What does it mean, exactly, to read this book? First, I think it must mean that you have already read 'How I Wrote Certain of My Books,' 'Locus Solus,' and 'Impressions of Africa': that is, you are thoroughly immersed, hypnotized, pithed by Roussel's absolutely unimpeachable, unapproachable weirdness. Then, I think it should mean you have read something about Roussel: Foucault's very literary book, or possibly Mark Ford's very sober appreciation.But then what can it possibly mean to read a book that keeps opening parentheses (like this ((and then parentheses within those, like this (((or this))) apparently endlessly (((and not at all always rationally ((((or so it seems)))) )))) )) ), playing arcane word games, making unconsciously ridiculous similes, proposing utterly opaque allusions, proposing the reader stop to cut the intentionally uncut octavo pages, and posing book-length puzzles that can never be solved because they aren't even (proper) puzzles. Even that sentence is easiest to read by plowing straight through. If I try to read it according to the order of the parentheses, I need to parse it carefully, and that is at once tedious and unrewarding.Here are the two most obvious ways that 'New Impressions of Africa' proposes that it be read:1. Read straight through, including footnotes whenever they appear.2. Read the way the surrealist's machine for turning the pages of the book supposedly worked: i.e., read to the opening of the first parentheses, find the place where that parenthesis closes, read from there to the end of the canto, return to the opening of the parenthesis, read (skipping interpolated parentheses), etc. -- until you have read the very last quintuple-nested parenthesis.The first kind of reading cannot yield the sense of any canto, because the logic, the argument -- whatever it should be called -- will be impossible to follow. The second raises two further possibilities:2a. Read mechanically, assiduously, skipping nothing, but reading in the moment, taking in each new stanza or couplet or page as it presents itself.2b. Read as you would read a piece of argumentative non-fiction, or a detective story: that is, try to keep the argument, or logic, or story, or grammar in mind as you go.I propose this last is the real challenge of the book, and I see almost no evidence that critics have tried it: and yet I think the logic and structure of the book itself makes such a reading just barely possible, and therefore necessary. I claim to have read Canto 2, 'The Battlefield of the Pyramids,' in this way, keeping the logic of the entire canto in mind as I read. It opens with three nested arguments in the space of half a page: a description of a coat (then a parenthesis opens, and inside it begins a description of a scarecrow, as an allegory of faith ((then a double parenthesis opens, and inside it a meditation on the cross apparently begins)) ); the first two arguments end where the parentheses close, on the last page of the canto. It was possible for me, one afternoon, to keep the entire top-heavy, preposterously artificial, tottering, twisted, perverse, inhuman argument in mind at once. At that moment -- which is now long gone -- I felt I had expended the effort Roussel demanded, and found my way to a new kind of rigor. A useless rigor, of course, but that is entirely the point.
Reading this book soothes me in a very weird way.* * * * * * * * *Now here's a book that should have distinct entries here on GR for its two current translations into English - Ian Monk's and Mark Ford's.Why the more recent Mark Ford version sports blurbs to the effect that his translation is the first is beyond me, though I'm beginnning to suspect some minor conspiracy initiated by distributors of foreign books and their campaign to limit the availability, and perhaps even deny the existence, of Atlas Press editions.I read Monk's version a couple years ago and it was a revelation that soothed me in a very weird way (see above), and I was content to reread his translation for the remainder of my days. But then out of the blue comes Mark Ford's translation in a conventional looking hardback designed for mass transmission (Monk's version is more of a precious object of publisher's art), and my initial impression was of slackness and dilation as compared to Monk's edgy terseness. This comparatively poor impression was intensified when I actually read the poem's first canto and was continually interrupted in my reading by end notes of often unnecessary explication (I much preferred the purer presentation of Monk's version, being as it is much closer to Roussel's original version, with the onus of understanding placed entirely upon the reader). But then when I read Ford's version of the first canto twice and went back and read Monk's version once, I began to see the benefits of having two very different translations, and presentations, of this great poem; though I was still on the fence about the benefits of Ford's version in isolation.Ford goes to great lengths to make the poem's syntax and meaning as clear as possible, at the expense of rendering it in any stanzaic uniformity, as Monk does by translating Roussel's rhyming alexandrines as rhyming iambic pentameter.In my back to back readings of the first cantos of each translation I noticed that Ford's is much more explicit in its expression of Roussel's apparent fecal (or generally excremental, whether solid liquid or gas) preoccupation; a preoccupation I did not even notice until I read Ford's translation.In the end, or rather in the beginning of the end, as I continue to read this masterpiece in these two versions, I suspect that I will read Ford's much more immediately accessible version as a way to enhance my reading of Monk's denser, prettier, and more mysterious version.
