'At the Lycée Claude Bernard in Paris during the 1950s a number of 16-year-olds were fascinated by their history and geography teacher, Monsieur Poirier. He was small, with short hair and dressed in a dark suit. Punctual and efficient, no one ever thought of playing tricks on him. When his teaching was over he gathered up his papers and went away. The reason for the particular interest in him was the discovery that Louis Poirier, who has died aged 97, was in fact Julien Gracq, the novelist, who had won (and refused) the Goncourt prize in 1951.
'He had adopted this name from Stendhal's Julien Sorel and from the Gracchi, the Roman heroes, Tiberius and Caius Sempronius. For his pupils he was the world of creative literature. But more than this, he was spoken of as one of the surrealists. Surrealism meant eccentricity and extravagance. How could the neat and precise Poirier fit into such a movement? They followed him to the Place Bianche to see him among the surrealists, as they followed him about Paris, eating his solitary meals. He remained a subject of mystery.
'In his last years it was the population of Saint-Florent-le-Vieil who observed him with the same intentness. This village in Maine-et-Loire was his birthplace and, in his 80s, Gracq gave up his Paris flat to live there with his sister who, like him, had never married. The shopkeepers knew him well. One day he left his wallet at the florists, and she phoned Poirier before he had realised that he had lost it. When he came to fetch it he presented her with one of his books. Until then she had no idea that he was a writer.
'As a novelist Gracq was a creator of mystery. He set his first one in Argol on the Isle de Crozon, western Brittany. To its dark forests and deserted moors, he added a labyrinthine chateau of the title Au Chateau d'Argol (1938). In the irregular architecture of this building, where the light appears as if through a curtain of silk, the main character, who has recently acquired the chateau, is unable to respond to the affection of a guest and to break out of his coldness. Le Rivage des Syrtes (1951, the winner of the spurned Goncourt), is a haunting novel with characters marked by the shadow of a past. Only at the end, as the principal character says, does the decor fall into place. Un Balcon en Foret (1958), the most accessible of the novels, tells the story of the war which has not yet become a war, that of 1939 to 1940, when ill-equipped French soldiers wait on events. Then the waiting ends; the Germans launch their devastating attack. The ending is Wagnerian. It is typical that although the author served in the French army during this period, this book is in no way autobiographical.
'He believed in the importance not so much of style but of form. As his example, he gave the sayings of the countryside. Many of them are about the weather. These sayings are accepted. No one seeks to verify whether they are accurate. It is the form that makes them authentic.
'Gracq was also a lucid critic. Perhaps the novelist and the critic came together best in the pieces that he wrote about London, after a visit in the summer of 1929. For Gracq, London was unknowable. He would ride in a bus until its finishing point, in some suburb. Then he would continue to walk in the same direction. Yet he saw the Thames as a river that seemed to control London, from the sordid pubs of the Isle of Dogs to the sleepy teashops of Richmond.
'His refusal to accept the Goncourt prize was based on his dislike of the publicity that he saw surrounding literature in the 1950s. He has seen his fears confirmed by the role that television has played in making authors and their books the subject of commercialism. He refused invitations to appear on French radio and television and politely turned down three invitations from President Mitterrand to dine at the Élysée.' -- Douglas Johnson
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Extras
The heritage of Julien Gracq
Footage: Julien Gracq and Ernst Junger in 1988
Julien Gracq and Salvador Dali (in French)
'Julien Gracq: Entetien', a documentary in French
La mort de Julien Gracq
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Further
Julien Gracq Website (in French)
Julien Gracq Fansite (in French)
Video: Julien Gracq refuses the Prix Goncourt
'Julien Gracq is smarter than all of us'
'Anorexia of Literature: Julien Gracq's Refusal of the 1951 prix Goncourt'
JG obituary @ The Independent
Julien Gracq’s King Cophetua @ The Quarterly Conversation
Julien Gracq's A Dark Stranger @ 50 Watts
Julien Gracq's Reading Writing @ Isola di Rifiuti
'Rencontres avec Julien Gracq'
'Le Rivage des Syrtes de Julien Gracq'
'Manuscrits de guerre, de Julien Gracq'
'Le balcon, une théorie du lyrisme dans Un balcon en forêt?'
