R.J. Dent's Blog, page 6
April 25, 2023
With me is god-the-dog, and its tongue
by Antonin Artaud
Translated into English by R J Dent
Listen to Poetry reads Antonin Artaud’s ‘With me is god-the-dog and its tongue’ (and 5 other Artaud poems) here: https://listentopoetry.com/antonin-artaud/
Six of Artaud’s poems and ‘Revolt Against Poetry’ have been published by Literary Orphans. The link to them is here: http://www.literaryorphans.org/playdb/antonin-artaud-six-poems-revolt-against-poetry-translated-by-r-j-dent/
The link to Listen to Poetry’s reading of Antonin Artaud’s ‘Revolt Against Poetry’ is here: https://listentopoetry.com/antonin-artaud-prose/
Translator’s website: http://www.rjdent.com/
April 23, 2023
The Day Glaxo Visited the Queen
A short story by R J Dent
The Day Glaxo Visited the Queen is a short story written by R J Dent, examining themes of deference to royalty.
The story can be read here: https://www.booksie.com/posting/r-j-dent/the-day-glaxo-visited-the-queen-695340
R J Dent’s website is here: http://www.rjdent.com/
April 18, 2023
R J Dent’s Books
Books either written by, translated by or contributed to by R J Dent
Some Thoughts on the Novel (the Marquis de Sade): http://www.rjdent.com/some-thoughts-on-the-novel/
The Celestial Bandit – A Tribute to Lautréamont/Isidore Ducasse (Various Authors): http://www.rjdent.com/the-celestial-bandit-a-tribute-to-isidore-ducasse-the-comte-de-lautreamont-edited-by-jordan-a-rothacker/
Sade: Sex and Death – Sade and the Surrealists (Various Authors): http://www.rjdent.com/sade-sex-and-death-the-divine-marquis-and-the-surrealists/
The Blood Delirium: Vampire Fiction (Various Authors): http://www.rjdent.com/the-blood-delirium-the-vampire-in-19th-century-european-literature/
A Box of Stars Beneath the Bed (Various Authors): https://www.amazon.co.uk/Box-Stars-Beneath-Bed-Flash-Fiction-ebook/dp/B01H7QRZ2K
Voodoo Excess (Jeremy Reed): http://www.rjdent.com/voodoo-excess/
The Songs of Maldoror (Le Comte de Lautréamont): http://www.rjdent.com/the-songs-of-maldoror-2/
Poems and Fragments (Alcaeus): http://www.rjdent.com/alcaeus-poems-fragments/
Moonstone Silhouettes (R J Dent): http://www.rjdent.com/moonstone-silhouettes/
Myth (R J Dent): http://www.rjdent.com/myth/
Speculations (Alfred Jarry): http://www.rjdent.com/speculations-alfred-jarry-translated-into-english-by-r-j-dent/
Her Three Daughters (Pierre Louys): http://www.rjdent.com/her-three-daughters/
Capital of Pain (Paul Éluard): http://www.rjdent.com/capital-of-pain/
Jean-Fucque (Louis Aragon): http://www.rjdent.com/jean-fucque-le-cocque-by-louis-aragon-adapted-from-the-french-by-r-j-dent/
Selected Erotic Poems (Charles Baudelaire): http://www.rjdent.com/selected-erotic-poems-charles-baudelaire-translated-from-the-french-by-r-j-dent/
Retaliation (the Marquis de Sade): http://www.rjdent.com/retaliation/
The Self-Made Cuckold (the Marquis de Sade): http://www.rjdent.com/the-self-made-cuckold-the-marquis-de-sade-translated-into-english-by-r-j-dent/
A Judge Deceived (the Marquis de Sade): http://www.rjdent.com/a-judge-deceived/
April 12, 2023
Review: Alfred Jarry’s Speculations
A review by Conor Hultman for The Local Voice
Book Review by Conor Hultman:
Speculations
by Alfred Jarry (translated by R J Dent)
Black Scat Books ($15.95)
Alfred Jarry, the French symbolist writer, founder of “pataphysics” (the absurd study of that which is beyond metaphysics), and influence for every weird artist from the Dadaists on down, has seen an embarrassingly low amount of translations in proportion to his historical significance and contemporary relevance. One might have the good luck to run into a copy of his most famous work, the play Ubu Roi, at a bookstore, but most likely not. R J Dent has done a great service for anyone with a sick and slanted sense of humor, in bringing into English Spéculations, a collection of Jarry’s “essays” on imaginary scenarios and antisensical observations.
Why Jarry reads so fresh today is much due to his perverse and unreal conception of what’s funny. The essay “Cannibalism” starts: “This much-neglected branch of anthropology, anthropophagy, known more generally as cannibalism, is not dying out; cannibalism is not dead.”
Is “much-neglected” meaning in study, or in practice?
“Known more generally”! “Anthropophagy”!
The hilarious, ironically-mournful note, “cannibalism is not dead”! Not to dissect a joke (or dissect a dissection, in this case), but I mean only to give a taste of the strange, alien tone Jarry uses across this book to derange the reader out of their comfortable stance toward the commonplace.
