Alter Ego: The Critical Writings of Michel Leiris (Legenda, Research Monographs in French Studies, 17) [1 ed.] 190075598X, 9781900755986

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Title
Copyright
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1 Perceiving Presence: Leiris and Visual Art
2 Breaking the Sound Barrier: Leiris and Music
The Jazz Age
Americans in Paris
Rejecting Civilization
Ethnomusicology and André Schaeffher
From Jazz to Opera
René Leibowitz
Operratiques
Turandot
Constant Lambert
The Matrix of Death
3 Reading Rules: Leiris and Literature
Revolution and Renewal: Leiris and Surrealism
The Coincidence of Contraries: Leiris and Documents
Dépassement perpétuel: Leiris and Existentialism
Conception and Reality: Leiris and Raymond Roussel
Conclusion: Being-with-Leiris
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

A lter E go T he C r i t i c a l W r itin g s of M ic h el L eiris

THE EUROPEAN HUMANITIES RESEARCH CENTRE U N IV E R S IT Y OF O X FO R D

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Further information: Kareni Bannister, Senior Publications Officer European Humanities Research Centre University of Oxford 76 Woodstock Road, Oxford 0x2 6hp [email protected] www.ehrc.ox.ac.uk

LEGENDA R E S E A R C H M O N O G R A P H S IN F R E N C H S T U D I E S

Editorial Committee Professor Michael Moriarty, Queen Mary, University of London (General Editor) Dr Adrian Armstrong, University of Manchester Dr Wendy Ayres-Bennett, New Hall, Cambridge Professor Celia Britton, University College London Professor Diana Knight, University of Nottingham Professor Bill Marshall, University of Glasgow

Published in this series: i . Privileged Anonymity: The Writings of Madame de Lafayette by Anne Green 2. Stéphane Mallarmé. Correspondance: compléments et suppléments edited by Lloyd James Austin, Bertrand Marchai and Nicola Luckhurst 3. Critical Fictions: Nerval’s ‘Les Illuminés’ by Meryl Tyers 4. Towards a Cultural Philology by Amy Wygant 5. George Sand and Autobiography by Janet Hiddleston 6. Expressivism by Johnnie Gratton

7.

Memory and Survival: The French Cinema of Krzysztof Kieslowski by Emma Wilson 8. Between Sequence and Sirventes by Catherine Léglu

9. All Puns Intended: The Verbal Creation ofJean-Pierre Brisset by Walter Redfern 10. Saint-Evremond: A Voice From Exile edited by Denys Potts 11 .La Cort d’Amor: A Critical Edition edited by Matthew Bardell 12. Race and the Unconscious by Celia Britton 13. Proust: La Traduction du sensible by Nathalie Aubert 14. Silent Witness: Racine’s Non-Verbal Annotations of Euripides by Susanna Phillippo 15. Robert Antelme: Humanity, Community, Testimony by Martin Crowley 16. By the People for the People?: Eugène Sue’s Les Mystères de Paris by Christopher Prendergast

LEGEN DA E u r o p ea n H u m a n i t ie s R esea rch C entre R esea r ch M onog r aph s in F r en ch S tu d ies 17

Alter Ego

The Critical Writings o f Michel Leiris

S ean H and

LEGENDA European Humanities Research Centre University of Oxford Research Monographs in French Studies 17 2004

First published 2004 Published for the Society for French Studies by the European Humanities Research Centre of the University of Oxford 76 Woodstock Road Oxford OX2 6LE LEGENDA is the publications imprint of the European Humanities Research Centre

Published 2017 by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OXl 4 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © European Humanities Research Centre

of the University of Oxford 2004

ISBN 13: 978-1-900755-98-6 (pbk) ISSN 1466-8157 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or disseminated or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, or stored in any retrieval system, or othenvise used in any manner whatsoever without the express permission of the copyright owner British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library LEGENDA series designed by Cox Design Partnership, Witney, Oxon Chief Copy-Editor: Genevieve Hawkins

C O N T EN T S

Acknowledgements Introduction

ix

i

1 Perceiving Presence: Leiris and Visual Art

io

2 Breaking the Sound Barrier: Leiris and Music

38 38

The Jazz Age Americans in Paris

4i

Rejecting Civilization

44

Ethnomusicology and André SchaefFner

47

From Jazz to Opera

50

René Leibowitz

52

Operratiques

55

Turandot

58

Constant Lambert

61

The Matrix of Death

63

3 Reading Rules: Leiris and Literature

76

Revolution and Renewal: Leiris and Surrealism

76

The Coincidence o f Contraries: Leiris and Documents

84

Dépassement perpétuel: Leiris and Existentialism

9i

Conception and Reality: Leiris and Raymond Roussel

98

Conclusion: Being-with-Leiris

114

Bibliography

127

Index

139

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ACKNO W LEDGEM ENTS ❖

I am most grateful to the Leverhulme Trust for the award o f a Fellowship which enabled me to undertake this project. I wish to thank the organizers o f the 2003 Congrès International d’Etudes Francophones at New Orleans, USA, and the 2003 Australian Society for French Studies conference at Brisbane, Australia, where versions o f incorpor­ ated material were delivered. I am most grateful to the British Academy for the award o f an Overseas Conference Grant in relation to the ASFS conference. M y thanks go to the staff o f the Taylor Institution, Oxford, and the Maison Française, Oxford, for help with bibliographical material. I wish to thank also Kareni Bannister and Graham Nelson o f Legenda, Professor Michael Moriarty, as editor o f the Research Monographs in French series, the readers o f the original manuscript and copy-editor Genevieve Hawkins for all their help in preparing and publishing this book. I am very grateful to Professor Denis Hollier for his warm encouragement and detailed advice, and to Jean Jamin for permissions. As ever, I thank my wife Maoliosa and our son Dominic for living with my preoccupations. Finally, I dedicate this book to my parents, Margaret Hand (née O ’Gorman) (1922-1998) and Sean Hand (1922-1999). S.H.

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http://taylorandfra ncis.co m

IN TRO D U CTIO N

This is the first monograph in English on the criticism o f Michel Leiris (1901-1990). Through detailed readings o f his essays on art, music and literature, collected in volumes such as Brisées, Zébrage, Au verso des Images, Operratiques and Roussel & Co., I seek to demonstrate the inherent, circumstantial and speculative value o f Leiris s critical work.1 Dividing his criticism into discrete fields o f inquiry helps me to trace clearly Leiris s developing response to key works and con­ temporary debates in each discipline; in the course o f my initially historical expositions, however, what also emerges is an intricate interdisciplinarity in Leiris that feeds off a more obsessional thematics and an accompanying process o f constant absorption and mutation, renewal and return. B y concentrating on Leiriss criticism and by emphasizing its scope, intensity and profound motivations, I am also implicitly revalorizing this practice in relation to the autobiography and ethnography for which Leiris is still primarily and even uniquely known, chief among these texts being the ethnographic journal L ’Afrique fantôme (1934) and the autobiographical works L ’Age d’homme (1939) and La Règle du jeu, the latter composed o f the four volumes Biffures (1948), Fourbis (1955), Fibrilles (1966) and Frêle Bruit (1976).2 The essays therefore signify not just as a synthesizing contribution to key aesthetic contests in the twentieth century, and a rehearsal o f the autobiographies’ perfected performances, but also as the integral demonstration o f a critical consciousness and its essentially contrapuntal dynamic, from which the autobiographies can be said to derive and o f which they are arguably a corn-pressed version. Following the logic o f Leiriss criticism therefore helps us to map out the terrain o f twentieth-century aesthetics in all its interconnectedness, to revise our assumptions about the purity and originality o f autobiographical experience in relation to the secondary, vicarious or parasitical nature o f critical consciousness, and to reflect on the essentially contrapuntal and corn-positional nature o f identity itself. This reversal o f

2

Introduction

assumptions regarding the centrality o f the autobiographical ego and the peripheral nature o f the critical alter ego is taken a step further in my concluding chapter, where I present Leiris’s criticism as figuring the inherently fissured and plural nature o f identity as postulated philosophically and ethically by a number o f contemporary thinkers. Michel Leiris’s intellectual journey passed through many o f the successive intellectual and aesthetic movements o f the twentieth century as registered primarily in the Francophone world. The tension between aesthetic and political dreams that typifies this period becomes a defining dynamic in his work. Born in 1901, Leiris did not serve in the First World War but he lived through its direct effects, as the prevailing social, moral and epistemological structures o f western society underwent radical reformulations. As a young surrealist, he participated enthusiastically in that movements clamorous cham­ pioning o f linguistic revolution and absolutist desire (expressing on one public occasion an anti-French sentiment that almost saw him lynched). Leiris’s decisive (if still inevitably stereotyped) encounter with jazz and African-American culture, which exploded in Paris during the postwar period, provided both a catharsis and a reference point for this increasingly hysterical idealism, and led to his parti­ cipation as secretary and archivist, with a special interest in secret languages and possession rituals, on the Dakar-Djibouti ethnographic expedition led by Marcel Griaule. Crossing sub-Saharan Africa from 1931 to 1933, this major excursion (which occasionally descended into adventurist pillaging) brought back thousands o f masks, dolls, musical instruments, recordings, photographs and even fetishes to the Trocadéro museum in Paris. Pursuing ethnographic studies on his return under Marcel Mauss and Maurice Leenhardt (and abandoning his psychoanalysis under Adrien Borel, begun at Georges Batailles suggestion), Leiris made ethnography his profession, rising to become director o f the department for sub-Saharan Africa at the Musée de l’ Homme. Just as Leiris’s earlier writing activities had been unavoidably political, however, so the growing political tension o f the late thirties still dominated this activity. Thus the inauguration o f the Musée de l’Homme (one o f many museums opened during the Popular Front period) on 27 June 1938 was in itself a political statement, one encapsulated in the closing words o f the cantata com­ missioned for the occasion: ‘La terre aux camarades / Soumet enfin les saisons’ .3 This humanist appeal also acted more sombrely as an anniversary recollection o f the brutal aerial bombing o f Guernica on

Introduction

3

26 April 1937. Yet Leiris’s political affiliations remain, as ever, nuanced. Having briefly been a member o f the communist party, like many surrealists in the late twenties, Leiris’s chief collectivist response to the politics o f the thirties was to co-found (with Bataille and R oger Caillois) the Collège de Sociologie, whose quasi-sacred and desubjectivated vision o f society significantly sought to resist the formal­ ization o f all identity by conventionally political schemata. After the war, during which he largely maintained an anti-collaborationist silence while gravitating towards the writings and positions o f JeanPaul Sartre, Leiris resumed this dialectic o f activist and aesthetic interests quite naturally via the evolving editorial decisions o f the journal Les Temps modernes, which he also co-founded, with Sartre and others, in 1945, as well as through his support for the discursive development o f decolonization. The two coincided precisely in a 1950 issue o f Les Temps modernes, heavily influenced by Leiris, which directly championed the poetry and ethnography associated with the French Caribbean. In this field Leiris not only successively produced such defining publications as the 1950 ‘L’ethnographe devant le colonialisme’ (also published in Les Temps modernes), the 1951 Race et civilisation and the 1955 Contacts de civilisations en Martinique et en Guadeloupe, but also helped to promote the work o f Aimé Césaire and other artists engaged in shaping post-colonial traditions, in the course o f which his ethnographic and poetic positions brought him more than once into conflict with the political authorities.4 B y now his new (unwanted) status as a recognized and even senior French writer and intellectual, based on the growing autobiographical and critical œuvre, increasingly made Leiris a reference point for new cohorts o f writers and thinkers (such as Blanchot, Butor, Robbe-Grillet and Foucault) seeking to find formulations through and beyond marxism or phenomenology. As a figurehead, Leiris continued from now until his final years to promote in precise, practical ways a progressivist and revolutionary politics. In addition to supporting various petitions, he was notably one o f the first signatories o f the i960 Appel des 121 manifesto concerning the moral and political right to insubordination o f French troops during the Algerian war, and marched in protest at the ‘affaire du métro Charonne’ in 1962. He visited Cuba in 1967 and 1968 in an act o f explicit intellectual solidarity, and equally gave fraternal support to the events o f May ’68. He spoke at the first Panafrican Festival held in Algiers in 1969, where ironically even his ethnography was denounced by certain African militants as essentially

4

Introduction

collusive with colonial power relations. He was one o f the leading intellectuals involved in the 1970 ‘bataille d’lvry’ (during which he was arrested and incarcerated) concerning the lodging conditions o f immigrant workers; and in the same year, with Simone de Beauvoir, he helped to direct the Association o f Friends o f the Maoist paper La Cause du peuple.5 But by the same token, as part o f the différend operating between the aesthetic and the political, Leiris was equally producing during this period the final volumes o f La Règle du jeu, a series o f appreciative and involved essays on art and music, the latter including posthumously published accounts o f particular operas and their performances that dramatized his poetic and psychomythical desires, and a set o f profound poetical meditations that returned to the early linguistic and ‘miraculous’ inspirations o f his surrealist days.6 B y the time o f his death on 4 October 1990, the scope and duration o f Leiris’s work already made it an invaluable testament o f the century’s artistic and political movements. More significantly, however, his strategy o f appropriation and transformation o f the work o f other intellectuals had uniquely fashioned complex connections from otherwise distinct and even contradictory positions. The funda­ mentally different visions and associated ideas o f artists such as Masson, Miró, Picasso, Giacometti and Francis Bacon are recognized yet reconciled in Leiris’s phenomenological quest for presence. Distinct or conflicting musicological principles, such as those o f André Schaeffner, René Leibowitz and Constant Lambert, are simi­ larly exploited by Leiris’s total immersion in the musical rituals o f jazz, ethnographic possession and opera. Textually, Leiris’s work registers within itself how Breton’s surreality is diverted by Bataillean dissi­ pation, which is then resisted through an ethnographic rigour that itself is transformed by the ethics o f solidarity. These connections, which together generate new singular instances in Leiris, are also embedded across the full range o f his writings, whether critical or creative, thus extending their transgeneric tendencies and facilitating further mutation. Such interconnectedness, in its predisposition and its practical forms, is implicitly acknowledged in the disciplinary spread and transgenerative spirit o f those critical responses which Leiris’s work has in turn attracted. Whether in the general areas o f psychoanalysis (Pontalis) or anthropology (Clifford) or philosophy (Derrida), or in the more particular subdisciplines o f speech-act theory (Lejeune), structuralist critique (Mehlman) and postcolonial practice (Glissant), Leiris has been presented as an exemplary case and,

Introduction

5

indeed, a guiding model for these senior practitioners in their own elaboration o f radical criticism.7 O f particular significance is the parergonal or marginal space which Leiris’s work importantly opens up for these critics’ own engagement with dependent declassification. Thus, for example, Derrida represents the allographical nature o f philosophical productivity by positioning a long quotation from the ‘Perséphone’ section o f Biffures (wherein Leiris produces figures o f ambiguous positionality such as the margin, the tympan and Perseph­ one herself) as the marginal text to the opening essay ‘Tympan’ o f the book Marges de la philosophie; in a parallel way, Edouard Glissant characterizes Leiris’s process as a simultaneous repli and dépli that can engage, both in the case o f the francophone Antilles and more gener­ ally, with ‘complexity itself as essence’, establishing in the process a ‘relationship [that] is neither fusion nor confusion’ and thus textually, as well as existentially, evincing ‘complex procedures o f contami­ nation’.8 As a logical extension o f his ambiguous attachment to key artistic and political developments, Leiris’s actual textual production through­ out all this time instinctively tested its own formal limits. His attempts to keep distinct writing functions separate (reportedly never writing ethnography at home, never writing autobiography at the Musée de l’Homme, for example) merely confirm an inherent tendency to textual métissage.9 Having been introduced to the surrealists by André Masson, and being already associated with the art dealer DanielHenry Kahnweiler (whose Galerie Simon in time became the Galerie Louise Leiris), Leiris’s first book publication, the 1924 Simulacre, inaugurated what became a minor tradition for him (one which was to include his surrealist anti-dictionary Glossaire j ’y serre mes gloses but also cut across simple adherence to surrealism): namely, the production o f a limited-edition work, often poetic, illustrated by a famous artist (notably Masson, Giacometti, Miró and Picasso).10 Batailles Documents, on which Leiris collaborated from 1929 to 1930, was designedly iconoclastic. The Dakar-Djibouti expedition led famously to the production o f the transgressively subjective ethno­ graphic journal L ’Afrique fantôme, a work that Mauss himself criti­ cized. Notwithstanding this, the postwar reflections on ethnography elevate transgression to the level o f an ethical and operative necessity: thus ‘L’ethnographe devant le colonialisme’ concludes that the ethnographer must work towards his or her own liberation; while the 1968 statement to the Cuban Cultural Congress stresses the necessity o f