Julien Gracq @ goodreads
JG's books @ Amazon
Buy 'Chateau d'Argol' @ Pushkin Press
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Misc
Julien Gracq's house
Manuscript page from 'Chateau d'Argol'
Julien Gracq as a child (w/ friend)
Han Bellmer's portrait of Julien Gracq
Julien Gracq refusing the Prix Goncourt
___________
Back to Breton
by Julien Gracq
Julien Gracq and André Breton, 1939. Photo: GBertrand
I do not believe that Breton would have truly welcomed the celebration of the centennial of his birth. Even though he may, in his own manner, have had something to do with the sacred, he had little interest in official, commemorative rites. Forever at odds with History, Surrealism, from the beginning, was never friendly with Memory, that impediment to a total receptivity of what could be, the blank page where revelation alone can be inscribed with all its power of renewal. Breton was utterly prospective, tracking what was emerging, rarely inclined to recapitulate; he was not a back-seat rider. Come to think of it, was he actually born in 1896? What he had in common with Malraux (and this was about all) was that he appeared relatively untouched by his childhood, which he more or less rejected as shabby, failed, too immature. He was really born around 1916: that is when things began to happen for him, towards the end of his adolescence, and the years immediately following.
Breton died in September 1966: a Fall burial that left me with an almost spring-like memory. Considerably more people attended than were ex- pected, many lovers bringing a flower and holding hands. And, shortly thereafter, the dislocation, then, dissolution of the group marked the official end of the movement. And yet ...
... The black humor that sometimes nests within the dates of a biography alone prevented, less than some two years from then, an encounter which still leaves one imagining, that of Breton with May 1968. It is more difficult than one thinks to predict the opinion Breton would have had of the student uprising. Basically, Breton did not like success; he mistrusted it, he was born contrary (“All ideas that triumph rush to their demise”). He might have been violently shaken by the inimitable trivialization, indeed, caricature, of those ideas. From the start, moreover, he had structured his group, not in a way to enlarge more fully its communication, but as an order of chosen depositors, having taken an oath to “absolute Surrealism,” in a word, rather than as propagandists, an elite phalanx garrisoning around him the “château étoilé.” I do not believe he ever seriously took into account the possibility of an actual surrealistic wildfire, really putting the masses into motion. But it is certain that, without always knowing it, the unforeseen libertarian explosion of May ’68, which, more than a political revolution, sought to change life according to the law of desire, here and now—”immediately and without delay”—and which so strongly disconcerted the entire institutionalized Left, even so far as within the fabric of its language and formulae, had to do much more with Breton than with Sartre, or especially Aragon, both of whom attempted to have themselves anointed by the resurrected Sorbonne. One day, sometime after the “events,” Georges Pompidou told me, “Actually, what happened there was all about Breton.”
Has [Surrealism] finished its journey? The world which is now being made—or unmade—in front of our eyes, after having explored in vain the classic paths of political revolution, is no doubt one of those which Breton would have cursed with the least amount of reservation, and also with the most justification. The instantaneous monetary standardization of all human activity—the promotion of art on the market level—the advent of a society exclusively obsessed with “uses” of money and mer- chandise production, in which, according to Thomas Pollack Nageire in the Exchange (Claudel), “everything is worth so much,” headed, moreover, towards cretinization by the media and political economy, where both the unemployed worker’s daily news and the intelligentsia’s magazine, by the game of “supplements” which swell up and are transformed before the naked eye into a Small Echo of TV and Stock Market news, make it no longer unreasonable to imagine, in the face of such a situation destined to trivialization or rejection, that one day Surrealism will have an heir, a movement whose form we cannot predict, one undoubtedly rid of its small sins, which it had overly caressed, trinkets of a time that greatly contributed to its aging: Czarist proclamations (“oukazes”), puerile provocations, exquisite cadavers, metaphysical spoonerisms, letters to “voyantes” and other “gadgets” from the Irrational. How can we know? The lack of a response from religions has nearly become as obvious as the caricature of “cults.” Surrealism, which played a little hide-and-seek with history, and which history did not really serve well, has not “gone by” the cafe, as one used to think; rather, it has demonstrated an unexpected tenacity to survive while in hibernation. For Breton’s Manes, a century after his birth, a quarter-century after his group became officially deceased, the perspectives are wide-open.
____
Book
Pushkin Press
'Julien Gracq's Chateau d'Argol, the author's first published work, appeared in 1939. In a lecture to Yale University students a few years later, Andre Breton, the leader of the Surrealist movement, cited the work as an example that summarized "the extent of Surrealism's conquest". By this, Breton was no doubt referring to two of Surrealism's great pre-modern sources of inspiration, the Gothic novel and Romanticism. From Breton, this was no scant praise. No doubt, however, that those who, like one reviewer below, have "studied Surrealism for six months" know better than Breton himself!
