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Locus Solus
An intoxicating sui generis novel by “the greatest mesmerist of modern times” (André Breton) The wealthy scientist Martial Canterel guides a group of visitors through his expansive estate, Locus Solus, where he displays his various deranged inventions, each more spectacular than the last. First, he introduces a machine propelled by the weather, which constructs a mosaic out of varying hues of human teeth, then shows a hairless cat charged with a powerful electric battery, and next a bizarre theater in which corpses are reanimated with a special serum to enact the most important movements of their past lives. Wondrously imaginative and narrated with Roussel’s deadpan wit, Locus Solus is unlike anything else ever written.
256 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1913
116 people are currently reading
5809 people want to read
About the author
Raymond Roussel
50 books134 followersPoet, storyteller, playwright and French essayist, born in Paris in 1877 and died in Palermo (Italy) in 1933. Author of a singular literary production of striking originality and dazzling imaginative force, applied with real obsessive fixation experiments applied to descriptive techniques and came to deploy a sort of automatic writing that made him one of the most brilliant of the surrealist movement.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 145 reviews
November 16, 2024
Locus Solus is an ultimate féerie where fantasy and inventiveness knows no limits. It’s a vista of brilliantly schizoid visions.
Art for art’s sake – a spiral aimed into the infinity… True art must enrapture and ravish… It must be a vehicle of boundless admiration…
What could be more innovative and groundbreaking for the modern pop culture than a theatrical troupe of animated corpses?
The entire novel is a vivification of artistic hallucinations – a surreal and post-impressionistic trip into obsession and insanity defying genres and told by genius.
The deeper into surreality the better is the artist.
Art for art’s sake – a spiral aimed into the infinity… True art must enrapture and ravish… It must be a vehicle of boundless admiration…
At last, after a great deal of trial and error and long experimenting with corpses submitted in time to the required degree of cold, the professor prepared on the one hand vitalium and on the other resurrectine. The latter was a reddish substance based on erythrite, which, when injected as a liquid into the skull of some defunct person through a laterally pierced opening, solidified of its own accord around the brain, encompassing it on all sides. It was then only necessary to put some point of the internal envelope thus created into contact with vitalium (a brown metal easily introduced into the injection hole in the form of a short rod) for the two new substances, each of them inactive without the other, to release a powerful current of electricity at that moment, which penetrated the brain and overcame its cadaveric rigidity, endowing the subject with an impressive artificial life. As a consequence of a curious awakening of memory, the latter would at once reproduce, with strict exactitude, every slightest action performed by him during certain outstanding minutes of his life; then, without any break, he would indefinitely repeat the same unvarying series of deeds and gestures which he had chosen once and for all. The illusion of life was absolute: mobility of expression, the continual working of the lungs, speech, various actions, walking – nothing was missing.
What could be more innovative and groundbreaking for the modern pop culture than a theatrical troupe of animated corpses?
The entire novel is a vivification of artistic hallucinations – a surreal and post-impressionistic trip into obsession and insanity defying genres and told by genius.
The deeper into surreality the better is the artist.
September 1, 2012
"My fame will outshine that of Victor Hugo or Napoleon." - Raymond RousselWhile this wish of Roussel may not have been realized, he did inspire more artists than Napoleon ever did.
Reading Locus Solus is like having walked into a surrealist painting. As one explores the painting bit by bit, several fascinating stories behind the visuals are revealed.
Roussel takes the reader on a tour of an estate with wildly imaginative and bizarre inventions and works of art on display. These, however, are not meant to be mysterious, magical works. The narrative alternates between detailed descriptions of the intricate machinery enabling each display and a story describing the context behind the visuals. Thus, on one hand, one would hear details laid out with scientific precision. And on the other, there are stories from distant lands, ancient times, stories about emperors and warriors. The novel is essentially composed of several stories-(within-stories)-within-story.
In a way, Locus Solus is about obsessions. The owner of the estate is an immensely wealthy man, with a scientific bend of mind and unparalleled ingenuity. Once an idea occupies his whimsical mind, he will go to any lengths to make it happen, even if it involves experimenting on people - living or dead.
Many of the inventions are described in enough technical detail for one to draw out the plan. To actually create the display, all one will need is to invent/discover the required materials, a godown full of human teeth, an aquarium for terrestrial beings, a half decomposed head, , a set of intelligent and obedient animals and of course, a never-ending supply of money.
I know absence of a plot can be a deal-breaker for some people. More than anything, it is really the whole premise that I find so alluring. This novel is something extra-ordinary.
And finally:
"Read with an open mind and a shot of absinthe." - The Observor_____________________________
Why has almost no one read this book? I can see it is not going to be everyone's cup of tea, but it is pretty darn good.
Only a meager 150 GR ratings! What gives?
September 18, 2022
YouTube kanalımda Locus Solus kitabını önerdim:
https://youtu.be/geVOXsOAOfo
Akla hayale getirilemeyen makine tasarılarıyla anı koleksiyonculuğu yapan, bugüne kadar okuduğunuz hiçbir kitaba katiyen benzemeyen, gerçekli büyücülük tarzının belki de dünyadaki tek temsilcisi, ölülerin bir reenkarnasyon sistemi içerisinde kendilerini ahiret simülatörü içerisinde bulduğu ve belki de bugüne kadar okuduklarım içerisinde yapay zeka edebiyatına sahip ilk kitap: Locus Solus!
İstisnasız olarak hepimiz, anılarımızı aklımızdaki soyut silüet hallerinden koparıp bir saklama kabında muhafaza etmek isteriz. Onların tekrar yaşanması arzulandığında ise elimizde birkaç saniye kapatılan gözler, aklımızdan geçen ve sinir uçlarımıza anlık olarak değen uyarımlar, hafıza bahçemizde soluk çiçekler olarak hayatına devam eden unutuşlardan başka pek bir şey kalmamıştır. Engin denizlerden gelen bir dalganın ulaşacağı sahilin kumlarını en uzak üyelerine kadar yıkıyor olma arzusu gibi hayat ve ölüm de insanın içinde onun tasvir bile edemeyeceği kadar uzakta duran kuru düşünce parçalarını yıkıyor olmak*¹ ister. Roussel ise bu eylemin gizli öznesidir.
"Neden yeni bir renk hayal edemeyiz?" sorusunun karşısına külliyen bir cevap olarak çıkan Roussel, akla hayale gelmeyen makine tasarılarıyla, reenkarnasyon fikrinin olgunlaştığı ahiret simülatörleriyle, çoktan ölmüş insanların ve unutulmuş hikayelerin unutkanlıklara savaş açtığı meydan muharebelerinde hayat ve ölümü düşüncenin bütün silahlarıyla birlikte başbaşa bırakır. Onun kelimeleri hayatla doludur, onun kelimeleri ölümle doludur. Sürekli tekrarlanan gelgitlerle yaşadığımız hayatlarımızdaki varlığımızın avutulmuş zenginliği, kelimelerimizin fakirliğine sadaka verme ihtiyacı duyar. Varoluşumuzla kelimelerin varoluşuna sebep olmak isteriz. Fakat kelimelerle olan mülakatımızdan da tam olarak bu yüzden yüzü asık ayrılırız. Yüzümüzün etrafındaki benler, sivilceler, kırışıklıklar, siyah noktalar ve gamzelerin zaman geçtikçe açıklanmayı bekleyen, akla hayale gelmeyecek hikayelerle taşması da Roussel'in saklama kabı içindeki anılarının bir geçitin üstündeki keçilerin geçiş mücadelesi hikayesinde olduğu gibi dil-varlık kutuplarında savaşımına bağlıdır.
"Dil varlık kadar zengin olsaydı, şeylerin yararsız ve suskun ikizinden, kopyasından başka bir şey olmazdı; hatta hiç var olmazdı." (s. 161) Raymond Russel: Ölüm ve Labirent, Michel Foucault
Kimsenin aklından geçiremeyeceği şeyleri keşfeden, o mekanı o güne dek hiç söylenmemiş şeylerle kaplayan, karşılaştığımız ve hafıza bahçemizde yetiştirdiğimiz unutulmaya yüz tutmuş hikayeleri hayat güneşiyle ve ölüm suyuyla reenkarne eden, sırları tasvirlerin derinliklerindeki mercan adalarında arayan Roussel'dan başkası değildir. Dalgıçlar olarak bizler ise elimizdeki betimleme gücü zıpkınlarımızla ava giderken onun hayal denizinde vurgun yemekten başka çare bulamayız. Vurgunun*² hangi yönden geldiğini anlamaya çalışırken yanımızda beliren dilkurtaran, görünür kılmaya çalıştığımız hedeflerimizin aslında birer görünmezlik çeperi yanılgısından ibaret olduğunu algılamamızı sağlar. Zaten Roussel'ın yapay zekası da mekan ve dilin insanlar gibi düşünmesini sağladığı ölçüde zekidir, beklenmediktir.
"Şeylerin yüzeyi altında, görünür nesnelerin iç yüzlerini görünmez çekirdeklerinin çeperinden ayıran şu namevcut mekan ile dil arasındaki bağ." (s. 123) Raymond Russel: Ölüm ve Labirent, Michel Foucault
Yanılsama ve tekrarların kendi memleketleri olarak var olduğu bir akılda tam devinim vizesiyle hayat ve ölüm ülkesinin arasında bulunan sınır kapısından geçilirken Roussel adlı gümrük memuruna kelime rüşvetleri sunulması da tam olarak Roussel'ın akla hayale getirilemeyen bir turist-okur serüvenliği elde etme isteminden dolayı olabilir diye düşünüyorum. Gümrük memurunun kaşesinde ise durağan sandıklarımızın*³ içinde kaçırdığımız devingenlikler vardır. Bu devingenliklerin öğrenilmiş çaresizliği içerisinde Roussel'ın saydam sinir kapısından geçilir.
Kitap ya da hayat boyunca birilerinin bizim için kurguladığı eserlere durağan bakışlarımızla bakar geçeriz, bize verilmiş olan organlarımız, tarafımızca umursanmayan anatomik ritüellerini yerine getirmekle meşgulken gözümüze yansıyan ve çeşitli tabakalardan geçen imgelemlerin katmerlerindeki eksiklikleri sorgulama ihtiyacı duymayız. Görünürde eksik görünmeyenler, görünmezde eksik görünür.
"Yaşam yanılsaması tamdı: bakışın devingenliği, akciğerlerin sürekli soluması, konuşma, değişik edimler, yürüme, hiçbir şey eksik değildi." (s. 112) Locus Solus, Raymond Roussel
Benliğinizin boşluğunu onun edebi özgünlüğüne teslim etmek istediğiniz anda bugüne kadar okumuş olduğunuz kitaplardan sonra Locus Solus, bir uyku serseminin yüzünü yıkamasına benzerdir. Okurun rüyalarla şişmiş büyülü gerçekçi yüzünün yıkanmasına sebep olan gerçekli büyücü Roussel suyunun tazyiği, okurun elindeki İngiliz anahtarını hangi yönde kullanacağına bağlıdır. Çünkü biliriz ki, bir anahtar hem kilitler hem açar -ya da hem sıkar hem gevşetir. Kelimelerle, arsenikle, ölümün gerçekçiliğiyle ama en önemlisi de tekrar yaşanabilirliğiyle dolu suyun içindeki sırların bize hem tikel hem de çoğul gelmesi, onun bir zamanlar kendi tebeşiriyle çizdiği üç boyutlu düşünsel dünyasını teknolojiye köle olmuş iki boyutlu akıllarımızla imkansızlık kafesine*? baştan koyma ön yargımızdan dolayıdır.
Victor Hugo'nun bir şiirini,
"Nasıl, diye sordular
Kurtulmalı pis bedenlerimizden
Kanatlarımızdan olmadan?
Ölün, dediler.",
şeklinde kendine ve kitabında tasarladığı makinelere yamayan Roussel, kanatlarından olmadan ölmek istemiştir. Kanatlarından olmadan ölmüştür. Zira onun kanatları ardında bıraktığı özgün bir dil hazinesidir. Bir yangın çıkma ihtimalinde, Roussel'ın bıraktığı kanatları kullanarak Salvador Dali bir tek Locus Solus kitabıyla imgelemlerine uçak bileti almak ister, Michel Foucault ise içindeki adrenalin hormonlarının supaplarına Roussel yağı sürmeden kendini alamaz. Adrenalinin peynir olduğu bir kurmaca labirentinde Foucault basit bir fareye dönüşmüştür. Roussel ise uçarı makine tasarılarıyla birlikte kıs kıs intihar etmiştir.