6

Introduction

rupture, experimentation and freedom o f investigation.11 The new combination o f psychoanalytic, ethnographic and existential selfanalysis in the 1939 L'Age d'homme generated a henceforth classic autobiographical format for the twentieth century. The subsequent four-volume autobiography La Règle du jeu then proceeded to overthrow even these constraints in its immense and complex presentation o f subjectivity as inherently linguistic, temporal and situated. But this iconoclasm takes place in turn within the sixty-year timeframe o f Leiriss essays on key artists, which all transcended historical or technical appreciation to negotiate the situational recog­ nition induced phenomenologically by each artwork. The emergence within art criticism o f an inherently disruptive autobiographical consciousness similarly occurs in the late Le Ruban au cou d'Olympia, where autobiographical meditations on mortality are blended with involved reflections on art and representation.12 Finally, the insistent musical figure o f an impossible ideal operates in similar fashion in Leiris, featuring not simply as the questing drive o f the posthumously published Operratiques, but throughout all the work, whether in a popular or ethnographic or classical context, as the affective insepar­ ability o f ecstasy from estrangement, and rapture from representation. We can see from this review that the obsessionality and singularity o f Leiris s best-known work in fact derive from a critical and collective consciousness. This impression is reinforced by recollecting the extent o f Leiris s collaboration on important journals, including Documents (1929—30), Minotaure (1934), La Bête noire (1935-6), Les Temps modernes (1945-55), Présence africaine (1948-55), Critique (1955), Cahiers d'études africaines (1960-90) and Gradhiva (1986-90). The emergence o f an individual voice from within critical contexts is obviously repeated textually by the trans-generative nature o f his writing and its frequent­ ly abyssal content, these two elements combining at micrological level in the aboriginal biffure within the autos o f La Règle du jeu . 13 This re-prioritization o f Leiriss different writings and their impulses ultimately suggests a radical rather than incidental significance for his critical essays. Extending now beyond a complementary status, they emerge as the model o f a predetermining composition, through which singularity and autobiography are dramatized as a disposition. It is towards this large claim that my readings o f Leiris s essays work. The three central chapters o f this monograph examine in succession Leiriss writings on visual art, music and literature. In Chapter 1, ‘Perceiving Presence: Leiris and Visual Art’, I establish the

Introduction

7

primary role o f the image and o f imaging in all o f Leiris’s work, and situate his art writings in particular relation to those o f Kahnweiler, before isolating the key features o f immediacy, fulguration and unmediated presence which obsess Leiris. I then examine three o f Leiris’s most accomplished and synthesized meditations on art: Le Ruban au cou d'Olympia, wherein Manet’s painting acts as a fetish for Leiris’s quasi-autobiographical determinations; the extended essay on Francis Bacon entitled ‘Face et profil’, which focuses on the violent eruption on Bacon’s canvas o f an atheological and preaesthetic real presence; and, finally, the 1973 overview o f Picasso’s work, ‘Le peintre et son modèle’, where Picasso is projected as an idealist self-presencing untouched by intellectual or plastic limits. In each case, I dwell on the stages whereby Leiris’s vision o f these different works as a charged autofigurative event, sublates their individual heterogeneity and facture. In Chapter 2, ‘Breaking the Sound Barrier: Leiris and Music’, I follow chronologically Leiris’s passionate immersion in early jazz and music-hall, ethnographic in­ stances and operatic spectacle. Giving the circumstantial details o f performances attended by Leiris, and contextualizing his theorizations with reference to ambiguously influential figures such as GeorgesHenri Rivière, Schaeffner, Leibowitz and Lambert, I also speculate on how Leiris’s adoration o f the music o f the Blackbirds or Puccini is bound up with a complex desire for self-transformation and selfannihilation, a moment o f simultaneous ecstasy and eradication that would also mark the impossible apogée o f autobiography. In Chapter 3, ‘Reading Rules: Leiris and Literature’, I again give a detailed chronological account o f Leiris’s ambiguous adherence to successive literary movements, bringing out his micrological process o f mimicry and mutation, as he triangulates contesting critical positions in order to construct a mobile, self-determining identity. Via examination o f precise encounters with Breton, Bataille and Sartre, I conclude by detailing the obsessive secretion o f Raymond Roussel in all o f Leiris’s work, and the manner in which this internalized rule bestows the full weight o f autobiographical resonance and resistance on the critical exegesis. The concluding chapter considers the speculative significance and value o f the critical model in Leiris. I successively relate his example to the contrapuntal, heterogeneous and ethical roles delineated for critical writing by different contemporary theorists, before formulating a particular evaluation o f Leiris’s criticism as dramatizing the founding o f Being’s emergence. It can therefore be

8

Introduction

read as revealing the originary alterity and discursive distantiation held within autobiographical compression and its expression, to be de­ posited through criticism on the alter ego. As such, Leiris s seemingly liminal critical writings can be revalued in relation to the supposed singularity and centrality o f the autobiography, becoming in this light the primary exposition o f Leirisian self con-struction.

Notes to Introduction 1. Michel Leiris, Brisées (Paris: Mercure de France, 1966; republished Paris: Gallimard, Folio Essais, 1992), 13 -1 6 . All page references are to this last edition. Zébrage (Paris: Gallimard, Folio Essais, 1992). A u verso des Images (Montpellier: Fata Morgana, 1980). Operratiques, édition établie par Jean Jamin (Paris: P.O.L., 1992). Roussel & Co., édition établie par Jean Jamin, présentée et annotée par Annie Le Brun (Paris: Fata Morgana/Fayard, 1998). 2. Michel Leiris, L'Afrique fantôme (Paris: Gallimard, 1934; republished 1981). All page references are to this last edition. L 'A ge d'homme (Paris: Gallimard, 1939; republished Folio 1973). All page references are to this last edition. La Règle du je u : Biffures (Paris: Gallimard, 1948); Fourbis (Paris: Gallimard, 1955); Fibrilles (Paris: Gallimard, 1966); Frêle Bruit (Paris: Gallimard, 1976). 3. The Cantate pour l'inauguration du Musée de l'Homme featured words by Robert Desnos and music by Darius Milhaud. See Robert Desnos, Fortunes (Paris: Gallimard, 1945), 16 5-7 4 . 4. Michel Leiris, ‘L’ethnographe devant le colonialisme’ (1950), in Cinq Etudes d'ethnologie (Paris: Denoël/Gonthier, 1969), 8 3 - 1 1 2 ; Race et civilisation (U N E S C O , 19 51); Contacts de civilisations en Martinique et en Guadeloupe (U N E S C O , 1955). Leiris concretely promoted the work o f Césaire by, inter alia, delivering a lecture entitled ‘Qui est Aimé Césaire?’ on the occasion o f the Venice production o f Césaire s play La Tragédie du roi Christophe, subsequently helping to finance its Parisian production in M ay 1965, and simultaneously publishing the lecture in Critique 2 16 (16e année), 1965 (republished in Brisées, 303—14). Leiris’s support for post-colonial cultural development included, for example, his participation in the Festival des arts nègres held in Dakar in 1966, as well as the 1948 mission to Martinique, Guadeloupe and Haiti. Concerning Leiris’s relations with some o f the political authorities encountered, see, e.g., the account given o f the Martinique prefect’s complaint, in Aliette Armel, Michel Leiris (Paris: Fayard,

1997), 492 . 5. For brief details o f these historical events, see: Robert Gildea, France since IQ45 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 2 6 -7 , 5 1 -4 ; Armel, Michel Leiris, 6 48 -54 , 6 6 1-2 , 6 6 5-8 ; and Michel Leiris, Journal, iç 2 2 -iç 8 g (Paris: Gallimard, 1992), 6 3 3 -4 , 9i i n. 2. 6. As examples o f these late poetic meditations, see: Langage tangage ou ce que les mots me disent (Paris: Gallimard, 1985) (bearing the bande publicitaire ‘Les mots en fête’); Ondes (Paris: Le Temps qu’il fait, 1987); A cor et à cri (Paris: Gallimard, 1988); and Images de marque (Paris: Le Temps qu’il fait, 1989). 7. See, e.g., James Clifford, The Predicament o f Culture. Twentieth-Century Ethno­

Introduction

9

graphy, Literature, and Art (Cambridge, M A , and London: Harvard University Press, 1988), 16 5 -7 4 ; J.-B . Pontalis, Après Freud (Paris: Gallimard, 19 71); Philippe Lejeune, Lire Leiris, Autobiographie et Langage (Paris: Klincksieck, 1975); Jeffrey Mehlman, A Structural Study o f Autobiography (N ew York: Cornell University Press, 1974). 8. Jacques Derrida, Marges de la philosophie (Paris: Minuit, 1972). Regarding the term ‘allographics’ , see Geoffrey Bennington, Interrupting Derrida (London: Routledge, 2000), esp. 2. Edouard Glissant, ‘Michel Leiris: The R epli and the D épli’ , Yale French Studies 81 (1992), 2 1 - 7 . 9. In support o f this claim, see the interview with Jean Jamin and Denis Hollier, conducted by Aliette Armel, entitled ‘U n homme du secret discret’ , Magazine littéraire 302 (Sept. 1992), 17 -2 4 , esp. 22. 10. The relationship between text and image is extensive in Leiris, running from visually accompanied text (as with cover photos or reproduced portraits o f the author) through textually accompanied illustration (as with large art books or catalogues for which Leiris wrote the text) to those works where text and image surpass accompaniment to generate a new level o f significance. This last category alone would include at least the following: Simulacre (Paris: Galerie Simon, 1925)— 1 1 2 copies, 7 lithographs (including the cover) by Masson; Miroir de la tauromachie (Paris: G L M , 1938)— 840 copies, 3 drawings by Masson; G lo ssa irefy serre mes gloses (Paris: Galerie Simon, 1939)— 1 1 2 copies, lithographs by Masson; Toro (Paris: Galerie Louise Leiris, 19 5 1)— 57 copies, 7 lithographs by Masson; Vivantes cendres, innommées (Paris: Jean Hugues, 19 61)— 100 copies, 13 etchings by Giacometti, 4 o f them portraits o f Leiris (representing fairly obviously his convalescence from the suicide attempt). 1 1. Michel Leiris, ‘L’ethnographe devant le colonialisme’ , 112 ; ‘Communication au Congrès culturel de la Havane’, in Cinq Etudes d ’ethnologie, 139—51, esp. 1 5 0 - 1 . 12. Michel Leiris, Le Ruban au cou d ’ Olympia (Paris, Gallimard, 1981). 13. For a detailed examination o f the biffure in Leiris, see my Michel Leiris: Writing the S e lf (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).

CHAPTER 1

Perceiving Presence: Leiris and Visual Art Image and imaging occupy from the beginning a crucial role in all o f Leiris s major works. As noted in my introduction, writing and image are indissociably linked through the production throughout Leiriss life o f limited-edition works illustrated by famous artists. Within the texts themselves, moreover, imaging operates as the origin o f consciousness; that is to say, the images in no way simply illustrate the text. A primary drama o f perception, against the play o f light and dark, opens Simulacre, Aurora, Biffures and Fourbis, while the meta­ physical corrida o f ‘De la littérature considérée comme une tauro­ machie’ and the psychosexual dramas o f L'Age d'homme more generally assume the same expectant penumbra. A Leirisian Lichtung therefore illuminates the iconic emergence o f Being: the text is the autogenerative act o f perceiving presence.1 Within this light, there emerges a stream o f images, especially in the autobiographies, that sustains and even generates the writing. L'Age d'homme is the most complete example: each stage o f the journey towards virility has its own significant visual content, whether taken from Epinal or the Histoire sainte or theatrical and biblical scenes or Géricault s Radeau de la Méduse; while the work’s consistent scopic drive creates a general intelligibility by collecting such images as ‘les vrais fétiches, c’est-àdire ceux qui nous ressemblent et sont la forme objectivée de notre désir’, to quote an early article by Leiris on Giacometti.2 This fetishism, which extends back from L'Age d'homme to the work o f Documents, shows up powerfully in relation to the painting by Antoine Caron entitled ‘Massacres d’une proscription romaine’.3 Leiriss early enthusiasm for this erotic and bloody representation, in Documents, is directly absorbed into the text o f L!Age d'homme, yet the work itself nowhere mentions either the Caron painting or the original piece.4

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The absent presence o f this newly mythologized imagery makes it the fitting formal version o f a screen memory, and further confirms the absolutely generative nature in Leiris’s autobiography o f the (fetishized) image ‘qui, comme aux temps les plus anciens, reste à la base de notre existence humaine [et] ne trouve que bien rarement l’occasion de se satisfaire sous une forme non déguisée’ .5 Leiris’s recognizably autobiographical work does not, then, begin in 1938 with the sociological ‘Le sacré dans la vie quotidienne’, or in 1934 with the ethnographie journal L'Afrique fantôme, but at least as early as 1929 with an essay on one obscure image which remained uncollected until the posthumous publication o f Zébrage. In addition to the questions here raised o f genre, chronology and liminality, this genealogy powerfully illustrates the primordiality o f the image in all o f Leiris’s writing. This fetishism is further confirmed by the way in which Leiris consistently dedicated his works to painters such as Picasso, Miró, Masson, Juan Gris, Henri Laurens, Giacometti and Wifredo Lam. Far from being an immediate acknowledgement o f the irreducibility o f representation, this linkage reflects a writerly envy for the effulgent presence free o f relation which he continually credited these artists with creating or revealing. Leiris constantly describes these artists’ approaches, therefore, in terms o f his own existential wager: Picasso is presented as a highly autobiographical artist who embraces ‘freedom’ and plays with the (im)possibility o f directly intelligible transcription;6 Masson’s painting Le Peintre is described as ‘l’expression dramatisée du jeu de dupes dans lequel, corps et âme, est engagé l’artiste (bondir vers quelque chose qu’il s’agit de saisir et, en dernière analyse, ne jamais saisir qu’un reflet de soi-même)’;7 Giacometti’s working practices as much as his finished products are felt to create ‘des œuvres qui n’ont besoin de nulle signature pour qu’on reconnaisse en elles des “ Giacomettis’” .8 Such a dream, that o f the pure, perfect, timeless, essential and freely produced image, is reinforced in Leiris by being paradigmatic. Leiris’s 1973 aphoristic praise o f M irô’s achievement as ‘notre éveil hors du Temps’,9 for example, was predicted both by Breton’s 1959 judgement o f the same artist (‘N ’importe où hors du monde et, de plus, hors du temps, mais pour mieux retenir partout et toujours, jaillit alors cette voix, au timbre de si loin discernable, qui s’élève à l’unisson des plus hautes voix inspirées’)10 and by Giacometti’s own appreciation o f Miró in the same year (‘Pour moi, c’était la plus grande liberté. Quelque

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chose de plus aérien, de plus dégagé, de plus léger que tout ce que j ’avais jamais vu. En un sens, c’était absolument parfait’).11 More generally, the key notion o f freedom mentioned in the last quotation was used from the beginning o f the post-impressionist period to describe the pre-eminent status o f the image in relation to aesthetics and representation. Prior to Cubism proper, in 1908, Apollinaire had already reacted to Braque and other Fauvists by stating that ‘la toile doit présenter cette unité essentielle qui seule provoque l’extase [...]. Le tableau existera inéluctablement. La vision sera entière, complète.’ 12 The whole o f the Cubist period, and in particular the creation o f Cubist ‘solutions’ from Negro art, was presented in terms o f the freedom forged by ‘an entirely new form o f representation’ .13 Negro art, and specifically a supposedly influential Wobé (N’gere) mask from the Ivory Coast,14 was held to foster a (Western) vision o f an anti-idealist art15 whose transparency was summarized in 1948 by Kahnweiler in terms o f freedom: ‘l’admirable liberté de l’art de notre temps qui lui ouvre des possibilités inouïes, nous la devons à l’exemple de l’art nègre’ .16 B y 1969 the critic Pierre Dufour was able to describe the whole history o f Cubism in terms o f this fundamental freedom o f the image: ‘L’ingrisme captant les nostalgies du passé dans une récupération semi-ironique de la culture, les œuvres “ cubistes” peuvent se libérer d’autant plus radicalement des survivances de l’image. Aussi apparais­ sent-elles, curieusement sans passé' . 17 One o f the most important critics o f all, in this respect, was DanielHenry Kahnweiler, the Cubist art dealer to whom Leiris was related by marriage and with whom he worked closely in the Galerie Louise Leiris.18 Kahnweiler’s specialist acquaintance with the Fauvists and then the Cubists, culminating in his lifelong professional relationship with Picasso, and his strong neo-Kantian views on the value o f ‘freedom’ in art and its non-abstract obligations, closely equate to Leiris’s pronouncements in both historical and generic range. Thus Leiris extols the virtues o f Manet and Cézanne (as the Picasso circle always did), dismisses those artists who directly or indirectly contest the Kahnweiler aesthetic or camp, and is silent on a vast amount o f western postwar art, at a time o f enormous economic expansion o f the field and redefinition o f aesthetic principles and aims. There is thus nothing in Leiris on abstract expressionism, or conceptual art, or Arte Povera, since none o f these answers to the concern for figuration, freedom and painterly presence as very narrowly defined by an early twentieth-century western art perspective, and as embodied by

