Cathode Love

 

Cathode Love by Matthew Brendan Clark
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Matthew Brendan Clark is an alchemist of decadence, mixing a strong literary and analytical brew to create something more powerful than the sum of its parts. Lead to gold? No. More like silver to gold, but the mix and presentation add significant value to each piece, giving a cumulative effect from beginning to end. One is reminded of the boundaried eclecticism of Strange Attractor and the wonderful Sacrum Regnum I and Sacrum Regnum II.

After an excellent introduction, the post-introduction introduction, "Now Departing . . . Reality," is a careful examination of the impossibility of communicating, something I've addressed myself at length. But Clark does so in a more careful way, I think, exploring to the very dusty corners the limitations we have as humans.

But in doing so, he opens doors, much like a Oulipo philosopher, showing that acknowledging the severe limitations of human ability to share perception actually cracks open the wall to one's own imagination. In our vain attempts to communicate, we give each other seeds that take root in our minds and our imaginations are opened to new vistas that are ours alone.

The first piece of writing not penned by Clark is Michel Leiris' "The Heiroglyphic Monad". It's is a brief philosophical treatise, told by a surrealist, outlining some of the ideas found in the writings of John Dee. A heady mixture in and of itself, which gives hints to the overall thematic content of Cathode Love.

I'm not sure if Marina Warner's essay "The Writing of Stones" constitutes an apologia for metaphor or science, both or neither. In the end, Warner finds a Hegelian dialectic moment in the stones collected by Roger Caillois, erstwhile surrealist. Here "material mysticism" and "convulsive beauty" are brought into contentious focus with one another over the subject of of, of all things, Mexican jumping beans. There is a lot to digest here, and it's a topic I've thought about extensively, so much so that I twirl around, infinitely, like an astronaut orbiting a black hole. The divergent threads might never merge in my mind, at least not as smoothly as Warner presents, so I have to be content to be on the edge, forever circling, until something breaks in my mind one way or the other. Perhaps this is why I like writing so much - the Apollonian side of me is gratified by the order of grammar and syntax, while the Dionysian side of me enjoys wrestling that same syntax into disorder (sometimes slight, sometimes more radical) in order to wedge open cracks in the armor of logic.

I was very glad to see Remy de Gourmont's "Introduction to the First Book of Masks," the symbolism manifesto, in many ways, contained in Cathode Love. This piece actually inspired me to compile and edit Text:Ur, The New Book of Masks many years ago, so, for me, it's seminal. I'm sure it was for many others, as well. The symbolism movement, while still a little obscured by time, spawned much of the early modernist movement. And I have to admit here that the Symbolist art movement (which featured two of my favorite artists: Gustave Moreau and Odilon Redon) is, by far, my favorite artistic era. So between the visual art and the written word, I enjoy a sort of artistic-synesthesia, if you will.

In his essay "Prison Food," Clark muses on poetry's ability to blossom from the depths of suffering. Or, in his words, we can benefit our lives by "assuming that poetry operates as an escape from hell". Though I don't think that poetry, whether we are writing it or reading it, can fully alleviate our internal suffering, it can provide some reprieve from the pangs of sorrow.

Antonin Artaud pushes for a mystification of what was becoming, in his day, utilitarian theater, in his essay "Metaphysics and the Mise En Scene". He creates a sort of artistic synesthesia (do you sense a theme here?) in his rolling commentary on visual art (featuring Van Leyden's painting The Daughters of Lot), poetry, and, most of all, theater, pointing out the metaphysical nature of Leyden's piece and Balinese shadow puppetry.

Artaud's "The Theater of Cruelty" is a Dionysian manifesto for the stage, criteria for a ritual more than a play, or the reuniting of the play with ritual. I see now exactly where Hermann Nitsch drew his inspiration for "The Fall of Jerusalem". Here, Artaud is as concerned with occult matters as dramatic matters. His focus on hieroglyphs and holy places betrays a neo-platonic reach to connect with the beyond.

I am not fond of werewolf stories or their ilk, as I find them hackneyed and largely predictable. But Count Stenbock's "The Other Side," of which I've heard rumors for years, has such a beautiful poetic resonance, that it's impossible for me not to love it, just like it was impossible for Gabriel not to love the woman with piercing blue eyes and golden hair, even though he condemned her (and himself) in the process.

Here's a bit of healing for your soul I discovered while perusing the next section of the book: Reading Baudelaire on the back porch on a cool summer evening with Dave Brubeck playing in the background. A sip from the balm of Gilead. A little moment of bliss. You're welcome. Now back to the book . . .

David Tibet's essay "Why I Looked to the Southside of the Door" is, as one would expect with his writing, elliptical, peeking around the corner, just out of sight, and absolutely enveloping in its charisma. From Coptic grammar to more nicknames than I can keep track of to, of course, Current 93 (don't all roads lead to Current 93 after all?), we journey with Tibet through vast halls of intellect, getting a glimpse of how the man sees the world.