------------------------------------------
*¹ : İnceleme sahibi, yıkmak ve yıkamak kelimelerinin birleşimiyle bir kelime oyunu yapmıştır.
*² : İnceleme sahibi, vurgu ve vurgun kelimelerinin birleşimiyle bir kelime oyunu yapmıştır.
*³ : İnceleme sahibi, sanmak ve sandık kelimelerinin birleşimiyle bir kelime oyunu yapmıştır.
.
.
.
*? : İnceleme sahibi, kafe ve kafes kelimelerinin birleşimiyle bir kelime oyunu yapmıştır.
?
Σ (n) = Raymond Roussel
n=1
https://youtu.be/geVOXsOAOfo
Akla hayale getirilemeyen makine tasarılarıyla anı koleksiyonculuğu yapan, bugüne kadar okuduğunuz hiçbir kitaba katiyen benzemeyen, gerçekli büyücülük tarzının belki de dünyadaki tek temsilcisi, ölülerin bir reenkarnasyon sistemi içerisinde kendilerini ahiret simülatörü içerisinde bulduğu ve belki de bugüne kadar okuduklarım içerisinde yapay zeka edebiyatına sahip ilk kitap: Locus Solus!
İstisnasız olarak hepimiz, anılarımızı aklımızdaki soyut silüet hallerinden koparıp bir saklama kabında muhafaza etmek isteriz. Onların tekrar yaşanması arzulandığında ise elimizde birkaç saniye kapatılan gözler, aklımızdan geçen ve sinir uçlarımıza anlık olarak değen uyarımlar, hafıza bahçemizde soluk çiçekler olarak hayatına devam eden unutuşlardan başka pek bir şey kalmamıştır. Engin denizlerden gelen bir dalganın ulaşacağı sahilin kumlarını en uzak üyelerine kadar yıkıyor olma arzusu gibi hayat ve ölüm de insanın içinde onun tasvir bile edemeyeceği kadar uzakta duran kuru düşünce parçalarını yıkıyor olmak*¹ ister. Roussel ise bu eylemin gizli öznesidir.
"Neden yeni bir renk hayal edemeyiz?" sorusunun karşısına külliyen bir cevap olarak çıkan Roussel, akla hayale gelmeyen makine tasarılarıyla, reenkarnasyon fikrinin olgunlaştığı ahiret simülatörleriyle, çoktan ölmüş insanların ve unutulmuş hikayelerin unutkanlıklara savaş açtığı meydan muharebelerinde hayat ve ölümü düşüncenin bütün silahlarıyla birlikte başbaşa bırakır. Onun kelimeleri hayatla doludur, onun kelimeleri ölümle doludur. Sürekli tekrarlanan gelgitlerle yaşadığımız hayatlarımızdaki varlığımızın avutulmuş zenginliği, kelimelerimizin fakirliğine sadaka verme ihtiyacı duyar. Varoluşumuzla kelimelerin varoluşuna sebep olmak isteriz. Fakat kelimelerle olan mülakatımızdan da tam olarak bu yüzden yüzü asık ayrılırız. Yüzümüzün etrafındaki benler, sivilceler, kırışıklıklar, siyah noktalar ve gamzelerin zaman geçtikçe açıklanmayı bekleyen, akla hayale gelmeyecek hikayelerle taşması da Roussel'in saklama kabı içindeki anılarının bir geçitin üstündeki keçilerin geçiş mücadelesi hikayesinde olduğu gibi dil-varlık kutuplarında savaşımına bağlıdır.
"Dil varlık kadar zengin olsaydı, şeylerin yararsız ve suskun ikizinden, kopyasından başka bir şey olmazdı; hatta hiç var olmazdı." (s. 161) Raymond Russel: Ölüm ve Labirent, Michel Foucault
Kimsenin aklından geçiremeyeceği şeyleri keşfeden, o mekanı o güne dek hiç söylenmemiş şeylerle kaplayan, karşılaştığımız ve hafıza bahçemizde yetiştirdiğimiz unutulmaya yüz tutmuş hikayeleri hayat güneşiyle ve ölüm suyuyla reenkarne eden, sırları tasvirlerin derinliklerindeki mercan adalarında arayan Roussel'dan başkası değildir. Dalgıçlar olarak bizler ise elimizdeki betimleme gücü zıpkınlarımızla ava giderken onun hayal denizinde vurgun yemekten başka çare bulamayız. Vurgunun*² hangi yönden geldiğini anlamaya çalışırken yanımızda beliren dilkurtaran, görünür kılmaya çalıştığımız hedeflerimizin aslında birer görünmezlik çeperi yanılgısından ibaret olduğunu algılamamızı sağlar. Zaten Roussel'ın yapay zekası da mekan ve dilin insanlar gibi düşünmesini sağladığı ölçüde zekidir, beklenmediktir.
"Şeylerin yüzeyi altında, görünür nesnelerin iç yüzlerini görünmez çekirdeklerinin çeperinden ayıran şu namevcut mekan ile dil arasındaki bağ." (s. 123) Raymond Russel: Ölüm ve Labirent, Michel Foucault
Yanılsama ve tekrarların kendi memleketleri olarak var olduğu bir akılda tam devinim vizesiyle hayat ve ölüm ülkesinin arasında bulunan sınır kapısından geçilirken Roussel adlı gümrük memuruna kelime rüşvetleri sunulması da tam olarak Roussel'ın akla hayale getirilemeyen bir turist-okur serüvenliği elde etme isteminden dolayı olabilir diye düşünüyorum. Gümrük memurunun kaşesinde ise durağan sandıklarımızın*³ içinde kaçırdığımız devingenlikler vardır. Bu devingenliklerin öğrenilmiş çaresizliği içerisinde Roussel'ın saydam sinir kapısından geçilir.
Kitap ya da hayat boyunca birilerinin bizim için kurguladığı eserlere durağan bakışlarımızla bakar geçeriz, bize verilmiş olan organlarımız, tarafımızca umursanmayan anatomik ritüellerini yerine getirmekle meşgulken gözümüze yansıyan ve çeşitli tabakalardan geçen imgelemlerin katmerlerindeki eksiklikleri sorgulama ihtiyacı duymayız. Görünürde eksik görünmeyenler, görünmezde eksik görünür.
"Yaşam yanılsaması tamdı: bakışın devingenliği, akciğerlerin sürekli soluması, konuşma, değişik edimler, yürüme, hiçbir şey eksik değildi." (s. 112) Locus Solus, Raymond Roussel
Benliğinizin boşluğunu onun edebi özgünlüğüne teslim etmek istediğiniz anda bugüne kadar okumuş olduğunuz kitaplardan sonra Locus Solus, bir uyku serseminin yüzünü yıkamasına benzerdir. Okurun rüyalarla şişmiş büyülü gerçekçi yüzünün yıkanmasına sebep olan gerçekli büyücü Roussel suyunun tazyiği, okurun elindeki İngiliz anahtarını hangi yönde kullanacağına bağlıdır. Çünkü biliriz ki, bir anahtar hem kilitler hem açar -ya da hem sıkar hem gevşetir. Kelimelerle, arsenikle, ölümün gerçekçiliğiyle ama en önemlisi de tekrar yaşanabilirliğiyle dolu suyun içindeki sırların bize hem tikel hem de çoğul gelmesi, onun bir zamanlar kendi tebeşiriyle çizdiği üç boyutlu düşünsel dünyasını teknolojiye köle olmuş iki boyutlu akıllarımızla imkansızlık kafesine*? baştan koyma ön yargımızdan dolayıdır.
Victor Hugo'nun bir şiirini,
"Nasıl, diye sordular
Kurtulmalı pis bedenlerimizden
Kanatlarımızdan olmadan?
Ölün, dediler.",
şeklinde kendine ve kitabında tasarladığı makinelere yamayan Roussel, kanatlarından olmadan ölmek istemiştir. Kanatlarından olmadan ölmüştür. Zira onun kanatları ardında bıraktığı özgün bir dil hazinesidir. Bir yangın çıkma ihtimalinde, Roussel'ın bıraktığı kanatları kullanarak Salvador Dali bir tek Locus Solus kitabıyla imgelemlerine uçak bileti almak ister, Michel Foucault ise içindeki adrenalin hormonlarının supaplarına Roussel yağı sürmeden kendini alamaz. Adrenalinin peynir olduğu bir kurmaca labirentinde Foucault basit bir fareye dönüşmüştür. Roussel ise uçarı makine tasarılarıyla birlikte kıs kıs intihar etmiştir.
------------------------------------------
*¹ : İnceleme sahibi, yıkmak ve yıkamak kelimelerinin birleşimiyle bir kelime oyunu yapmıştır.
*² : İnceleme sahibi, vurgu ve vurgun kelimelerinin birleşimiyle bir kelime oyunu yapmıştır.
*³ : İnceleme sahibi, sanmak ve sandık kelimelerinin birleşimiyle bir kelime oyunu yapmıştır.
.
.
.
*? : İnceleme sahibi, kafe ve kafes kelimelerinin birleşimiyle bir kelime oyunu yapmıştır.
?
Σ (n) = Raymond Roussel
n=1
May 19, 2011
I read this book some years ago, and to this day I felt I dreamt it. Not meaning it's a Surrealist work - and some argue it is - at least by its nature. But re-reading "Locus Solus" reminds me of the Museum of Jurrastic Technology here in Los Angeles. One goes into the museum not sure how it will turn out in the end, but for sure you are going for a wild intellectual and sensual journey.
There is no real plot for say, but more of a group of settings where things happen Some are narratives and some are almost visual set pieces. Which explains why Roussel was a major influence on the visual arts of the early 20th Century as well as to poets. His mixture of images within bizarre settings never gets stale. The wealthy scientist Cantarel takes a group on a tour of his estate, and what he has in his collection.... Oh my!
in many ways the book is about obsessions. About capturing a moment and keeping it is some form or another. And that the author is Raymond Roussel, perhaps one of the great obsessive writers ever. A wealthy man who paid for the publication for this book (as well as his other titles). An author who eventually put together a huge stage show in Paris - and a man who traveled around the world and never left the ocean liner. So the world of his choice are all in his head. And this is what makes his work so great.
There is logic, but its in a science fiction turn of the century way of looking at the world. And that is another odd aspect to his work is that he is clearly a man from the 19th Century dealing with the 20th Century world. Without a doubt a work of genius, and a book I will re-read again and again.
There is no real plot for say, but more of a group of settings where things happen Some are narratives and some are almost visual set pieces. Which explains why Roussel was a major influence on the visual arts of the early 20th Century as well as to poets. His mixture of images within bizarre settings never gets stale. The wealthy scientist Cantarel takes a group on a tour of his estate, and what he has in his collection.... Oh my!
in many ways the book is about obsessions. About capturing a moment and keeping it is some form or another. And that the author is Raymond Roussel, perhaps one of the great obsessive writers ever. A wealthy man who paid for the publication for this book (as well as his other titles). An author who eventually put together a huge stage show in Paris - and a man who traveled around the world and never left the ocean liner. So the world of his choice are all in his head. And this is what makes his work so great.
There is logic, but its in a science fiction turn of the century way of looking at the world. And that is another odd aspect to his work is that he is clearly a man from the 19th Century dealing with the 20th Century world. Without a doubt a work of genius, and a book I will re-read again and again.
November 20, 2024
Raymond Russel’ı ve onun ilginç ve farklı kitabı Locus Solus’u okumaya karar verdiğimde iki olasılığı da kafamda tartmıştım. Ya kitap hakkında çok güvendiğim “goodreads” dostlarımın 5 yıldızlık beğenileri haklı çıkacak dolayısıyla ben de beğeneceğim, ya da kitap hakkında çok olumlu sözler söyleyen ama benim hiçbir şekilde sempati duymadığım, beğenmediğim belki de anlamadığım Breton, Butor, S. Dali gibi isimler benim kısmi önyargımı doğrulayacak yani kitabı beğenmeyeceğim.