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Kahnweiler. (One thing Leiris never is, even when writing about African art, is an art historian: his is an essentially obsessive rather than objective response, concerned with apotheosis more than archivization.) Within this context, Kahnweilers own writings on art, including his reminiscences in Mes Galeries et mes peintres, 19 actually closely echo and indeed arguably shape Leiris s productions, including even in terms o f a quasi-philosophical shift, from a slightly perceptualist to a more semiological reaction to Cubism, which occurs after the end o f the Second World War.20 In the first o f these two periods, Kahnweiler emphasizes above all the freedom represented by Cubism. A typical example o f this approach is the 1947 essay ‘La place de Georges Seurat’, which contends that modern painting evolved from Cézanne rather than from Seurat in part because o f the latter’s academic training, and then concludes: ‘La figuration peut fort bien naître de l’architecture du tableau pour peu qu'on la laisse naître librement1.21 In the second o f these periods, Kahnweiler then increasingly absorbs this concept o f artistic freedom into the semio­ logical notion o f the autonomy o f the sign and the reading which Cubism demands o f the spectator. For example, the 1948 ‘Mallarmé et la peinture’ daims that if it was Cézanne who taught the Cubists about plastic architecture, it was Mallarmé who convinced them that ‘ [l]a peinture est une écriture, n’a jamais été autre chose, mais elle ne s’en est pas toujours souvenue, elle a souvent “ voilé” son origine’ .22 Another typical example, ‘Exposition des œuvres récentes de Picasso’ (1949), considers that ‘la nouveauté des signes inventés par les Cubistes, et notamment par Picasso, c’était l’absence de fauxsemblant. Ces signes n'imitaient plus les objets du monde extérieur’.23 This shift in critical language culminates in the 1961 Mes Galeries et mes peintres, where in a series o f interviews Kahnweiler emphasizes how all painting is a form o f writing which creates the external world, how the Cubists simply created signs that were new but were increasingly difficult to read, how this reading is none the less simply a question o f convention, how only through such reading does the painting take form, and how the significance o f this form lies ultim­ ately in the ‘communion’ between painting and viewer established in the viewer’s consciousness. Kahnweilers writings on Cubism, both in their championing o f a highly defined set o f artists and attitudes, and in their evolution towards a semiological phenomenology, have obviously had a major effect on Leiris’s perception o f the art image. However, one inter­

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esting, and perhaps symptomatic, demarcation can be observed in passing here. Leiris’s art writings overwhelmingly comment on artists directly associated with Kahnweiler’s galleries or publishing, including Masson, Picasso, Laurens and Lascaux (the last related by marriage to both Kahnweiler and Leiris). Naturally, this involves over time a reciprocating rather than one-sided influence: it was Leiris, for example, who introduced Giacometti and Masson to Kahnweiler, undoubtedly promoted the publication o f several authors, including Jacob and Jouhandeau, by Kahnweiler, and placed Kahnweiler s essays in new empowering contexts by encouraging their publication in journals such as Les Temps modernes and Présence africaine. But there are also fundamental if subtly controlled differences. In the first years o f his affiliation to surrealism, Leiris bought a number o f surrealist pictures (specifically, in 1924, La Grande Roue orthochromatique qui fait Vamour sur mesure by Ernst, dated 1919—20, and, in 1925, Baigneuse, by Miró, dated 1925). Kahnweiler, however, insisted that surrealism was uniquely a literary phenomenon, and although he admired Miró and Masson, he openly dismissed others such as Magritte in Mes Galeries et mes peintres, commenting: je n’aime pas la peinture surréaliste orthodoxe pour une raison très simple: les intentions dans cette peinture [sont] tellement littéraires [que] vous êtes presque obligé de faire une peinture académique ou une peinture genre calendrier des postes’ (p. 161). Bacon, the subject o f Leiris’s intense appreciation, never showed at the Leiris gallery and was never bought by Kahnweiler (although, in qualification, this may have been to do with Bacon’s established adherence to another gallery and Kahnweiler’s insistence on exclusivity in his promotions). Giacometti, the object o f Leiris’s immediate enthusiasm from 1929 on, was only belatedly ap­ preciated, and again never promoted, by Kahnweiler. It is also tantal­ izing to note the list o f Kahnweiler artists about whom Leiris remains silent, in spite o f there being important pieces by such artists in the Kahnweiler-Leiris collection which was bequeathed to the Musée national d’art moderne in 1984. Here it may be understandable that, for reasons o f age as much as differing aesthetic and political interests, Leiris wrote nothing substantive on early Kahnweiler artists such as Van Dongen, Derain, Vlaminck or Suzanne Roger, although he was surrounded by their work (portraits o f Kahnweiler and his wife, by Derain and Vlaminck, for example, hung in the Kahnweiler salon), made passing private judgements o f them (for example referring in his Journal as late as 1937 to Van Dongen’s works as being ‘pas trop

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désagréables comme œuvres de troisième zone’ , to Vlaminck landscapes as ‘appétissants comme de la crème fouettée’, and, less flatteringly, to ‘ [d]es Derain qui puent hideusement le musée’ (p. 314), and even envisaged collaboration in one case (a 1925 catalogue for Kahnweiler’s Editions de la Galerie Simon announcing imminent publication o f a text by Leiris, destined never to materialize, entitled ‘La maison de ville’ , to be illustrated by Suzanne Roger).24 Similarly one does not expect to see much commentary on the postwar gener­ ation o f Kahnweiler artists, including Hadengue (represented for the first time by the Galerie Louise Leiris in 1965) and Rouvre (repre­ sented for the first time in 1955), even though here again Leiris was certainly aware o f their work. What is much more significant is that Leiris remained quietly dismissive o f a long list o f Kahnweiler artists contemporary with those he openly appreciated. These include, im­ portantly, André Beaudin, the husband o f Suzanne Roger (promoted by Kahnweiler from 1935 but known to the Leirises from the end o f the twenties), Braque (promoted by Kahnweiler from 1908 until after the First World War when Braque moved for commercial reasons to Paul Rosenberg, and known to Leiris from 1924 until Braque’s death in 1963), Gris (known to Kahnweiler from 1908 if first promoted only in 1923), Kermadec (under contract with Kahnweiler only from 1929 to 1933, though remaining close socially to the Leirises and Kahnweilers up until his death in 1976) and R o u x (also represented for the first time in 1929, and known to Leiris in part through their joint participation in the 19 3 1-3 Dakar-Djibouti ethnographic ex­ pedition led by Griaule. There may be one additional reason for Leiris s silence on this last artist, since he had an affair with R o u x ’s wife between 1939 and 1940.)25 Given Leiris’s generally reserved approach to critical disapproval and above all his fetishistic discretion concerning family privacy, we can only speculate in general that these artists failed to fuel the essentially subjective and obsessive research which Leiris conducted through his experience o f the painter’s vision, and that they therefore lacked the exemplary manifestation o f freedom, transgression, autobiographical realization and existential risk that he consistently praises in others. Two tendencies can none the less be discerned in those critical remarks which Leiris did permit himself to make privately in his Journal: their focus on formal and expressive limits; and the almost instinctual rapidity with which Leiris makes his definitive judgement. As early as 1924, then, Leiris dismisses Braque ‘parce qu’il part de la peinture et n’aboutit qu’à la peinture’

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(pp. 6 1—2). And in 1929 he notes o f Kermadec: ‘La peinture de Kermadec ne me touche en somme pas du tout. Tous ses tableaux me restent entièrement extérieurs. Je n’ai même aucun désir d’y pénétrer. Seules, les choses les plus récentes (petits nus) me présentent quelques points de contact. Du reste, je ne me soucie pas’ (p. 143). The key to both these critical remarks seems to lie in these works’ inability, in Leiris’s view, to transcend art itself in order to force a radically unsettling communication with the viewer. Placed alongside a review o f the art which, in spite o f social and professional proximity, failed to elicit even a private response from Leiris, it suggests that while Leiris acknowledged (occasionally somewhat dutifully) the Kahnweiler stable o f Cubist painters, he was inspired only by evidence o f a creative passion which, while enabled by technique, sought to surpass a concern with form and colour in order to achieve a communicative presencing. This expressively ritual dimension accounts for the somewhat synthetic attraction to both ethnographic and modern western art in Leiris (creating an alternative link to the formalist one emphasized by Kahnweiler, and contradicting Leiris’s view that his own approach is forensic rather than synthetic), but it also suggests a tacit dismissal o f the ultimate adherence to classical ideals located approvingly in the likes o f Beaudin and Gris by Kahnweiler in Mes Galeries et mes peintres: ‘A mon avis, Juan Gris était certainement un pur classique, pas le moindre doute à ce sujet’ (p. 96); ‘Beaudin, celui qui a le mieux compris, selon moi, la grande leçon de Juan Gris. Comme lui, c’est un peintre classique, profondément sensible, certes, mais qui soumet les débordements, de la passion à sa raison lucide, à son souci d’ordre, de clarté, de pureté’ (p. 165).26 This tension between professional/familial loyalties and personal obsession can be further intuited from the remarkably different collection o f figurai references erupting in Leiris’s own autobiographical work. In both range and reason, these works lie so far outside the Kahnweiler aesthetic as to challenge implicitly the latter’s neo-Kantian strictures. As noted earlier, L ’Age d'homme draws on the classical violence and erotics o f Caron and Cranach, as well as the extravagant romanticism o f Géricault, together with an essentially scopic reliance on Epinal, Larousse and the Freudian dream-work. Collectively, these ground the autobiography in an iconography fundamentally at odds with both Cubism’s practice and Kahnweiler’s abstractions, one that is historical, representational and psychological. This leads to the interesting idea that La Règle du jeus subsequent

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foregrounding o f language over icon and figure over representation is due not just to an integral aesthetic evolution but also to a deliberate attenuation o f potential conflict between Leiris’s and Kahnweiler’s positions; Leiris achieves this by absorbing into his self-analysis the semiotic and non-representational justification o f the Cubist artwork as espoused by Kahnweiler. This would also explain a double move effected in La Règle du jeu whereby the emphasis shifts fundamentally from visual to musical analogies, and within this shift from the real and historically localized pictures o f musical activity in L yAge d'homme (twenties jazz and bourgeois opera), to the essentially imaginary and fantastical (i.e. invented and inventive) status o f music in La Règle du jeu, as demonstrated progressively in the childhood songs and instru­ ments o f Biffuress alternative structuration o f childhood, the ethno­ graphic and operatic musical scenes o f transcendent passion in Fourbis, the ‘fabulous harmony’ o f revolution described via musical notation in Fibrilles, and finally the muted meditations o f Frêle Bruit, which in both tenor and structure resembles a book o f preludes and fugues. Notwithstanding these tacit differences, one o f the strongest influences on Leiris’s developing vision o f the artwork remains the Kahnweiler aesthetic. As we have seen, it clearly lays forth an ultimately circular programme wherein the event o f perceiving a pure presence becomes transformed into the pure event o f a perceiving presence, one which ‘disengages itself and comes to the fore as already-thereness’ .27 Artistic and critical forms o f self-fulfilment come interestingly together in Kahnweiler s remarks to Leiris in a letter dated 1932 (and therefore sent to Africa): ‘Je me dis souvent maintenant que tout de même, mes professeurs de Stuttgart m’ont bien influencé et que mon état d’esprit est protestant [...]. Selon Fichte, il faut arriver à l’identité avec soi-même: je crois que c’est déjà pas si mal. Je ne me cache pas, je le répète, ce que cet idéal a de prussien, mais je crois que c’est le seul qui soit encore possible à l’heure actuelle’ .28 Kahnweiler’s explication o f how the viewer comes to read and so live the presence revealed in the Cubist free image can be clearly seen both in Leiris’s art criticism and even in his auto­ biographical work. For all o f the latter revolves finally around the central paradox o f self-representation, wherein an immediately arresting presence is tracked through the language o f difference to which it none the less immediately gives rise as an equiprimordial event o f consciousness, with the therefore impossible aim o f immediately living this revealed event in a pre-divisional moment o f

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perceiving presence. But it is in Leiris’s writings about art and artists that this complex phenomenology o f perception is most clearly articulated and directly illustrated. The first feature o f artworks in Leiris’s view is their immediate, relation-free state o f being. Like the sculptures o f Henri Laurens, they are simply there. Leiris’s (inevitably prosaic) response to the presence o f Laurens’s works even dispenses with those personal pronouns that would mediate, localize and particularize the works’ disclosure o f an unadulterated and directly perceived being-there: Il y a un autre type de sculpture qui, elle, se contente tout simplement d’être là. A portée de la main. Ne cherche pas à orner, non plus qu’à tirer l’œil ou à en imposer. Tient moins encore à imiter. Veut seulement peupler le vide de l’atmosphère, y créer une présence amie, discrète en même temps que d’une évidence irrécusable.29

Giacometti’s sculpture is equally an ‘acte de présence’ which spatially and temporally is immediate and complete, posing and resolving the problem o f ‘real presence’ with ‘la chose qui surgit, d’autant plus évidente qu’elle a l’air d’avoir poussé tout d’un coup, sans histoire ni racine: instantanée et hors du temps’.30 And as with Laurens, the response to this pre-dimensional presence is a religious sense o f wonder to which Leiris once again seeks to give unobtrusive ex­ pression, either by lovingly subordinating his reaction to Giacometti’s own account o f an illumination: ‘une espèce d’émerveillement continuel [...] transformation de la vision de tout [...] inconnu merveilleux’,31 or by adopting the self-obliterating language o f passion: ‘ces sculptures [...] qui nous font délirer [...], ces figures [...] qui sont si concrètes, si évidentes, absolues comme les créatures que l’on aime’ .32 It is remarkable that more than thirty years separate the production o f these two expressions, none the less so stubbornly similar. In the same way, certain o f these ideas are evoked in Leiris’s massive volume o f ethnographic art history, Afrique Noire: La Création plastique, published in 1967 but conceived in 1955 and drawing on Leiris’s knowledge and experience o f both Western and African art from the twenties on. It is significant (as well as ethnographically exemplary) that Leiris deals with the particular problems and circum­ stances o f this work by referring at once to the Western reception o f African art, that is, ‘La “ Crise nègre” dans le monde occidental’ (p. 1125), which therefore permits him in the volume’s first part to note at once the key qualities o f Cubism, describing the movement in

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a way that then evokes ‘morphologically’ for us our experience o f ‘la sculpture nègre’ . Cubism, and by extension African sculpture, are therefore both an ‘ [a]rt visant moins à décrire qu’à instaurer des réalités’, producing particular works that possess ‘la qualité souveraine de “ plus vrai que le vrai” , cette sorte de présence réelle (p. 1142). Suddenly the sculpture o f Giacometti is placed by implication alongside that o f the Dogons or the Lobi.33 Direct and unmediated truth is also a key feature in the work o f André Masson. Here the image continually absorbs the biffure o f any response: ‘des images dont chacune sera une saisie, réponse immédiate à un saisissement et saisie de ce saisissement’,34 and here again Masson is a visionary artist, in whose work a living presence is repeatedly said to emerge as an ‘éclosion’ or ‘révélation’ or ‘naissance’ or ‘surgissement’ or ‘fulguration’ .35 Once more, this direct presence is experienced and expressed as a combin­ ation o f passion and infinity, and is particularly evident in Masson’s eroticism, with its ‘mode orgiaque d’effacement des bornes du moi’ .36 In the face o f this explosive plenitude,37 consciousness (either in Masson or in Leiris) simply perceives an immediate ‘enigma’ instead o f attempting to ‘transcribe a reality’ .38 In the same way, M irô’s paintings are ‘passionate mysteries’39 which neither offer nor require any commentary or explanation, constituting instead a presence which is ‘significatif en lui-même et non pas simplement par les objets qu’il décrit’ .40 Presence in Picasso is similarly ‘absolutely direct, frank, spontaneous’, making redundant ‘any kind o f commentary’ on what ‘by definition is incommensurable’ .41 This 1930 reaction still holds in 1968: Leiris’s first and last vision o f a Picasso drawing is o f ‘cette présence absolue’ and ‘l’aboutissement péremptoire, la réussite d’évi­ dence’ which marks its immediate emergence and the redundancy o f any gloss.42 Supportive o f this essential presence are the freedom and invention o f the artist, psychological and technical elements which Leiris recalls throughout his postwar prefaces for the catalogues o f Picasso’s shows at the Galerie Louise Leiris (ex-Kahnweiler).43 But for Leiris it is perhaps above all in the work o f Francis Bacon that this peremptory and self-sufficient ‘présence qui sera essentiellement le surgissement d’une présence’ is evidenced in all its immediacy, brutality and liberty.44 His paintings reveal ‘un présent absolu que pas plus espérance que nostalgie n’embuent’ in a style and a form ‘visant [...] à une “ immédiateté” exempte de double fond’ . N o moral or political message is carried by such art: ‘que l’image sortie [...] affirme énergiquement sa présence, un point c’est tout’ . The only law which