'Chateau d'Argol is a tale of three friends, and of a disturbing menage-a-trois turned violent. In good Romantic/Gothic fashion, the changes in the richly described landscapes mirror the turbulent alterations in the characters' inner states. The setting is a lonely castle in an area of Brittany that is simultaneously real and imaginary, in that Gracq unites disparate elements of the Breton landscape and situates them in a locale of his memory-based imaginings.
'The philosophy of Hegel also figures prominently in this story of doubles and opposites, of dialectical antitheses and syntheses. In addition, the author creates a strange mood of detachment through his use of third-person narrative throughout (there is not a word of dialogue in the book) that contrasts with the rich and opulent descriptive writing. Indeed, for me, the most striking and rewarding aspect of this work is its gorgeous, richly hued language, its superbly evocative and poetic narrative. Of course, there are false notes on occasion, some of which may be the fault of the translator, but, on the whole, Gracq succeeds in sustaining a hypnotically beautiful tapestry of language.' -- Pushkin Press
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Excerpt
from 50 Watts
And perhaps it was not perceptible to him in the midst of his tumultuous agitation, how much higher than all the voices of nature resounded here with a dissonant clamour the glaring disappropriation of all things—of the altar all the more majestic for being abandoned, of the useless lance, of the tomb as perturbing as a cenotaph, of the clock ticking for nothing outside time, on which its gears had no more grip than a mill-wheel in a dried-up stream, of the lamp burning in full daylight, of the windows palpably made to be looked into from outside, and against which were glued all the green tentacles of the forest.
Then out of the depth of his disquietude there rose a sound that seemed instantly to fill the whole chapel and stream down the glistening walls, and without daring to turn around, so stunned was he by its inconceivable amplitude, he now realized that during his own silent exploration of the chapel, Herminien had mounted the stone steps of the organ loft which rose in the darkness to the left of the door, occupying a considerable portion of the chapel, but which, his own attention having been at once captured by the alluring light effect, had escaped his notice until now. Herminien's playing was stamped with a singular force, and such was his expressive power that Albert, as though he could read in the depths of his soul, divined each succeeding theme of this wild improvisation. At first it seemed that Herminien, with dissonant and tentative gropings, interrupted by reiterations and regressions in which the principal motif was repeatedly taken up in a more timid and, as it were, interrogative mode, was only trying out the volume and acoustical capacity of this perturbing edifice. And now burst forth waves of sound, as violent as the forest and free as the winds of the heights, and the storm which Albert had contemplated with such horror from the high terraces of the castle thundered out of those mystic depths, while above them sounds of a crystalline purity fell, one by one, in a surprising and hesitating decrescendo, and floated like a sonorous vapour shot with flashes of yellow sunlight, curiously following the rhythm of the drops of water that were dripping from the vault.
After these effects of nature came an access of violent, sensual passion, and with perfect fidelity the organist painted his savage frenzy: like a luminous mist Heide floated on high, vanished, returned, and finally established her empire over melodic swells, of an extraordinary amplitude that seemed to transport the senses into an unknown region, and, by means of an incredible perversion, to endow the ear with all the graces of touch and sight. Meanwhile, although the artist had already given full rein to a tremulous and incoercible passion, it seemed to Albert apparent from now on, that even in the full plenitude of his improvisation, whose curious arabesques still kept something of the tentative character of an experiment, Herminien was searching for the key to an even loftier soaring, the necessary support for a final leap whose completely decisive consequences were at once both forecast and unpredictable, and that he was hesitating on the very brink of that abyss whose glorious approaches he described with such wild enveloping grace.
Clearly now—and with every moment it became more apparent to Albert—he was looking for the unique angle of incidence at which the eardrum, deprived of its power of interception and of diffusion, would become permeable like pure crystal, and would change this thing of flesh and blood into a sort of prism of total reflection, where sound would be accumulated instead of passing through, and would irrigate the heart with the same freedom as the sanguine medium, thus restoring to the desecrated word ecstasy its true significance. A sonorous vibration, growing ever more concentrated, seemed the exterior sign of the sombre fever of his quest, and settled everywhere swarmingly like bees out of a suddenly shattered hive. Finally a note, held with marvellous steadiness, shrilled in incredible splendour, and taking off as from a beach of sound, rose a phrase of ineffable beauty. And still higher, in a mellow golden light which seemed to accompany the descent into the chapel of a sublime grace as an answer to a prayer, Herminien's fingers resounded, as if a light and consuming warmth ran through them, the song of virile fraternity. And the final breath that gradually left the lungs as it soared to unbelievable heights, let the salutary tide of a sea, as light and free as the night, rise into the completely vacant body.