İkinci olasılık oluştu. Yazarın mükemmel bir düzyazı tekniği, olağanüstü tanımlamaları, ayrıntılardaki özeni, hikaye anlatımındaki güzelliği, zihni sinir projeleri gibi ilginç teknik detayları ve daha başka birçok olumlu özelliklerine rağmen bu fantastik biraz da esrarengiz romanı (roman mı emin değilim) kitabı beğen(e)medim. Çok sıkılarak ve zorlayarak okudum, kitabın içine girmek istememe rağmen kitap beni kabul etmedi.
Sürrealizm, kübizm, dadaizm, fütürizm vb akımlara hep mesafeli olmuşumdur. Ne Dali ne Picasso, ne Aragon ne de Eluard beni cezbetmemektedir. Sürrealizm (gerçeküstücülük) sanatın her dalında kuvvetlice yeralırken kendimi hep çok uzaklarda hissetmişimdir.
Özetle beğenmedim, zor bir okurum :)
İkinci olasılık oluştu. Yazarın mükemmel bir düzyazı tekniği, olağanüstü tanımlamaları, ayrıntılardaki özeni, hikaye anlatımındaki güzelliği, zihni sinir projeleri gibi ilginç teknik detayları ve daha başka birçok olumlu özelliklerine rağmen bu fantastik biraz da esrarengiz romanı (roman mı emin değilim) kitabı beğen(e)medim. Çok sıkılarak ve zorlayarak okudum, kitabın içine girmek istememe rağmen kitap beni kabul etmedi.
Sürrealizm, kübizm, dadaizm, fütürizm vb akımlara hep mesafeli olmuşumdur. Ne Dali ne Picasso, ne Aragon ne de Eluard beni cezbetmemektedir. Sürrealizm (gerçeküstücülük) sanatın her dalında kuvvetlice yeralırken kendimi hep çok uzaklarda hissetmişimdir.
Özetle beğenmedim, zor bir okurum :)
Read
May 29, 2018Pa dobro, videla sam i ovo.
Locus Solus je nekakav jezički eksperiment, nesumljivo originalan, koji je, izgleda, sam sebi svrha i ako hoćete da ga čitate, pre svega mu tako pristupite. Rusel je, u duhu svoga vremena (kad su za jedno prepodne nastajala bar tri nova umetnička pravca), rešio da bude apsolutno moderan, najmoderniji od svih modernista i u tu svrhu osmislio jedinstveni postupak kombinovanja jezičkih elemenata, novu tehniku pisanja koja se uglavnom zasniva na višeznačju, tako da se struktura teksta, ali i stvarnost formira u odnosu na jezik, makar takvo preinačavanje vodilo direktno do besmisla. Da stvar bude uzbudljivija, sebi je, kao pravi control freak, utvrdio veoma stroga pravila i principe, baratajući jezikom i formom kao geometrijskim zakonima ili matematičkim jednačinama.
Savremena kritika tu foru nije htela da kupi što je moglo da ispadne sasvim pankerski i kul da je makar publika progutala mamac, no - nisu kapirali. Razočaran, Rusel je raji predao ključ za tumačenje svoje tehnike, ostavivši svome izdavaču amanet da rukopis "Kako sam napisao neke svoje knjige" objavi tek posle njegove smrti. Malo potom je, nakon jednog pokušaja samoubistva, i umro, predoziravši se halucinogenima u Palermu (što nije bitno: njegova smrt - njegova stvar, ali neka ostanu ove halucinacije koje mi se čine bitnim).
Tad su se stidljivo promolili i prvi fanovi, među kojima je najznatniji Fuko, al' se nešto i nisu narazbijali knjižarskih izloga gurajući se u gužvi.
Grešno bi bilo svesti Locus Solus na taj postupak, budući da je Ruselova imaginacija više nego impresivna, ali se od silnog drveća šuma jedva nazire. Ništa od navedenog običan čitalac (poput mene) ne može da primeti, izvesno ne lako i svakako ne do oduševljenja koje se očekivalo, shodno uvodnim činjenicama. Ne verujem da je situacija bolja u originalu, a pakao kroz koji je prevodilac prolazio mogu samo da slutim. A ne sumnjam da se zabavljao prevođenjem.
Ovakav je, nekako, koncept: neki ludi naučnik (al' ono, luuuud!) sprovodi grupicu gostiju kroz svoje imanje imenom Locus Solus na kome se nalaze svakakva čudesa neispričive bizarnosti. Eto, i ja ću kao primer navesti tu mašinu koja, pokrenuta energijom sunca i vetra, sklapa mozaik od ljudskih zuba, iako ona nikako nije najčudnija od opisanih... instalacija. Da bi ste, koliko - toliko, zagrebali smisao, potrebno je da se probijete kroz dvadesetak (minimum!) strana manijakalne deskriptivnosti i eksplikacije tako detaljne (do najsitnijeg šrafčeta) da je gotovo nemoguće zamisliti kako ta sprava, zapravo, izgleda. Onda sledi bajčica o temi tog zubnog mozaika koja u sebi sadrži još jednu fantastičnu priču, a i ta još jednu... i sve su zabavne. Onda pređu na sledeći eksponat, pa sve ponovo. I sve tako: malo Vagner, malo Volter, malo Aleksandar Veliki, arapski putopisci, zaboravljeni gradovi... stvarno svašta i zaista čudesno, groteskno, bizarno, lucidno, maštovito...ali beeeeskrajno naporno, suvo i rogobatno, da čovek prosto ima utisak da sve vreme čita besmislene slogove.
Ne sumnjam da bi studiozno čitanje uz to uputstvo donelo veće zadovoljstvo, ali ne znam kome bih to preporučila. Nakon prvog poglavlja stvar se ne menja, pa eto, ko hoće, nek proba makar toliko.
Da je ostao na nekih stotinak strana, bio bi prihvaćeniji, makar među stimpankerima koji ozbiljno pate od nesanice. Ovako ostajem sa utiskom da ga je na čuvenje izgurala Fukoova pažnja, i žalom - što se, bre, Remone, nisi ponašao kao normalan pisac, kad je na svetu vazda manjak Žil(ova)a Vernova?
p.s. Kad sledeći put uzmem Peljevina i kad počne da pršti onim svojim nenormalnostima, uz jedan znalački pogled preko ramena, samo ću mu dobaciti "You know nothing, Viktor Pelevin!"
Locus Solus je nekakav jezički eksperiment, nesumljivo originalan, koji je, izgleda, sam sebi svrha i ako hoćete da ga čitate, pre svega mu tako pristupite. Rusel je, u duhu svoga vremena (kad su za jedno prepodne nastajala bar tri nova umetnička pravca), rešio da bude apsolutno moderan, najmoderniji od svih modernista i u tu svrhu osmislio jedinstveni postupak kombinovanja jezičkih elemenata, novu tehniku pisanja koja se uglavnom zasniva na višeznačju, tako da se struktura teksta, ali i stvarnost formira u odnosu na jezik, makar takvo preinačavanje vodilo direktno do besmisla. Da stvar bude uzbudljivija, sebi je, kao pravi control freak, utvrdio veoma stroga pravila i principe, baratajući jezikom i formom kao geometrijskim zakonima ili matematičkim jednačinama.
Savremena kritika tu foru nije htela da kupi što je moglo da ispadne sasvim pankerski i kul da je makar publika progutala mamac, no - nisu kapirali. Razočaran, Rusel je raji predao ključ za tumačenje svoje tehnike, ostavivši svome izdavaču amanet da rukopis "Kako sam napisao neke svoje knjige" objavi tek posle njegove smrti. Malo potom je, nakon jednog pokušaja samoubistva, i umro, predoziravši se halucinogenima u Palermu (što nije bitno: njegova smrt - njegova stvar, ali neka ostanu ove halucinacije koje mi se čine bitnim).
Tad su se stidljivo promolili i prvi fanovi, među kojima je najznatniji Fuko, al' se nešto i nisu narazbijali knjižarskih izloga gurajući se u gužvi.
Grešno bi bilo svesti Locus Solus na taj postupak, budući da je Ruselova imaginacija više nego impresivna, ali se od silnog drveća šuma jedva nazire. Ništa od navedenog običan čitalac (poput mene) ne može da primeti, izvesno ne lako i svakako ne do oduševljenja koje se očekivalo, shodno uvodnim činjenicama. Ne verujem da je situacija bolja u originalu, a pakao kroz koji je prevodilac prolazio mogu samo da slutim. A ne sumnjam da se zabavljao prevođenjem.
Ovakav je, nekako, koncept: neki ludi naučnik (al' ono, luuuud!) sprovodi grupicu gostiju kroz svoje imanje imenom Locus Solus na kome se nalaze svakakva čudesa neispričive bizarnosti. Eto, i ja ću kao primer navesti tu mašinu koja, pokrenuta energijom sunca i vetra, sklapa mozaik od ljudskih zuba, iako ona nikako nije najčudnija od opisanih... instalacija. Da bi ste, koliko - toliko, zagrebali smisao, potrebno je da se probijete kroz dvadesetak (minimum!) strana manijakalne deskriptivnosti i eksplikacije tako detaljne (do najsitnijeg šrafčeta) da je gotovo nemoguće zamisliti kako ta sprava, zapravo, izgleda. Onda sledi bajčica o temi tog zubnog mozaika koja u sebi sadrži još jednu fantastičnu priču, a i ta još jednu... i sve su zabavne. Onda pređu na sledeći eksponat, pa sve ponovo. I sve tako: malo Vagner, malo Volter, malo Aleksandar Veliki, arapski putopisci, zaboravljeni gradovi... stvarno svašta i zaista čudesno, groteskno, bizarno, lucidno, maštovito...ali beeeeskrajno naporno, suvo i rogobatno, da čovek prosto ima utisak da sve vreme čita besmislene slogove.
Ne sumnjam da bi studiozno čitanje uz to uputstvo donelo veće zadovoljstvo, ali ne znam kome bih to preporučila. Nakon prvog poglavlja stvar se ne menja, pa eto, ko hoće, nek proba makar toliko.
Da je ostao na nekih stotinak strana, bio bi prihvaćeniji, makar među stimpankerima koji ozbiljno pate od nesanice. Ovako ostajem sa utiskom da ga je na čuvenje izgurala Fukoova pažnja, i žalom - što se, bre, Remone, nisi ponašao kao normalan pisac, kad je na svetu vazda manjak Žil(ova)a Vernova?
p.s. Kad sledeći put uzmem Peljevina i kad počne da pršti onim svojim nenormalnostima, uz jedan znalački pogled preko ramena, samo ću mu dobaciti "You know nothing, Viktor Pelevin!"
October 3, 2013
What a strange and bizarre book. Another obscure volume that I would never have read if not for the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die list. Raymond Roussel was one of those avant-garde French writers whose greatest impact was upon rarefied literary circles known only to other literati: Focault, Breton, the New York School, etc. And yet, in this strange, surrealist fantasy, I discern influences that may have rippled out to a wider audience. Not really a book with a plot, Locus Solus is about a wealthy inventor, Martial Canterel, who takes a group of visitors on a tour of his eponymous estate, Locus Solus ("Solitary Place") and shows them a variety of fantastic and bizarre inventions and tableaux vivants.
It's strange and disturbing, but also reminiscent of Willy Wonka, and the bizarre sights Canterel shows his guests make me wonder if perhaps Rube Goldberg got some of his ideas from Roussel. Or if Theodor Geisel was inspired by Roussel's strange surrealism. The multi-layered stories-within-stories also reminded me of the subsequent trend in post-modernism, which in turn made me think of Mark Danielewski's House of Leaves.
Canterel's inventions start out merely wacky — an automated wind-powered paving beetle that constructs elaborate mosaics out of human teeth, which Canterel extracts painlessly from his subjects by means of a magnet that attracts calcium. An aquarium filled with "aqua-mican," water infused with oxygen that can be breathed by terrestrial creatures, occupied by an intelligent hairless cat, a French singer, and a stable of trained seahorses.
