[N.B. What began for me with 50 Caprichos after Goya & has continued with variations on “The Disasters of War” will end with this Coda, first sketched in Madrid 2007, in the shadow of his darkest works. (J.R.)]
The main interest for early lovers of Roussel's work, such as the surrealists and Duchamp, was its bizarre content – the impossible tableaux vivants and unlikely narratives in which these were supposedly contextualized and “explained.” However, in the second half of the 20th century, focus definitively shifted to the (deeper) structural logics (revealed in How I came to write certain of my books) that generate these contents as their (surface) effects.
Coda: Eight poems in black, after Goya
[N.B. What began for me with 50 Caprichos after Goya & has continued with variations on “The Disasters of War” will end with this Coda, first sketched in Madrid 2007, in the shadow of his darkest works. (J.R.)]
1/
two women watch
a man his hand
under his cloak
or in his pants the act
Fous Littéraires vs. non-sense
Part 1: The little girl
The main interest for early lovers of Roussel's work, such as the surrealists and Duchamp, was its bizarre content – the impossible tableaux vivants and unlikely narratives in which these were supposedly contextualized and “explained.” However, in the second half of the 20th century, focus definitively shifted to the (deeper) structural logics (revealed in How I came to write certain of my books) that generate these contents as their (surface) effects.