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may be attached to such images is the law o f freedom, their ‘extreme brutality’ and ‘absence o f a tradition’ being symptoms not o f a sensationalism so much as o f a ‘liberté devenue en quelque sorte statuaire’ . Such a non-symbolic freedom leaves the spectator ‘convié à saisir et non à fabuler’.45 The major impediment to this presence without relation, which has explicitly preoccupied modern French art since Cézanne and French writing since Valéry,46 is o f course that it is inevitably thwarted by the very medium which registers its pure existence. At the same time, therefore, as praising the absolutely pure presence, Leiris recog­ nizes the inevitably spatio-temporal nature o f representation, and so shifts his praise to the effect o f presence given by the modern and real nature o f the images produced.47 These details return us at once to the fetishism o f presence, and they are significantly described near the beginning o f Le Ruban au cou d’ Olympia as simultaneously erotic and religious: Les bas que la fille d’antan gardait pour ne pas se dissoudre dans le flou édenique de la nudité totale. Appât auquel on mord, le détail qui fait de nous des saints Thomas touchant du doigt. Attendu ou inattendu, l’instant qui donne prise et désarme le sinistre ruissellement du temps.48

It is understandable that Leiris should discuss the confirming detail o f a modern and real image o f presence in the context o f Manet’s Olympia, a painting which became a modernist fetish in itself precisely for its exposure o f the fetishism o f a pure presence; but more indicative o f the consistency o f Leiris’s preoccupation is the fact that he effortlessly adds Picasso and Bacon to the name o f Manet, in order to create an idiosyncratic list o f painters who have revealed a naked presence with the aid o f a modern and real accessory: Le ruban noué autour du cou de l’Olympia de Manet et les mules que ses pieds aussi crûment nus que l’est senti tout son corps grâce à l’ajout de ces accessoires, paraissent prêts à perdre. Le bracelet-montre qui, encerclant leur poignet, empêche plusieurs des innombrables femmes nues que Picasso a dessinées ou peintes d’être des Vénus mythologiques. La seringue hypodermique plantée par Bacon dans le bras d’un nu féminin et qui, en la modernisant, rend la figure plus véridiquement présente, (pp. 14-15)

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Leiris had in fact already drawn this same analogy between Bacon and Picasso in 19 7 1,49 and— by way o f the Baudelairean notion o f modern presence— between Bacon and Manets kind o f art in 1977.50 Here equally, Leiris s focus on the proof o f a real, modern presence in art remains absolutely constant. His 1930 article, ‘Toiles récentes de Picasso’, calls Picasso a genius for creating not a distance between representation and reality but a rapprochement such that ‘le réel est alors éclairé par tous ses pores, on le pénètre, il devient alors pour la première fois et réellement une R E A L IT E ’ . It is this presencing rather than absenting o f reality which in turn actually creates the key element o f freedom: ‘La véritable liberté [...] ne consiste en rien à nier le réel ou “ s’évader” ; bien au contraire elle implique la reconnaissance nécessaire du réel [...]. Picasso est libre — le peintre le plus libre qui ait jamais existé — lui qui connaît mieux que quiconque le poids exact des choses, l’échelle de leur valeur, leur matérialité’ (p. 64). In passing, we can note how this stress on materiality, in part an effect o f the heterological aesthetics o f Documents, where the article was first published, again marks a divergence from the neoKantianism o f Kahnweiler who during the same period, in the essay ‘Naissance de l’œuvre d’art’ , significantly stressed the article’s ‘besoin d’éternisation d’une réalité vécue’ and the resulting canvas as that ‘expérience vécue [...], visible pour tout le monde, éternisée’ (pp. 66, 67), and who elsewhere, in contemporary accounts, relied on idealist distinction and transformation, with sculpture in ‘L’essence de la sculpture’ therefore being a ‘témoignage visible de la suprématie de l’esprit humain sur le monde issu de son imagination’ (p. 102), and the artwork in ‘Forme et vision’ resting essentially on a ‘vision pure’ as opposed to a ‘vision pratique’ (pp. 1 1 2 —13). As late as 1983, in ‘Face et profil’,51 Leiris is still making similar ‘realist’ claims for Francis Bacon. Bacon’s art is ‘plus réel au réel’, feeling rather than describing the reality o f the thing, experiencing it ‘à partir des données brutes de la perception’ rather than suggesting it through style (pp. 248, 249). This creative rather than transcriptive realism (the same, he reminds us, as that o f Picasso) does not so much figure as install the real, stripping the thing ‘pour n’en plus garder que la réalité nue’ and once again employing a heroic freedom (‘par le jeu actif de forces contraires, volonté réaliste et désir de transcrire avec une liberté totale’) in order ultimately to win through to a Nietzschean sense o f exhilarating despair in the presence o f brute facticity (pp. 250, 253, 25s).52

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The last quotation in particular offers evidence o f a further means by which Leiris can view representation less as a mediated effect than as the register o f pure presence, namely the artist’s wager. Leiris here employs a new series o f terms, such as struggle, risk, adventure or play, to describe the eternal renewal o f a pure, perceiving presence. This action on the part o f the artist, far from representing a formal disengagement from reality, confirms presence with a decisive act. The 1964 article ‘Picasso’ therefore interprets the artist’s plurality o f styles as a play whose eternally open nature involves Picasso for ever in a new risk.53 As in bullfighting, a theme exploited by both Leiris and Picasso, the real adventure in the latter’s work takes place in an empty arena as a passionate encounter between painter and painting out o f which erupts a dramatic sense o f presence (p. 147). We might say that Picasso’s performance, centred on the ‘qualité proprement fulgurante de la facture’,54 as Leiris put it four years later, is the equivalent o f the matador’s creation o f that dark and crucial presence which we acknowledge with an immediate ‘¡olé!’. Later, Leiris inter­ prets in the same light Picasso’s encoded interaction o f painter and model, or successful fusion o f heteroclite objects into one new presence: whatever the form or theme, Picasso’s whole activity is ‘engagé à plein [...] dans sa propre aventure concrète sans pour autant se détourner de celle du monde’ .55 Bacons risk-taking is o f the same order, the gambles he takes with painting (such as throwing or rubbing) and his general struggle to create order by way o f chance leading Leiris to entitle one piece on him ‘Bacon le Hors-la-loi’ .56 Bacon’s ‘passionate realism’ is ultimately but the representation o f his belief in our essentially adventurous state o f being, and is for that reason completely figurative and existential rather than abstract and formal: Pour lui, le jeu ne consiste pas tellement à inventer des signes, il est avant tout une joute entre l’artiste et ce que celui-ci entend signifier, lutte qui, interaction entre contingence du motif et image que l’on trace en se fiant aux pulsions qui subjectivement nous animent, engendre cette ‘tension’ que Francis Bacon réclame et qui, selon lui, fait forcément défaut aux œuvres non figuratives.57

These bravura performances already imply a spectator. ‘Face et profil’ admits that even the raw data o f presence in Bacon must be registered and responded to by another, objectifying presence, one in fact already existing within every adventurer, ‘notre esprit de specta-

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teur’ (p. 248). In Bacon this is acknowledged from the beginning by his conscious staging o f the logic o f self-portraiture (involving mirrors, triptychs, cages, raised platforms, the use o f photographs, for example, as in the 1970 Three Studies of the Male Back). In Picasso there is a general recognition, in Leiris s view, that un jeu [...] consiste à se faire entendre du spectateur’,58 one given a particularly powerful twist in Picasso (and in Masson) by virtue o f the essentially erotic nature o f this confrontation with the Other: ‘le peintre et son modèle, explicitement, n’est plus qu’un cas particulier de la confrontation de l’homme et de la femme, confrontation elle-même englobée dans celle de l’être conscient avec l’Autre qui lui fait face’ .59 And in Leiris, o f course, the very representation o f these fulgurations, doubled in turn by subsequent writerly attempts at reproducing their effects, admits a double polarity o f reflection at the heart o f perceiving presence. Beyond this staging, the projected spectator is obviously a key mechanism for enabling the emergence o f an objectified self­ presence. For this reason, three extended syntheses by Leiris o f the ideas so far outlined are worth examining in more detail, in order to see how they simultaneously reveal both this desire for self-projection and the gap within presence. The first such synthesis, Le Ruban au cou d'Olympia, published in 1981, resembles in appearance and approach ‘the latest stage o f research’ on presence (as the prière d'insérer puts it) which had been conducted throughout the composition o f La Règle du jeu. The pretext for this meditation, Manet’s painting, also famously embodies a dynamic o f colonial and sexual otherness which is o f significance when we come to unveil some o f the ideological investments which successive artists and critics, Leiris included, have placed in Olympia’s presence. For Leiris, the figure in Manet’s painting, before being dubbed Olympia and made to signify in a socio-cultural scene, before being even Victorine Meurent and all she inspired in the painter, is the appearance o f what had previously never been given body, the unadulterated and relation-free ‘épaisseur vivante d’une présence’ (pp. 279, 172), marked literally by the ribbon around her neck. Leiris’s quasi-autobiographical determination here is to learn how meta­ phorically to place such a ribbon around the neck o f things, so rendering them ‘aussi présentes, pressantes, que Y Olympia de Manet avec son cou barré de noir’ (p. 262). This ribbon, then, is the fetish o f presence for Leiris: it is the detail that makes a presence immediately visible, the Ariadne’s thread which helps him through the pheno­

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menological maze o f presence and absence, and even (by way o f the figure-of-eight bow which ties it around Olympias neck) an open sign o f the infinite process o f grasping presence, one made moving by its obvious fragility (pp. 285—7, I 93)- The delicate ribbon therefore represents Leiris s actual perceiving presence, both as the substance o f his litany o f praise ÇRuban couleur de nuit mais qui aide à voir clair. / Ruban dont la noirceur de jadis semble vouloir faire pièce à la gomme du néant... (p. 275)) and as the symbol o f a vivifying writing: ‘Ruban au cou d’Olympia, les lignes que j ’écris noir sur blanc devraient, à tout instant, susciter une présence’ (p. 203). Such writing, like the black band around Olympia’s white neck, seems o f course to confirm as well as contest the possibility o f non-being. For Leiris, however, this duality is precisely what makes Olympia, and hopefully his own writerly presence as critic and autobiographer, ‘parfaitement actuelle’ (p. 39): the ribbon, making visible her non-veiled and indifferent body, ultimately promises a sexual and quasi-sacred annihilation (p. 271); by association, the ribbon o f writing which Leiris attaches to Olympia seeks to climax with an urgent, ultimate verb that would bring about the same (annihilating) actuality o f presence for his own portrait (p. 179; see also p. 72). This urgent reality which the black ribbon (of writing) can call forth is suggested graphically at one point when Leiris interrupts his more involved discourses on the degree to which he can represent any real presence in order to send himself an impatient telegram: R É A L I T É S C O U R T I S A N E S S T O P T R I S T E S O U G A IE S M A IS P O É T IQ U E ­ M E N T M A N IP U L A B L E S S T O P A U T R E S R É A L I T É S I N G R A T E S À L A IS S E R L À S T O P A U T R E S E N C O R E P E A U X D E V A C H E À T O U C H E R PAS M Ê M E A V E C P I N C E T T E S S T O P S O U P IR E A P R È S R É A L I T É S A S S E Z B O N N E S F ILL E S P O U R P R E N D R E L A N G U E A V E C E T F A IR E A M O U R (p. 2 18 )

In using the form o f the telegram, Leiris is no doubt knowingly conjoining the ejaculatory urgency o f its tone and content to the traditionally mortal news that the telegram carries. It therefore comes as no surprise that Leiris’s writerly response to his own imperative is to produce an extended portrait o f the artist as a modernist (pp. 221-48) which, in scrutinizing every avatar o f the modern (from the artistic to the political, the progressive to the transgressive, the intellectual to the visceral) dissipates will with reason and concludes with a fatalistic picture o f the end o f modernity. However, such a pusillanimous presence merely serves to reinforce the incontestable

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reality o f Olympia, who in inviting him ‘par sa modernité (acuité, proximité, instantanéité) à ne pas m’endormir dans une immobile et vaine contemplation’ (p. 142) moreover confirms even in the sup­ posed reality o f her superior willpower Leiris’s formalist presentation o f presence and absence. The passionate reality o f each suit in a pack o f cards, the spiritually charged possibilities o f a landscape, the light and dark o f the sky, the abrupt presence o f poetry as light and shade, reality and illusion, spontaneity and artifice, all these are thus men­ tioned in conjunction with the elemental presence and absence o f Olympia’s sex so tensely concealed and revealed in Manet’s painting. Leiris’s formalist perception o f Olympia ultimately repeats Batailles (and Valéry s) 1955 fetishistic recognition and disavowal o f ‘the “ sacred horror” o f her presence [...] whose simplicity is that o f absence’ and whose modernity is constituted by ‘the sacred game o f technique and light’ .60 (Given that Manet lies outside the tight canon endorsed by Kahnweiler, and that Leiris’s explicit interest in Manet does not predate the war, it is also reasonable to assume that Batailles essay to a degree influenced Leiris.) This overriding desire for perceiving presence means, however, that Leiris effectively decorticates the political layer o f Olympia. As a result, consciousness as disclosure here fails to disclose an entire political agenda o f which the committed writer Leiris is hardly unconscious: it exploits the fetishism o f presence which Manet actually exposes (in Olympia as elsewhere, notably in the 1873 Ball at the Opera); it effectively repeats the Baudelairean perception o f woman as stunning (and stupid) source o f man’s jouissance,61 it continues with an occlusion o f the female body which Olympia on a formal level openly denounces in contemporary academic painting;62 it does not see the politics o f class, sex or race encoded in the work63 as relevant to its idea o f presence. These absent features show clearly how the presence actually perceived by Leiris resembles rather the Olympia o f Hoffmann’s tale ‘The Sand-Man’, as analysed by Freud in ‘The Uncanny’: a robotic, reproducible beauty, both blind and blinding, the terrifying other o f an art criticism dominated by autobiographical anguish.4 As such, Olympia continues the line o f Leirisian phantas­ magoria, beginning with the eponymous surrealist heroine o f Aurora, including Judith, Lucretia and their avatars in L ’Age d...homme, and extending to Khadidja in Fourbis, which represent a male preoccupation with scopic and phallic presence. The second synthesis occurs in the long piece on Francis Bacon entitled ‘Face et profil’ . Here Leiris’s photic limits are given the same

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expression. An atheological real presence is so immediately perceptible for Leiris in Bacons work that ‘le spectateur sans idées préconçues touche à un ordre de réalité chair et sang qui n’est pas sans rapport avec ce qu’un acte paroxystique tel que l’amour physique fait toucher dans la vie ordinaire’ (p. 244). This orgasmic identification with the image leads both the work and the spectator beyond repre­ sentation, aesthetics, even significance, stripping away the occult in order to operate enfoudre (pp. 244, 2463 Subject, painter and spectator form part o f one nervous system, ideation giving way to the direct, internal communications o f that body in débordement which is so often figured in Bacon’s actual work. Frenzy, paroxysm and liquefaction bring perceiving presence to its limits o f distinction, beyond which lies the pure, undifferentiated reality o f a single, solid mass, a state o f presence before representation to which the body in Bacon’s works constantly returns. This coexistence o f frenzied activity and un­ differentiated neutrality in the one pre-aesthetic presence leads Leiris once again to propose a highly formalist view o f the work, which is compared to the counterpointing incandescence and neutrality in jazz, or to the ‘flame and crystal’ metaphysics o f Mallarmé. This violent formalism ultimately discloses the same unsurpassable (con­ sciousness as) ‘sacred horror’ perceived in Olympia’s blank presence: Ne semble-t-il pas qu’un art de cette espèce, où presque dans chaque image la beauté et sa négation apparaissent souverainement conjuguées, fasse écho à la double nature des moments que nous goûtons comme nos moments peut-être les plus spécifiquement humains, ceux dans lesquels — fascinés, séduits jusqu’au vertige — nous croyons toucher à la réalité même, vivre enfin notre vie, mais constatons qu’à notre joie s’associe une étrange dissonance: l’angoisse que suscite cette instance radicalement ennemie, la mort, que toute saisie apparemment plénière de la vie nous dénonce siégeant au plus intime de nous? (p. 255)