In "A Dream Through Death," Matthew Brendan Clark gives a short, if thorough, retrospective on the films of French director Jean Rollin outlining his works, biography, and distinctive ouvre. Am I a huge fan of Rollin's films? No. Will I examine them in a different light and with a more careful eye, especially those films I have not yet seen? Absolutely, and directly as a result of this essay.

After a short eulogy to Roger Gilbert-Lecomte, eight of the drug-addled poet's works are presented in the original French and in translation. I've not read much of the former-surrealist's works, but after this introduction I will be reading much, much more. "Wind out of a space steeper than the edge of eternity" indeed!

"Clarimonde" is not my first encounter with Theophile Gautier, but it might be my most profound. This is the epitome of the gothic romance story, vampirism, and all. It's a crushingly beautiful work, giving full feeling to the experience shared by all humans of being violently-pulled between two natures, two entire beings, Manichean dualism of the heart (and in this case, the body and soul, as well). A profound work.

"An Interview with Catherine Ribeiro" is my introduction to the music of Catherine Ribeiro + Alpes, a genre-melding psychedelic band redolent of early Pink Floyd, but unique. Since I make it a habit to listen to the Floyd's "Live at Pompeii" from time to time, this is a welcome introduction.

Jess Franco's "Lorna . . . The Exorcist" sounds like the sort of movie that would disgust even the 19th-century decadents. Not my cup of tea. I enjoyed the essay, which was informative and insightful, but I won't be watching the movie.

The inclusion of Remy de Gourmont's "Hell" seems appropriate in a book that flies to the heights and descends to the depths. But these are the heights of tortured bodies and the lows of forlorn hopes. Gourmont embraces them all!

"The Lock of Faith" is, by the author's own admission, a fragmentation recounting of a sexually-charged, yet terrifying dream. Unedited, it shows a raw, shattered reality that many will recognize from their own dreamtime forays. Edited, this could be a compelling tale, dark, sensual, and surprising. The germ is there, waiting to grow. Perhaps it's a bit indulgent for Clark to have included this in his own anthology, but it doesn't lessen the impact of the whole.

The short prose-poem "Chlorotic Ballad" by Joris-Karl Huysmans is an exquisite sliver of his larger works, concentrated beauty and grim dreadfulness all wrapped up in velvet and rubies. Each sentence seemed like a little explosion through which one could see the author's longer works, like the heretofore-unseen backdrop to a sky torn asunder, revealing the stunning reality beyond.

Saint-Pol-Roux takes the reader (and the "Yokels" of the story) from banal lust to an apotheosis of the sublime in "The Perceptible Soul". This vibrant account of an esoteric transformation, not only of the stage performer's persona, but of the very hearts and minds of the Yokels, is a wonder to read, a high point of aesthetic beauty and profound reverence, which ends on a suitably surreal note.

A mystical strain of Catholicism (or a catholic strain of mysticism) permeates Saint-Pol-Roux' next piece, "The Immemorial Calvary". At what point does the quest for hope destroy the vessel of hope, only to integrate into one's very soul? Saint-Pol-Roux explores that very question, and finds a bittersweet, if positive answer.

Clark's final essay, "For the Saints of Failure . . ." is a work of beauty and genius, a manifesto, if not for artists, then for those who appreciate art, especially in its strangest, most outre forms. It is a beautiful benediction to the works that appear before it in this volume, and to the volume itself. Finis opus coronat!

All-in-all, I strongly recommend buying a copy direct from the editor/author. It's an absolutely beautiful artifact, inside and out. It's obvious that Clark poured a lot of love and creative juices into this volume. I honestly wish there were more books like this in the world, where someone has taken great care to curate and present a cohesive group of fiction and non-fiction to form a sort of "world view" artifact. The anthologies I mentioned at the beginning of this review are exactly the sort of anthologies I mean. Anthologies, especially those that combine fiction and non-fiction, are becoming a rare sight these days. Clark, I think, recognizes this and has presented Cathode Love as a rare treasure, indeed.




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The Complete Lyrics 1978-2022 by Nick Cave

 

The Complete Lyrics 1978–2022 by Nick Cave
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I've never read Delueze's Difference and Repetition (though it is on my list), but I am aching with curiosity to see if he has anything to say about song lyrics. Because, by and large, song lyrics suck. There are notable exceptions, but they are notable because they are exceptional. I'll restrain myself from quoting any, because that's not the point of my banal and overly jejune "observation". But really, when you rip lyrics from the context of the music in which they are couched, they most often come across as just plain stupid. I think this has something to do with repetition. Songs don't have to be repetitive, but it helps, especially if you're a music producer whose goal is to shove some catchy bit into the craw of as many brains as you can. Repetition sells when it's associated with a catchy tune. You don't have to think about such music, which is part of the joy of it all, singing inane lyrics at the top of your lungs: The easier, the better.

