November 25, 2024 On Books Rabelaisian Enumerations: On Lists By Andrew Hui Illustration by Albert Robida, from chapter seven of Pantagruel (1886). Courtesy of the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Few are the authors whose names rise to the status of adjectives: Shakespearean profundity, Dickensian squalor, Kafkaesque bureaucracy. Rabelaisian—satirical, excessive, corpulent—joins these ranks. The French author François Rabelais’s first novel, Pantagruel, is a heady celebration of abundance in which sexual organs and epic feasts sit alongside scatological humor. Beneath the absurdity, however, is a deep critique of Renaissance learning. The plot is simple: Pantagruel, a giant, grows up, gets an education in Paris, makes many friends, and ends up fighting to defeat the Dipsodes, a rival group of giants who have invaded Utopia. In an early chapter, the eponymous hero heads off to the University of Paris and stumbles upon the Library of Saint-Victor, which he finds “most magnificent, especially certain books he found in it.” What follows is a long list of rather odd titles, among them: • Bregeuta iuris (The codpiece of the law) • Malogranatum vitiorum (The pomegranate of vices) • La couillebarine des preux (The elephant balls of the worthies) • Decretum universitatis Parisiensis super gorgiasitate muliercularum ad placitum (Decree of the University of Paris concerning the gorgiasity of harlots) • La croquignolle des curés (The curates’ flick on the nose) • Des poys au lart cum commento (On peas with bacon, with commentary) • Le chiabrena des pucelles (The shitter-shatter of the maidens) • Le culpelé des vefves (The shaven tail of the widows) • Antipericatametanaparbeugedamphicribrationes merdicantium (Discussion of messers and vexers: Anti, Peri, Kata, Meta, Ana, Para, Moo, and Amphi) • La patenostre du singe (The monkey’s paternoster) • La bedondaine des presidens (The potbelly of presiding judges) • Le baisecul de chirurgie (The kiss-ass of surgery) Read More
November 22, 2024 On Poetry Mallarmé’s Poetry of the Void By Quentin Meillassoux Édouard Manet, frontispiece for L’Après-midi d’un faune. Public domain. The following is drawn from one of three texts accompanying Florian Hecker’s Resynthese FAVN, a ten-CD box set to be released by Blank Forms in December. Hecker’s work points back to Stéphane Mallarmé’s 1876 poem L’Après-midi d’un faune—and its subsequent musical and choreographic interpretations by Claude Debussy and Vaslav Nijinsky—in which a faun, straddling reverie and reality, recounts a sensuous meeting with several nymphs. It is unclear whether the experience was an illusion; asks the faun, “Did I love a dream?” Hecker, in turn, asks listeners to examine their own sensory perceptions, destabilizing the language of Robin Mackay’s libretto within the hallucinatory textures of his composition. This text, adapted from Meillassoux’s essay “The Faun, Hero of a Dyad,” translated by Maya B. Kronic, is a close reading of Mallarmé’s rhymes. What L’Après-midi d’un faune presents is a fully developed form of the poetic art: a form that resulted from Mallarmé’s discovery of the “Void” ten years earlier, as he put it in a 1866 letter to his friend the poet and physician Henri Cazalis. The tension inherent to his project from the moment of this “negative revelation” stems from the fact that it is combined with a refusal to renounce the vaulting ambitions of early Romanticism. Victor Hugo and Alphonse de Lamartine assigned to poetry the unprecedented task, following the example of the Psalms, of configuring a new religion to succeed an outdated Catholicism: a religion of modern man, heir to the universalist rupture of the French Revolution. Mallarmé never renounced this ambition, as can be seen in his Le Livre (probably written between 1888 and 1895), in which his own poetry becomes the centerpiece of a future ritual that resembles a kind of civic Mass. Read More