Once again Leiris’s obsession with the intuition o f consciousness as an absolute bypasses the heterogeneous nature o f Bacon’s body-image. Thus he readily accepts, in a parenthetical statement, Bacon’s ex­ planation o f the appearance o f a Nazi arm-band in the 1965 Crucifixion as being solely a formal device.65 He effectively repeats Bacon’s apolitical homogenization o f the particular realities o f Ireland, Berlin and Paris in the twenties and thirties as ‘living through forms o f violence’66 by suggesting a superficial connection with Joyce and Beckett based in part on an exoticist view o f the Irish Other (which

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here ridiculously compares Becketts phrases to ‘the discrete emanations from a smouldering peat fire’ (p. 255)) and above all on a formalist interest (one charged with an erotic frisson) in transgressive works which retain the pattern o f a violent ritual while abandoning the referent. Elsewhere, Leiris carefully blurs consideration o f politically and religiously provoked aggression in Bacon, by presenting him as anti-bourgeois in the widest sense, through his exhibition o f ‘l’homme dans sa vérité’ (p. 66).67 Overall, Leiris’s fascination with the poetically disclosed écorché o f presence and his concomitant lack o f interest in the relational or political significances o f the painting lead him to privilege one set o f terms over another in what Deleuze identifies as the ‘diagrammatic’ emergence o f Bacon’s paintings:68 the figurai over the figurative; the tensile chaos o f the body over the uniform deadness o f the background; the thick bloody or creamy spurt o f life over the thin, nihilating screen o f black and Prussian blue; the intense play o f paint over the untreated ‘outzones’ o f canvas; the systolic and the hysterical over the diastolic and the abject. Yet the immediate explosion o f presence which Leiris perceives depends, for its foregrounding, on the delicate balance maintained with catas­ trophe. The very success o f portraying presence thus works only through an unresolved relation with failure, and depends on a pre­ present biffure (painting as a simultaneous addition and effacement) and accompanying décalage (painting as disjunction, interval and trans­ lation). This apperception would incidentally also immediately remedy one significant absence in Leiris’s art criticism, namely, the extended analysis o f those portraits made o f him by Masson, Giaco­ metti, Picasso, Lam and Bacon, for the hysteria o f painted presence would here reach its apogée, or tip over into abjection.09 The third o f our syntheses is the 1973 essay on Picasso, ‘Le peintre et son modèle’, a mature overview that incorporates and reorients reactions to the artist’s work developed over the previous forty years, and distinguished from these by a double distancing, being neither an immediate and particular response (i.e. not for the catalogue o f a new exhibition) nor even primarily for a French audience (appearing originally in English in Picasso in retrospect.70 Leiris immediately locates Picasso’s work in an autobiographical genre wherein fabulous in­ vention, meeting historical events, produces a simultaneously political and artistic commitment: ‘engagé à plein comme il l’est (ses œuvres en témoignent) dans sa propre aventure concrète sans pour autant se détourner de celle du monde’ (p. 102). This doubly legitimizes the

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abiding theme in Picasso o f the ‘mute dialogue’ between painter and model, one raised to a mythological level where, as in the 1927 Vollard suite inspired by Balzac’s Le Chef d'œuvre inconnu, it embodies the essential problems o f representation versus readability, personal versus public signification. What Leiris instantly sees in this existential con­ frontation (repeating the resolution o f lack) is Picasso’s immediate and imposing power o f vision, a pre-original fajvoir su voir cela that transforms heteroclite objects through the genial je u ’ o f their grasping into the perceiving unity o f Picasso’s own presence: ‘ [r]egard curieux de tout et qui scrute tout, le regard de Picasso, à la fois le plus attentif, le plus mobile et le plus pénétrant’ (p. 112). As evidence, Leiris gives a long list o f instances in Picasso’s works o f this visual act which, notwithstanding his implicit acknowledgement o f the erotic power relations involved, he essentializes by calling ‘presque absence d’acte’ . This primary gaze calls forth an endless parade o f concrete yet mythical spectacles and discoveries. Insisting that their recurrence, and accompanying irony and humour, confirm both a greater concern for the plastic over the priapic, and a continuing dialectical relation with history, Leiris concludes by emphasizing Picasso’s endless inventive­ ness and implicitly criticizing Braque, Gris and Léger for eventually falling back into theorizing. Noting that ‘ [a]ujourd’hui, malgré fortune et gloire, il a su rester l’artiste qui regarde et s’ingénie comme s’il avait encore tout à découvrir’ (p. 131), the essay closes with a cameo encapsulating the dynamics o f singularity and doubling, stylish self-construction and deconstruction, erotic unveiling and ironic reveiling, exploited by both Picasso and Leiris. So we are told that Picasso, ‘fils de peintre’, is one day ceremoniously handed the paternal palette and brushes by his father, ‘selon le protocole de l’alternative’ wherein the matador hands over to the novice. In this way, the artist that he already was is ‘ce qu’est demeuré — miraculeusement — Picasso’ (p. 133). Becoming and commentary are therefore resolved in ritual spectacle. Leiris’s critical projection o f autobiographical anxiety envisions Picasso as an idealist self-presencing sustained through a scopic and symbolic reduction untroubled by intellectual, plastic or economic limits. Such hagiography, however, in form and content glosses over some major implications in Picasso’s work. Leiris’s appreciative but pedagogical gaze obviously has none o f the ironic and playful brio observed in Picasso’s own performative response. Its investment in the successful outcomes o f a perpetual ‘remise en question’ ultimately

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emphasizes qualification over breakdown, diversification over erasure, self-redefinition over violent dissipation (pp. 125—6). Its homogenizing fixation specifically chooses to ignore the abyssal grounding o f ‘Picasso’ in thematic and stylistic appropriation and pastiche. Rosalind Krauss’s characterization o f Picasso in this context as ‘the very model o f the inflationary artist’ points to that other model o f ‘Picasso’ assiduously ignored here by Leiris but faced symbolically and stylistically by the painter himself, including importantly in the series o f works on painter and model, namely, the ‘fortune et gloire’ which Kahnweiler and the Galerie Louise Leiris helped to establish and thereafter discreetly manage.71 Part o f this management, o f course, included Kahnweiler’s retrospective emphasis on artistic and commercial integrity, a position tacitly endorsed by Leiris’s essay but early on in his career more aggressively defended in relation to Picasso. It is telling that, in a set o f Compléments at the end o f Un génie sans piédestal, we are given Leiris’s contemporary robust dismissal o f Max Raphael’s 1933 Proudhon — Marx — Picasso, whose view o f Picasso as symptom and symbol o f bourgeois alienation and Christian European reaction is scorned by Leiris as a Stalinist dogmatism that debases Marxist thinking as much as it dislikes the transgressive intelligence o f a Freud or a Picasso.72 John Berger’s well-known return to this same critical approach, in The Success and Failure of Picasso, is actually dedicated, inter alia, to Raphael, ‘a forgotten but great critic’.73 Responding in a re-edition to criticism o f his own ‘doctrinaire’ position, as well as obliquely defending Raphael’s pos­ ition, Berger shifts the political critique onto aesthetic grounds in both a new preface, where he discusses Picasso’s pre-Cubist work, and especially the 1906 Self-Portrait, as ‘a presence striving to become seen’ (p. xvii) and a symbol o f the painter as ‘master o f the unfinished [whose] energy surpasses the existent’ (p. xviii), and an additional final chapter, where he uses the late theme o f painter and model to move away from a political focus on the ‘failure o f revolutionary nerve’ and towards a view o f the work as an existential failure, being that o f an ‘old man’s frenzy [producing] painting swearing at its own power and at its own mother. Painting insulting what it had once celebrated as sacred’ (pp. 206, 214). Crucially, Leiris’s critical silence on the subject o f politico-aesthetic failure in ‘Le peintre et son modèle’ has the incidental effect o f preventing him from considering the practice o f deliberate failure in Picasso, this being a dialogical liberation from ‘Picasso’ that is

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powerfully evidenced in the late works that focus on painter and model. Reviewing three such canvases, for example, all from 1963 and hanging now in the Reina Sofia museum in Madrid, it becomes clear how Picasso works initially to desublimate the overdetermined encounter and thwart any facility o f facture, in order precisely to achieve an emancipatory effect.74 Stereotypical positions and fetishes (the male, bearded painter leaning forward on a seat, facing right, clothed, shod, wearing a hat, holding a palette, arm extended, openmouthed; the female model seated on the floor, facing left, naked, her left arm or occasionally her feet acting like a tree-trunk rooting her to the ground, displaying stasis if not indifference where the painter seems urgent; the crude and massive easel dividing the canvas and separating the figures whose feet none the less almost touch) are blocked in impatiently with thick strokes, indicative contouring and starkly contrastive areas o f colour (complete with bare or running patches), as though to bring into view without delay once again the possibility o f authentic failure beyond the ‘miraculous’ ‘Picasso’. At this point an imagery o f failure looms forth from the collective variations, as a thematic endorsement o f this stylistic attempt which the artist must become: the detail o f a chair leg in one work becomes transposed in the next to the nails o f the picture frame, suggesting a perforated strip or even coffin lid running down through the middle o f the picture; the easel arms, counterpointed by the model’s supporting hand or the painter’s feet, suddenly confront us in the centre o f one canvas, like an anamorphic skull or mask complete with indicative eye-sockets and horns; the painter’s white face hovers openmouthed like a death mask. In effect, Picasso offers a critical lesson that Leiris does not match in his essay (however sensitive he is to such a dialectic in his autobiography), wherein the artist’s obsessive return to a dilatory seizure o f presence faces up to the subject’s constitutive lack. The painter’s fixed gaze here acknowledges the real origin and end o f perceiving presence, being ‘le manque constitutif de l’angoisse de la castration’, a schism inherent already in the act o f consciousness o f which the painting is the mise-en-scène, and what Merleau-Ponty has termed ‘déhiscence’ , an equally inherent relationship o f inter­ subjectivity that remains permanently open and unresolvable like a wound, and can only be evaded rather than closed by the will to perceive a relation-free presence based on decortication.75 Picasso’s acknowledgement here o f the ‘étrange dissonance’ grounding the relationship between painter and model brings him close to the

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contemporary position expounded by Merleau-Ponty who, in his last published essay, ‘L’œil et l’esprit’, reaches the conclusion that ‘ [l]a vision n’est pas un certain mode de la pensée ou présence à soi: c’est le moyen qui m ’est donné d’être absent de moi-même, d’assister du dedans à la fission de l’être, au terme de laquelle seulement je me ferme sur moi’ (p. 81). Leiris’s art writings, in seeking to uncover the somatic presence that is the ideal goal o f pure autobiography, unwittingly demonstrate this internal fission and in so doing reinforce its unsurpassable inherence. In particular, the charged autofigurative event which his most involved art criticism foregrounds ultimately presents to us not the Being before resemblance but that eye o f consciousness which, freed o f Cartesian dioptrics, sees for us, in Merleau-Ponty’s words, ‘ce qui manque au monde pour être tableau, et ce qui manque au tableau pour être lui-même [...] et il voit, une fois fait, le tableau qui répond à tous ces manques’ (pp. 25-7). If Leiris’s critical eye obviously dilates before this (autobiographical) consciousness (as inadequacy), then the additional organ o f Leiris’s ear supports this same transformative urge in his experience o f the musical spectacles offered by jazz and opera.76 It is to a consideration o f this otobiography that I now turn.

Notes to Chapter 1 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

7.

8. 9. 10. 11.

C f. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time (Oxford: Blackwell, 1962), 17 1 (§133). ‘Alberto Giacometti’ , Documents 4 (Sept. 1929), 2 0 9 -14 ( 210). ‘Une peinture d’Antoine Caron’ , Documents 7 (Dec. 1929), 34 8 -5 5 . To be precise, pp. 348 and 350 o f the article being reconstituted almost exactly on pp. 10 2 -3 o f the Folio edition. ‘Alberto Giacometti’, 209. ‘Le peintre et son modèle’ , in A u verso des Images (Montpellier: Fata Morgana, 1980), 4 5 -7 9 (47-52); reprinted in Un génie sans piédestal (Paris: Fourbis, 1992), 10 1-3 4 . See also ‘Picasso’ , Les Lettres nouvelles (Apr.-M ay 1964), 1 4 3 -7 , esP- r4 5 i reprinted as ‘La peinture est plus forte que m oi...’ in Un génie sans piédestal, 8 7-92. ‘Portraits’ , in Michel Leiris and Georges Limbour, André Masson et son univers (Geneva and Paris: Trois Collines, 1947), 19 5 -9 (198). See also ‘En fête avec André Masson’ , in A u verso des Images, 8 1 - 9 1 . ‘Autre heure, autres traces’ , ibid. 9 3 -10 7 (107). ‘Mirô soir et matin’ , in UEmerveillé merveilleux (Paris: Le Vent d’Arles, 1973); reprinted in Fissures (Paris: Maeght, 1974), 84. André Breton, Les Constellations de Joan Miré (N ew York: Pierre Matisse, 1959). Alberto Giacometti, cited by Pierre Schneider in ‘M irô’, Horizon 1/ 4 (Mar. 1 9 5 9 ), 7 2 .

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12. Guillaume Apollinaire, Chroniques d ’Art (Paris: Gallimard, i960), 57. It is worth noting in passing that Kahnweiler believed that Apollinaire knew nothing about art. 13. Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, Mes Galeries et mes peintres (Paris: Gallimard), 19 61. 14. Kahnweiler specifically links the paintings and constructions o f Picasso and Braque from 1 9 1 2 - 1 3 with this mask, an example o f which was owned by Picasso. See Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, The Sculptures o f Picasso (London: Rodney Phillips, 1949), preface. 15. See Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, Ju an Gris. Sa Vie, son oeuvre, ses écrits (Paris: Gallimard, 1946). 16. Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, ‘L’art nègre et le cubisme’, Présence Africaine 3 (Paris-Dakar, 1948); reprinted in Confessions esthétiques (Paris: Gallimard, 1963), 2 2 2 -3 6 (236). The date and publication venue o f this article give an added (idealistic) political dimension to the praise for ‘admirable freedom’ . 17. Pierre Dufour, ‘Actualité du cubisme’ , Critique, nos. 2 6 7-8 (Aug.-Sept. 1969), 809-25 (820). 18. Kahnweiler married Léontine (Lucie) Godon on 5 Nov. 1904, while Leiris married Louise (Zette) Godon on 2 Feb. 1926 (see L'A ge d'homme, 195). (It was revealed after Leiris’s death that Louise was in fact the illegitimate daughter rather than the sister o f Lucie.) On 16 Apr. 1925 the remaining sister, Berthe, married Elie Lascaux, who had been introduced to Kahnweiler by M ax Jacob, Leiris’s first mentor, and had in turn introduced Kahnweiler to Masson in 19 2 1. These were the first two artists from whom Kahnweiler bought when he opened the Galerie Simon, 29 bis rue d’Astorg, in Sept. 1920. Many o f these people, the Leirises included, were to end up together in the southern zone during the Second World War. 19. See in particular: Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, ‘La montée du cubisme’ , in Confessions esthétiques; ‘La naissance du cubisme’ , Les Temps modernes 4 (Jan. 1946), 625—39; ‘A propos d’une conférence de Paul Klee’ , Les Temps modernes 16 (Jan. 1947), 7 5 8 -6 4 (reprinted in Confessions esthétiques); ‘La place de Georges Seurat’ , Critique 2 / 8 -9 (Jan.-Feb. 1947), 5 4 -9 (reprinted in Confessions esthétiques); ‘Exposition des œuvres récentes de Picasso’ , Les Temps modernes 48 (Oct. 1949), 75 8 -9 ; ‘Le véritable Béarnais’ , Les Temps modernes 53 (Mar. 1950), 17 0 7 - 1 0 (reprinted in Confessions esthétiques); Les Années héroïques du cubisme (Paris: Braun, 1950), n.p.; Mes Galeries et mes peintres; Confessions esthétiques. 20. Dufour suggests that Kahnweiler also contributed to these, speaking o f ‘des schémas kantiens à travers lesquels Kahnweiler renvoyait à ses amis cubistes l’image de leur propre démarche’ (‘Actualité du cubisme’ , 819). 2 1. See also the relatively early and quasi-philosophical piece, ‘La montée du cubisme’, originally written in German as early as 1 9 1 4 - 1 5 (and reprinted in French in Confessions esthétiques), which appeals to a Lockean distinction between primary and secondary qualities in order to present Cubism’s proliferation o f formal over perceptualist criteria as the unconscious liberation o f painting from optical limitations (p. 33). Anticipating, and perhaps predetermining, Leiris’s later ethnographic interest in African art, Kahnweiler reinforces this schematic view by drawing an analogy between the sculptural form o f Cubist constructions and ritual masks from the Cote d’Ivoire, where the latter uses ‘schematized forms’ and ‘stimulating’ details to produce ‘l’évocation du visage humain dans l’esprit

