Uncertain Manifesto

Manifiesto incierto #1

by Frédéric Pajak, Donald Nicholson-Smith (Translator)

An illustrated artist's memoir of the motivations, feelings, ideas, figures (including Samuel Beckett and Walter Benjamin), travels, and love affairs that have influenced his life.

The writer and artist Frédéric Pajak was ten when he began to dream of “a book mixing words and pictures: snippets of adventure, random memories, maxims, ghosts, forgotten heroes, trees, the raging sea,” but it was not until he was in his forties that this dream took form as Uncertain Manifesto. The utterly original book that he produced is a memoir born of reading and a meditation on the lives and ideas, the motivations, feelings, and fates of some of Pajak’s heroes: Samuel Beckett and the artist Bram van Velde, and, especially, Walter Benjamin, whose travels to Moscow, Naples, and Ibiza, whose experiences with hashish, whose faltering marriage and love affairs and critique of modern experience Pajak re-creates and reflects on in word and image. Pajak’s moody black-and-white drawings accompany the text throughout, though their bearing on it is often indirect and all the more absorbing for that. Between word and image, the reader is drawn into a mysterious space that is all Pajak’s as he seeks to evoke vanished histories and to resist a modern world more and more given over to a present without a past.

Genres: Comics, Nonfiction, Graphic Novels, Art

192 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2012

About the author

Frédéric Pajak is a Swiss-French writer and graphic artist born in Suresnes, France. He has written novels and film scripts, and he is a painter, as was his father, Jacques Pajak. He has edited and contributed to cultural and satirical periodicals and is the editor of the highly illustrated biannual journal Les Cahiers dessinés, devoted to graphic work ranging from cartooning to the drawings of old masters. But Pajak is best known for a long series of books of unique design which present his own full-page drawings accompanied by a biographical and autobiographical quasi-narrative. The first of these works, which made his reputation, was L’Immense solitude (1999), which won the Prix Michel Dentan in 2000. He followed this up with another similarly structured work, Le Chagrin d’amour (Broken Hearts), which dealt with Guillaume Apollinaire. Later subjects included Joyce, Luther, Freud, Nietzsche, Cesare Pavese, and Schopenhauer. In the same formal vein, Pajak’s ongoing Uncertain Manifesto, which began with the present work in 2012, reached its seventh volume in 2018. Volume III was awarded the Prix Médicis (Essai) in 2014.

Reviews

[Vendedor de rápida · Rating 4 out of 5]

Es una alegría que errata naturae esté publicando la obra de este inclasificable. Como en 'La inmensa soledad', Pajak no sólo mezcla texto e imagen en una especie de álbum ilustrado oscuro y meditabundo, sino que su propio texto va de lo autobiográfico a lo biográfico, a partir de unas reflexiones que enlazan la propia vida del autor con la de Benjamin, especialmente durante sus estancias en Ibiza y sus premoniciones sobre el fascismo. Como en el acercamiento al suicidio y la locura a través de la vida de Pavese y Nietzsche en Turín, de nuevo la propuesta de Pajak conmueve e invita a reflexionar.

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

Story “Two Fascists” is extremely memorable. Loved the drawings. Felt throughout that I was reading maybe a new kind of literature, not exactly a comic book, not just a narrative in fragments, but an assemblage of image and text.

[Erkuden Aldasoro Errea · Rating 5 out of 5]

De los que no te dejan indiferente y sin duda quiero volver a leer.

[Charlie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Inspired me to pick up Benjamin again!

[Andrea Samorini · Rating 4 out of 5]

pag.26 _______________________________
È vero, si, Beckett sproloquia. Nel caso particolare di Bram, d'altronde, è l'unico scrittore o critico a farlo, con lo stile che gli è proprio. Afferma ad esempio che la sua pittura «fa un rumore molto caratteristico, quello di una porta che sbatte di lontano».

pag.32 _______________________________
Gli esuli non dimenticano la propria terra. Quando ha incontrato Beckett per la prima volta, James Joyce, l'esule perenne, ha ribadito al giovane compatriota quanto segue: «Ci ha messo un po', non lo nego, ma alla fine è tornato anche Ulisse...».
E infatti Beckett non abbandonerà mai davvero la sua isola e la sua lingua. Si nutrirà delle parole di quel maestro, gesuita incorreggibile e impenitente, fino a quando non avrà trovato la propria voce, la propria risata e, soprattutto, di che far ridere. Diventerà il protestante comico, un precursore capace di trasformare la pasta molle di ogni conversazione in un dialogo al contempo divertente e disperato, un dialogo realista e improbabile.
___________________________________
WANT TO READ BOOK:
- Aspettando Godot (Samuel Beckett)
- Molloy (Samuel Beckett)
- Malone muore (Samuel Beckett)
- L'innominabile (Samuel Beckett)
- Mercier e Camier (Samuel Beckett)

[Jeanne Martin · Rating 3 out of 5]

J'ai retrouvé avec beaucoup de plaisir le style sobre et harmonieux de Frédéric Pajak, et ses magnifiques dessins.
Par rapport au tome 7 que j'ai lu il y a quelque temps avec émerveillement, celui-ci est malheureusement moins ordonné. J'ai appris quelques faits concernant Walter Benjamin, mais je serais incapable d'en faire la synthèse : quand est-il né, quand et de quoi est-il mort ? Et entre les deux, l'ordre de ses actions, ou du moins leur logique, quels sont-ils ? Je n'ai pas compris. Et d'ailleurs (de ce fait ?) je ne suis guère convaincue par le personnage.
Les récits pris isolément restent cependant très agréables à lire, y compris, peut-être surtout, les pages autobiographiques.
Une autre perplexité : l'articulation entre texte et dessins, loin d'être évidente.
Je me dis que ce premier numéro montre probablement un premier état du projet de Pajak, qui est beaucoup plus convaincant dans le tome 7. Je suis curieuse de voir ce que donne le tome 2.

[dv · Rating 3 out of 5]

Accostandomi per la prima volta a Pajac grazie alla serie pubblicata da L'Orma (di cui ho già anche la seconda e terza uscita) incontro un autore effettivamente originale nel mettere a punto una forma molto libera di "saggio illustrato". Più nel dettaglio, le illustrazioni a china sono molto belle e spesso più evocative che letterali (in quanto non sempre connesse direttamente al testo), gli approfondimenti storici - qui incentrati su Benjiamin sono ricchi, documentati e coinvolgenti. Quel che mi ha convinto meno sono gli innesti autobiografici sul presente, che non ho trovato ben connessi alla vicenda benjaminiana. Ma proseguirò con la lettera degli altri libri.

[Gabriel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hermosa obra que aúna arte gráfico y un ensayo exquisito que alterna entre el periplo vital de Benjamin y el del propio autor. Lo leí de una sentada y me ha dejado con deseos de seguir explorando la obra de Pajak.

[Noe · Rating 4 out of 5]

¿Ensayo gráfico, novela biográfica? Pajak, ¿dibujante o filósofo? Inclasificable y más que necesario grito contra las ideologías en nuestros días, tributo a la figura de Walter Benjamin.

[Jackson Hengsterman]

“I inhale the breeze from the open sea. I place my hand on the nape of a woman’s neck: there is a woman within the woman.”