November 21, 2024 Document Sixth and Seventh Sleepers: Graziella Rampacci and Françoise Jourdan-Gassin By Sophie Calle In one of Sophie Calle’s first artistic experiments, she invited twenty-seven friends, acquaintances, and strangers to sleep in her bed. She photographed them awake and asleep, secretly recording any private conversation once the door closed. She served each a meal, and, if they agreed, subjected them to a questionnaire that probed their personal predilections, habits, and dreams. The following text is Calle’s narrative report of her sixth and seventh guests’ stay, and is the fourth and final in a series of excerpts from the project to be published this week on the Daily. Previous installments: “Third Sleeper,” “Fourth Sleeper,” and “Fifth Sleeper.” I do not know Graziella Rampacci. Françoise Jourdan-Gassin gave me her telephone number. She immediately agrees to sleep without asking for any more details. She will come Tuesday, April 3, from midnight to 8 A.M. I know Françoise Jourdan-Gassin. She had declined to participate. She simply came to accompany Graziella Rampacci whom she’d recommended I invite. She decides at the last minute to share the night with her friend. Tuesday, April 3, at midnight, they take over for Gérard Maillet. Françoise says to Graziella, “What if I slept with you?” G: Oh! That would be wonderful! F: Are you inviting me? G: I’m inviting you. This will be my first time sleeping with you. Bizarre, considering how long we’ve known each other. F: To know someone for eight years and never sleep together. G: I’ve wanted to for so long, Françoise. Then we leave the bedroom. They wait for Gérard to come out, dressed in my father’s robe, before they get settled. They change the sheets. Graziella brought red pajamas with a jabot collar. I serve them a glass of champagne. I leave. Read More
November 20, 2024 Document Fifth Sleeper: Gérard Maillet By Sophie Calle In one of Sophie Calle’s first artistic experiments, she invited twenty-seven friends, acquaintances, and strangers to sleep in her bed. She photographed them awake and asleep, secretly recording any private conversation once the door closed. She served each a meal and, if they agreed, subjected them to a questionnaire that probed their personal predilections, habits, and dreams. The following text is Calle’s narrative report of her fifth guest’s stay, and is the third in a series of four excerpts from the project to be published this week on the Daily. Earlier installments: “Third Sleeper” and “Fourth Sleeper.” I barely know him. We saw each other, one time, several years ago now, at the home of a mutual friend. That friend told him about my idea. Gérard Maillet calls me to offer his services. He wants to be paid—a symbolic sum. He says he’s unemployed, that any time works for him. He’ll sleep Monday, April 2, from 5 P.M. to midnight. Read More
November 19, 2024 Document Fourth Sleeper: Rachel Sindler By Sophie Calle In one of Sophie Calle’s first artistic experiments, she invited twenty-seven friends, acquaintances, and strangers to sleep in her bed. She photographed them awake and asleep, secretly recording any private conversation once the door closed. She served each a meal and, if they agreed, subjected them to a questionnaire that probed their personal predilections, habits, and dreams. The following text is Calle’s narrative report of her fourth guest’s stay, and is the second in a series of four excerpts from the project to be published this week on the Daily. You can read the first installment here. She’s my mother. I call her on the phone at 10:30 A.M. She agrees to replace Maggie X., who was supposed to arrive at ten but didn’t show up. She will sleep on Monday, April 2, from 12 P.M. to 5 P.M. Read More
November 18, 2024 Document Third Sleeper: Bob Garison By Sophie Calle In one of Sophie Calle’s first artistic experiments, she invited twenty-seven friends, acquaintances, and strangers to sleep in her bed. She photographed them awake and asleep, secretly recording any private conversation once the door closed. She served each a meal, and, if they agreed, subjected them to a questionnaire that probed their personal predilections, habits, and dreams. The following text is Calle’s narrative report of her third guest’s stay, and is the first in a series of four excerpts from the project to be published this week on the Daily. I do not know him. A mutual friend gave me his contact information. I call him and tell him briefly about my project. He is hesitant. First, he wants to know if I have a bathtub. He wants to sleep ten hours, at night only. Finally, he agrees. He will come Monday, April 2, from one to ten in the morning. Read More