*
p.s. Hey. ** Billy Lloyd, Hi. I think I'm fine now, health-wise, thank you. Yeah, I think you're probably right about the escort mindgame playing. Or I guess that makes more sense than the possibility that a couple of guys you know have secret side-occupations. Consider that future double espresso 'on the house' to be a done deal then. Slightly burnt does sound tingly, cool, I'll try that. The art gallery gig sounds really nice. Do you compose your songs and music on the piano first and then layer and dense them up? I did have some noodles since we last spoke. Just some Cappellini with a splash of Pesto Rosso and soy Emmental shreds and crumbled veggie burger, but, hey. What did your weekend do to you? ** David Ehrenstein, Thank you. A still from 'L'Avventura'? Oops. Any meta in that case was accidental, I'm afraid. My fave Ozu is 'Late Spring', as I think you know. Thanks for that behind the scenes Ozu info. Did not know that. Hm. ** Tosh, Thanks, T. I just got through/warded off a cold over here, so discreet hugs and an air-kiss in hopes you feel better. Here-here on a Tam Tam book in every Xmas stocking in the world. ** Cobaltfram, Excellent about the finished draft. Strange/ funny/ nice about mss. draft vis-a-vis the wind sneaking inside a house kind of draft. I wonder how that happened. Very cool pen. Very cool pen-giving friend. I think if I had a nice pen, I would be writing my thing by hand more. I found the pen I'm using on a floor somewhere. Obviously, I'm already fond of your main character with only those slight clues at hand. Dude, very happy if 'MLT' helped pry your language open. The Ozu effect is a great one, inspiring re: the creation of things, I think. Kind of a very emotional, serene, cleansing kind of effect. I'm pretty much feeling okay now, whew. Did the article get started? ** Steevee, Hi. Nice: 'Dragnet' like Ozu. If he was talking about the '60s TV show version. You know what's really Ozu: 'The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet'. That show is a very under-sung work of auteurish genius. I didn't get a chance to watch Benning's 'The War', damn. I'm not on Karagaraga, but I know someone who is. Maybe Mubi has it. I'll hunt. ** Misanthrope, That's what I thought. Castration in particular would do you a world of good. Shall I try to find you a slicing-and-dicing master? Sunday morning ... so, you've been to the clinic now, I hope? What's up? What's the deal? Going to that party is maybe kind of stupid, but there's the whole distraction as helpmate angle on the other hand. Was it stupid or totally awesome? I hear you about the numbness, but I'm refusing the offer from my brain to shut down emotionally 'cos that's what the NRA and their power-mongering lapdogs are counting on. Confusing is the word. One of the big problems is all the people drawing simplistic conclusions about something that is profoundly confusing. Ugh. ** 5STRINGS, Horror is a huge genre that, for all the zillions of horror movies and things, is still so untapped. It's like the World's Fair of genres maybe. Actually, I've noticed a definite uptick in the number of escort tops lately. Well, if you include 'mostly top'. Sex with Janes Addiction, yuck. Maybe that's just me. Romance seems like it's coming back in a big way. Maybe it's the looming marriage equality influence or something. Or at least bromance. Man, I hate that word. I bet Gawker made it up. ** Kiddiepunk, Ah, thank you, M-ster. You would know. It's fucking Buche day, man! Oh, yes! Talk to you almost quicker than quick. ** Paradigm, Hi, Scott. Ozu's amazing. Can be kind of life changing in a way. I worked a little but tried hard on the novel, and I am just having the hardest time getting back into it. Really, really frustrating. But all I can do is keep trying. A blog post, oh, thank you so very much in advance for that, man. That's really kind. Your swarm of ideas sounds great. Have you narrowed them down at all? Americans' love of guns and their defiance about the freedom to possess them is deep and very weird. I mean, to have put the right to bear arms in the Constitution shows you how deep that love/need is. A nation of paranoid hyper-materialists, maybe, and that includes the empowered and the powerless. I don't know. Maybe something will change this time. Change in some way, hard to tell how. It almost feels like it might, which is a new feeling. ** xTx, Spending money is fun. Well, spending on the unnecessary is fun. I'm going to plunk down too much dough on a Xmas cake today, and I'm kind of digging how that'll turn my bank account into a roller coaster. So, did you manage to fight off the spending tickles and write and wrap on Sunday? Love, me. ** Brendan, Hi, B! You good? I love those photos of those sunset pantings that you slid onto FB, so I can only imagine how much I will love the actual paintings when I get close enough to smell them. ** Paul Curran, Hi, Paul. Aw, thanks, buddy. Right, your kiddo must have reached that age where Xmas' full-on genius begins its multi-year reign over the imagination. Sweet. My Xmas is likely to be super quiet. No plans whatsoever other than eating Buche #2 and probably taking a long stroll through deserted, prettified Paris