And then it just gets weirder. Presented with tableaux vivants seemingly played out by actors, it turns out that the "actors" are cadavers animated with "resurrectine," another mineral of Canterel's discovery, which causes preserved corpses to act out the most memorable scenes preserved in their nervous systems. Canterel mathematically reconstructs a deceased man's final actions and uses it to improbably exonerate a wrongfully convicted murderer, reanimates a dead child which the child's mother holds on her lap (supposedly "comforted" by this semblance of having her child brought back to life), as well as constructing dioramas involving bleeding dwarves and the preserved head of French Revolutionary Georges Danton.
Each of these tableaux vivants is accompanied by a story from Canterel, often wrapped around yet another story, each of which is a series of fantastic coincidences and unbelievable twists and contrivances.
The bizarre inventions and tableauxs continue: gold that acts as a magnet for water. Emeralds that absorb sound and are used to create musical tarot cards. A cock trained to write by coughing blood. African tribesmen who secrete gunpowder. A doctor who has a special formula for painlessly removing fingernails, painting them so that they act as mirrors, and then reattaching them.
It is all very weird, and it is not at all an easy read.
I am guessing it's probably not much easier to read in the original French. Roussel's writing was apparently full of extended puns and other word games, suggesting that much is lost in translation:
I am giving this book 3 stars out of admiration for its genius and uniqueness. It's certainly memorable and strange. That said, the linguistic density and plotless surrealism were more of an "experience" than a pleasure, and I can see why Roussel isn't widely read today outside of literature classes.
It's strange and disturbing, but also reminiscent of Willy Wonka, and the bizarre sights Canterel shows his guests make me wonder if perhaps Rube Goldberg got some of his ideas from Roussel. Or if Theodor Geisel was inspired by Roussel's strange surrealism. The multi-layered stories-within-stories also reminded me of the subsequent trend in post-modernism, which in turn made me think of Mark Danielewski's House of Leaves.
Canterel's inventions start out merely wacky — an automated wind-powered paving beetle that constructs elaborate mosaics out of human teeth, which Canterel extracts painlessly from his subjects by means of a magnet that attracts calcium. An aquarium filled with "aqua-mican," water infused with oxygen that can be breathed by terrestrial creatures, occupied by an intelligent hairless cat, a French singer, and a stable of trained seahorses.
And then it just gets weirder. Presented with tableaux vivants seemingly played out by actors, it turns out that the "actors" are cadavers animated with "resurrectine," another mineral of Canterel's discovery, which causes preserved corpses to act out the most memorable scenes preserved in their nervous systems. Canterel mathematically reconstructs a deceased man's final actions and uses it to improbably exonerate a wrongfully convicted murderer, reanimates a dead child which the child's mother holds on her lap (supposedly "comforted" by this semblance of having her child brought back to life), as well as constructing dioramas involving bleeding dwarves and the preserved head of French Revolutionary Georges Danton.
Each of these tableaux vivants is accompanied by a story from Canterel, often wrapped around yet another story, each of which is a series of fantastic coincidences and unbelievable twists and contrivances.
The bizarre inventions and tableauxs continue: gold that acts as a magnet for water. Emeralds that absorb sound and are used to create musical tarot cards. A cock trained to write by coughing blood. African tribesmen who secrete gunpowder. A doctor who has a special formula for painlessly removing fingernails, painting them so that they act as mirrors, and then reattaching them.
It is all very weird, and it is not at all an easy read.
The prodigiously developed caudal apparatus, a kind of solid cartilaginous frame, rose vertically first of all, then spread out forwards in its upper regions to create a veritable horizontal canopy over the bird. The inner part was bald, whereas from the outside grew long, tufted feathers, which pointed backwards like some fabulous head of hair. The most anterior part of the frame was very sharp and formed a solid, slightly arched knife parallel to the table. Fixed horizontally to the back of the canopy by several screws piercing its edge, was a golden plate which, by some baffling magnetism, held a heavy mass of water dangling beneath it — perhaps half a litre — which, despite its volume, was behaving like a single drop on the tip of one's finger when it is just about to fall.
I am guessing it's probably not much easier to read in the original French. Roussel's writing was apparently full of extended puns and other word games, suggesting that much is lost in translation:
Les lettres du blanc sur les bandes du vieux billard/The white letters on the cushions of the old billiard table... must somehow reach the phrase, ...les lettres du blanc sur les bandes du vieux pillard/letters [written by] a white man about the hordes of the old plunderer.
I am giving this book 3 stars out of admiration for its genius and uniqueness. It's certainly memorable and strange. That said, the linguistic density and plotless surrealism were more of an "experience" than a pleasure, and I can see why Roussel isn't widely read today outside of literature classes.
January 23, 2013
To appreciate this book in all its grandeur one must contextualize it properly. We're reading a novel written in 1914, in a period prior to the Great War. The social environment was prone to philosophical and scientific positivism that would give birth to the Recieved View on the Wiener Kreis a decade later. The electricity takes over as core of industrial revolution, displacing the exhausted steam engine. Mists of Victorianism deviate to reveal a world transformed socially, intellectually and technologically. All miracles seem possible in the way of scientific progress. And The masses have become accustomed to passionate and detailed technical descriptions narrated in daily newspapers.
It is in this context when Raymon Roussel dares to portray an applied science, almost (or completely) miraculous resulting in a horrific landscape of shocking wonders. The very detailed and aseptic narrative of the inventions in the garden hides monstrous events and assemblies: mosaics created with human teeth. reanimated heads, shaved aquatic cats, tableaux performed by zombies trapped in endless loops of the most dramatic moments of their lifes...
If Jules Verne represents the sublimation of nineteenth-century positivism Roussel is the prophet of the disillusionment that will arise in The Interbellum. And it could seems contradictory but Roussel science (though fantastic) is closer in its development to the real scientific praxis that Verne's Wonders. Jules introduced scientific advances of the time in their novels and them He applied it in unexpected ways. He spared no descriptions of the theory and technique that underlay its wonders, but they were the descriptions of a finished product already extending into society.. Meanwhile Roussel describes the scientific process of discovery and its wonders are confined in a garden that is a metaphoric laboratory: One discovery leads to another and over time new derived applications crop up. You could say that Verne is pure sociological science fiction, while Roussel is the basis of a future Hard Sci-Fi.
My personal recommendation is to read this book with all this in mind. You have to understand that the complication of narrative language, the nested structure of the descriptions and proliferation details are Roussel's tools to alienate the reader with a sense of scientific asepsis.
It is in this context when Raymon Roussel dares to portray an applied science, almost (or completely) miraculous resulting in a horrific landscape of shocking wonders. The very detailed and aseptic narrative of the inventions in the garden hides monstrous events and assemblies: mosaics created with human teeth. reanimated heads, shaved aquatic cats, tableaux performed by zombies trapped in endless loops of the most dramatic moments of their lifes...
If Jules Verne represents the sublimation of nineteenth-century positivism Roussel is the prophet of the disillusionment that will arise in The Interbellum. And it could seems contradictory but Roussel science (though fantastic) is closer in its development to the real scientific praxis that Verne's Wonders. Jules introduced scientific advances of the time in their novels and them He applied it in unexpected ways. He spared no descriptions of the theory and technique that underlay its wonders, but they were the descriptions of a finished product already extending into society.. Meanwhile Roussel describes the scientific process of discovery and its wonders are confined in a garden that is a metaphoric laboratory: One discovery leads to another and over time new derived applications crop up. You could say that Verne is pure sociological science fiction, while Roussel is the basis of a future Hard Sci-Fi.
My personal recommendation is to read this book with all this in mind. You have to understand that the complication of narrative language, the nested structure of the descriptions and proliferation details are Roussel's tools to alienate the reader with a sense of scientific asepsis.
June 30, 2015
Spurning plot or any kind of traditional development, Roussel wrote this entire novel as a kind of cabinet of curiosities generated by wrenching a kind of narrative continuity out of arbitrary word games. Within, a brilliant eccentric shows guests his latest incomprehensible inventions, then explains them in great pseudoscientific detail. The Surrealists, 60s avant-garde lit, John Zorn, and many others found the utter weirdness to be greatly inspiring, and it is, but it may also be one of those books that I find more inspiring and significant then directly enjoyable. You can get lost in the insane tableaux for a time, but you're always carried out by the parodic rationalism of Roussel's explanations at some point. But this implausible rationalism may be exactly Roussel's purpose, given how the rapid progress of the day carried the world directly into the madness and destruction of world war one the very year this was published, and the world has hardly become more comprehensible since.
I wrote at greater length about this one here: http://imaginesciencefilms.org/limina...
I wrote at greater length about this one here: http://imaginesciencefilms.org/limina...
May 7, 2024
Totalement zinzin, mais cent pour cent méthodique.
Si vous aimez la pataphysique d’Alfred Jarry, les engins de Marcel Duchamp, les aéroplanes de Panamarenko ou le ballet mécanique de Fernard Léger, vous allez adorer ce “roman” archi-absurde et tout aussi sérieux.
Bonne lecture!
Si vous aimez la pataphysique d’Alfred Jarry, les engins de Marcel Duchamp, les aéroplanes de Panamarenko ou le ballet mécanique de Fernard Léger, vous allez adorer ce “roman” archi-absurde et tout aussi sérieux.
Bonne lecture!
August 10, 2024
I seem to be one of the only reviewers who simply didn't feel the magic of this book. I wish I liked it better.
French author Raymond Roussel has been known for writing some wildly inventive imagery, so at first glance of this novel, you might think he was purely a surrealist on some serious drugs. But he actually was playing with homonyms.
You fantasy readers may be familiar with Piers Anthony, who was known for his punny titles like "Centaur Aisle" and "Heaven Cent". Well, if Roussel had been writing in English, he would have taken those puns and crafted an entire paragraph, or chapter, or even a whole story, based on those puns. So, in a Roussel book, pennies would literally rain from heaven, or the main character would encounter shelves in the middle of a store stocked with figurines of mythological creatures. That is how Roussel came up with his bizarre imagery.
Which means that if you don't read Roussel in French, you are almost completely missing the point. But if you do understand French, will it help to read it in the source language?
Well, I read the first half of the book twice, once in French and then in English. But my French is a weird amalgamation of the Cajun and New Orleans "Frenchlish" that got spoken in my neighborhood, the Haitian Creole I picked up as well, and my attempts to formalize my French through an Algerian tutor. Since many of the homonyms that Roussel uses are from archaic phrases or idioms I've never heard before, I didn't get much more out of it than from my rather clunky English translation.
So now that we've established that he uses puns as his creative launch pad, your next question may be, "Is that supposed to make this clever or interesting?" Here's where your mileage may vary.
For me, it certainly didn't make for a good story. In fact, there really is not much of a central plot. Some guests are invited to a rich guy's estate, called Locus Solus. We don't know who these folks are, or how many, or why they are even there in the first place. The reader is taken on a tour of Locus Solus with these unknown people, and encounter various artifacts, inventions, and knickknacks of escalating strangeness. As we examine the highlights of our tour, there are often stories associated with the object being described, and nestled within those stories are further stories, so that it can be easy to lose track of where you are.
There isn't really any deep meaning to any of it. The content is largely the result of the author exploiting the homonymic nature of the French language.
Here is an example from Chapter 2 of how it works. We get page after page of a description of a machine that floats from a balloon which paves a mosaic of a German soldier out of human teeth. Why? Because Roussel took the French phrase "demoiselle à prétandant" (a girl with suitors) and made it into "demoiselle à reître en dents". In French, "demoiselle" can mean a young lady, but it can also mean a tool that is used to force things like paving stones or tiles into place. The word "reître" can mean a thuggish soldier or cutthroat, but it's more archaic usage literally means a German cavalryman. "Dents" is teeth, placed to make a similar sound as at the end of "prétandant". Hence, you have a paving machine making a mosaic of a German soldier out of teeth. Roussel then goes on to tell the story behind the mosaic, which involves a German mercenary hired to kidnap a princess.
Are you starting to get the picture? Okay, I admit that I did not make a very good pun just now, but I don't think Roussel's overcomplicated one is any better.
But postmodernists like Michel Foucault sure thought that Roussel was a genius. In fact, several of my Goodreads friends, whose tastes I share, seem to find the whole experience delightfully hallucinogenic and fresh. And I guess you could say that, whether or not you know the "secret" of Roussel's wordsmith, the result sure seems like unfettered creativity. So hey, if this floats your boat, don't let me sink it.