What do You think about Impressions Of Africa (1988)?
This one was remarkably readable for an author so closely connected to the surrealists. Still strange to thing that Roussel was a contemporary of Proust. Such a weird book after all, half the book being this surreal pageant of images and then the other half being an explanation of how the pageant came to be, explaining everything in minute detail. It struck me a lot like some of the X-Files episodes, the beginning actually being somewhat of the ending. In any event, saying this one is interesting is an understatatment.
—David
further proof that, for me, the best medium for expression of surrealism, the most effective, the most memorable- is visual not verbal. that is, visual arts like painting, etching, drawing, dance, plays, movies, or even plastic arts like sculpture, ceramics- not writing prose or poetry. maybe this loses something in translation, but for me it is one long, long, description of surrealist performance art, which may be striking, involving, interesting, in itself but not at this remove. in this, the anthropologist in me argues, there is nothing of Africa that offers these impressions...http://www.michaelkamakana.com/uncate...
—the gift
'Nouvelles Impressions d'Afrique', a title interpreted by Jean Ferry to represent 'nouvelles impressions à fric' ('new imprints for money') -- a sure sign that Raymond Roussel was aware by now that his work didn't sell well and publication had to be paid for by the author himself. The typesetter he collaborated with revealed that Roussel's original intentions with this book were to print the different layers or mental expeditions using different colors, but Roussel couldn't afford the costs of this process. Instead, he released this piece of poetry with a mystifying set of parentheses (that each enclose a tangential line of thought (stacked upon each other like this) or literary play (such as spending 12 pages of text filled with similes and interlocking motifs) in its many satisfying forms when you 'get' the hidden joke) along with extended footnote entries that use the same stacking procedure! It sounds like something that indeed wouldn't sell too well -- but it has become something of a cult classic nonetheless.The Dutch translation fulfills one wish of Roussel and has printed the different layers with 6 different colors. This helps tremendously in figuring out your position in the work, as the deepest level reads fine, but the others are intermittent and scattered among words and pages that belong to different impressions.Now I hear you think: "Wait, this is like Inception, right?" And in fact, in the fourth and last canto, a footnote at the 5th level is stacked into 4 sections itself to reach the deepest level of this poem which reads 'De se taire parfois l'occasion est riche' (freely translated: 'Sometimes it is preferable to remain silent'). Although the similarity with the 'limbo' state of Inception is an odd resemblance, the amount of tedious action scenes is far too scarce in this poem to be anything like the aforementioned movie. In this poem we get a non-stop crossfire of rhyming lines, often grouped in pairs of independent 'impressions'. This leads to a wildly encyclopedic range of excursions. It's like a museum that contains all the classy and vulgar things of this world and, moreover, puts them side by side as equals. I could do some philosophizing here about it reflecting life and such, but it really just helps to keep it fresh with hundreds of micro-stories!Roussel describes humans in detached sketches. He wrote that 'if it resembled [my] reality, it'd failed'. His observations are strictly from the outside - no feelings, little thoughts - and many resemble 'tableaux vivants', living images. They may surely have sprung from his mind or a composing constraint alone, but he makes reflective notes of the ordinary things that give us the 'fire' to act, or that take the fire from our lives.It is a great, rich and lucid poem full of puzzles, motifs and stories, that you'll read and read again -- if just to understand one piece after being interrupted by five other poems!
—Erik
