Showing posts with label atlas press. Show all posts
Showing posts with label atlas press. Show all posts
December 21, 2008
June 24, 2008
Two texts by Robert Walser
For the benefit of the tens of readers who visit this site, I post here two buried treasures by Robert Walser from Atlas Anthology III (1985). James Tweedie and Sam Jones discussed these texts here. Sam pointed out that they haven't been collected elsewhere.
If you enjoy "Sketch for a Curtainraiser" and "Two Little Fairytales" (and how could you not), please support Atlas Press by buying one of their books, and support the now-90-year old Mr. Kirkup by buying his books!
A Stage The curtain rises, we are looking into an open mouth, down a brightly-lit reddish throat, out of which a big, broad tongue is dangling. The teeth, framing the stage mouth, are sharp and blinding white, the whole thing looks like the maw of some monster, the lips are like mammoth human lips, the tongue is reaching out over the footlights and is almost licking the heads of the audience with its fiery tip; then it withdraws, and now comes out again, bearing on its broad, soft surface the sleeping figure of a beautifully-clad maiden. The maiden's bright golden locks are flowing in a long flood from her head and around her gown, she is holding in her hand a glittering star, that looks like a big, soft, sunny snowflake. Set firmly on her hair is a pretty green coronal, her mouth is smiling in sleep as she reclines upon the tongue, leaning upon her elbows, as if upon pillows. All of a sudden she opens her eyes, and those are eyes such as one often sees in dreams, when, irradiated with some supernatural light, they bend themselves upon ours. These eyes have a wonderfully refreshing brilliance, and now they are gazing all around, like children's eyes looking upon the world in their questioning, searching, innocent way. Now up out of the fiery blackness of the throat a man climbs forth, clad in fluttering fabrics, apparently thrown together by a half-demented tailor, and that hang like rags around his massive limbs; he strides out along the tongue that keeps twitching under his steps, reaches the maiden, leans over and kisses her. Thereupon flames and fiery sparks come gushing out of the throat, and rain down upon the pair, without causing them the slightest alarm. The well-knit youth lifts the young lady in his arms and carries her back, the huge tongue rears up, casts itself over the couple and swallows them up in its maw with a rumbling crash. The maiden's white star flashes out against the teeth, then all at once blue, green, yellow, crimson, indigo and shimmering-white stars are shooting in a flame-colored rainbow parabola out of the dark throat, music starts playing, and the stars keep exploding into nothing in the air; finally the great maw's lips move and utter the quiet, but raw, clearly audible words:
In the street it was snowing. The cabs and the cars came driving up, set down their passengers and departed therefrom. The ladies were all swathed in furs. People were swarming round the cloak counter. In the foyers there were greetings, exchanges of smiles and handshakes. The candles were shimmering, the gowns were rustling, the overshoes shished and squeaked. The floor had been waxed like glass, and attendants were standing here and there making hand movements, now this way, now that. The gentlemen were harnessed into their swallow-tail coats, that is how a swallow-tail is worn. People were bowing. Pleasantries were flying like doves from mouth to mouth, the ladies were glowing, even some old ones too. They kept standing up at their seats, in order to see their acquaintances, only a few were sitting down. Their faces were so close to each other, the breath of one played on the nostrils of the one standing next to him. The ladies' gowns gave off scent, the gentlemen's bald heads were glossy, eyes sparkled, hands said: What, you back again? Where've you been all this time? In the first row sat the critics like the faithful in some high church, so quiet, so devout. The curtain stirred a little, then the bell for the start of the performance rang out; anyone wanting to clear his throat made haste to do it now, and then they were all sitting there like children in a schoolroom, looking straight ahead, quiet as mice, as something went up and something was performed.