And this book should have conceivably worked for me too! I love a good pun, and I embrace the avant-garde. My favorite music is experimental and abstract, creating extraterrestrial and supernatural moods through noisescapes. Some of my favorite films shun conventional narrative and aim to deliver emotional sensations and reactions purely through imagery, like "The Color of Pomegranates," "Begotten," "L'Eclisse," and "L'Age d'Or". And some of my favorite books are--let's face it--bizarre. Roussel's tendencies to layer stories within stories reminds me of "House of Leaves," which I enjoyed very much. Hell, I gave "A Voyage to Arcturus" a high rating, so c'mon!
But this? It feels too much like a gimmick, like the author thought he could razzle dazzle himself into the intellectual Hall of Fame with his own unique formula. He really did expect to be adored as a genius, which no doubt led to some of his artistic choices. And maybe he was. I just feel that great surreal art should have NO formula. I think it's impressive that he took so much time to come up with all these puns, but the end result felt dishonest and empty for me. When done well, the avant-garde will stimulate a visceral reaction--an unintentional laugh or a feeling of disgust or a sense of awe. I had none of those experiences with this book, just a feeling of confusion.
There is a subtle difference between a work that is "odd" because it comes from an artist's unique perspective and something that is weird for the sake of being weird. I have probably listened to almost every industrial and noise album from 1975 to 1990 that still has a surviving copy. My wife and friends have all asked me how I could possibly pick a favorite from all this "noise". So I would have them listen to an example of something that really seemed to be coming from the genuine soul of an outsider artist, a true example of captured genius and lighting in a bottle, something so beautiful in its otherworldliness because we could never imagine hearing anything like it. Then I would compare it to a similar album made by some poor kid who wanted to get in on the tape scene action, thinking that mumbling into a microphone, twiddling some knobs on an analog synth, and slapping a disturbing picture of a holocaust corpse on the cover would suddenly give them street cred and make them a rock star. Most agree that the difference is astounding. I just can't help but sense that Roussel falls more in the later camp. Whenever literary and artistic circles reach peak competitive levels of snobbery, you have a lot of hungry talent trying to outdo each other in eccentricity so they stand out. This inevitably leads to a lot of experimentation, some of which is innovative, and some of which does not work.
My overall attitude about such art is to be grateful that it exists. I encourage everyone to think outside of the box to find their own unique creative voice. And "Locus Solus" is surely innovative. It stands out. It leads to long reviews like this. But as a literary experience, I found I was reading word salad much of the time. I don't mind hard science fiction, but I also don't understand how reading twenty pages of what amounts to a nonsensical inventor's disclosure manual, which details the technological inner workings of a device that doesn't exist, and can never exist, can speak to anyone.
Here's another example. There's a large diamond-shaped tank of water that makes music, and it almost broke my brain trying to understand what the hell Roussel was talking about. A dancer is submerged in this "breathable" water, and her hair is actually making the musical notes as she floats around, and also in the tank with her is a... peeled-off human face from the remains of the orator Georges Danton (!) and a... bald cat (?!) and... several Cartesian diver figurines reenacting scenes from philosophical literature, the New Testament, and Greek mythology (?!!?) and... seven seahorses having a race around a floating ball of Sauternes wine!!?!?!!?!?!!
So you can see how this can either tickle some readers or drive them absolutely bat shit crazy, depending on taste. For me, there's just too many loose associations to tolerate for the entire length of the book.
A friend of mine recommended this book to me, and he said that he skimmed over a lot of the more technical jargon and descriptions. After I read it, I told him that he must've skimmed over half the book! Now, this is not the first time I've heard readers talk like this, even about books they supposedly love, so though I've said this before, I'll say it again: If you are doing that sort of thing just to make it through a novel, then what's the point?
Because there is no golden thread through all the surrealism in this book, I'll never be able to remember a thing about it unless I revisit the review threads on Goodreads, or (heaven forbid) give it another try. Maybe I will reread it in a different mood, or while delirious after a medical procedure, and if I like it any better, I'll update this review.
If you are a fan of this book, or of Roussel's style in general, let me know what works for you. I'm always open to new ways of looking at things.
SCORE: 2 demoiselles out of 5
WORD OF THE DAY: Ooo, one great thing about the Anglicized version of this book is that there are so many great English words to chose from. So in the spirit of Roussel, I'm going to randomly select three that begin with "p" (for "pun"): parallelepiped, peregrinations, and (my favorite) plangent.
French author Raymond Roussel has been known for writing some wildly inventive imagery, so at first glance of this novel, you might think he was purely a surrealist on some serious drugs. But he actually was playing with homonyms.
You fantasy readers may be familiar with Piers Anthony, who was known for his punny titles like "Centaur Aisle" and "Heaven Cent". Well, if Roussel had been writing in English, he would have taken those puns and crafted an entire paragraph, or chapter, or even a whole story, based on those puns. So, in a Roussel book, pennies would literally rain from heaven, or the main character would encounter shelves in the middle of a store stocked with figurines of mythological creatures. That is how Roussel came up with his bizarre imagery.
Which means that if you don't read Roussel in French, you are almost completely missing the point. But if you do understand French, will it help to read it in the source language?
Well, I read the first half of the book twice, once in French and then in English. But my French is a weird amalgamation of the Cajun and New Orleans "Frenchlish" that got spoken in my neighborhood, the Haitian Creole I picked up as well, and my attempts to formalize my French through an Algerian tutor. Since many of the homonyms that Roussel uses are from archaic phrases or idioms I've never heard before, I didn't get much more out of it than from my rather clunky English translation.
So now that we've established that he uses puns as his creative launch pad, your next question may be, "Is that supposed to make this clever or interesting?" Here's where your mileage may vary.
For me, it certainly didn't make for a good story. In fact, there really is not much of a central plot. Some guests are invited to a rich guy's estate, called Locus Solus. We don't know who these folks are, or how many, or why they are even there in the first place. The reader is taken on a tour of Locus Solus with these unknown people, and encounter various artifacts, inventions, and knickknacks of escalating strangeness. As we examine the highlights of our tour, there are often stories associated with the object being described, and nestled within those stories are further stories, so that it can be easy to lose track of where you are.
There isn't really any deep meaning to any of it. The content is largely the result of the author exploiting the homonymic nature of the French language.
Here is an example from Chapter 2 of how it works. We get page after page of a description of a machine that floats from a balloon which paves a mosaic of a German soldier out of human teeth. Why? Because Roussel took the French phrase "demoiselle à prétandant" (a girl with suitors) and made it into "demoiselle à reître en dents". In French, "demoiselle" can mean a young lady, but it can also mean a tool that is used to force things like paving stones or tiles into place. The word "reître" can mean a thuggish soldier or cutthroat, but it's more archaic usage literally means a German cavalryman. "Dents" is teeth, placed to make a similar sound as at the end of "prétandant". Hence, you have a paving machine making a mosaic of a German soldier out of teeth. Roussel then goes on to tell the story behind the mosaic, which involves a German mercenary hired to kidnap a princess.
Are you starting to get the picture? Okay, I admit that I did not make a very good pun just now, but I don't think Roussel's overcomplicated one is any better.
But postmodernists like Michel Foucault sure thought that Roussel was a genius. In fact, several of my Goodreads friends, whose tastes I share, seem to find the whole experience delightfully hallucinogenic and fresh. And I guess you could say that, whether or not you know the "secret" of Roussel's wordsmith, the result sure seems like unfettered creativity. So hey, if this floats your boat, don't let me sink it.
And this book should have conceivably worked for me too! I love a good pun, and I embrace the avant-garde. My favorite music is experimental and abstract, creating extraterrestrial and supernatural moods through noisescapes. Some of my favorite films shun conventional narrative and aim to deliver emotional sensations and reactions purely through imagery, like "The Color of Pomegranates," "Begotten," "L'Eclisse," and "L'Age d'Or". And some of my favorite books are--let's face it--bizarre. Roussel's tendencies to layer stories within stories reminds me of "House of Leaves," which I enjoyed very much. Hell, I gave "A Voyage to Arcturus" a high rating, so c'mon!
But this? It feels too much like a gimmick, like the author thought he could razzle dazzle himself into the intellectual Hall of Fame with his own unique formula. He really did expect to be adored as a genius, which no doubt led to some of his artistic choices. And maybe he was. I just feel that great surreal art should have NO formula. I think it's impressive that he took so much time to come up with all these puns, but the end result felt dishonest and empty for me. When done well, the avant-garde will stimulate a visceral reaction--an unintentional laugh or a feeling of disgust or a sense of awe. I had none of those experiences with this book, just a feeling of confusion.
There is a subtle difference between a work that is "odd" because it comes from an artist's unique perspective and something that is weird for the sake of being weird. I have probably listened to almost every industrial and noise album from 1975 to 1990 that still has a surviving copy. My wife and friends have all asked me how I could possibly pick a favorite from all this "noise". So I would have them listen to an example of something that really seemed to be coming from the genuine soul of an outsider artist, a true example of captured genius and lighting in a bottle, something so beautiful in its otherworldliness because we could never imagine hearing anything like it. Then I would compare it to a similar album made by some poor kid who wanted to get in on the tape scene action, thinking that mumbling into a microphone, twiddling some knobs on an analog synth, and slapping a disturbing picture of a holocaust corpse on the cover would suddenly give them street cred and make them a rock star. Most agree that the difference is astounding. I just can't help but sense that Roussel falls more in the later camp. Whenever literary and artistic circles reach peak competitive levels of snobbery, you have a lot of hungry talent trying to outdo each other in eccentricity so they stand out. This inevitably leads to a lot of experimentation, some of which is innovative, and some of which does not work.
My overall attitude about such art is to be grateful that it exists. I encourage everyone to think outside of the box to find their own unique creative voice. And "Locus Solus" is surely innovative. It stands out. It leads to long reviews like this. But as a literary experience, I found I was reading word salad much of the time. I don't mind hard science fiction, but I also don't understand how reading twenty pages of what amounts to a nonsensical inventor's disclosure manual, which details the technological inner workings of a device that doesn't exist, and can never exist, can speak to anyone.
Here's another example. There's a large diamond-shaped tank of water that makes music, and it almost broke my brain trying to understand what the hell Roussel was talking about. A dancer is submerged in this "breathable" water, and her hair is actually making the musical notes as she floats around, and also in the tank with her is a... peeled-off human face from the remains of the orator Georges Danton (!) and a... bald cat (?!) and... several Cartesian diver figurines reenacting scenes from philosophical literature, the New Testament, and Greek mythology (?!!?) and... seven seahorses having a race around a floating ball of Sauternes wine!!?!?!!?!?!!
So you can see how this can either tickle some readers or drive them absolutely bat shit crazy, depending on taste. For me, there's just too many loose associations to tolerate for the entire length of the book.
A friend of mine recommended this book to me, and he said that he skimmed over a lot of the more technical jargon and descriptions. After I read it, I told him that he must've skimmed over half the book! Now, this is not the first time I've heard readers talk like this, even about books they supposedly love, so though I've said this before, I'll say it again: If you are doing that sort of thing just to make it through a novel, then what's the point?
Because there is no golden thread through all the surrealism in this book, I'll never be able to remember a thing about it unless I revisit the review threads on Goodreads, or (heaven forbid) give it another try. Maybe I will reread it in a different mood, or while delirious after a medical procedure, and if I like it any better, I'll update this review.
If you are a fan of this book, or of Roussel's style in general, let me know what works for you. I'm always open to new ways of looking at things.
SCORE: 2 demoiselles out of 5
WORD OF THE DAY: Ooo, one great thing about the Anglicized version of this book is that there are so many great English words to chose from. So in the spirit of Roussel, I'm going to randomly select three that begin with "p" (for "pun"): parallelepiped, peregrinations, and (my favorite) plangent.
June 11, 2020
Çok değişik, zorlu ve kelimenin tam anlamıyla acayip bir kitaptı...