But this isn't about joy. Well, maybe a little. But we're talking about Nick Cave here. Talk about a man who has suffered. I'll spare the details, but go read about his life some time. Ugh. Yes, he's had fame and fortune and flamboyance, but, ugh, the things he's gone through, especially the death of two of his children - no thank you. It's odd, then, that many of his most poignantly sad lyrics were written before these losses. Or maybe it's not odd at all. Maybe Nick Cave is just good at putting to paper (and music) the inevitability of pain.

Now, Nick Cave is not innocent when it comes to rote repetition in lyrics. This is especially true in his more punk phase while he was with The Birthday Party. Yes, the seeds (pun intended) of brilliance were there, but, really, they were just a pretty good punk band full of, you guessed it, repetitive lyrics. Cave's outrageous energy carried the band's music, and there's something to be said for that, but if you're looking for poetry in his early lyrics, you're going to have to squint.

Now, I can't speak to this musically, but lyrically, the album The Bad Seed (1983) seems to be a watershed moment in Cave's writing. I don't know what exactly triggered this, but here Cave's poetics enter a new phase. From this point on, things are different, and noticeably so. In the past, sheer brute power carried the day, but now you can see that the work has been crafted more carefully. Yes, there is repetition (it's inevitable in music, I know), but that repetition only serves as punctuation marks to the poetry throughout, like lyrical exclamation points or, more often, lyrical question marks.

Song lyrics, like poems, are easy to read but not easy to process, especially if you are reading them. Without voice inflections and different points of emphasis, one must supply these variations oneself, whether audibly or just in one's head. Of course this can make the songs "yours," but you are bound to have to reinterpret upon hearing the singer's expression. And really, the music is an integral part of the lyrics. So, in some ways, The Complete Lyrics didn't resonate with me (no pun intended there, believe it or not). Again, that pesky repetition, when devoid of emotional context, was just plain irritating, at points. Every exception to this, for me as a reader, came because I had a close knowledge of the songs in which the repetitive lyrics were ensconced. Context is everything, in this case, and when I knew the context well enough, my irritation wore off, soothed by the melody (even if it was a raucous one).

I suppose every Nick Cave fan has a favorite album. Mine is No More Shall We Part. It's agonizingly beautiful. Let Love In marches a close second behind as less somber (but still morose) and more animated, sometimes cartoonishly so. There are songs intermingled in all the other albums that I greatly enjoy ("From Her to Eternity" - my introduction to Nick Cave's music back in the '80s by way of Wim Wenders' Der Himmel über Berlin , and "The Carny" both jump to mind), but these two are albums which, from start to finish, I can long and languish in.

Cave, along with the Bad Seeds, has like any good artist, evolved over the years. From punk to strange calliope rhythms to the blues, his music is nothing if not twisting along a path that is unpredictable. If I ever suspected a Nick Cave album to have been written under the influence of an epic dose of LSD, it would have to be DIG, LAZARUS, DIG. It's "way out there," as they say. Definitely the most experimental (whatever that means) album, lyrically speaking. And now, since the publication of this book in it's most recent incarnation, it appears that Cave and company have taken another turn, towards the ethereal and, dare I say it? Religious?

Wherever he goes, I'm along for the ride. While I can't count myself as a member of his cult of personality, I will say that I continue to be interested, even touched deeply, from time to time, as I was when I first read the lyrics to "Nature Boy," which I'll end with here:

Nature Boy

I was just a boy when I sat down
To watch the news on TV
I saw some ordinary slaughter
I saw some routine atrocity
My father said, don't look away
You got to be strong, you got to be bold, now
He said that in the end is a beauty
That is going to save the world, now

And she moves among the sparrows
And she floats upon the breeze
She moves among the flowers
She moves something deep inside of me

I was walking around the flower show like a leper
Coming down with some kind of nervous hysteria
When I saw you standing there, green eyes, black hair
Up against the pink and purple wisteria
You said, hey, nature boy, are you looking at me
With some unrighteous intention?
My knees went weak, I couldn't speak, I was having thoughts
That were not in my best interests to mention

And she moves among the flowers
And she floats upon the smoke
She moves among the shadows
She moves me with just one little look

You took me back to your place
And dressed me up in a deep-sea diver's suit
You played the patriot, you raised the flag
And I stood at full salute
Later on we smoked a pipe that struck me dumb
And made it impossible to speak
As you closed in, in slow motion
Quoting Sappho, in the original Greek

She moves among the shadows
She floats upon the breeze
She moves among the candles
And we moved through the days and through the years