if it isn't raining. Should be okay. I seem to have aced out my cold at the almost root, which has been a nice surprise. Sucks that they changed the name of the museum. America is such a creepy, far-reaching motherfucker. ** Allesfliesst, Hi, Kai. Oh, wow, about stumbling meaningfully on Ozu's grave. And I think you did say that about the Ozu museum. Damn far away, expensive Japan. That kindness story is so beautiful, and its warranted display, yeah. I'm going to demand of my New Years Resolutions that a trip to Japan is the least they can grant me, and we'll see what good that does. ** Scunnard, Hi, Jared. I never give lectures about my writing. I hate doing that, and I always refuse. I'll have a public conversation with some monitor or answer questions, but I can't do straight out talks. I just don't have it in me. In Lyon's case, Gisele did a kind of lecture and showed clips from our work while I sat beside her, and occasionally she turned to me and said, 'Maybe you want to add something', and I usually would. Yeah, I'm doing talks of different kinds about the work with Gisele fairly often now, but, again, q&a's or team efforts mostly. I have to do one about 'Jerk' and 'Them' solo in Poitiers and one about 'Jerk' with Jonathan Capdevielle in Strasbourg next month. I dread doing them. I do them because Gisele wants me to, basically. I like doing school gigs, though. I'm doing an occasional visiting artist thing at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam, and I love doing that. But I mostly like just getting to talk to students about their work. That I really, really like. Denis and Ronnell are there? Wow, very sweet for the students. But they probably don't have to talk about their work all the time, so maybe it's not so bad. Or maybe they love to talk about their work and not being able to do that during the job is really frustrating? I'd do that gig you mentioned. It sounds cool. I don't know, let me know it's a real possibility, I guess. Thanks for thinking of that. My cold's gone. How diminished is your malaise? A little bit at least, right? ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. The YnY launch looks great. And Peter William Holden's show looks intriguing in that shot. Was it? What is that gift on your arm? I couldn't tell. A little building-y kind of thing? Everyone, witness the glory of the just-past launch of the new issue of the great Yuck 'n Yum by clicking this and looking at said festivity through the lens of _B_A, won't you? ** David J. White, Hi, David. Merry almost Xmas! Wonderful that you're a fellow Ozu lover, and a fellow 'Late Spring' lover to boot. Our filmic tastes are interestingly aligned. I will sneak you into my next conversation with Christophe indeed. Oh, that's very cool about Zadie Smith teaching 'MLT'. She's been really nice and supportive of my stuff, which is very cool since I don't know her personally at all. Thank you for the boosting info, man. Things really good? Really hope so. ** Bill, Well, Lyon's closeness and my birthday being on the horizon does seem like a hand of fate slapping me across the face kind of situation maybe. The 22nd is fairly soonish. Where are you leaving town to be? Not halfway across the world again? Not that that's a bad idea at all, jet lag notwithstanding. Cold sesame noodle is actually very hard to find here. I have never found it anywhere. Much less Szechuan style, which is my absolute favorite. Not even bland, half-assed cold sesame noodle. Stranger than strange. I might just have to break down and try to make some myself, which I suppose probably isn't so very hard. ** Un Cœur Blanc, Hi. So very true re: Ozu and thank you. I'm so glad to hear your trip is filled with enjoyment. I was hoping. Too much caffeine has a really unpleasant effect. It seems like you would just get better and better the more you drink, but it doesn't work. I think the stomach is the problem maybe. It can't deconstruct caffeine properly. I don't know. I do remember that bookstore. It felt kind of nice, right? And it actually has a stock of excellent books too? I didn't get a chance to even look. Yes, Keith Waldrop is a lovely poet. Wow, I should read him. I haven't in a while. Interesting about Valery. Yes, he's really something else. Gosh, you've kind of inadvertently given my day ahead some clear reading choices. Thank you, pal. Keep enjoying everything. ** Alan, Uh, is that you sarcastically putting words I never said into my mouth, or are you proposing some bizarre new version of anarchism, or what was that? ** Bollo, Thanks a lot, buddy, about 'TS'. Yeah, I wish so about Artforum too, but I don't think I'm on the new editor's wavelength or something. Right, exactly, about the new Godspeed. That's been my reaction too. I will try it again at some point. I read The Wire's review after I'd already listened to it, and I thought that review was kind of spot on. Hope the getting done and seeing people balanced out in your total favor, man. You leave tomorrow? A preemptive bon voyage. ** Okay. Please begin your week by investigating today's post about the very great and too under-read writer Julien Gracq. He's really something, folks. See if you think so. See you tomorrow.