R J Dent is as much or more responsible for achieving this alien effect in translation. It’s hard to imagine these flesh-splitting, perception-altering lines not having originated in English; “The fashion is for kidnappings”; “virtuous philanthropists have organized the large-scale milking of white women”; “There are virtuous celibates who abstain and use the ‘moral restraint’ of Malthus, which is available from all the good tyre makers,” for a few glittering examples. The English used carries off all the bizarre unreality of Jarry’s idiom without recourse to erudition nor archaisms. We have here “speculations” about the bus as quarry for hunters and trappers, biological studies of drowned drunks as aquatic specimens, and the Crucifixion reimagined as a bicycle race between Jesus and Pontius Pilate. Jarry ranges over war, sex, cities, industry, all the crude obsessions of modernity, and strains them through a dream logic. R J Dent captures this logic in a language perfectly clear, admirable for writing that aims at nothing so less as clarity.
There’s a story that Jarry carried a loaded revolver around with him (said revolver Picasso obtained after his death, and took it with him on night walks around Paris). A woman living near Jarry complained to him about the danger of his gun-toting to her children. To which Jarry said, “If that should ever happen, ma-da-me, we should ourselves be happy to get new ones with you.” If you can appreciate as demented a sentiment as that, you can have a hundred more reading Speculations, in a delightful translation from R J Dent, available at Black Scat Books: JARRY LIVES!
The original review can be found here: http://www.thelocalvoice.net/oxford/book-review-by-conor-hultman-speculations-by-alfred-jarry/
Book details (translator’s website): http://www.rjdent.com/speculations-alfred-jarry-translated-into-english-by-r-j-dent/
Alfred Jarry’s Speculations
A review by Conor Hultman for The Local Voice, Oxford, Mississippi
Conor Hultman has reviewed R J Dent’s modern English translation of Alfred Jarry’s Speculations for The Local Voice, based in Oxford, Mississippi.
The review can be read here: http://www.thelocalvoice.net/oxford/book-review-by-conor-hultman-speculations-by-alfred-jarry/
The book details and links are here: https://blackscatbooks.com/2022/03/23/jarry-lives/
and here: http://www.rjdent.com/speculations-alfred-jarry-translated-into-english-by-r-j-dent/
Alfred Jarry spent his brief and turbulent life experimenting with genres of fiction. In his last few years, he created a new fictional form: the absurdist speculative essay. R J Dent’s new English translation of Speculations contains 68 of Jarry’s essays, originally printed between 1901 and 1904 as a series, ‘Spéculations’, in the French journal Le Revue Blanche.
In Jarry’s darkly comic collection of surrealist and satirical prose pieces, the renowned author deploys his characteristic satirical eye and dark humor to devastating effect. These essays range in tone from the wildly comic to the deeply tragic and cover a diversity of subjects, ranging from French Trees to Cannibalism. For Jarry, nothing is sacred; everything is worthy material for his surreal satire; the Passion is presented as a sporting event; buses are the prey of big game hunters, and even the Queen is licked from behind.
A series of sly investigations into fin de siècle France that reads like a beautiful & bloody
handful of paper cuts, splintered essays that turn authority on its head in sharp bursts of
wicked logic, R J Dent elegantly capturing Jarry’s iconoclastic spirit, his scandalous heart.
—Matthew Kinlin
April 10, 2023
Suki Takes It Off (Again)
A short story by R J Dent
Published in D.F.L. Lit in April 2023
Inspired by an initial anecdote told to the author by his brother, and then plotted and written after research into ventriloquism, particularly the work of the incredibly gifted Nina Conti, Suki Takes It Off (Again) is a short story written by R J Dent, about a professional ventriloquist who is called to the hospital bedside of her dying mother.
The story was published in D.F.L. Lit in April 2023.
Here is the link to read Suki Takes It Off (Again): https://dfllit.com/043-2/
R J Dent’s website: http://www.rjdent.com/
March 31, 2023
The Study of the English Language – Alfred Jarry
in TYPO 2: A Journal of Lettrism, Surrealist Semantics & Constrained Design.
Alfred Jarry’s absurdist essay, The Study of the English Language in which a man is able to learn an entire new language after hearing a loud explosion, is now available to read in TYPO 2: A Journal of Lettrism, Surrealist Semantics & Constrained Design.
TYPO 2 is available here: https://blackscatbooks.com/2023/03/27/typo-2
Or here:
US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BZFLSJ95
UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0BZFLSJ95
Aus: https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B0BZFLSJ95
Can: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B0BZFLSJ95
Alfred Jarry’s The Study of the English Language is also one of the essays in Speculations, a collection of Jarry’s Surrealist, absurdist essays published by Black Scat Books.
Alfred Jarry spent his brief and turbulent life experimenting with genres of fiction. In his last few years, he created a new fictional form: the absurdist speculative essay. R J Dent’s new English translation of Speculations contains 68 of Jarry’s essays, originally printed between 1901 and 1904 as a series, ‘Spéculations’, in the French journal Le Revue Blanche.