Years passed by, we were walking by the sea
Half delirious
You smiled at me and said, babe
I think this thing is getting kind of serious
You pointed at something and said
Have you ever seen such a beautiful thing?
It was then that I broke down
It was then that you lifted me up again

She moves among the sparrows
And she walks across the sea
She moves among the flowers
And she moves something deep inside of me

She moves among the sparrows
And she floats upon the breeze
She moves among the flowers
And she moves right up close to me

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Waiting for the Dog to Sleep

 

Waiting for the Dog to Sleep by Jerzy Ficowski
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

It should come as no surprise that Jerzy Ficowski is possibly the world's leading biographer of the great Bruno Schulz. Not only did Ficowski write the definitive Schulz biography, Regions of the Great Heresy, but one can hear echoes of Schulz's distinctive voice bordering the edges of Ficowski's short fiction, collected here in Waiting for the Dog to Sleep. Throughout my reading of the 28(!) stories in this volume, I found myself drawing frequent comparisons to Schulz, Kafka, and Calvino, and some of these stories should be spoken in the same breath as these greats.

That is not to say that Ficowski does not have his own voice; he does. But in order to entice readers to this book, I can't avoid the comparison. This work will sit comfortably - on its own - amidst works by the authors heretofore mentioned. Alas, this comprises all of the short fiction Ficowski ever wrote. He is much more well-known as a poet, and his poetic stance is reflected quite strongly in a few of these stories. At other times, his work is extremely straightforward and unadorned, which suits the stories in which ornamentation was not only un-necessary, but inimical to the goals of the narrative. Ficowski allows the form to follow the story, not allowing his own predilections to smother the necessary work that his words perform.

There is a wide variety here ("Something for everyone to hate," as Stepan Chapman used to say), and a lot to love. These pieces are all short and easily digestible, but some of them leave a long-lasting aftereffect, a lingering literary flavor that "sits well on the tongue," as they say. Here are my thoughts on each of the morsels:

The first story, "The Artificial Hen, or the Gravedigger's Lover" hovers somewhere between magic realism and surrealism. It's a strange, uncomfortable space. Most of the stories in this volume, I've found, fall into this strange liminal space between strange liminal spaces. Sometimes hewing toward more stark surrealism and at other times toward a warm magic realism a'la Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

"The Passing Settlement" is about what's right there in the title. But what's there is not quite what you think. A charming little bit about one of those "blink and you'll miss it" places in the middle of nowhere (which may well be the middle of everywhere).

"Old-World Entomology" is a short, concise gut-punch about moths, ancestors, memory, and futility. A three page long existential masterstroke.

Daydream? Ghost story? Liminal magic realism? It doesn't matter. "Recreation with the Paralytics" is a numinous tale, in any case. It will lull you into its own sacral reality, chestnuts, wheelchairs, and all.

"Proof of the Existence of Saint Eulalia" is, as the academics are wont to say "transgressive". Equal parts wicked and clever, this tiny tale packs a lot. Almost a prose poem, though without so much filigree. The sort of story about which a writer (this writer in particular) would say "I wish I had written it myself". And I do.

"The Pink House, or the Desert Sentries" is the sort of story that sends literature majors scrambling for hidden meanings and symbolism when maybe, just maybe, the author was simply telling a story with no meaning . . . which, of course, carries hidden meanings. It is, in this way, a tricksterish story. Ficowski channels Kafka herein, and the academics start sprinting for their podiums . . .

It's funny, when I read the next tale, I had just had a conversation with my wife about the traces we do and don't leave behind when we die. This story, "Chorzeluk," is about making a memory mountain out of a molehill and the proposition that it's sometimes best to let silence speak for itself.

"Before the Wall Collapses" is a small slice of a small slice of the world, an urban trap, of sorts, as much psychological as physical, inhabited by the narrator's grandfather.

Ever wonder what it might feel like to be a victim of the Dungeons & Dragons spell "Otto's Irresistible Dance"? I have. The answer might be found in "Tango Milonga," a tale of magic realism that evokes Italy Calvino in all the best ways. That really is the highest praise I can give to a story. I am hoping there are more like this in Ficowski's collection, but this could carry the whole book! The price of admission is worth it for this story alone.

"Window to the World" is a window on frozen hope and the helplessness one faces in the face of cold, strong winters, and the inevitability of death. This could easily be a short Brothers Quay film. I might add that the Quays (my favorite directors) are, not surprisingly, mentioned in the translator's notes.

"The Sweet Smell of Wild Animals" is magical realism par excellence. This story would rank up among Millhauser and Calvino's best. A fantastic fantastical story (replete with obligatory clown) of an unexpected train ride to a zone of liminality between city and circus, mechanics and magic. An amazing tale of tails.

I keep using referents to magic realists most readers know. It can't be helped. "An Escape" brushes against Kafka's territory or that of a very, very restrained Solzhenitsyn. I wasn't as enamored of this story as others, but it is still well-realized, with a Rod Serling-esque cliffhanger ending.