Abuk sabuk bir sürü araç, makine (ki neredeyse hiç birini tam olarak gözümün önüne getiremedim) o kadar detaylı bir şekilde betimlenmiş ki insanı bitap düşürüyor, çoook yoruyor. Bunun bilinçli olarak yapılmadığını düşünmek zor. Peki neden yapıyor böyle yazar?
Bana aslında modernizm eleştirisi geldi bu; sadece makine tasvirleri değil bana bunu düşündüren, daha çok Roussel'in anlatım tekniği dikkat çekici geldi bana. Önce bir tasvir yapıyor, mesela bir takım insanların yaptığı bir takım eylemleri anlatıyor, çok sıkıcı, çok anlamsız görünen eylemler, detayları okuyoruz önce. Sonra bir hikaye anlatıyor ve bütün o insanları, detayları ve en önemlisi eylemleri bu hikayenin içinde eritiyor. O zaman her şey anlam kazanıyor, bizi duygulandırıyor, düşüncelerimizi hareketlendiriyor...
Bu arada, söylemeden geçmeyeyim, kitabın aralarına sızmış küçük hikayeler de nefis!
Dali'nin "bir yangından tek bir kitabın kurtulması gerekse bu seçerdim" dediği, Alain Robe-Grillet'nin çok beğendiği bir kitabı birine tavsiye etmek zor :) Ben de kimseye böyle bir tavsiyede bulunmam zaten... (Ama okumama vesile olan Bülent ve Emre'ye teşekkür ederim yine de :)))
Abuk sabuk bir sürü araç, makine (ki neredeyse hiç birini tam olarak gözümün önüne getiremedim) o kadar detaylı bir şekilde betimlenmiş ki insanı bitap düşürüyor, çoook yoruyor. Bunun bilinçli olarak yapılmadığını düşünmek zor. Peki neden yapıyor böyle yazar?
Bana aslında modernizm eleştirisi geldi bu; sadece makine tasvirleri değil bana bunu düşündüren, daha çok Roussel'in anlatım tekniği dikkat çekici geldi bana. Önce bir tasvir yapıyor, mesela bir takım insanların yaptığı bir takım eylemleri anlatıyor, çok sıkıcı, çok anlamsız görünen eylemler, detayları okuyoruz önce. Sonra bir hikaye anlatıyor ve bütün o insanları, detayları ve en önemlisi eylemleri bu hikayenin içinde eritiyor. O zaman her şey anlam kazanıyor, bizi duygulandırıyor, düşüncelerimizi hareketlendiriyor...
Bu arada, söylemeden geçmeyeyim, kitabın aralarına sızmış küçük hikayeler de nefis!
Dali'nin "bir yangından tek bir kitabın kurtulması gerekse bu seçerdim" dediği, Alain Robe-Grillet'nin çok beğendiği bir kitabı birine tavsiye etmek zor :) Ben de kimseye böyle bir tavsiyede bulunmam zaten... (Ama okumama vesile olan Bülent ve Emre'ye teşekkür ederim yine de :)))
November 19, 2015
In rereading this I am struck by how much melodrama is buried in it - crimes of passion, infanticide, infidelity, suicide, hysteria, etc. - as if Roussel took the plot lines from any number of 19th c. novels and condensed them into the armatures of his bizarre mechanical inventions, where they act as the enlivening agents that sets them in motion. I am beginning to think that this buried melodrama constitutes the emotional content of his novels, whereas previously I considered his novels devoid of emotions. Whether Roussel actually felt these emotions I cannot say. I suspect he felt them, but only through the medium of the novels which he read. Which is to say his emotions derive from literature rather than the actual world, but nevertheless they are there, in his own literature.
This buried 19th c. melodrama in the service of creating a feverish modern landscape of technical gadgetry and disquieting obsession I am now linking to the films of Feuillade from the same time period.
This buried 19th c. melodrama in the service of creating a feverish modern landscape of technical gadgetry and disquieting obsession I am now linking to the films of Feuillade from the same time period.
October 7, 2021
(Lightning Review/"Je t'aime moi non plus")
Transportive.
Otherworldly.
Cliches.
Roussel uses each chapter's 'invention' as merely a springboard into its origin story. Lots-o-Borgesian foreshadowing from the 30's. Great fun and quite beautiful. My mistake was reading it in one night. Advice to you: read a chapter here and there. It'll make the stories stick to your ribs longer than my cokesnort buffet approach. Live, learn, LaVerne.
Lightning Review rating: this is not my beautiful house/this is not my beautiful wife/how did I get here?
Transportive.
Otherworldly.
Cliches.
Roussel uses each chapter's 'invention' as merely a springboard into its origin story. Lots-o-Borgesian foreshadowing from the 30's. Great fun and quite beautiful. My mistake was reading it in one night. Advice to you: read a chapter here and there. It'll make the stories stick to your ribs longer than my cokesnort buffet approach. Live, learn, LaVerne.
Lightning Review rating: this is not my beautiful house/this is not my beautiful wife/how did I get here?
April 29, 2023
Fransız yazar Raymond Roussel’in başyapıtı Locus Solus, sürrealist (gerçeküstücü) bir eser ve kesinlikle benim de okuduğum en tuhaf, sıra dışı ve ilginç metin.
Eser, Martial Canterel isimli zengin ve alışılmışın oldukça dışında araştırmalar, bilimsel çalışmalar yapmaktan hoşlanan ve yine çok sıra dışı bir koleksiyona sahip bir bilim insanının, Locus Solus adlı malikanesinin bahçesinde topladığı çalışmalarını ve koleksiyonunu bir grup dostuna tanıtıp anlatmasından oluşuyor. Aklınıza hayalinize gelmeyecek, hatta tüm detaylarıyla anlatıldığında dahi zihninizde canlandırmakta çok zorlanacağınız ve muhtemelen asla yazarın kastettiği şekilde canlandıramayacağınız, fantastik ve hakikaten çok çılgın Canterel’in çalışmaları ya da koleksiyonunun parçaları. Daha önce gördüğünüz, duyduğunuz hiçbir şeye benzetemiyor, kendinizce zihninizde şekillendirmeye çalışıyorsunuz. Kitabın ortalarına doğru bambaşka ve çok daha uçuk bir boyut kazanıyor üstelik bu çalışmalar ve kendinizi acayip bir evrende bulurken biraz Frankestein’ı da anımsatan şekilde ölüm, ölümsüzlük ve hayat üzerine düşünüyorsunuz.
Eserin zorluğu da yazarın dilinden ziyade onun hayal gücüne erişmenin zorluğundan ve hatta imkansızlığından kaynaklanıyor. Kendine has, uçuk kaçık, tuhaf bir evren onunki. Luis Bunuel ve Terry Gilliam bir araya gelip bir film çekseler ortaya Locus Solus’un beyaz perde uyarlaması çıkar sanki. Salvador Dali’nin de çok sevdiği, hatta yangından tek kitap kurtaracak olsa seçeceği kitapmış Locus Solus; okurken benim de aklıma sık sık Salvador Dali müzesinde gördüğüm eserleri -özellikle Yağmurlu Taksi çalışması- geldi ve gerçekten kafası benzer çalışan iki isim diye düşündüm Dali ve Roussel için.
Anlatması zor, çözmesi pek muhtemel değil ama buna boşverip teslim olduğunuzda adım adım ilerlemesi keyifli bir yolculuk sunuyor okura Locus Solus. Raymond Roussel’in hayal dünyasına ve kitabın gerçeküstücü evreninin kollarına kendinizi bıraktığınız takdirde keyif alabileceğiniz bir kitap. Gerçekle bağdaştırmaya, sorgulamaya çalışmadan okuduğunuzda yazarın hayal gücüne ve farklı çalışan zihnine hayranlık duyuyorsunuz. Özellikle kitabın 1914 yılında yayımlandığı göz önüne alındığında hakikaten etkilenmemek elde değil bence.
Kitap dördüncü baskı olmasına rağmen çok fazla yazım yanlışı var, umarım bunlar sonraki baskılarda düzeltilir. Tahsin Yücel’in yer yer çok aşina olmadığımız kelime tercihleri bazı okurların hoşuna gitmeyebiliyor ama ben seviyorum Tahsin Yücel çevirilerini. Locus Solus’un da keza çevirisi bence gayet güzel.
Ben çok beğendim ama her okura hitap edecek bir kitap değil. Farklı metinlerden ya da gerçeküstücü eserlerden hoşlananlara tavsiye ederim.
Eser, Martial Canterel isimli zengin ve alışılmışın oldukça dışında araştırmalar, bilimsel çalışmalar yapmaktan hoşlanan ve yine çok sıra dışı bir koleksiyona sahip bir bilim insanının, Locus Solus adlı malikanesinin bahçesinde topladığı çalışmalarını ve koleksiyonunu bir grup dostuna tanıtıp anlatmasından oluşuyor. Aklınıza hayalinize gelmeyecek, hatta tüm detaylarıyla anlatıldığında dahi zihninizde canlandırmakta çok zorlanacağınız ve muhtemelen asla yazarın kastettiği şekilde canlandıramayacağınız, fantastik ve hakikaten çok çılgın Canterel’in çalışmaları ya da koleksiyonunun parçaları. Daha önce gördüğünüz, duyduğunuz hiçbir şeye benzetemiyor, kendinizce zihninizde şekillendirmeye çalışıyorsunuz. Kitabın ortalarına doğru bambaşka ve çok daha uçuk bir boyut kazanıyor üstelik bu çalışmalar ve kendinizi acayip bir evrende bulurken biraz Frankestein’ı da anımsatan şekilde ölüm, ölümsüzlük ve hayat üzerine düşünüyorsunuz.
Eserin zorluğu da yazarın dilinden ziyade onun hayal gücüne erişmenin zorluğundan ve hatta imkansızlığından kaynaklanıyor. Kendine has, uçuk kaçık, tuhaf bir evren onunki. Luis Bunuel ve Terry Gilliam bir araya gelip bir film çekseler ortaya Locus Solus’un beyaz perde uyarlaması çıkar sanki. Salvador Dali’nin de çok sevdiği, hatta yangından tek kitap kurtaracak olsa seçeceği kitapmış Locus Solus; okurken benim de aklıma sık sık Salvador Dali müzesinde gördüğüm eserleri -özellikle Yağmurlu Taksi çalışması- geldi ve gerçekten kafası benzer çalışan iki isim diye düşündüm Dali ve Roussel için.
Anlatması zor, çözmesi pek muhtemel değil ama buna boşverip teslim olduğunuzda adım adım ilerlemesi keyifli bir yolculuk sunuyor okura Locus Solus. Raymond Roussel’in hayal dünyasına ve kitabın gerçeküstücü evreninin kollarına kendinizi bıraktığınız takdirde keyif alabileceğiniz bir kitap. Gerçekle bağdaştırmaya, sorgulamaya çalışmadan okuduğunuzda yazarın hayal gücüne ve farklı çalışan zihnine hayranlık duyuyorsunuz. Özellikle kitabın 1914 yılında yayımlandığı göz önüne alındığında hakikaten etkilenmemek elde değil bence.
Kitap dördüncü baskı olmasına rağmen çok fazla yazım yanlışı var, umarım bunlar sonraki baskılarda düzeltilir. Tahsin Yücel’in yer yer çok aşina olmadığımız kelime tercihleri bazı okurların hoşuna gitmeyebiliyor ama ben seviyorum Tahsin Yücel çevirilerini. Locus Solus’un da keza çevirisi bence gayet güzel.
Ben çok beğendim ama her okura hitap edecek bir kitap değil. Farklı metinlerden ya da gerçeküstücü eserlerden hoşlananlara tavsiye ederim.
March 29, 2008
One of the great insane novels of all time. If you are scratching your head while reading 'Locus Solus" then this book is not for you. if you allow yourself to be pulled into a bizarre world in Roussel's very particular and odd world - then that's the plus. So allow the main character in this novel (and only character really) Martial Canterel take the reader on a tour of his estate...
January 13, 2025
My successful second attempt at this unique and wonderful book from an author as original as his works. Funny,( and beautiful); how a different mindset, or being in a different place, or stage in your life can make an old book resonate so differently.
July 23, 2024
W gruncie rzeczy nie ma tu do powiedzenia żadnej ,,prawdziwej" fabuły - całokształt powieści to raczej grupa scenerii, w których ,,coś" się dzieje. Niektóre z nich to po prostu narracje, a inne to niemal wizualne scenografie - zbiory impresji mieszających inwencję z groteską.