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du spectateur’ (p. 41). It is significant that when Kahnweiler returns to this example, in the 1948 essay ‘L’art nègre et le cubisme’ , he specifies that the freedom given to western art by the Ivoirean masks derives from their nonimitative use o f ‘le pouvoir des “ signes plastiques’” (p. 236). ‘La naissance du cubisme’ (1946) also describes this autonomy o f the art image as being no less than ‘la tentative d’éviter l’imitation de la lumière’ , the result being the relationfree composition and emergence o f a ‘unique’ object (pp. 6 3 1 —2, 638). 22. Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, ‘Mallarmé et la peinture’ , in Confessions esthétiques, 2 14 -2 1. 23. In the later publication o f ‘interviews’ or conversations with Picasso, Kahnweiler also recalls having said in 1948: ‘ [l]a commande oblige l’artiste — ou l’artisan — à se fixer un but précis. Il est donc contraint de prévoir comment sera son tableau à la fin, ce qui exclut la liberté de la “ creation perpétuelle’” : Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, Six Entretiens avec Picasso (Paris: L’Echaloppe, 1995), 14. (These interviews first appeared in Quadrun 2 (Brussels, Nov. 1956).) ‘Le véritable Béarnais’ (1950) repeats the idea that analytic Cubism frees us from the illusions o f Impressionism by communicating in writing (p. 1708). In the same year, Kahnweiler’s small book, Les Années héroïques du cubisme, similarly concludes that in seeking to render the essence rather than the appearance o f objects, Cubist painters ‘inventent librement des “ signes” qui, tout en signifiant les objets du monde extérieur, ne les imitent plus’ . In another recollected interview with Picasso, dating from 19 55, Kahnweiler notes the latter’s insistence on discovery rather than recovery: ‘Vous comprenez, ce n’est pas le “ temps retrouvé” , mais le “ temps à découvrir’” : Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, Entretiens avec Picasso au sujet des Femmes d ’Alger (Paris: L’Echaloppe, 1991), s.p. (These first appeared in Aujourd’hui, art et architecture 4, Sept. 1955.) Another interview, a week later (7 Feb.), recollects Picasso’s praise o f Van G ogh’s invention o f new artistic subjects such as potatoes or shoes. Kahnweiler’s ‘Une lettre inédite de Juan Gris’ (1956) equally states unequivocally: ‘les signes du peintre sont une écriture sur la surface plane’ (Confessions esthétiques, 2 11). This notion o f freedom conjoined with an emphasis on the sign returns in the 1958 preface to the re-edition o f ‘La montée du cubisme’ : ‘Si je me demande aujourd’hui ce que somme toute le cubisme a apporté de nouveau, je ne trouve qu’une seule chose à dire: grace à l’invention de signes qui figurent le monde extérieur, il a fourni à l’art plastique la possibilité de transmettre au spectateur des expériences visuelles de l’artiste sans imitation illusioniste’ (p. 10). 24. Leiris’s judgement o f Derain can be turned back on itself, since it not only obeys Kahnweilerian orthodoxy (Derain no longer being one o f the stable) but echoes a witticism in Gertrude Stein’s The Autobiography o f Alice B. Toklas (Bodley Head, 193 3, repub. Penguin, 2001) à propos Derain and Hemingway: ‘ Gertrude Stein added further, you see he is like Derain. You remember Monsieur de Tuille said, when I did not understand why Derain was having the success he was having that it was because he looks like a modern and he smells o f the museums’ (p. 234). More than likely, the phrase was by then already hackneyed. For another example o f this traditional waspishness (which uncannily echoes Leiris’s evocative description o f Vlaminck), see John Richardson’s snobbish dismissal o f Derain as being evidently the son o f a pastrycook: A Life of Picasso, ii: lgoy—ig iy : The Painter o f Modern L f e (London: Pimlico, 1996), p. 70. Regarding the

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unrealized illustration by Roger, see Aliette Armel, Michel Leiris (Paris: Fayard, 1 9 9 7 ), 250. 25. O n this, see ibid. 38 2 -4 10 .

26. For Leiris s view that his is not a synthetic approach, see Leiris s quoted remark, in Jean Jam in’s ‘Présentation d’Afrique Noire: la création plastique’, in Miroir de VAfrique (Paris: Gallimard, Quarto, 1996), 1 1 0 5 - 1 5 (1106). 27. Martin Heidegger, A n Introduction to Metaphysics (1959; N ew Haven and London, 1987), 193. See also 6 1, 18 0 -1, 190 and 205. 28. Quoted in Werner Spies, ‘Vendre des tableaux — donner à lire’, in Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler1 Centre Georges Pompidou, Musée national d ’art moderne, 22 novembre 1984-28 janvier 1985, catalogue compiled by Dominique Bozo (Paris: Centre Georges Pompidou, 1984), 1 7 - 4 4 (18). 29. ‘Henri Laurens ou la sculpture en bonnes mains’ , Brisées, 9 4 -5 (94). The article was originally published in 1945. In the same year, Leiris described the world o f Elie Lascaux’s work as a ‘merveilleux quotidien’ , and that o f M ax Jacob as a ‘fantastique quotidien’ (Brisées, 92, 90). This last remark was made at the matinée commemorating Jacob (who had died at Drancy on 5 Mar. 1944) held in the newly liberated Théâtre des Mathurins. This context confers a resonance o f hope and pathos on the bare expression o f a pure state o f being-there. 3 0 . ‘Pierres pour un Alberto Giacometti’, Brisées, 14 6 -5 6 (150, 155); reprinted in Pierres pour un Alberto Giacometti (Caen and Paris: L’Echoppe, 1991), 9—27. 3 1 . ‘Alberto Giacometti en timbre-poste ou en médaillon’, Brisées, 2 4 5 -9 (247) (reprinted in Pierres pour un Alberto Giacometti, 3 1-8 ). 32. ‘Alberto Giacometti’ , Documents 4 (Sept. 1929), 2 0 9 -14 (210). For a description o f wonder as ‘the first o f all the passions [which] has no opposite’ , see René Descartes, The Passions o f the Soul, article 53 in The Philosophical Writings o f Descartes, I, trans. J. Cottingham, R . Stoothoff and D. Murdoch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 350. 33. Michel Leiris et Jacqueline Delange, Afrique Noire: La Création plastique (Paris: Gallimard, 1967). For details o f the problems relating to the production o f this work, see Jean Jamin, ‘Présentation d’Afrique Noire: la création plastique’, 34. 35. 36. 37. 38.

110 5 -15 ‘Le monde imaginaire d’André Masson’ , Brisées, 2 6 7-8 (267). Ibid. 268. ‘En fete avec André Masson’, A u verso des Images, 8 1—91 (88). Ibid. 89. ‘La ligne sans bride’, in André Masson, Massacres et autres dessins (Paris: Hermann,

i 9 7 i), L 9 39. ‘Joan M irô’ , Brisées, 32—7 (35). 40. ‘Autour de Joan M irô’, in The Prints o f Joan Miro (N ew York: Valentin, 1947); reprinted, together with ‘Repentirs et ajouts’ , in Fernand Mourlot, Joan Mirô, lithographe, i: 1930—1952 (Paris: Mazo, 1972), 45, 39. 4 1. ‘Toiles récentes de Picasso’ , Documents 2 /2 (1930), 5 7 -7 1 (62, 57); reprinted in Un génie sans piédestal, 2 3 -3 2 . 42. Preface to the catalogue ‘Picasso: Dessins 1966—19 6 7’ for the Galerie Louise Leiris exhibition, 28 F e b -2 3 Mar. 1968, 4; reprinted as ‘N on hors du temps...’ in Un génie sans piédestal, 9 7 -10 0 . 43. See, e.g., the 1954 ‘Picasso et la Comédie Humaine ou les Avatars de Gros-Pied’ ,

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or the 1959 ‘Picasso et les Ménines de Velasquez’ (pp. 54, 75). Both prefaces were republished in Un génie sans piédestal. 44. ‘Le grand jeu de Francis Bacon’ , preface to Francis Bacon, œuvres récentes (Paris: Galerie Claude Bernard, 1977), n.p. 4$. ‘Bacon le hors-la-loi’ , Critique (May 1981), 5 1 9 -2 5 (52 0 -1). See also the rather banal 1966 interview with Jean Clay, entitled ‘Le peintre de la détresse humaine’ , included in Francis Bacon ou la brutalité du fait (Paris: Seuil, 1995), 59 -6 8, where Leiris immediately replaces Clay’s description o f Bacons work as ‘tragique et caricatural’ with the term présence, and emphasizes the ‘évidence brute’ , beyond catharsis, o f this presence (pp. 59, 60, 62). 46. I am speaking not o f the sublime but o f a presence ([as] consciousness) unsupported by narrative. Bacon himself indicates this preoccupation in Cézanne and Valéry. In his talks with David Sylvester (Interviews with Francis Bacon, 1962—1979 (London: Thames and Hudson, (1975) 1980), 6 3-4 , Bacon states: ‘ (FB) I always hope to be able to make a great number o f figures without a narrative. (DS) As Cézanne does in the bathers? (FB) He does’, adding shortly afterwards: T want very, very much to do the thing that Valéry said— to give the sensation without the boredom o f its conveyance’ (p. 65). 47. An interesting parallel to this is the way in which Leiris’s characterization o f the artist Wifredo Lam shifts attention from an art that is ‘antillais’ to one that is ‘universalisé, and so from an already constructed view o f Lam as a ‘super­ transplanté’ to a consciously celebratory notion o f how this ‘déracinement’ creates authenticity and freedom (pp. 36, 38). See Michel Leiris, Wifredo Lam, édition établie et annotée par Jean Jamin (Brussels: Didier Devillez, 1997). 48. Le Ruban au cou d'Olym pia (Paris: Gallimard, 1981), 15. 49. ‘Francis Bacon aujourd’hui’ , preface to the catalogue for the Bacon exhibition at the Grand Palais, Paris, 19 7 1—2; reprinted with ‘ C e que m ’ont dit les peintures de Francis Bacon’ as part o f ‘Francis Bacon ou la vérité criante’ , in A u verso des Images, 7 -4 3 (26). 50. See ‘Le grand jeu de Francis Bacon’ : ‘l’on pourrait croire que le peintre avait — spontanément — fait sienne la phrase de Baudelaire assurant qu’une moitié de l’art est “ l’éternel et l’immuable” et l’autre la modernité, soit “ le transitoire, le fugitif, le contingent’” . 5 1 . ‘Full face and profile’ , introduction to Francis Bacon (Oxford: Phaidon, 1983), 1—36; French version, ‘ Face et profil’ , published at the end o f the volume (pp. 2 4 3 -5 5 ). All quotations and page references relate to the French version. In a letter from Leiris to Bacon, dated 1 Dec. 19 8 1, included in Francis Bacon ou la brutalité du fait, Leiris notes that he and Bacon agree on what realism is (cf. at this point the Journal, p. 739), criticizes Expressionism for its ‘côté caricatural’ (p. 136) (see n. 45 above on ‘Le peintre de la détresse humaine’ for an interesting echoing o f this term), and opines that one can be a realist while treating tragedy or mythology, since the reaction is what matters. 52. ‘Face et profil’ , 255. Leiris here adapts the phrase ‘exhilarated despair’ from David Sylvester: see Interviews with Francis Bacon, 83. 53. ‘Picasso’ , Les Lettres nouvelles (Apr.-M ay 1964), 1 4 3 - 7 (145). 54. Preface to the catalogue ‘Picasso: Dessins 19 6 6 -6 7 ’, ibid. 4. 55. ‘Le peintre et son modèle’ , ibid. 48. 56. ‘Bacon le hors-la-loi’ , Critique (May 1981), 519 —25 (525).

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57. ‘ Face et profil’, ibid. 247. 58. ‘Picasso’, ibid. 145. 59. ‘Picasso et la comédie humaine, ou les avatars de Gros Pied’, Brisées, 18 3 -9 7 (194); reprinted in Un génie sans piédestal, 4 3-6 4 . See also ‘Le peintre et son modèle’ , Brisées, 60, reprinted in Un génie sans piédestal, 10 1-3 4 ; and ‘Idoles’, in André Masson et son univers, esp. 169—70. 60. Georges Bataille, M anet in Œ uvres complètes (Paris: Gallimard, 1979), ix. 10 3 -6 7 , 142, 147. 61. Charles Baudelaire, Le Peintre de la vie moderne, in Œuvres complètes (Paris: Gallimard, Pléiade, 1961), 1 1 5 2 -9 2 , esp. 11 8 1 . 62. One telling (and hilarious) contrast to Olympia is Louis-Frédéric Schutzenberger’s 1865 Salon painting, Europe enlevée par Jupiter. See Timothy James Clark, The Painting o f Modem Life: Paris in the Art o f Manet and his Followers (London: Thames and Hudson, 1984), 1 1 8 - 2 1 . An equally instructive comparison on every level can be made with Frédéric Bazille’s La Toilette, which hangs in the Musée Fabre, Montpellier. 63. Here we can compare the painting with Gérôme’s Oriental Slave Market or Delacroix’s The Death o f Sardanapalus, and consider the contemporary description o f Olympia by Victor Fournel (pseudonym Gérante) as Hottentot. O n this last point, see Charles Bernheimer, Figures o f III Repute: Representing Prostitution in Nineteenth-century France (Cambridge, M A : Harvard University Press, 1989), 120. 64. Sigmund Freud, ‘The Uncanny’ [1919], S .E ., 17, 2 1 7 - 5 2 (1955); Penguin Freud Library, vol. 14, Art and Literature (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1990), 3 35 -7 6 . Leiris mentions this form o f Olympia on one occasion in Le Ruban au cou d'Olym pia, 67. 65. See Sylvester, Interviews with Francis Bacon, 65. 66. Ibid. 81. 67. ‘ Le peintre de la détresse humaine’ . 68. Gilles Deleuze, Logique de la sensation, 2 vols. (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, Editions de la Différence, 1981), i. 66 -7. 69. On the equation between hysteria and presence, see ibid. 36—7, where Leiris’s desire is noted. 70. Picasso in retrospect, ed. John Golding and Ronald Penrose (London: Paul Elek, 1973); reprinted in French as ‘Le peintre et son modèle’ , in A u verso des Images, and again in Un génie sans piédestal. All page numbers refer to this last edition. 7 1. Rosalind Krauss, The Picasso Papers (Cambridge, M A : M IT, (1998), 1999), 2 1. Krauss goes on to define Picasso’s dialectical engagement with other artists (such as Picabia) as a ‘reaction formation’, and thereafter even his relationship with ‘Picasso’ as one o f pastiche and dissembling (pp. n o , 210). 72. M ax Raphael, Proudhon — M arx — Picasso. Trois Etudes sur la sociologie de l'art (Paris, Excelsior, 19 33; republished as Proudhon, Marx, Picasso. Three Studies in the Sociology o f A rt (N ew Jersey: Humanities Press, and London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1980). Page numbers are to this latter edition. Michel Leiris, ‘M ax Raphael: Proudhon — Marx — Picasso (Trois Etudes sur la sociologie de l’art.)’ (Paris, Editions Excselsior, 1 vol. in -16, 2 37 p.)’ , in Un génie sans piédestal, 158 —9. 73. John Berger, The Success and Failure o f Picasso (London: Writers and Readers, 1965; repr. Granta, 1992).