Existentialism by way of an attempt to fade into non-existence is the theme of "Mimesis". Where best to hide? Or, rather, best to hide as what? What happens when one disappears into . . . a piece of architecture, for example? And what of the pull of such an act on others. One must be strong or dissolve.

"An Attempt at a Dialogue" is a psychogeographical dreamscape of a story with a strange hauntological twist that teases the edges of time-travel, questioning both past and present and the (false?) notion of selfhood. It leaves philosophical quandaries far beyond the limits of the ink on the page and even beyond the strangeness that the story infers.

To call "The Joy of Dead Things" a "nice" story gives the wrong connotation. Maybe "comfortable" is the word I'm looking for, but only to those of us who love to walk through sleepy, dilapidated towns, unkempt ruins, dirty side streets, and ancient overgrown cemeteries, physically-realized dreamscapes. If that's you, then you, like me, will feel comfortable with this story, "soothed" even.

In "Outskirts on the Sands," we find a narrator who constantly, stubbornly, thrusts himself into the past, intentionally avoiding the present until a girl, an amalgam of all his pasts, gently compels him into the present. But the pull of nostalgia is too powerful, and he loses his present, ironically, to a new future. Another strongly psychogeographic work.

A weirdly- beautiful story, the imagery of "My Forest" is going to stay in my head for a long, long time, particularly the fantastically gorgeous apocalyptic closing scene. I would love to quote it, but I don't want to spoil the dark beauty of it all, one of the most simultaneously moving and disturbing images I've seen painted with words. So many hints and implications . . . I can't get over how "ripe" this little tale is. I think I'm in love with it.

"Aunt Fruzia" can be killed off by a salacious story involving a nun, we learn. A domestic dinner story gone wrong (because the narrator just can't help himself from provoking his aunt). The analogies of dinner were so good, I'd prefer to take them literally. But that's cannibalism, and cannibalism is a no-no, kids.

The one disappointing story in the collection for me was "An Alliance". Is the alliance in "An Alliance" really an alliance at all? Or is it just spousal spitefulness? There's probably an analogy in this story, but I'm not seeing it.

"Gorissia" (as the Romans named it) is a village in which the people embrace the final embrace, that of the grave. It's a story as old as time, as discovered by the narrator, an archeologist noted for his previous Neolithic discoveries. And the story will continue on in perpetuity. The archeologist is, in essence, robbed of the fruits of his profession.

"Intermission" is a story of war, during which the line demarcation living and dead is all but erased and only fear can save you. It is an autobiographical tale of Ficowski's participation in the Warsaw uprising.

By the end of "They Don't Ring at the Bernadines'," Ficowski slips into, or rather ascends into full surrealist mode. This story of religious figures versus their adherents approaches, but doesn't quite cross the threshold into all-out absurdity. The restraint is apropos, given the story itself.

I was waiting for a story that would touch directly on the holocaust, and in "'Cause He's Stupid and 'Cause He's Abram," I begrudgingly found it. As you can imagine, it doesn't end well. In this sad case, ignorance truly is bliss. The story begins with the following paragraph, just to give you a taste of Ficowski's writing ability:

He had a molting beard the color of hempen harl, his frayed canvas clothes were made up of holes and cracks painstakingly sewn together. Niemira from Lesne claimed that Abram had stolen those rags from his field scarecrow and was now parading about in them. Possible, but if so, Stupid Abram hadn't taken them to make himself frightening only so that he would have something to wear: without them he was already fairly frightening, though more naked.

You can probably gather that Ficowski shows a wry humor, even in his portrayal of the most horrific of circumstances. I thought of the masks of comedy and tragedy strapped to each other often as I read this book. Sometimes the wires get crossed, and it makes for a heady mixture of emotions.

"Post-patrimony" is a deep dive into psychogeography, how the inhabitant is tied to the habitation and the fragile relationship between the two. When one dies, the other decays, and yet there is something irreducable at the heart of place, a kernel of immortal being that persists, a Genius loci that may take a familiar form.

"Stumps" is one of those strange stories whose strangeness resides, coiled up like a snake waiting to strike, in its utter banality. An ordinary day with one out of the ordinary element (in this case a beggar) that sends everything sideways, forcing the narrator to look at the world in an even more strange way: loaded with meaning amidst the ordinariness of living.

"Signs of the Times, or Diction" is too slight. While I can appreciate stories that only hint and infer, I'd like at least a thread to follow. Yes, this narrator has no thread, that's the point of it all. So, while clever, this story only pans out as average because it's too brief to take full hold.

"Spinning Circles" may be close to perfect, the fabled perfect circle sought after by the Greeks. A wanderer who hopes to reach The City, despite the entries awaiting him, follows his spinning hoop, the last holdover from his distant childhood, only to learn that the circle, which has a mind of its own, will never take him back to where he wants to go. Or will it? Where does the circle end, if it ends at all?