The curtain went up, and there was a tense interest in what was to happen next; then a boy walked on, and he began to dance. In a box in the front sat the Queen, surrounded by her court ladies. She enjoyed the dance so much, she decided to go down on the stage in order to address some pleasant words to the youth. She very soon appeared on the stage, the boy gazed upon her with his youthful, beautiful eyes. He smiled a secret smile. Then the Queen was struck as if by lightning, she recognized her own son through the smile, she collapsed on the ground. What's the matter, the boy asked. At that she recognized him ever more certainly, by his voice now. Then she cast all her queenly dignity to the winds. She cast aside her regal demeanor and did not hesitate to press the youth close to her heart. Her breast rose and fell, she was weeping with joy: you are my son, she said. The audience clapped applause, but what was the point of the applause? This woman's happiness was certainly something far above all applause, it could have surmounted a storm of hissing: the boy's head was seized again and again and pressed to the heaving bosom. She kissed him, and then her court ladies came and pointed out to their royal companion the unseemliness of the scene. That made the audience laugh, but the court ladies cast withering looks upon the many-headed rabble. They twitched their mouths, and then the curtain twitched and fell.
This text is included in the "Notes on the Contributors":
James Kirkup chose these extracts "because they describe fantastic scenic effect or dramatic moments on stage. I feel that Walser was thus to some extent trying to compete with his much more successful brother, a celebrated scenic designer, with whom he lived for a while in Berlin. There is a subtle humor in Walser's deliberately unrealizable decors, as if he were challenging his brother, knowing full well that Karl could not possibly translate them into actual scenery, and thus showing the superiority of literature over scene painting. The peculiarities of Walser's cunningly naive style have been retained -- the rather breathless punctuation, the exalted cliches, the ironic use of inflated advertising jargon and the vocabulary of the sentimental novel. At times we are reminded of the Douanier Rousseau, though the artist produced his effects as it were unintentionally by trying hard to get everything as right as possible, whereas Walser is a highly conscious stylist with a purity and lightness of touch and a sense of the absurd that hardly ever occurred to Le Douanier."
I finally got my hands on George Avery's Inquiry and Testment -- the scans here come from the book.
If you enjoy "Sketch for a Curtainraiser" and "Two Little Fairytales" (and how could you not), please support Atlas Press by buying one of their books, and support the now-90-year old Mr. Kirkup by buying his books!
***
SKETCH FOR A CURTAINRAISER
A Stage The curtain rises, we are looking into an open mouth, down a brightly-lit reddish throat, out of which a big, broad tongue is dangling. The teeth, framing the stage mouth, are sharp and blinding white, the whole thing looks like the maw of some monster, the lips are like mammoth human lips, the tongue is reaching out over the footlights and is almost licking the heads of the audience with its fiery tip; then it withdraws, and now comes out again, bearing on its broad, soft surface the sleeping figure of a beautifully-clad maiden. The maiden's bright golden locks are flowing in a long flood from her head and around her gown, she is holding in her hand a glittering star, that looks like a big, soft, sunny snowflake. Set firmly on her hair is a pretty green coronal, her mouth is smiling in sleep as she reclines upon the tongue, leaning upon her elbows, as if upon pillows. All of a sudden she opens her eyes, and those are eyes such as one often sees in dreams, when, irradiated with some supernatural light, they bend themselves upon ours. These eyes have a wonderfully refreshing brilliance, and now they are gazing all around, like children's eyes looking upon the world in their questioning, searching, innocent way. Now up out of the fiery blackness of the throat a man climbs forth, clad in fluttering fabrics, apparently thrown together by a half-demented tailor, and that hang like rags around his massive limbs; he strides out along the tongue that keeps twitching under his steps, reaches the maiden, leans over and kisses her. Thereupon flames and fiery sparks come gushing out of the throat, and rain down upon the pair, without causing them the slightest alarm. The well-knit youth lifts the young lady in his arms and carries her back, the huge tongue rears up, casts itself over the couple and swallows them up in its maw with a rumbling crash. The maiden's white star flashes out against the teeth, then all at once blue, green, yellow, crimson, indigo and shimmering-white stars are shooting in a flame-colored rainbow parabola out of the dark throat, music starts playing, and the stars keep exploding into nothing in the air; finally the great maw's lips move and utter the quiet, but raw, clearly audible words:
The play is beginning
Curtain
***
TWO LITTLE FAIRYTALES
I
In the street it was snowing. The cabs and the cars came driving up, set down their passengers and departed therefrom. The ladies were all swathed in furs. People were swarming round the cloak counter. In the foyers there were greetings, exchanges of smiles and handshakes. The candles were shimmering, the gowns were rustling, the overshoes shished and squeaked. The floor had been waxed like glass, and attendants were standing here and there making hand movements, now this way, now that. The gentlemen were harnessed into their swallow-tail coats, that is how a swallow-tail is worn. People were bowing. Pleasantries were flying like doves from mouth to mouth, the ladies were glowing, even some old ones too. They kept standing up at their seats, in order to see their acquaintances, only a few were sitting down. Their faces were so close to each other, the breath of one played on the nostrils of the one standing next to him. The ladies' gowns gave off scent, the gentlemen's bald heads were glossy, eyes sparkled, hands said: What, you back again? Where've you been all this time? In the first row sat the critics like the faithful in some high church, so quiet, so devout. The curtain stirred a little, then the bell for the start of the performance rang out; anyone wanting to clear his throat made haste to do it now, and then they were all sitting there like children in a schoolroom, looking straight ahead, quiet as mice, as something went up and something was performed.
