Jeremias Gotthelf, The Black Spider

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Jakob von Gunten

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Maya Miller, Notebooks

Drawings by musician Maya Miller (of Religious Knives) published by her Heavy Tapes imprint in a too-limited signed edition of 100 (oh wait, I see she has luckily reprinted so pick one up QUICK).

I think she should produce a coloring book edition, ask readers to submit scribbled-in or watercolored versions, and then publish the full-color results. Ideally, children would participate. Surely some bad parent would potentially damage their toddler's psyche in the name of art? Demand that they stay inside the lines.

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

Roger Gilbert-Lecomte, Ian Nagoski, Black Mirror

A scan of Black Mirror by Daumal associate Roger Gilbert-Lecomte.



Adding this is really an excuse to plug an upcoming cd curated by Ian Nagoski. Here's the press blurb:

Black Mirror: Reflections in Global Musics 1918 - ca. 1955
On the Dust-to-Digital label. Contact Ian's Baltimore record store The True Vine.

24 recordings from the first half of the 20th century of music from Syria, Bali, Scotland, Thailand, Ukraine, China, Camaroon, India, Turkey, Germany, Spain, Vietnam, Yugoslavia, Japan, Poland, Greece, Java, Portugal, Laos, Sweden and Burma, all newly transfered and mastered from 78 rpm discs, at least 18 of which never issued before on CD.
Each performance is a gorgeous manifestation of outrageous virtuosity, religious devotion, heart-stopping ebullience and/or worshipful ache, just as they reflect a moment in the personal trajectories of the individual performers and their now generations-past historical contexts, elucidated to a great degree by record collector and compiler Ian Nagoski's notes.
Drawn from the best of Nagoski's vernacular 78 collecting, Black Mirror began two years ago as a high-falutin meditation on love, death, social class and divinity. In its finished form, it's one of far too few overviews of peak human music from the period when the performance was the record and that was that.

Track list:
1. Naim Karakand - Kamanagah Syrian
2. Thewaprasit Ensemble - Phleeng Khuk Phaat, pt. 2 Thai
3. Gong Belaloewana Bali - Kebyar Ding, I Balinese
4. Pipe Major Forsyth - Malorca Northumbrian
5. Thiruvazhimilalai Subramanian Bros. & Needamangalam Meenakshisundaram Pillai - Manasa Sri Ramachandra South Indian
6. Paul Pendja Ensemble - Ngo Mebou Melane Camerounian
7. Cyganska Orchestra Stefana - Cyganske Vesilia, pt. 4 Lemko-Hungarian
8. Zhehongyi with Nendi Zhaoguan - Mother's Uproar Fouzhou-Chinese
9. Patrick J. Touhey - Drowsy Maggie Irish
10. Hutzl Ukrainian Ensemble - Welsisni Melodyi Hutzl-Ukrainian
11. Neriman Altindag - Soyledi Yok Yok Turkish
12. Lata Mangeshkar - Aayega Aanewaala Indian
13. M. Nguyen van Minh-Con - Nam Nhi-tu Vietnamese
14. Edwin Fischer - Handel's Chaconne, Teil I. Swiss / German
15. Marika Papagika - Smyrneiko Minore Greek
16. Petar Perunovic-Perun - Narodne Saljive Pjesme Serbian
17. Nji R. Hadji Djoeaehn - Tjimploengan Sundanese
18. Niño de Priego - Envidia yo no Tengo Nadie Spanish
19. Prof. Lucas Junot - Fado de Passarinhos Portuguese
20. Sathoukhru Lukkhamkeow - Nakhone Prayer Laotian
21. Christer Falkenstrom - Baklandets Vackra Maja Swedish
22. Representatives of the Democratic Youth of Indonesia - Djanger Balinese
23. Sinkou Son & Kouran Kin - Songs in Grief Japanese
24. untraced Burmese muscians - Yein Pwe Burmese

Angela de Foligno, The Saint of the Double Abyss

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Jean Painleve, the surrealist Jacques Cousteau

Jean Painleve is the surrealist Jacques Cousteau. He was literally associated with the first wave of French surrealists before embarking on his career as a documentary filmmaker. In the age of dvd, youtube, and the Discovery Channel, I cannot figure out why he hasn't been properly introduced to America. He could even be marketed as the "Jacques Cousteau for Stoners"! Yo La Tengo did their part by playing music live behind his films.

Here's a scan of the book Science is Fiction: The Films of Jean Painleve, released by Brico / MIT Press a few years ago. I don't know why there's a book about him in English, but no DVD available for sale in America.



Here's a postcard for the book:

October 07 update: you can now purchase a DVD set of his movies in the UK. Here's a link. (The set is "region 2," so check that your dvd player can handle it.) A US version is hopefully in the works from Kino or a similar dvd company. The UK set seems to be a compilation of the two French dvds which were produced over the past few years.

Henri Michaux, Light Through Darkness, Major Ordeals

Someone asked in a comment about the good drug books by Henri Michaux.