And here the collection ends. I must note that Twisted Spoon Press is starting to impress me. I only have two data points at this time, but what I see is very promising, indeed. I strongly recommend picking up this collection as a start, especially if you are partial to Central and Eastern European authors in translation. I am becoming more and more enamored of this niche, and Ficowski's collection is a very strong example of the sort of writing I've been finding from that corner of the world. Go get yourself a copy!



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Heqet

 

Heqet by Brendan Connell
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I've discovered over the last few years that my favorite forms to read and to write are the novella and the prose poem. Here, Brendan Connell hits some crisp notes on these two scales. Or, rather, he hits some dirges tinged with sparkling beauty, like the silver edges of a black, malicious storm. I couldn't be more pleased. Now, I should note that I co-authored a story with Brendan many years ago, so I am not without bias. But I didn't write a story with him because I wasn't already a fan of his writing. On the contrary . . . I've had a glimpse of his creativity in media res, as it were, and I was, and remain impressed. In the intervening years, I've seen Brendan's fiction published in the same boutique small presses I love to read (and am sometimes lucky enough to be published in). I'm never far from his fiction, and there are strong reasons for that.

The title novella, Heqet, is a plunge into decadence - not the wealthy, indulgent decadence of Huysmans, et al., but a journey beneath the scabs of degeneracy and self-loathing. There is really nothing to love about the main character, who speaks like a more eloquent and even more socially-depraved shadow of Beckett's low-lifes. It's a relentless eternal round of depravity and disgust with oneself, a portrait in hopeless and well-deserved self-loathing. And it's beautiful.

Imagine Huysmans and von Grimmelshausen running full speed at each other, arms thrown behind them, jaws thrust forward, then smashing their faces into a bloody, co-mingled pulp and you'll begin to find a tenuous grasp on the voice of Hequet; painful, bloody, messy, erudite, and exquisite. But in this story, the antihero finds no redemption whatsoever.

There are several shorter pieces (and by shorter I mean poetry, prose poetry, and microfiction). Of the shorts, I liked "The Abbey of the Heart" and "The Organist" the best. "Abbey" is a nasty little macabre piece, a piece of the heart, so to speak. To say much more would give it away.

"The Organist" is like a fine medieval woodcut in tone and in subject. Dürer couldn't have done it better. This sinister little tale has just enough experimental "bite" to keep the reader on their toes, but isn't over-indulgent. If I could read nothing but stories like this the rest of my life, I would be quite content.

There are several others, all of them good, most of them great. But these two, in particular, are the cream of the crop, as they say. There are moments (very few) when Brendan's experimental side gets just a touch too surreal (I mean this in the original sense, not the more recent sense - these aren't just weird, they are a very particular brand of abruptly weird). I think he's at his best when he toys at the edge of classical surrealism, but only teases, usually by means of synesthesia, expanding our view of the possible, while not overwhelming our sense of what we perceive. That liminal space is the perfect space for my reading tastes, and for the most part, Heqet not only treads that space, it patrols it, dominates it, looming.

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Flowers of Evil: fleurs du mal in pattern and prose

 

Flowers of Evil: fleurs du mal in pattern and prose by Charles Baudelaire
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Was this the most amazing book of poetry I've ever read? No, though I would have a difficult time nailing down exactly which one is (though Mark Valentine's At Dusk would be a strong contendor). Is it among the better books of poetry I've read, absolutely. It's easy to see why people both revere(d) and revile(d) Baudelaire. Take this line, for instance, from "Hymn to Beauty":

So to her heart she ravens back the spume of her loathing . . .

I look at this as a near-perfect sentence. The use of "ravens" as a verb, rather than a noun (or the adjective "ravenous"), is absolutely spot-on for the context. How could one better describe being on the edge of exploding, but forcing oneself to pull that emotion inside and let it fester? This is the type of sentence that makes me, as a writer, envious.

On the other hand, when one looks at the whole poem (or Hymn, in this case), one wonders if Baudelaire was not bordering on misogynism? At the very least, he has a dark view of beauty, like he has been spurned too many times and is thinking about becoming a serial killer. Not the kind of guy I'd like to hang out with, even in a writer's group. But, perhaps I misread him?

Or, perhaps he was simply trying to be decadent. Some might argue that he is trying too hard. I would tend to agree in some instances, disagree in others. There are moments when his purple prose is too treacle-laden even for this lover of baroque forms, words, and constructions. At other times, he shows just enough restraint (ravens his words?) to give his expansive vocabulary and sometimes-convoluted structures the extra kick that good poetry ought to deliver.