Muszę przyznać, że ciężko mi było przebrnąć przez tę książkę - jej gęstość językowa (musisz czerpać satysfakcję z czytania niekończącego się biegu zdań, po trochu elitarnego bełkotu) i pozbawiony fabuły surrealizm były bardziej „doświadczeniem” niż przyjemnością.
Im głębiej w pisarstwo Roussela, tym bardziej dzieli się fascynację, którą odczuwali wobec niego czytelniczy poprzednicy.
Mimo wszystko był to swoisty trening wyobraźni.
Muszę przyznać, że ciężko mi było przebrnąć przez tę książkę - jej gęstość językowa (musisz czerpać satysfakcję z czytania niekończącego się biegu zdań, po trochu elitarnego bełkotu) i pozbawiony fabuły surrealizm były bardziej „doświadczeniem” niż przyjemnością.
Im głębiej w pisarstwo Roussela, tym bardziej dzieli się fascynację, którą odczuwali wobec niego czytelniczy poprzednicy.
Mimo wszystko był to swoisty trening wyobraźni.
January 24, 2016
Okurken epey zorlandım, hatta zaman zaman işkenceye dönüştü. Locus Solus'a edebiyat eseri denmeli mi bundan da emin değilim. Kafamda bir türlü canlandıramadığım için kağıt kalem alıp tasvir ettiği makineleri çizmeyi bile denedim, sonrasında bir blogda bulduğum çizimlere bakarak tekrardan okudum. Bu kadar zorlamaya gerek var mıydı peki? Sanmıyorum. Tek güzel yanı içindeki minik hikayeler ve masallardı, bir de Dali'nin yangında kurtarılacak kitap olarak göstermesi.
Read
June 30, 2025True to my promise/threat, I'm doing a cut and paste (or gut and waste) review, taking material from my earlier post:
But first, my newer reflections:
-Having recently been reading about mnemonics and memorization, it occurs to me that this book seems largely as if it were based on the images of a bizarre mnemonic, in a virtual memory palace, where every object and event is really just a symbol or a pun devised to help someone remember something. In other words, there is the perpetual feeling that what we experience as readers is cryptic, and there is a profound hidden story within... something of the nature of the unconscious, and thus emotionally charged.
-There's an interesting association of ideas, or structure, which arises from the fact that certain themes, images, and ideas recur in different forms. This is subtle, and unexplained. But, for instance, the repeat occurrence of people who sweat or exude blood, or a blood-like fluid, the almost magical properties associated with magnetism and electric current, the employment of animals to communicate or participate in scientific enquiry, the existence of hidden switches, panels and passageways, the returning themes of catholicism (all within a "scientific" context)--these obsessions of the author's creative mind come back with just enough frequency to give the impression that the book is not a series of independent vignettes, but rather that they are interrelated and thematically united.
Well, I'll get lazy now and just append what I wrote earlier:
-----------------------------------
Locus Solus is truly unique. Like many of the great books, it makes me think "until reading this, I didn't even imagine such a book was possible."
Roussel is sometimes cited as an early influence on the surrealists--a sort of proto-surrealist. But he appears to be something quite different. While influential on other writers who came after, I suspect that the others were inspired by him, but not imitative, and he may have had rather different literary goals.
Anyway, Locus Solus seemed immediately engaging from the first short chapter, and the book in its entirety is rather short, but it doesn't seem short. It's dense as a text, and somewhat slow going, particularly if you find yourself visualizing and meditating on what is being described.
The structure is that of a visit to the property of a wealthy, talented, and eccentric inventor. The narrator sees various mysterious objects and strange spectacles. Each object and spectacle is described with a remarkable exactitude, and each conceals a story. The story of each object or spectacle is then disclosed, as well as its scientific or historical significance, as though the fantastic is being rationalized, though it still retains a degree of mystery and potency nonetheless.
To describe it in a similar but different way, the book is like a continuous magic show by a stage illusionist, who concludes each performance with a detailed description of the method behind each trick, yet the tricks aren't spoiled by the description, and still seem miraculous for their ingenuity.
For a brief, randomly selected example, imagine encountering a gigantic radiant diamond, and within that diamond there is a luminescent fluid, and within that fluid there is a dancing woman who strikes a series of dramatic poses and executes a series of gestures and moves such that the strands of her hair, in passing through the fluid, produce music. Imagine a race between seven seahorses, each tagged with a different color of the rainbow, through this same fluid, tethered together and towing a golden sphere like the sun, in imitation of the horses of Apollo towing the sun's chariot. Then imagine an explanation that rationalizes this spectacle in terms of an elaborate science experiment.
Now imagine a novel which consists entirely of such spectacles and their explanations.
That's Locus Solus.
But first, my newer reflections:
-Having recently been reading about mnemonics and memorization, it occurs to me that this book seems largely as if it were based on the images of a bizarre mnemonic, in a virtual memory palace, where every object and event is really just a symbol or a pun devised to help someone remember something. In other words, there is the perpetual feeling that what we experience as readers is cryptic, and there is a profound hidden story within... something of the nature of the unconscious, and thus emotionally charged.
-There's an interesting association of ideas, or structure, which arises from the fact that certain themes, images, and ideas recur in different forms. This is subtle, and unexplained. But, for instance, the repeat occurrence of people who sweat or exude blood, or a blood-like fluid, the almost magical properties associated with magnetism and electric current, the employment of animals to communicate or participate in scientific enquiry, the existence of hidden switches, panels and passageways, the returning themes of catholicism (all within a "scientific" context)--these obsessions of the author's creative mind come back with just enough frequency to give the impression that the book is not a series of independent vignettes, but rather that they are interrelated and thematically united.
Well, I'll get lazy now and just append what I wrote earlier:
-----------------------------------
Locus Solus is truly unique. Like many of the great books, it makes me think "until reading this, I didn't even imagine such a book was possible."
Roussel is sometimes cited as an early influence on the surrealists--a sort of proto-surrealist. But he appears to be something quite different. While influential on other writers who came after, I suspect that the others were inspired by him, but not imitative, and he may have had rather different literary goals.
Anyway, Locus Solus seemed immediately engaging from the first short chapter, and the book in its entirety is rather short, but it doesn't seem short. It's dense as a text, and somewhat slow going, particularly if you find yourself visualizing and meditating on what is being described.
The structure is that of a visit to the property of a wealthy, talented, and eccentric inventor. The narrator sees various mysterious objects and strange spectacles. Each object and spectacle is described with a remarkable exactitude, and each conceals a story. The story of each object or spectacle is then disclosed, as well as its scientific or historical significance, as though the fantastic is being rationalized, though it still retains a degree of mystery and potency nonetheless.
To describe it in a similar but different way, the book is like a continuous magic show by a stage illusionist, who concludes each performance with a detailed description of the method behind each trick, yet the tricks aren't spoiled by the description, and still seem miraculous for their ingenuity.
For a brief, randomly selected example, imagine encountering a gigantic radiant diamond, and within that diamond there is a luminescent fluid, and within that fluid there is a dancing woman who strikes a series of dramatic poses and executes a series of gestures and moves such that the strands of her hair, in passing through the fluid, produce music. Imagine a race between seven seahorses, each tagged with a different color of the rainbow, through this same fluid, tethered together and towing a golden sphere like the sun, in imitation of the horses of Apollo towing the sun's chariot. Then imagine an explanation that rationalizes this spectacle in terms of an elaborate science experiment.
Now imagine a novel which consists entirely of such spectacles and their explanations.
That's Locus Solus.
July 25, 2022
Se ad ammirarlo sono stati fra gli altri Breton, Duchamp, Robbe-Grillet, Perec, Foucault, Sciascia e Vila-Matas (grazie al quale l’ho scoperto), ci sarà più di un motivo. Roussel rappresenta uno di quei casi in cui la vita e l’arte risultano inscindibili, nel bene e nel male. Locus Solus (1914), la sua opera più nota, è un viaggio nel giardino del geniale inventore Martial Canterel. Procedendo per quadri separati, le pagine illustrano le diverse meraviglie presentate agli ospiti di Canterel. Roussell celebra il trionfo della tecnica sulla natura (e non di rado della vita sulla morte), attraverso invenzioni in cui la fantasia non ha limiti e da cui si viene a poco trascinati in un mondo unico e misterioso in cui tutto è possibile e in cui si sovverte ogni funzionalismo. Roussel a poco a poco educa il lettore, con una struttura che, didatticamente, prima espone il meraviglioso e poi lo spiega, con una dovizia di particolari che non può non affascinare. Un’opera unica, con un forte debito nei confronti di Huysmans.
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October 27, 2008Moving from description to description, Roussel writes in terms of surrealist-inclined dreamworld and Victorian weird science, interspersed with digressions into imaginary fables of princesses and warriors. Each description is lucid enough to drag you in, much like the best ultra-structured fiction of the Oulipo writers. Damn, this is solid. If steampunk was smarter, it would come out something like this.
May 13, 2019
Though he was ignored and even ridiculed in his time, financing the publication of his works with a fortune inherited from his father, Raymond Roussel would end up having a massive influence after his death. As a forbearer insofar as concerns certain trends or tendencies in literary modernism it might not be too bold to group Roussel with Joyce, Proust, and Kafka. (Of course, Proust himself originally self-published his RECHERCHE and the near totality of Kafka’s work would not have an opportunity for any kind of publication until after his death.) Roussel’s influence can be clearly discerned in the work of the Surrealists, the Oulpio, and the Nouveau Roman movement of Alain Robbe-Grillet & co. Roussel also had an influence on American writers. John Ashbery, Harry Mathews (also a member of Oulipo), James Schuyler, and Kenneth Koch briefly edited a magazine called LOCUS SOLUS, named for the novel currently under consideration. The influence is ongoing. The New Directions edition of LOCUS SOLUS contains a blurb from Ben Marcus placed among others on the first page, and Roussel’s influence on Marcus strikes me as self-evident. Though a few years younger than Proust, Roussel was a few years older than Joyce and Kafka. He demands to a certain extent to be appreciated as a product of fin de siècle Paris, and it is worth noting that not only was he six years younger than Proust, but only four years younger than Alfred Jarry, wild libertine inventor of ‘pataphysics. LOCUS SOLUS has some things in common with Jarry, what with its extremely complicated quasi-nonsense logic, and if it looks forward to André Breton (Father of Surrealism) and Raymond Queneau (Father of Oulipo), the men who in large part rescued Roussel’s legacy from obscurity, it also seems to prefigure the dada movement by a couple years. LOCUS SOLUS takes place on the large estate of Martial Canterel, an estate for which the novel is itself named. Over the course of the novel, Canterel guides the narrator and some other guests through the multiple bizarre attractions he has consolidated at Locus Solus, filling in much of the backstory. One might call these “attractions” something like extremely unusual Rube Goldberg contraptions, one involving “human teeth placed at intervals in all directions,” another involving electrodes applied to an embalmed head. If the lengthy descriptions of the elaborate contraptions are unmistakably dazzling, they also make for somewhat challenging reading, especially if one is inclined to seek a stable picture of the mechanics at hand. What are being constructed in terms of the descriptions of the estate’s attractions are somewhat inchoate tableaus. One remains struck by the prodigious feat of the author’s exercise of imagination while at the same time being overwhelmed by the extremity of his performance. I imagine that this is a book with a tendency to go unfinished, to defeat readers. It is a highly unusual book and the pleasures it affords are likewise decidedly uncommon ones. Again, though much of the book consists of descriptions of outrageous contraptions, Roussel consistently places these contraptions and the tasks they perform, often involving the repurposing of historical narratives, in such a way that stories sneak in through the back door. “Dreaming of some further application of the aqua-micans, the professor conceived the notion of making, for the great diamond’s interior, a collection of Cartesian divers capable of rising to the surface automatically by means of an air pocket in each of them in which a portion of oxygen so abundantly diffused in their environment would eventually be accumulated—then, when the gas collected in this way was suddenly released, they would descend again to the bottom.” This technology is used to depict a number of stories, such as “An adventure from the life of Alexander the Great narrated by Flavius Arrian,” the tale of a dwarf named Pizzighini, and Voltaire’s lone experience of “mystical emotion” etc. Roussel in turn gives us these stories (in more or less abbreviated form). Subsequently we visit dead persons “transferred to [an] enormous ice house” and subject to “a cranial injection of resurrectine.” Eight of the dead persons are inventoried at length. Again, we get the stories. They in fact comprise the novel’s lengthiest section. Basically the novel consists of descriptions of the scientific attractions on display at Locus Solus and all kind of narrative fragments, generally of a pronouncedly bizarre nature, at one point summarized as “certain consequences of a remote historical fact.” We meet Lucius, a man who went mad in the aftermath of seeing his daughter trampled to death by dancing brigands and who came in his grief to believe that he was Leonardo da Vinci. We meet a Sudanese woman and some unusual eggs along with an “astonishing bird.” “The Bluebells of Scotland” is performed in what we are told is its original key of F major. Finally there is Noël, who practices divination with the assistance of a “lively cock” named Mopsus. Of all the writers influenced by LOCUS SOLUS, I was especially struck reading it by the extent to which it looks forward to Raymond Queneau and Georges Perec, the two most famous French members of Oulipo. Oulipo, or L'Ouvroir de littérature potentielle, advanced the use of mathematical and other formula to produce literary compositions beholden to generative constraints, and the extent to which Roussel presages such techniques is plainly evident from reading his work, although the full extent to which this is the case seems to have been elucidated at length in his posthumously published text HOW I WROTE CERTAIN OF MY BOOKS, wherein Roussel explains just how complicated the rules informing the composition of LOCUS SOLUS in fact were. I am a huge fan of Queneau and reading LOCUS SOLUS forever changes how I understand the context of his work. The influence of LOCUS SOLUS on a novel like JEALOUSY will also be clear to fans of Alain Robbe-Grillet. Roussel’s revolutionary approach to form is genuinely pathbreaking in a manner that is exceedingly rare. He is one of those writers who committed himself to challenging the idea of what a novel is or can be. His work constitutes something of a kind of a frontier, plainly ahead of its time. Perhaps LOCUS SOLUS draws attention above all else to its author’s brain. I will confess to experiencing awe in relation to evidence it appears to supply of impossible-seeming neural connections.