In Jarry’s darkly comic collection of surrealist and satirical prose pieces, the renowned author deploys his characteristic satirical eye and dark humour to devastating effect. The essays in Speculations range in tone from the wildly comic to the deeply tragic and cover a diversity of subjects, ranging from French Trees to Cannibalism. For Jarry, nothing is sacred; everything is worthy material for his surreal satire; the Passion is presented as a sporting event; buses are the prey of big game hunters, and even the Queen is licked from behind.
Book Details:
Title: Speculations
Author: Alfred Jarry
Translator: R J Dent
Publisher: Black Scat Books
ISBN-13: 979-8985999617
Publication Date: March 22, 2022
Language: English
Format: Paperback
Pages: 235
Item Weight: 11.2 ounces (317.5 grams)
Dimensions: 5.06 x 0.59 x 7.81 inches (12.85 x 1.5 x 19.84 cm)
Publisher’s product details: https://blackscatbooks.com/2022/03/23/jarry-lives/
Purchase link (UK): https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B09W78YV4G
Purchase link (USA): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09W78YV4G
Purchase link (Aus): https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B09W78YV4G
March 28, 2023
All Things Éluard
Paul Éluard’s poetry in print and audio.
Capital of Pain is a book of poems by French surrealist poet Paul Éluard.
Capital of Pain by Paul Éluard, translated into modern English by R J Dent, is published by Black Scat Books.
Book details:
Title: Capital of Pain
Author: Paul Ėluard
Translator: R J Dent
Publisher: Black Scat Books
Publication Date: February 16th, 2023
Language: English
Format: Paperback
Pages: 132
ISBN-13: 979-8986922485
Item Weight: 7 ounces (198.447 grams)
Dimensions: 5.06 inches x 0.33 inches x 7.81 inches (12.85 cm x 0.84 cm x 19.84 cm)
Book details by the publisher: https://blackscatbooks.com/2023/02/16/surreal-deal/
Book details on R J Dent’s website: http://www.rjdent.com/capital-of-pain/
Purchase link (US): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BVT3QXGD/
Purchase link (UK): https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0BVT3QXGD/
Purchase link (Aus) https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B0BVT3QXGD/
Purchase link (Can): https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B0BVT3QXGD/
Five poems from Capital of Pain are available to read in TYPO 2: A Journal of Lettrism, Surrealist Semantics & Constrained Design.
TYPO 2 is available here:
Publisher’s details: https://blackscatbooks.com/2023/03/27/typo-2
Purchase links:
US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BZFLSJ95
UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0BZFLSJ95
Aus: https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B0BZFLSJ95
Can: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B0BZFLSJ95
Eight poems from Capital of Pain have been read and recorded by Listen To Poetry.
The link to hear the eight poems from Capital of Pain read by Listen to Poetry is here: https://listentopoetry.com/paul-eluard/
March 27, 2023
T Y P O 2
Journal of Lettrism, Surrealist Semantics & Constrained Design
T Y P O: Journal of Lettrism, Surrealist Semantics & Constrained Design
TYPO 2 is now available
Contents include: alien alphabets, prismatic subdivisions, principles of double-talk, Post-Neoist portraits, desiring specimens, asemic architecture, Paul Éluard poetry, titular typography, Surrealist trivia, Italian eye candy, curlicues in review, generic sheet music, Jarry on the English language, historical filler text translations & much more
Journal Details:
Title: TYPO 2
Author: Various
Language: English
ISBN 979-8-9869224-5-4
Format: Paperback Journal
Pages: 152
Publisher: Black Scat Books
Contributors:
Pierre Albert-Birot; Guillaume Apollinaire; Mark Axelrod-Sokolov; Tom Barrett; Allan Bealy; Miggs Burroughs; Jahan Cader; Janina Ciezadlo; Norman Conquest; Farewell Debut; R J Dent; Karen Eliot; Paul Éluard; Paul Forristal; Ryan Forsythe; Jesse Glass; Rick Henry; Rhys Hughes; Rory Hughes; Alfred Jarry; Richard Koman; Márton Koppány; Amy Kurman; Peter F. Murphy; Pata-No UN LTD; Gaston de Pawlowski; Derek Pell; Harry Polkinhorn; Tom Prime; Jason E. Rolfe; Ded Rysel; Doug Skinner; Giovanni Antonio Tagliente; Félix Vallotton; Andrew C. Wenaus; Adolphe Willette; Carla Wilson; William Wordsworth.
Publisher’s details: https://blackscatbooks.com/2023/03/27/typo-2
Purchase links:
US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BZFLSJ95
UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0BZFLSJ95
Aus: https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B0BZFLSJ95
Can: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B0BZFLSJ95
March 20, 2023
The Songs of Maldoror – a mini-review
by cegesteorphee
‘My choice for World Poetry Day is Lautreamont’s Les Chants de Maldoror – this edition by https://www.infinitylandpress.com/ is the best edition in English IMO…’
Book details (Infinity Land Press): https://www.infinitylandpress.com/the-songs-of-maldoror
Book details (Translator’s website): http://www.rjdent.com/the-songs-of-maldoror-2/