I will say, though, that reading this, and particularly this edition of Flowers of Evil has left a strong impression on me and has opened a well from which I will almost inevitably draw. This is the sort of work that influences, whether by pushing writers to write more like him or by pushing them away, to be more intentional about specifically not writing like him. And why is this edition so good? I have three good reasons, though I cannot speak to the translation itself. My French is terrible and, truth be told, nearly non-existent (the only class I failed in college was French for Reading Knowledge - though I can read a fair amount of French. That debacle of a class had everything to do with bad pedagogy, but I digress . . .). The first reason is simply the book's overall design. This 1947 edition has an engraved cover with the design you see in the little cover photo, but the colors are reversed on mine. There is a simple elegance to it, and that engraved cover feels good in the hand, literally. Besides, I get that old book smell out of this volume more than most of my other books. Reading this version is a tactile, olfactory experience. Second, the layout is not in versified form. I find that reading this work as prose-poetry works far batter than trying to read it in carefully laid-out verse. There is a certain flow to Baudelaire's work, or at least to this translation, that would become disjointed and choppy were it all laid out just so. Finally, there is the art by Beresford Egan. It is highly transgressive and would sit well alongside Aubrey Beardsley's most risque, erotic works. There is an expressionism that "breaks" Beardsley's sinuous lines, however, giving the illustrations a decidedly more modern feel.

As I said earlier, this is the kind of work that influences. To illustrate this, let me end with Baudelaire's outstanding poem "A Voyage to Cythera". I'm not sure if this poem influenced Richard Calder's under-rated novel Cythera, but my mind kept popping with mental imagery from the novel after I read this poem . . . three times in a row. Maybe that's just my psychic connection, but I think I can feel the influence there. Even if that's not the case, the feeling of "the weird" that has spawned its own sub-genre is just seething throughout this piece. But here, I'll let it speak for itself, and end there:

A Voyage to Cythera

My heart as a bird fluttered exulting, and fearlessly hovered around the high rigging. 'Neath a cloudless sky rolled the vessel as an angel who of the sun's radiance too deeply had drunk.

But what is this isle, dark and sad?

'Tis Cythera, land famous in song, banal Eldorado of all the old bachelors. See, after all, it is but a poor country.

Cythera, isle of soft secrets and of love's revels, o'er whose seas, as a perfume, hovers the haughty phantom of Venus of old, loading men's spirits with languorous love; fair isle of green myrtles and blowing flowers, for ever by every nation revered, where adoration's sighs roll as fragrance over a garden of roses or the murmurous cooing of doves never-ending - thou wast no more than a spare, barren waste, a stony desert distraught by shrill cries. Yet there mine eyes a singular object descried.

No temple was it, with green shading groves, whose flowers would see their young priestess, with robe to the passing breezes agape, striving to ease her body of the secret fires that consumed it. But, as we skirted the coast so near that our white sails raised the birds in flight, we saw, as a dark cypress against the clear heavens sharply etched, a three-branched gibbet, wherefrom a rotten carcase hun. Savage birds perched there were greedily riddling their prey, thrusting their foul bills, as awls, in the bloody crannies of its stinking mass. Two yawning holes were the eyes; the belly gaped shameless and from it hung heavy the uncoiled intestines that flowed down the thighs. Its hideous executioners, gorged on their unspeakable delicacies, had with their beaks pulled and rent it to tatters. Beneath the feet, in envy of this glutting, roved a pack of creatures, with raised muzzles sniffing the spreading reek, ceaselessly turning hither and thither. One, out-topping the rest, restlessly paced as an executioner amid his assistants.

Cythera's denizen, child of so fair a sky, in silence didst thou these insults suffer, to expiate the infamous cult and the sins that have cut thee off from the tomb.

Ridiculous carcase, thy pangs are mine. At sight of thy limbs in mid air hanging, I felt to my teeth as a vomit rising the gall of my ancient sorrows' long stream. Before thee, poor wretch, reaping thy harvest so sweet, have I felt the crows' probing beaks and the black panthers' jaws, which once did lacerate my flesh.

Lovely the sky, unbroken the sea; but for me thereafter was all black and bloody. Of this allegory wove I my heart's black winding-sheet. In Venus' isle naught did I find save mine own image on a gibbet raised.

Great God, give me the courage and the strength to look upon my body and my heart without disgust.

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The Secret Life of Puppets

 

The Secret Life of Puppets by Victoria Nelson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I haven't read a book with marking pencil in hand since graduate school. That was a long, long time ago. This book forced my pencil out of retirement and back into action. The difficult part was not marking nearly every page with something so profound that I wanted to memorize it.