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74. This conflicts with the ideological view propounded by Jürgen Habermas in ‘Modernity— An Incomplete Project’ , in Hal Foster (ed.), Postmodern Culture (London: Pluto Press, 1985), 3 - 1 $ (11). 75. Jacques Lacan, Le Séminaire, Livre X I: Les Quatre Concepts fondamentaux de la psychanalyse (Paris: Seuil, 1973). Maurice Merleau-Ponty, ‘L’oeil et l’esprit’ , Les Temps modernes, nos. 18 4 -5 , numéro spécial (Jul.-Oct. 19 6 1), 19 3 -2 2 7 ; republished as L ’ Œ il et l ’Esprit (Paris, Gallimard, 1964). All page references are to this last edition. Leiris must surely have been familiar with this last essay, given the close professional and personal links. The latter as much as the former should have made obvious to Leiris the ‘étrange dissonance’ recognized in this essay: it was on returning from the Merleau-Ponty household that the drunken Leiris took an overdose; Merleau-Ponty had died on 4 M ay 19 6 1, two months before publication o f the essay. 76. Significantly, in reaching the conclusion that music does not relate in the same way as painting to hysteria, Deleuze discusses music only as something pure and divorced from its spectacular dimension: see Logique de la sensation, 38.

CHAPTER 2

Breaking the Sound Barrier: Leiris and Music The Jazz Age Dans la période de grande licence qui suivit les hostilités, le jazz fut un signe de ralliement, un étandard orgiaque, aux couleurs du moment. Il agissait magiquement, et son mode d’influence peut être comparé à une possession. C ’était le meilleur élément pour donner leur vrai sens à ces fêtes, un sens religieux, avec communion par la danse, l’érotisme latent ou manifesté, et la boisson, moyen le plus efficace de niveler le fossé qui sépare les individus les uns des autres dans toute espèce de réunion. Brassés dans les violentes bouffées d’air chaud issues des tropiques, il passait dans le jazz assez de relents de civilisation finie, d’humanité se soumettant aveuglément à la machine, pour exprimer aussi totalement qu’il est possible l’état d’esprit d’au moins quelques-uns d’entre nous: démoralisation plus ou moins consciente née de la guerre, ébahissement naïf devant le confort et les derniers cris du progrès, goût du décor contemporain dont nous devions cependant pressentir con­ fusément l’inanité, abandon à la joie animale de subir l’influence du rythme moderne, aspiration sous-jacente à une vie neuve où une place plus large serait faite à toutes les candeurs sauvages dont le désir, bien que tout à fait informe encore, nous ravageait. Première manifestation des nègres, mythe des édens de couleur qui devait me mener jusqu’en Afrique et, par-delà l’Afrique, jusqu’à l’ethnographie. Leiris s well-known description, in L'Age d'homme (pp. 16 1—2), o f the frenetic Parisian jazz scene displays all o f the factors that drew Leiris to this musical sign o f modernity. In the immediate wake o f the First World War, jazz offered both a release o f anxiety and a manifestation o f hope to a younger generation that repudiated European corruption and convention and celebrated exotic vitality. Presented literally and metaphorically as a spontaneous uprising that overwhelms social, sexual and even politico-economic restrictions, the ‘modern rhythm’ o f jazz and its anti-progressivist ‘spirit’ are also euphorically associated

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with a mythic Africa and an adventuresome ethnography. Together they combine here into a metropolitan scene o f possession wherein the conflictual social mood is captured perfectly by the musics in­ herent métissage, this being the precise quality o f jazz that Leiris elsewhere singles out for praise: j ’aimais dans le jazz le melange, le côté “ métis” du jazz — qui s’est formé à partir de racines africaines et grâce à des apports de la civilisation occidentale’.1 Moreover, Leiris’s reference to a religious dimension quite clearly recalls Durkheim’s Les Formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse, which describes the ‘effer­ vescence’ or transport o f a primitive collectivity as being the key founding moment o f group identity, a ‘characteristic o f revolutionary or creative epochs’, and— via religion— a core element o f games and major art forms.2 (Leiris always claimed to remain attached to Durkheimian principles, and gave ‘des fautes sérieuses contre les règles de méthode établies par Durkheim’ as one o f the excuses for his eventual resignation from the Collège de Sociologie.) 3 In this way, Leiris manages neatly to link the heady experience o f jazz to both autobiographical and ethnographic research, the adolescent’s ecstasy in the idealist and metaphysical twenties being retroactively programmed to herald the production o f L ’Age d’homme and L ’Afriquefantôme in the more sober and reflective thirties. The existence and nature o f this preoccupation also foreground the most striking feature o f Leiris’s celebration o f jazz, which is the virtual absence o f any music. Here, as elsewhere, Leiris’s appreciation o f jazz appears to derive fundamentally from a non-musical programme. Instead o f technical knowledge, we have vague effusion; in place o f the fan’s forensic analysis, we are given a paean to social and personal alteration. In fact, L ’Age d’homme, in spite (or because) o f its insistence on the cathartic ritual o f jazz, does not detail a single actual piece o f jazz music, in contrast to the volume’s overdetermined recollection o f specific operas, noting instead the different jazz-accompanied dance steps, such as the shimmy, tango and fox-trot which the young Leiris, in thrall to this fashion, desperately tried to learn. In addition, and somewhat logically accompanying this lack o f musical reference, Leiris’s ‘effervescence’ glosses over some o f the hard socio-economic reasons for the growth and eventual decline o f jazz in Paris. Thus in L ’Age d’homme we read nothing at all, for example, about the soaring postwar exchange rate which, in moving from seven francs to the dollar in 1919 to fifty francs to the dollar in 1926, generated a luxurious lifestyle for expat Americans that in turn subsidized such

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shows and revues as the 1925 Revue Nègre (bankrolled by American heiress Caroline Dudley Reagan) or Louis Douglas’s Black People and Florence Mills’s Blackbirds o f 1926; or about the American crash in October 1929 that helped to close Le Bœ uf sur le toit and turn the Moulin Rouge into a cinema that same year; or about the subsequent ‘ 10% law’, introduced in 1933 to place a ceiling on the number o f foreign musicians in any establishment; or even about how the Nazi occupation o f Paris led, at least temporarily, to many jazz and culturally ‘black’ activities being curtailed.4 As we shall see in more detail, the ‘éloge dithyrambique’ which Leiris offered o f jazz in fact grew out o f the (largely non-musical) surrealist aesthetic o f irrationalism and explosion o f a realist economy.5 O f course, this was a prevalent mood, and one that manifested itself generally in the inverse racism o f a white, middle-class ‘negrophilia’ that appropriated for its own cultural effervescence all the irrational and fetishizing behaviour it sought to see in ‘negro’ nature.6 On a superficial level, this ‘crise nègre’ was therefore nothing o f the sort, since it involved little more than fashion’s version o f imperialist economics; notwithstanding which, on a deeper level, the ‘crisis’ accompanied and assisted a revolution in core western epistemo­ logical, artistic and moral concepts and hierarchies. Leiris’s life and work typically seek to reconcile these frivolous and academic extremes into an endless autocritical commentary o f which L ’Age d'homme is merely the most striking example. Thus, in the entirely professional Afrique Noire: La Création plastique, for example, Leiris observes that 1923 marked both the publication o f Frobenius’s Das unbekannte Afrika and Robert Rattray’s Ashanti, and the performance o f the ‘Afro-American’ review Dover Street to Dixie at the London Pavilion. Noting that the latter represented the first US exportation o f a jazz spectacle, Leiris links it immediately to the 1925 Revue Nègre at the Champs-Elysées, the concerts o f the Southern Syncopated Orchestra, and the rapid rise to the status o f ‘grande étoile parisienne’ o f Josephine Baker, before concluding appositely: A tort, parce que le jazz et son contexte choréographique ainsi que les échantillons alors connus du folklore afro-américain étaient des produits très composites qui devaient beaucoup à l’Occident, et parce que les sculptures africaines elles-mêmes procédaient de civilisations façonnées au cours d’un long passé et dont la simplicité n’était qu’une apparence, de nombreux amateurs n’appréciaient dans ces formes d’art ou de divertissement que l’espèce de fraîcheur originelle qui leur semblait en être la vertu capitale, (pp. 1157—8)7

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Once again, the positive recognition o f cultural métissage is reproduced by Leiris within his own generic productions, leading on this occasion to social commentary within art history.

Americans in Paris If jazz is for Leiris the expression o f an aesthetic and moral challenge, then ‘l’image d’une Josephine Baker se déchaînant dans le charleston’ is none the less for him the icon o f its Parisian relocation.8 This already tells us much about a postwar European redefinition o f jazz that was originally designed to appeal to white middle-class taste in combining casino-style playing with performances from ‘native’ artists. Some basic facts about the Parisian version o f jazz bear repeating here, both to illustrate this point, and to contextualize the extent and limits o f Leiris’s understanding o f the phenomenon. Mitchell’s Jazz Kings (formed by drummer Louis Mitchell from The Seven Spades) first visited France in 1918 to give free concerts to Allied troops (following on the heels o f James Creese Europe’s army band), before becoming the house orchestra at the Casino de Paris for five years, and thus accompanying French artists such as Mistinguett and Maurice Chevalier. The Southern Syncopated Orchestra, men­ tioned by Leiris in ‘La “ Crise nègre’” , toured Europe in 1919; its clarinettist Sidney Bechet famously inspired Ernest Ansermet, conductor o f the première o f The Rite of Spring, to produce possibly the first article on jazz written from the perception o f a classically trained musician, in which he is at pains to locate rags, cakewalks and foxtrots in Stravinsky, Debussy, Ravel, Mendelssohn and Rach­ maninov.9 This still Eurocentric approach, in which there is therefore a ‘negro’ way o f playing the violin, or o f singing, was seen as openminded rather than appropriative. The prevalent model o f jazz entertainment was in fact still the urbane productions o f the aptly named Paul Whiteman, self-styled ‘King o f Jazz’, whose 1924 Experiment in Modern Music, given significantly as a quasi-symphonic concert in New York’s Aeolian Hall, featured George Gershwin playing Rhapsody in Blue. 10 This first controlled exposure generated certain conditions for subsequent cabarets and revues in Paris. The former, such as Chez Florence (founded originally by Louis Mitchell) or Bricktop’s Le Grand Due, were in part dancing academies where the latest craze (such as the Charleston) could be mastered by a Leiris with the same social anxiety and suppression o f politico-aesthetic

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embarrassment with which the salon generation had appropriated and sanitized the ‘cakewalk’, but with the added ‘frisson’ now o f a real black presence.11 The latter, such as the 1925 Revue Nègre featuring Josephine Baker, the 1926 Blackbirds (presented as ‘the second Revue Nègre9) starring Florence Mills, or the Lew Leslie 1929 revival o f Blackbirds, now starring Adelaide Hall, at the Moulin Rouge, pre­ sented in reality little more than exotically updated variety shows featuring the usual collection o f juggling acts, comedy routines, dance numbers and musical productions, here all given an ‘African’ twist. It was through her performance o f ‘La danse sauvage’ in the Revue Nègre that Josephine Baker, in reality a ‘chorus babe’ who was ‘a comedian more than a dancer or a singer’, opportunistically made her name.12 Her simultaneously sexual and comic ‘danse de ventre’, immortalized soon after in Calder’s 1926 wire sculpture ‘Josephine Baker 1 (Dance)’ and in Paul Colin’s 1927 set o f suggestive prints, ‘Le Tumulte N oir’, deliberately offered an unthreatening eroticism assisted no doubt by Baker’s light-skinned appearance but above all by her quickwitted emulation o f prevailing music-hall rituals. (Shades o f the cakewalk indeed!)13 Her subsequent packaging (complete with all the spin-off products o f a present-day manufactured band) was designed to seduce rather than scare the sophisticated bourgeoisie. This upward mobility had a further, obvious musical parallel in the modernist renovation through jazz and associated ‘savage’ soundworlds o f the classical tradition. Stravinsky had already followed up his ‘pagan’ 1913 Rite of Spring with the 1918 Histoire du soldat, which not only included a ragtime (and a tango) but employed jazz band instrumentation and the structure o f a revue, consisting o f music, dance and spoken roles. The Russian Ballet’s next scandal, after The Rite of Spring, was Satie’s 19 17 Parade, which incorporated features o f jazz and music hall into Cocteau’s inconsequential vignettes. Cocteau, and ‘Les Six’, subsequently patronized the Bar Gaya, where the banjo and saxophone player Vance Lowry, who had played in The Seven Spades and The Jazz Kings, accompanied the popularizing jazz pianist Jean Wiener, and which soon relocated to become Le Bœ uf sur le toit; taking its name from this club, the 1920 ballet by Cocteau and Darius Milhaud is self-consciously set in an American bar enlivened by tangoes and sambas. It was while attending a production o f Le Bœuf sur le toit in London that Milhaud heard jazz, an epiphany sub­ stantiated by study in Harlem, and which generated his 1923 ballet La Création du monde, featuring ‘savage’ costume designs by Léger and a

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Bachian beginning for alto saxophone. Hearing Leo ArnaudVauchant’s 1924 jazz trombone performances at Le Bœ uf sur le toit, Ravel consciously incorporated his style into the solo o f his 1928 Boléro, before exploiting the entire jazz idiom in the G major piano concerto, begun in 1929 and first performed in 1932. This small list o f interlocking appropriations illustrates clearly both the indebtedness and the exploitativeness o f the musical relations. Leiris’s own recollections o f this music collectively contain all the unresolved ambiguity o f his ethnographic work o f the period. On the one hand, his retrospections offer a carefully factual and discrimin­ ating material analysis o f jazz as a socio-political phenomenon. On the other hand, and especially in contemporary reactions, he enthu­ siastically bears witness to the same music as a quasi-sacred portal onto possession and the dissipation o f difference. The best example o f the former tendency is his interview with Michael Haggerty, ‘L’Autre qui apparaît chez vous’, which appeared in an issue o f Ja zz Magazine.u Leiris recalls and explicates many o f the historical figures, venues and events mentioned above, including even, from his earliest childhood, the Nouveau Cirque and the cakewalk. Interspersed with these reference points are more particular choices and opinions, about the pedantry o f the traditionalist jazz historian Hugues Panassié, the discrete playing o f Count Basie, Leiris’s lack o f interest in the ‘reconstruction historique du style N ew Orleans’ affected by someone like Claude Luter, his approval, on the other hand, o f the Professor o f Bebop, Dizzy Gillespie and his orchestra, and his frankly politically motivated endorsement o f the temperamental and erratic Archie Shepp, recording in particular one ‘happening fabuleux’ in Algiers at the Pan-African festival in 1969.15 The key theme running consistently through these reminiscences, as the title suggests, is Leiris’s socio-aesthetic interest in métissage (‘ [c]e sont les mélanges qui au fond m ’ont toujours intéressé’ (p. 35)), the various historical and affective connections between jazz and African arts and social rituals, and the consequent irruption into a western controlled situation o f a ‘provocation’ or ‘apparition’, a ‘miraculous’ or ‘fabulous’ moment. The temptation to cross the line from observation to immersion at this point is what brings us beyond the limits o f the interview, towards the latter tendency, as outlined above, o f hysterical identification. Examples o f this abound in the diachronic Journal. Two typical moments are April—May 1925, when Leiris responds intensely to the singer and club-owner Ada Smith, aka

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Bricktop, and June-August 1929, when he repeatedly visits clubs such as Bricktop’s or the Music Box, often with Bataille, and reacts to the Blackbirds revue by experiencing violently erotic dreams (pp. 190—’7 ).16 In both cases, the event stimulates writing as well as libido. Thus his experience o f Bricktop generates one overextended analogy based on a literal and an emotional prospecting for gold, followed by a confusion o f poorly transcribed and often cliche-ridden lyrics from her songs, which together confirm the maudlin insight that he is doomed to be ‘éternellement malheureux et isolé de tout’ (p. 99).17 In the case o f the Blackbirds revue (to which on one occasion Leiris took his mother along with Josette Gris), Leiris likens their drama­ tization o f DuBose Heywards Porgy (from which Gershwin later constructed his Porgy and Bess) to Stravinsky’s Noces, naively praises it for its naivety (p. 190), and then describes in an embarrassingly literal way the elemental and disorienting singing o f American ‘coloured girls’ (‘ [c]’est plus grave que la mer et que les montagnes, c’est boule­ versant comme la pluie, toutes les routes, tous les sentiers s’y sont croisés’ (p. 196)), while noting his dreams o f (unsuccessful) sex with (the black and widowed) Josette Gris in which his mother’s presence again figures (‘ [l]a scène se passait devant ma mère’ (pp. 197-8)). Once again, Leiris s intense appreciation centres not on the music (which relied on spirituals rather than jazz) but on the spectacle’s supposed somatic compact o f exoticism, sexuality, violence and quasi-religious resolution.

