Sometimes I wish, or maybe wonder, that my biography will open with these lines:
God grant that the reader, emboldened and having become at present as fierce as what he is reading, find, without loss of bearings, his way, his wild and treacherous passage through the desolate swamps of these sombre, poison-soaked pages; for, unless he should bring to his reading a rigorous logic and a sustained mental effort at least as strong as his distrust, the lethal fumes of this book shall dissolve his soul as water does sugar.
-Comte de Lautreamont, Les Chants du Maldoror.
I've been on a surrealistic/symbolist French poetry rampage. Feeling bummed that I can't read in French.
Something about winter makes me want to sit at home in pajamas and glasses and read about evil.
I do highly recommend the above, in addition to:
Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du mal
Rimbaud, Collected Works
Special thanks to James for contributing to the beginnings of my collection.
Last week, when I picked up the Rimbaud, my sort-of-buddy Rich who works there told me how Rimbaud, by way of Dragnet, got him in to literature, and acid.
Apparently he was watching the show, when the detectives or whatever were called to 'a nightmarish scene'at a house where a teenage boy was dipping a paintbrush into the can and licking it. On the floor were copies of Les Fleurs du mal and Une Saison en Enfer. Rich thought this was pretty cool.
I'm out.
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4 comments:
One Should ALways be Drunk.
anyway. english is wayyyy more surreal in a way that fucks you up. screw all this franklophilia.
or not, whatever really. there's a lot of good stuff in what you've been reading.
hopefully, french surrealist somehow acts as a catalyst to get you into something super wild like vispo.
that would be amazing.
im pioneering caffeination right now. apologies.
I will never forget his coupling with the shark.
i think i saw that dragnet on tvland once. or a different one, in which the acronym P.O.T.- plenty of trouble- was employed.
alden - you rascal! where have you been?
who's coupling with the shark?
and renee- where have YOU been?
you people need to email me or something.
james, whatever. i'll see you soon enough.
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