I recently read Arthur Machen's Heiroglyphics and just last year I read Gary Lachman's Lost Knowledge of the Imagination, two incredible books about the need to temper "scientism," for lack of a better term (it's a term that Nelson uses, as well) and to expand the critical use of the Imagination. Nelson would use different terminology: Empiricism versus Transcendentalism, but she traces, essentially, the same lines of thought. Although rather than the artistic evaluation of Machen or the esotericism of Lachman, Nelson traces a socio-anthropological path through the maze of the past two millennia (and beyond), following an unbroken Ariadne's thread that begins and ends (an intellectual ourobos, if you will) with our individual and societal desire to reach for the transcendent, to at least want to believe that there is something beyond this pale existence.

The short version of the thesis is that the idea of an underworld (or, by extension, Plato's cave) was transformed during the Renaissance into the mundus subterraneous, a world beneath the crust of our earth, then to terra incognita, most notably in the form of the Arctic and Antarctic, and after these had all been explored and revealed, our desires turned to the outer worlds beyond earth and to the inner worlds of, among others, cyberspace. All of this exploration, Nelson convincingly argues, is born of a desire to know the unknowable, to transcend our meager lives, to be a part of something grand. She does not engage in psychological speculation on a societal scale as to what causes this drive, merely traces our desires by way of "low" literature, and . . . puppets.

One of the more interesting pieces of this exploration is seeing how man, in past ages, worshipped graven images - anthropomorphic statues imbued with some mystical aura of power, then turned that worship on its head to eventually become a fear of inanimate "men" (or women). We witness the transformation from Baal to Punch to Pinocchio to Maschinenmensch to Terminator to Chucky, with many branchings-off in-between. First, man worships the puppet, then they manipulate the puppet (fulfilling the theandric urge for some kind of false apotheosis), then they fear the manipulation of the puppets they have created.

While Nelson does avoid the psychological analysis of society as a whole, she does give examples of those whose individual psychosis reflect this push-me, pull-me dynamic of manipulating and being manipulated, particularly when it comes to the diaries of Daniel Paul Schreber and the woman who inspired the "false Maria" of Metropolis, a patient of Viktor Tausk, one of Freud's disciples. The analysis of psychosis and particularly schizophrenia in the context of The Secret Life of Puppets makes for a poignant reminder that real lives are affected in real ways by these perceptions.

But the book is largely about a deep dive into popular literature, cinema, etc., to see where we, as a society, long to discover the transcendental, long after "high" society has relegated such longing to the ghetto of ignorance (in their view). Nelson hits many favorites of mine throughout: The movies of Brothers Quay, the fiction of Philip K. Dick, "The Raven" by Edgar Allen Poe, Lovecraft, The Matrix, the works of Franz Kafka and Bruno Schulz, the German expressionist movies The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Metropolis, and Der Golem - the list of personal touch-points goes on and on. And I was rewarded with learning of some new or previously un-seeen/un-read cinematic and literary works which I shall have to explore. I also made some of my own connections (as with Machen and Lachman, above) such as the connection between the earthly and celestial poles and another of my favorite problematic and uncategorizable books, Hamlet's Mill.

This will be reread, probably many times, but next time I'll know to have my marking pencil ready before I crack the cover.



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The Golem

The Golem by Gustav Meyrink
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

While the story of The Golem alone deserves four stars as Gustav Meyrink's masterpiece, the Tartarus Press edition, of which I happen to be a fortunate owner, pushes the book-as-artifact into the five star category. This book is one of my most prized possessions, one of the books I'll reach for if the library ever catches fire. Everything about it screams "I defy you to find another book as cool as me". From the outstanding internal artwork to the silk ribbon marker to the weight of the pages themselves, this is a book of quality workmanship through and through. If I could own all of my favorite books in a Tartarus hardcover edition such as this, I might do nothing but read the rest of my life, starving to death in an easy chair under the light of a reading lamp.

As several reviewers have pointed out, The Golem is obtuse. It is clearly not the story of the golem as dramatized in the silent movies directed by Paul Wegener. This book is much less forthright in its horror, if it can be called horrific at all. I think that "unsettling" is a more accurate term. The heavy mysticism and symbolism Meyrink employs simultaneously draws in and distances the reader, making for an uneven read that sets up a disturbing cadence in the reader's mind. This can be aggravating at times, and absolutely captivating at others. One always feels that there's something just around the next bend, emotionally and intellectually speaking. I wonder if Meyrink didn't intend the book to read this way. In this way, he is much like Kafka, but on a more ethereal plane, if you will. Where Kafka creates unease with a sharp dose of uncaring bureaucracy, Meyrink plays hide and seek with shadows that may be interpreted as real demons or as the slow nightmare of a collective unconsciousness. It is because of this openness to interpretation that one reading is really insufficient to judge the work. The Golem, while not as hallucinatory as some think (those who haven't read it) or hope (those who were looking for an early surrealist Gothic tale) , is also not as incomprehensible as some reviewers complain. It is not an easy read, but, like many difficult reads, it is rewarding to wander Prague's streets in search of Meyrink's elusive creature.

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