II
The curtain went up, and there was a tense interest in what was to happen next; then a boy walked on, and he began to dance. In a box in the front sat the Queen, surrounded by her court ladies. She enjoyed the dance so much, she decided to go down on the stage in order to address some pleasant words to the youth. She very soon appeared on the stage, the boy gazed upon her with his youthful, beautiful eyes. He smiled a secret smile. Then the Queen was struck as if by lightning, she recognized her own son through the smile, she collapsed on the ground. What's the matter, the boy asked. At that she recognized him ever more certainly, by his voice now. Then she cast all her queenly dignity to the winds. She cast aside her regal demeanor and did not hesitate to press the youth close to her heart. Her breast rose and fell, she was weeping with joy: you are my son, she said. The audience clapped applause, but what was the point of the applause? This woman's happiness was certainly something far above all applause, it could have surmounted a storm of hissing: the boy's head was seized again and again and pressed to the heaving bosom. She kissed him, and then her court ladies came and pointed out to their royal companion the unseemliness of the scene. That made the audience laugh, but the court ladies cast withering looks upon the many-headed rabble. They twitched their mouths, and then the curtain twitched and fell.
*****
Robert Walser's brother James McAvoy Karl Walser
This text is included in the "Notes on the Contributors":
James Kirkup chose these extracts "because they describe fantastic scenic effect or dramatic moments on stage. I feel that Walser was thus to some extent trying to compete with his much more successful brother, a celebrated scenic designer, with whom he lived for a while in Berlin. There is a subtle humor in Walser's deliberately unrealizable decors, as if he were challenging his brother, knowing full well that Karl could not possibly translate them into actual scenery, and thus showing the superiority of literature over scene painting. The peculiarities of Walser's cunningly naive style have been retained -- the rather breathless punctuation, the exalted cliches, the ironic use of inflated advertising jargon and the vocabulary of the sentimental novel. At times we are reminded of the Douanier Rousseau, though the artist produced his effects as it were unintentionally by trying hard to get everything as right as possible, whereas Walser is a highly conscious stylist with a purity and lightness of touch and a sense of the absurd that hardly ever occurred to Le Douanier."
***
I finally got my hands on George Avery's Inquiry and Testment -- the scans here come from the book.
Tobler's house from The Assistant?
March 2, 2008
Jean Ray, Malpertuis (and Presence du Futur)
I can't say much more than these two have said about Jean Ray's 20th century Gothic masterpiece Malpertuis: Giornale Nuovo and Michael Cisco.
In the intro to his 1998 translation of this 1943 novel, Iain White reports that: "In December of [1955, the year Ray died], due in large measure to the intervention of Raymond Queneau and Stragliati [Roland Stragliati, cineaste and writer], 'who have moved heaven and earth to rescue Malpertuis and indeed Jean Ray, from the obscurity of oblivion,' Malpertuis was republished in France by the leading firm Denoel, in their mass-market S. F. paperback series Presence du Futur."
Here's the cover of the Presence du Futur edition.
I just looked up the Presence du Futur series. Here are some of their covers (I stitched these together though they are not my scans):
Atlas Anthology III
I love the tagline at the top of the cover: "Benign Pollution * Enthused Writing."This early anthology from Atlas Press was edited by Alastair Brotchie and Malcolm Green and published in 1985 with the help of Carcanet. You can still find copies with a little effort and patience.
Get in touch if you can provide scans of (or actual copies of!) Atlas Anthology 1 & 2.