Here are two. I'll write about them soon. I always loved the title: The Major Ordeals of the Mind and the Countless Minor Ones.

These are out-of-print so snatch them up if you ever see them. They are both hardcovers. Major Ordeals definitely came out in paperback too, in a 70s Harcourt Psychology series (!) if I remember correctly.

Luc Sante on Lovecraft

(I don't know if it's a joke, but the website Worldroots features this image of Lovecraft as a child with his parents.)

Here is Luc Sante's hilarious list of things that frightened Lovecraft:

"He was also frightened of invertebrates, marine life in general, temperatures below freezing, fat people, people of other races, race-mixing, slums, percussion instruments, caves, cellars, old age, great expanses of time, monumental architecture, non-Euclidean geometry, deserts, oceans, rats, dogs, the New England countryside, New York City, fungi and molds, viscous substances, medical experiments, dreams, brittle textures, gelatinous textures, the color gray, plant life of diverse sorts, memory lapses, old books, heredity, mists, gases, whistling, whispering—the things that did not frighten him would probably make a shorter list."

I'm looking forward to Luc Sante's book Kill All Your Darlings: Pieces, 1990-2005 which will be published in September by the excellent Yeti (part of a book series presented with Verse Chorus Press).

This quote comes from Sante's essay The Heroic Nerd in NYRB.

I thank my friend for pointing out my unfortunate similarity to Lovecraft, which caused me to finally read him.

Harold Pinter, A Wake For Sam, BBC TV 1990

Another find from my library browsing.

Harold Pinter, A Wake For Sam, BBC TV, 1990
Printed in Pinter's Various Voices.

"I first met Samuel Beckett in 1961 in Paris when my play, The Caretaker, was being produced. He came into the hotel walking very quickly indeed. He had a sharp stride and quick handshake. He was extremely friendly. I'd known his work for many years of course but it hadn't led me to believe he'd be such a very fast driver. He drove his little Citroen from bar to bar throughout the whole evening, very quickly indeed. We finally ended up in a place in Les Halles eating onion soup at about 4 in the morning and I was by this time overcome -- through, I think, alcohol, tobacco and excitement -- with indigestion and heartburn, so I lay my head down on the table. When I looked up he was gone. I had no idea where he'd gone and I thought, 'Perhaps this has all been a dream.' I think I went to sleep on the table and about forty-five minutes later the table jolted and there he was and he had a package in his hand, a bag. And he said, 'I've been across the whole of Paris to find this. I finally found it.' And he opened the bag and gave me a tin of bicarbonate of soda, which indeed worked wonders."

I'm glad I found this section for the fascinating tidbits about Beckett, but more importantly because my life is overwhelmed with heartburn and indigestion, and I'm going to find myself a tin of bicarbonate of soda.

[october update: the alka-seltzer works]

Melmoth the Wanderer by Maturin

I spent an hour this week browsing in the local public library. I found this amazing passage from Charles Robert Maturin's 1820 novel Melmoth the Wanderer (conveniently I could grab this passage, which I photocopied from a book called The Gothic Flame, from Project Gutenberg):

"The next moment I was chained to my chair again,--the fires were lit, the bells rang out, the litanies were sung;--my feet were scorched to a cinder,--my muscles cracked, my blood and marrow hissed, my flesh consumed like shrinking leather,--the bones of my legs hung two black withering and moveless sticks in the ascending blaze;--it ascended, caught my hair,--I was crowned with fire,--my head was a ball of molten metal, my eyes flashed and melted in their sockets;--I opened my mouth, it drank fire,--I closed it, the fire was within,...and we burned, and burned! I was a cinder body and soul in my dream."

The edition with the best cover seems to be the Spanish translation--Melmoth el errabundo:

Henri Michaux, By Surprise, Hanuman Books

I never noticed the nice paper and foil stamping of this Hanuman Book under its tiny dust jacket. Hanuman publications are truly pocket-friendly at 2-3/4" by 4-1/8".

By Surprise was published in France in 1983, one year before Michaux's death (1899-1984). Randolph Hough translated the book for Hanuman in 1987. It is one of Michaux's many texts on hallucinogenic drugs. I find his "drug books" fascinating because he had been writing hallucinogenic texts since the 1920s, but he didn't try mescaline or any drug like it until 1956.

At age 59 he described his early childhood years:

"Brussels.
Indifference.
Inappetance.
Resistance.
Uninterested.

He avoids life, games, amusements and variation.
Food disgusts him.
Odors, contacts.
His marrow does not make blood.
His blood isn't wild about oxygen.

Anemia.

Dreams, without images without words, motionless.
He dreams of permanence, of perpetuity without change.
His way of existing in the margins, always on strike, is frightening or exasperating.
He's sent to the country."

Rene Daumal, Mount Analogue part 2

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Hanuman Books

I'll post about my two Hanuman Books publications this week.

Rene Daumal, Mount Analogue

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