June 26, 2025
Raymond Roussels "Locus Solus" liegt irgendwo zwischen der schwarzen Romantik à la E.T.A Hoffmann und dem Surrealismus. Anders als viele andere Werke, die von den Surrealisten als Vorbilder geschätzt wurden (z.B. Maldoror), ist dieser Roman ein großer Spaß. Im wesentlichen geht es darum, dass bei einem Rundgang durch einen Park skurrile Erfindungen vorgestellt werden, unterbrochen von Einschüben aus vermeintlichen Werken von vorgeblichen älteren Autoren. Das ganze hat insbesondere gegen Ende ganz schöne Längen und eigentlich keine Handlung, zündet aber einige erstaunliche Inspirationsketten.
Wie von der "Anderen Bibliothek" gewohnt, eine vorzügliche Edition.
Wie von der "Anderen Bibliothek" gewohnt, eine vorzügliche Edition.
October 24, 2025
ça donne envie de prendre du lsd ou n’importe quelle substance que roussel a pris pour écrire ça… j’ai adoré je pense que je vais en faire des cauchemars pendant longtemps
January 12, 2017
K této knize jsem se dostala díky četbě románu Ostrov v bodě Nemo, který na něj zhusta odkazuje. Očekávala jsem surreálné čtení, ale ve finále kniha předčila v tomto ohledu všechna má očekávání. Místy je to tak fantasmagorické, že to hraniční asi s duševním zdravím autora, ale paradoxně se mi to četlo v řadě míst mnohem lépe než Ostrov v bodě Nemo.
Každá kapitola knihy se věnuje jednomu oddílu zahrady Canterelova sídla, kterou provází své návštěvníky. Výstavba kapitoly je vždy stejná - nejprve vypravěč (jeden z návštěvníků) podrobně (ale opravdu velmi podrobně) popíše, co v dané části zahrady viděl a co se tam odehrálo. V druhé polovině pak Canterel svým hostům dané výjevy vysvětluje a vypráví jim k nim se vážící příběhy. Ta první část pro mě byla většinou skoro neučtitelná, těch podrobností bylo tolik, že člověka zahltí a já měla problém se tím prokousat. Druhá část byla pro mě výrazně lepší, čtivější , zajímavější a popravdě některé z těchto scén zachránili knihu před ještě horším hodnocením. Protože byť tyto druhé části kapitol (alespoň u prvních tří částí) byly velmi zajímavé, tak zbytek knihy mi nesedl, ostatně stejně jako Ostrov v bodě Nemo.
Určitě je to zajímavá zkušenost, pokud se někdy budu k podobným textům vracet, tak asi spíš k Rousselovi než Jean-Marie Blas de Roblès.
Kontext: To se již nějakou dobu chystám na Sestra, že to konečně jednou dočtu do konce. Tak teď nevím, jestli dám třetí fantasmagorickou knihu v řadě a navíc na Vánoce :-)
První věta: "Na onen čtvrtek zkraje dubna mě můj učený přítel mistr Martial Canterel pozval společně s několika svými blízkými k návštěvě obrovského parku obklopujícího jeho nádhernou vilu v Montmorency."
Poslední věta: "Když nám Canterel oznámil, že všechna tajemství jeho parku nyní známe, vykročil na cestu vedoucí k vile, kde jsme se všichni záhy sešli k veselé večeři."
Každá kapitola knihy se věnuje jednomu oddílu zahrady Canterelova sídla, kterou provází své návštěvníky. Výstavba kapitoly je vždy stejná - nejprve vypravěč (jeden z návštěvníků) podrobně (ale opravdu velmi podrobně) popíše, co v dané části zahrady viděl a co se tam odehrálo. V druhé polovině pak Canterel svým hostům dané výjevy vysvětluje a vypráví jim k nim se vážící příběhy. Ta první část pro mě byla většinou skoro neučtitelná, těch podrobností bylo tolik, že člověka zahltí a já měla problém se tím prokousat. Druhá část byla pro mě výrazně lepší, čtivější , zajímavější a popravdě některé z těchto scén zachránili knihu před ještě horším hodnocením. Protože byť tyto druhé části kapitol (alespoň u prvních tří částí) byly velmi zajímavé, tak zbytek knihy mi nesedl, ostatně stejně jako Ostrov v bodě Nemo.
Určitě je to zajímavá zkušenost, pokud se někdy budu k podobným textům vracet, tak asi spíš k Rousselovi než Jean-Marie Blas de Roblès.
Kontext: To se již nějakou dobu chystám na Sestra, že to konečně jednou dočtu do konce. Tak teď nevím, jestli dám třetí fantasmagorickou knihu v řadě a navíc na Vánoce :-)
První věta: "Na onen čtvrtek zkraje dubna mě můj učený přítel mistr Martial Canterel pozval společně s několika svými blízkými k návštěvě obrovského parku obklopujícího jeho nádhernou vilu v Montmorency."
Poslední věta: "Když nám Canterel oznámil, že všechna tajemství jeho parku nyní známe, vykročil na cestu vedoucí k vile, kde jsme se všichni záhy sešli k veselé večeři."
July 15, 2012
I was really shocked at how much I didn't like this novel, to the point where 14 pages from the end I put the book back on my bookshelf because I realised I really didn't care what happened in the plot or to the characters. This is something I feel quite guilty about as it is unlike me as a reader to put something aside so close to the end. With a lack of unrelatable characters or characters in general and the plot not really going anywhere, I felt quite frustrated because I felt like the novel was giving me nothing to work with. The only benefit were the anecdotal fables and stories which were sometimes quite interesting but for the most part these were short lived, before we were brought back to the tedious present. Disappointed.
December 30, 2020
I think the best way to describe Locus Solus is as a literary Rube Goldberg machine. A machine that has been rendered in perfect detail by a master technical draughtsman. It is in turns fascinating, perplexing, beautiful and oddly gratifying. But ask me what its function is? I'm really not sure, other than as an end unto itself. The machine is compelling because it is intricate and artistically wrought, not because it has any discernable purpose.
Published in 1914, Locus Solus is framed as a wealthy scientist giving a tour of the titular compound. There is no "plot" as such. Instead, it is the most detailed description possible of the scientist's bizarre experiments. Roussel's approach is to describe the nuts-and-bolts appearance of each experiment in near-excruciating detail, then to recount the story of each one's creation. The stories are marvelous, with recursive asides within asides ranging from invented African myths to contemporary vignettes, to faux scientific analysis.
Again, there does not seem to be any overarching point to the exercise. Maybe something about how science and technology was reaching a tipping point where it was really beyond people's comprehension? But I really think Roussel was just interested in the process. It's almost a game. Think of a crazy device, then see how deep you can go in justifying its existence. This is a different type of book than anything you've ever read.
Enjoyed this one very much. Roussel was also quite a character and is worth reading about.
Published in 1914, Locus Solus is framed as a wealthy scientist giving a tour of the titular compound. There is no "plot" as such. Instead, it is the most detailed description possible of the scientist's bizarre experiments. Roussel's approach is to describe the nuts-and-bolts appearance of each experiment in near-excruciating detail, then to recount the story of each one's creation. The stories are marvelous, with recursive asides within asides ranging from invented African myths to contemporary vignettes, to faux scientific analysis.
Again, there does not seem to be any overarching point to the exercise. Maybe something about how science and technology was reaching a tipping point where it was really beyond people's comprehension? But I really think Roussel was just interested in the process. It's almost a game. Think of a crazy device, then see how deep you can go in justifying its existence. This is a different type of book than anything you've ever read.
Enjoyed this one very much. Roussel was also quite a character and is worth reading about.
December 15, 2019
Published in 1914, this novel came from somewhat outside of the literary history of the time and became very influential for the 20th century French authors that followed, from Marcel Duchamp to Alain Robbe-Grillet. And it is easy to see why: this novel foregrounds form, or style, in a unique way that probably hasn't been replicated since.
In eight or so scenes, or tableaux vivants, as they generally seem to be referred, a wealthy inventor leads a group of friends across his estate in order to share his efforts as an artistic and scientific genius. The staging of each scene is exactly the same: the group arrives at the tableaux, which is described in painstakingly photographic detail, and the action taking place is completely incomprehensible. Then the wealthy inventor describes step-by-step the meaning of the action in the tableaux, which ends up being even more bizarre, outlandish, and ingenious than the scene described.
More than a hundred years later this text is still like nothing else. As a fantastical and surreal flight of fancy which disguises a serious and historical aesthetic statement, Locus Solus is easily a masterpiece of world literature.
In eight or so scenes, or tableaux vivants, as they generally seem to be referred, a wealthy inventor leads a group of friends across his estate in order to share his efforts as an artistic and scientific genius. The staging of each scene is exactly the same: the group arrives at the tableaux, which is described in painstakingly photographic detail, and the action taking place is completely incomprehensible. Then the wealthy inventor describes step-by-step the meaning of the action in the tableaux, which ends up being even more bizarre, outlandish, and ingenious than the scene described.
More than a hundred years later this text is still like nothing else. As a fantastical and surreal flight of fancy which disguises a serious and historical aesthetic statement, Locus Solus is easily a masterpiece of world literature.
May 24, 2012
Unceasingly odd. With this and "Impressions of Africa" I suspect Raymond Roussel revealed a lot about himself, but what is revealed is so opaque and puzzling that I for one can't make any sense of it. (The Dalkey introduction of "Impressions" mentions how Roussel explained (posthumously) that much of the imagery in these books was guided by elaborate, non-humorous puns, which gives them a rebus-like atmosphere.) In this volume we follow the entirely sane and sensible mad scientist Canterel on a tour of his estate. At the site of each of his inventions first a demonstration is given, each of which is a hilarious combination of dreamlike imagery and overly precise technical description, and then Canteral explains how the machine works. The rather sedate narrator does not seem to realize how strange are the phenomena he's encountering, such as tooth magnets, a flexible ruler made of bacon, or a species of perfectly flat, music-loving insects which live inside a hollowed Tarot card.
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