June 2008 update: Read two of the four Robert Walser pieces from this book here.
Atlas's editorial note:
"Thanks to the generous assistance of Carcanet Press, it has been possible to bring the third Atlas Anthology to a wider audience. Readers will decide for themselves whether there is a thread connecting these many differing texts. It seems to us they represent aspects of a shared outlook which has been manifested by numerous groups (European Romanticism, early Expressionism, Surrealism, 'Pataphysics, the OuLiPo, the Vienna Group) and many individuals. One thing is certain: their preoccupations have little connection with the bleak and conventional naturalism prevalent in Britain and the U.S., which seems to owe more to Mrs. Gaskell than the twentieth century. We know from past issues that we have at least a small yet effusive audience, and cannot say whether the wider reception will be that 'climate of warm indifference'* with which the English normally 'welcome' enthused writing.
"Just so long as it's not boring . . . "
"*Title of Martin Seymour-Smith's survey of insularity of English writing, published in Bananas (the last magazine attempting to publish interesting writing in the U.K.) in 1976."
--THE EDITORS
Author included: Hans Carl Artmann, Pierre Albert-Birot, Wolfgang Bauer, Konrad Bayer, Pierre Bettencourt, Peter Blegvad, Andre Breton, Jean-Pierre Brisset, Gunter Brus, Rene Crevel, David Gascoyne, Alfred Jarry, James Kirkup, Karl Kraus, Jean Lorrain, Harry Mathews, Gustav Meyrink, Pasolini, Georges Perec, Benjamin Peret, Oskar Panizza, Raymond Queneau, Jacques Rigaut, Herbert Rosendorfer, Raymond Roussel, Paul Scheerbart, Mathew Phipps Shiel, Kurt Schwitters, Boris Vian, Austryn Wainhouse, Robert Walser, Unica Zurn, and more.
December 31, 2007
December 25, 2007
Benjamin Peret, Death to the Pigs
Benjamin Peret, Death to the Pigs and Other Writings, translated and introduced by Rachel Stella (Atlas, 1998). This Atlas Press book is identical to the University of Nebraska press edition (except this cover is way cooler). Both editions seem to be out-of-print.
Blurbs from the back cover:
"Peret's oeuvre: the most original and savage of our era." -- Octavio Paz
"The greatest living poet." -- Paul Eluard (don't know when he wrote that one)
"Benjamin Peret is, for me, the Surrealist poet par excellence: a totally liberating and lucid inspiration which flows effortlessly and directly from its source and straight away re-creates a whole other world." -- Luis Bunuel
September 7, 2007
The Golden Bomb, Phantastic German Expressionist Stories
[Cover: untitled woodcut by Heinrich Stegemann (1921)]The Golden Bomb, like Black Letters Unleashed, was edited and translated by Atlas Press editor Malcolm Green. Published in 1993 by Polygon, copies are still available! Find them at the Atlas site.
Press blurb:
The German and Austrian Expressionists of the first two decades of the twentieth century constituted one of the truest and most energetic avant-garde movements of the last hundred years. In little more than fifteen years they brought about lasting and fundamental changes in the fields of dance, drama, painting, film, typography and, all too often overlooked, in writing. Concentrated in the years preceding the First World War, the movement burned like a magnesium flare, short-lived but intense, and very much in keeping with the tempo of modern city life which was its chosen backdrop. Much of the writing, as assembled here for the first time in this anthology, belies the gaunt, grainy, slice-of-life demeanour that is the movement’s traditional image. Instead we find dandyish despair, slapstick horror, and black humour, visionary speculation, linguistic experimentation, the arcane and the capriciously grotesque - in other words, the dreams and dementia that fed into Dada, that served as the true precursor of Surrealism, and inspired the “Vienna Group” in the 1950s.
This anthology, originally put together for Polygon of Edinburgh (then sold at £9.95) and now available exclusively from Atlas Press, incorporates several of the movement’s illustrious forerunners, such as Franz Held, Oskar Panizza, and Paul Scheerbart; a large number of the early Expressionists, whose writings are especially astonishing for their absurdism and archness of tone, such as Albert Ehrenstein, Hans Arp, and Gottfried Benn; and concludes with the early Dada and Surrealistic speculations of Hugo Ball, Wieland Herzfelde, and Kurt Schwitters.
Writers included: Franz Held, Oskar Panizza, Albert Mombert, Paul Scheerbart, Alfred Döblin, Albert Ehrenstein, Carl Einstein, Gustav Meyrink, Georg Heym, Ferdinand Hardekopf, Wassily Kandinsky, Mynona, Hans Arp, Alfred Wolfenstein, Paul Zech, Else Lasker-Schüler, Georg Trakl, Alfred Lichtenstein, Theodor Däubler, Heinrich Nowak, Gottfried Benn, Hans Flesch-Brunningen, Hugo Ball, Conrad Felixmüller, Heinrich Schaefer, Wieland Herzfelde, Kurt Schwitters, Franz Kafka, Iwan Goll, Robert Musil, Hermann Ungar. Plus short biographies of all the writers, and an introductory essay by Malcolm Green.
Black Letters Unleashed, 300 Years of 'Enthused' Writing in German
The 1989 Atlas Press book Black Letters Unleashed: 300 Years of 'Enthused' Writing in German (Atlas Anthology No. 6; Amaz link) has become way too scarce. I used to give away copies of it to friends (to paraphrase Gabriel Zaid "giving a book is like giving an obligation"). Full contents and an excerpt from the intro coming soon.
3/28/2014 update (only 7 years late), the Contents:
Malcolm Green - Foreword
Johannes Fischart - Introduction
Quirinus Kuhlmann - The Kiss of Love
Gottfried Burger - The Magnetic Mountain Range
G. C. Lichtenberg - Inventory of a Collection of Appliances
Jean Paul - The Dead Christ's Address from On High on the Non-existence of God
Novalis - The Apprentice
E. T. A. Hoffmann - Sister Monika
Franz Grillparzer - The Wild Hunter
Johann Nepomuk Nestroy - Tratschmiedl's Dream
Max Stirner - I've Based My Affairs on Nothing
Arthur Schopenhauer - Conversation Anno 33
Friedrich Nietzsche - Letter to Jakob Burckhardt
Karl Marx - Digression on Productive Labour
Leopold von Sacher-Masoch - Drama-Dscheuti
Oskar Panizza - The Immaculate Conception of Popes
Stanislaw Przybyszewski - The Mass of the Dead
Franz Held - The Golden Bomb
Paul Scheerbart - The Stupid Ass
Gustav Meyrink - Just What Purpose Do White Dog Stools Actually Serve
Adolf Wolfli - New York
Georg Heym - Sketches
Elsa Lasker-Schuler - Artists
Jakob von Hoddis - Doctor Hacker's End
Franz Jung - The Telepaths
Heinrich Schaefer - Creative Extension out of Darkness
Georg Trakl - Transmutation of the Evil One — Revelation and Decline
Erna Kroner - 2 Poems
Ferdinand Hardekopf - Winter Garden
Albert Ehrenstein - Kimargouel
Wieland Herzefelde - The Soviet Cloud
Kurt Schwitters - A Gulp for the Whole of Life — Horizontal Story
Fritz von Herzmanovsky-Orlando - The Masked Ball of the Genii
Alfred Doblin - Incomprehensible Stories
Hans Henny Jahnn - Kebad Kenya
Ilse Aichinger - Ajax
Gerhard Ruhm - The Grotto
Unica Zurn - In Ambush
Paul Celan - 6 Poems from The No-One's Rose
Wolfgang Bauer - 3 Microdramas
H. C. Artmann - Lord Lister's Afternoon Letters
Imtraud Morgner - The Hotel
Christoph Meckel - Instructions to the House Guests
Gunter Brus - Jack O'Lantern
Peter Pongratz - Sunset
Oskar Pastior - 12 Poempoems
Ror Wolf - The Danger of the Great Plains
Ingomar Kieseritsky - The Fermail Method, or the Abolition of Music
Monica Tornow - Body Demons
Jean Paul Jacobs - Miss Lazybones
Gerhard Roth - Between Heaven and Earth
Heiner Muller - Description of a Picture
Gunter Brus - The Crystal Cistern
Notes, Biographies, Sources
Translators: Malcolm Green, Derk Wynand, Shaun Whiteside, James Kirkup, Max Paddison, Rosemarie Waldrop, Carl Weber
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