Rejecting Civilization This full affective and aesthetic circumstance swiftly permits Leiris to subiate a personal crisis into a more objectified position in his contri­ butions to Georges Batailles dissident journal Documents, and in so doing to resolve the opposition o f observation and immersion. Established as an anti-idealist alternative to the dominant surrealist orthodoxy, the most striking feature o f Documents was its appropriation o f surrealist contrast as evidence o f a basic ethnographic attitude. Contemporary details o f high and popular culture were placed intel­ lectually and visually in stark juxtaposition as a deliberate corruption o f idealist unity. The redemptive spirit o f surrealism, in particular, was aggressively denounced via a fetishistic focus on materiality and heterogeneity. The radical ethnographic vision was above all fuelled by a number o f key contributors: Georges-Henri Rivière, re-organizer

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o f the Trocadéro museum (and accomplished jazz pianist); Marcel Griaule, leader o f many ethnographic expeditions including the 19 3 1-3 Dakar-Djibouti mission; André Schaeffner, a musicologist who also participated in the above-mentioned expedition, but had additionally produced the first book on Stravinsky and the first French work (with André Cœuroy) on jazz; and, indeed, Leiris himself who, in addition to being editorial assistant, contributed a total o f thirty-seven pieces over a two-year period.18 The journal obsessively if erratically cham­ pioned certain causes, including Picasso and a number o f other contemporary artists, ethnographic exoticism, and, perhaps most im­ portantly, the iconoclastic and erotic force o f jazz. The 1929 Blackbirds show completely dominated the journals fourth issue. Bataille produces a hallucinatory evocation: ‘dans une nuit nègre, vaguement lunaire, nous assistons donc à une démence grisante de feux-follets louches et charmants, tordus et hurleurs comme des éclats de rire’ (p. 215). Schaeffner, predictably, concentrates on the show s musical extremism: ‘Le jazz — oui, mais, lors de la chanson du Diga diga do ou de la scène du “ Dancing the blues away” , dans toute sa frénésie de rythme et d’orchestre, de rythme sonore autant que plastique; dans une fusée de cuivre, de tambours et de gestes fous. Musique de l’œil. Eau-forte de l’oreille’ (p. 223). Rivières ‘Chronique du jazz’, incorporating brief record reviews by Jacques Fray, comments on ‘la remarquable danse des Berry Brothers de la revue Black Birds’ (p. 226) (via endorsement o f a Paul Whiteman recording!). In a typical juxtaposition, a photograph o f the Blackbirds troupe en route to France by ship is placed below that o f a garrison o f N ew Caledonian soldiers. But it is Leiris s article ‘Civilisation’ that provides by far the most sustained, imaginative and writerly response to the revue.19 Here Leiris combines a general evocation o f violent elements, erotic fetishism, quasi-ethnographic allusions to savagery, magic and Satanism, and a schematic contrast between ‘negro’ and ‘European’ dynamics, with the precise claim that the Blackbirds show spontaneously produces a preartistic hysteria which ‘we’ are too timid to emulate. Our civilization is therefore little more than a ‘mince couche verdâtre’ which the merest ‘remous’ or ‘tourbillon [de] notre respiration même’ will transform (back) into ‘les laves, les cratères, les geysers et tout ce qui touche aux volcans’ . In a related analogy, ‘un ongle de femme rouge et pointu comme une dague de rubis’ is a sign o f our barely disguised savagery, and our western clothing conversely a debased version o f ‘des accoutrements faits de peaux et de plumes, par-dessus les tatouages qui

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dessinent de mystérieuses aventures sur les corps, comme l’écriture des astres qui donne des événements humains le pronostic aérien’ . In our de-sacralized society, we deny our ‘savage ancestry’ in order to worship ‘la divine “ politesse” ’, a profanation symbolized by the ethnographie crime whereby ‘nous changeons un masque ou une statue construite en vue de fins rituelles précises et compliquées en vulgaire objet d’art’ . It is the rebellion against this deterioration that the instantly recognizable spectacle o f Porgy, contained within the revue, represents, and the summary o f one scene reproduced by Leiris shows clearly the source o f his imagery and object o f his identification: Dans les Etats du Sud, le pays est au même niveau que la mer et lorsqu’un nègre meurt, s’il n’est pas assez riche [...] il est enterré dans les marais où l’eau fait revenir son corps à la surface. [Alors,] tous les nègres du village se réunissent autour de son cercueil et créent, par leurs chants, une sorte d’hystérie qui pousse les hommes à voler et les femmes à se vendre aux blancs, pour réunir l’argent suffisant à l’inhumation du défunt, (p. 221)

Aesthetically, this fantasy, like ‘le jazz et ce qui en dérive’ may have ‘rules’ and ‘logic’, but primarily it does not constitute an Art. Ethnographically, therefore, it returns us to the mythical moment o f originary effervescence pre-existing Art, ‘où ne s’est pas encore hyper­ trophiée cette conception bâtarde, fruit des amours illégitimes de la magie et du jeu libre’ (p. 222). The rest o f the article reinforces this dubious version o f the show as purgative resurgence o f hysterical bloodlust and debauchery, in (ironic) conformity with the principles o f base materialism and heterological body illustrated here for Bataille by Blackbirds (‘les noirs [qui] dansent et crient, sont des émanations marécageuses de la décomposition qui se sont enflammées au-dessus de cet immense cimetière’ (p. 215)) and elsewhere in Documents by the big toe, with its ‘aspect hideusement cadavérique et en même temps criard et orgueilleux’, or mutilated ear (of Van Gogh), embodying the sacrificial ‘puissance de libérer des éléments hétérogènes et de rompre l’homogénéité habituelle de la personne’. However, the article immediately following the latter piece by Bataille, Leiris’s ‘ “ Le Caput Mortuum” ou la femme de l’alchimiste’ (disturbingly illustrated with pictures o f sado-masochistic leather hoods ‘designed’ by William Seabrook), recontextualizes these same elements o f religious and erotic fetishism, desire and disguise, and above all western culture and its occultation, in a way that emphasizes how Leiris’s ultimate aim is ‘l’abolition, par quelque moyen que ce

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soit (mysticisme, folie, aventure, poésie, érotisme...), de cette insup­ portable dualité établie, grâce aux soins de notre morale courante, entre le corps et l’âme, la matière et l’esprit’ .21 Here, as elsewhere, we sense a residual surrealist tendency to transcendence and ideal unity in the midst o f Leiris’s adherence to the ‘documentary’ obsession with indecency, degradation and disarticulation as propounded by the anti­ surrealist Bataille, in whose image the journal was basically made.22 This divergence will grow over time, as Leiris moves away from political and aesthetic obscurity towards more historically grounded ethical imperatives.23 Musically, then, what is also immediately obvious is that Blackbirds provides Leiris simply with the appropriate aural means to negotiate a metaphysical goal. In his other article, ‘Alberto Giacometti’, published in the same issue o f Documents, Leiris therefore significantly illustrates these key moments o f ‘crisis’ by conjuring up, not the show’s music, but the ‘gratuitous’ appearance ‘dans une rue lumineuse de Montmartre [d’une] négresse de la troupe des Black Birds tenant un bouquet de roses humides dans ses deux mains’, before concluding that ‘ [l]a poésie ne peut se dégager que de telles “ crises” , et seules comptent les œuvres qui en fournissent des équivalents’ .24 Moreover, for ail Leiris’s involvement in the somatic ritual o f clubbing, there is only one other piece by him in Documents ostensibly related to the music o f the period, the review ‘Disques Nouveaux’, which, as the title suggests, is the announcement o f record releases, by the Duke Ellington or Leslie Black Birds orchestras, o f songs from the Blackbirds show such as Bandanna Babies or Diga Diga Do (sic), interspersed with banal criticism (‘disque excellent mais nettement inférieur aux précités [...] il est dommage que l’enregistrement en soit médiocre’) and above all hyperbole.25 Jazz is thus ‘la vraie musique sacrée [...], pour ne pas dire la seule musique’, with ‘un caractère d’horreur grandiose, inquiétant comme les larves qui grouillent obscurément en nous’, a ‘rythme de cérémonie rituelle ou d’incantation magique’, and the almost sacral function o f being ‘une musique à faire peur, donc [une] musique à faire aimer, si tant est que l’amour [...] se rapproche à peu près nécessaire­ ment de l’assassinat ou de l’angoisse panique’ .26

Ethnomusicology and André Schaeffner There is nothing new or vaguely scandalous about the musical facilitation o f transcendence: perhaps the founding characteristic o f all

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music, it remains a key element o f its power. From an ethnographic rather than a merely social perspective, however, Leiriss technical in­ attentiveness is instructive, and all the more so given the proximity o f André Schaeffner’s work and the strong reciprocity existing be­ tween his ethnomusicology and Leiriss own professional investiga­ tions. Founder o f the ethnomusicology department at the Trocadéro in 1929, music specialist on the Griaule-led 19 3 1—33 Dakar-Djibouti expedition, and (like Leiris) subsequent pupil o f Marcel Mauss at the Institut d’Ethnologie, Schaeffner pioneered the study o f African music in its full social and religious milieux, organized six expeditions to Africa between 1931 and 1958, and in addition to his studies o f western composers wrote the authoritative Origine des instruments de musique. This is a work that at several points acknowledges the contribution o f Leiriss ethnographic research to the musicological understanding o f the use and significance o f ‘calebasses’, the Kita xylophone, the Dogon ‘rhombe’ or the Kono fetish brought back from their joint expedition which features as an illustration in Minotaure and L ’Afrique fantôme.27 In addition, Leiris and Schaeffner jointly wrote ‘Les rites de circoncision chez les Dogons de Sanga’ .28 O f Schaeffner’s eight pieces published in Documents at precise intervals, four are on classical music (two o f which recall his earlier book in focusing on Stravinsky), one is on ethnic instruments (anticipating Origine des instruments), one is on Picasso (in an issue offered in ‘homage’ to the painter), and two are on jazz-related subjects (the Blackbirds, and Eddie South, the former following Leiriss ‘Civilisation’, the latter recalling Rivière s review, in the previous issue, o f Eddie South and his Alabamians) . 29 Several o f these also establish links with Leiris; all provide valuable lessons in considered ethnomusicological criticism. ‘Igor Strawinsky, musicien vivant’, for example, contextualizes each new work within Stravinsky’s whole cultural heritage, from Bach and folklore through Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov to ‘le rythme, la percussion, le jazz’ and his entire production up to and including the 1928 ballet Le Baiser de la Fée, isolates the issues o f harmony and counterpoint, acknowledges ethnographically the effect o f critical reception on the contemporary composer, and concludes with an effective apology for detailed musicology, in praising Stravinsky for helping us to realize ‘qu’en calculant le prix des courtes inventions nous ressentirons mieux le vertige des grandes. De l’inconnu’ (p. 64). The same process, together with an implicit acknowledgement o f Documents’ preoccupations, leads him to note Delannoy’s ‘tournures

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d’abord significatives de la sentimentalité debussyste, puis éveillant le jazz’ (p. 120), and Rossini’s ‘rythme où parfois la syncope napolitaine (jaillie d’Afrique?) saisit déjà comme un violent alcool’ (p. 143). And in the important article ‘Des instruments de musique’ Schaeffner reinforces again a comparatist and analytical approach in asserting that while ‘nous ne prétendons pas que les mobiles auxquels obéit l’auteur [...] du Sacre du Printemps nous deviennent plus clairs du fait que [...] nous aurons analysé les modes de batterie rythmique dont usent les nègres’, none the less ‘sous tous les degrés de civilisation musicale se retrouvent, se dissimulent des éléments invariables que nous avons intérêt à suivre dans la variété de leurs combinaisons’ (p. 249). On a rare occasion, this musical lesson is belatedly acknowledged elsewhere by Leiris: thus Schaeffner’s complimentary citation o f Leiris in ‘L’homme à la clarinette’, where he concludes that ‘ [i]l n’y a point de musique qui se puisse dire “ surréaliste” ’ (p. 162) is returned fifty-six years later when, in response to a question from Jean Jamin, Leiri states that ‘ [i]l ne pouvait pas y avoir de musique surréaliste’ and that, moreover, ‘en jazz, il n’y a pas de signifiants’; while casual entries in the Journal, for 1942 and 1951 respectively, show that Leiris possesses and consults Schaeffner’s 1931 book on Stravinsky and shares with him thoughts on Verdi’s ‘scala enigmatica’.30 Significantly, however, in the related areas o f ethnographic music and jazz, there is no musicological evidence o f reciprocity by Leiris. The rare pieces o f strict ethnomusicology by Leiris, incidental references apart, are academic records that are doubly hampered by showing none o f Schaeffner’s contextualizing interest while seemingly denying themselves (in spite o f Leiris’s attraction by possession) Alfred Métraux’s exactly contemporary appreciation o f how ethnographic music’s ‘phrases brèves et catégoriques rendent tangible la présence surnaturelle’.31 In the realm o f jazz, the obvious absence is any reference to Schaeffner’s pioneering book on the subject. One single reason for this lies in the fundamental distinction between Schaeffner’s conceptualizations and classifications, and Leiris’s non-musical impulse towatds decategorization.32 Another plausible and related reason, however, concerns the equally fundamental difference between the assimilationist approach o f Schaeffner’s book, admittedly pioneering and therefore working with and from prevailing European models o f musical heritage and valorization, but none the less constantly locating jazz in contemporary classical exploitations o f the sound-world as well as in predominantly white jazz orchestras

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such as that o f Paul Whiteman; and Leiris’s more radical ‘inverse racism’, which by his own admission led him to reproduce, ‘virés au positif, les stéréotypes naïfs qui avaient cours sur les Noirs’ and to isolate jazz precisely for its non-western elements and significance.33 This ultimately political difference would no doubt have been some­ what endorsed in his eyes by the subsequent wartime collaboration, as musical critic on Je suis partout from April to October 1943, o f Schaeffner’s co-author on Le Ja z z , André Cœuroy.34

From Jazz to Opera This brings us to the conditions that would have accounted logically for the virtual disappearance from Leiris’s writings after the Second World War o f his appreciation o f jazz as metropolitan exoticism. Firstly, the new processes o f decolonization and globalization, com­ bined with technological advances, began to accelerate the availability and absorption o f hitherto uncommon music, and through this the self-critique o f ethnomusicology. Operating often in parallel to specific schisms within jazz criticism or anthropology (themselves intensified by technology), this increasingly professionalized discipline came to review its own colonialist foundations, eurocentrist assump­ tions and subsequent scientific pretensions. This was to lead to a fundamental decategorization that questioned (often in the service o f newly established indigenous practice) the very validity and purpose of, say, an ‘Islamic’ or an ‘African’ ethnomusicology, or essentializing presentations o f women or ritual in music.35 Popularization, profes­ sionalization and (re)politicization thus all combined to distance Leiris from further affective or analytic interaction. Leiris’s own metaethnographic writings assisted this general movement. For example, his 1950 proto-postcolonial essay, ‘L’ethnographe devant le colonial­ isme’, has moved on significantly from early enthusiastic opportunism, in that Leiris progresses from recognition o f the ethnographer’s inevitable participation in the ‘game’ o f colonialism (p. 85), through rejection o f the antithetical idea o f non-involvement (which would be just to oppose ‘the very life o f a culture’ (p. 92)), to the synthetic exhortation (described as ‘realist’) to study colonial societies ‘dans leur entier’ (pp. 105-6), that is to say, by analysing also the colonial relation. From this first sublation, the committed ethnographer could then practically address the existing power imbalance by training native ethnographers who would thereafter research their own and

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neighbouring societies, generate their proper existential authenticity (by working through the ‘inevitable’ alienation to an empowering ‘dépassement’ (p. 108)), and lay the foundations o f a non-western ‘orientation o f ethnographic research’ that would contribute to the liberation o f colonizing as well as colonized societies from ‘l’ennemi commun que représente une bourgeoisie trop attachée à sa position de classe dominante pour ne pas chercher — sciemment ou non — à maintenir coûte que coûte un tel état d’oppression’ (p. m ) . This intellectual development was obviously to lead Leiris to reassess the whole politics o f fieldwork, beyond the irrationalist praise o f jazz and black culture. Once again, on a socio-economic level, these ‘overturnings’— colonial, professional, psychological— inherent in Leiris’s espoused reorientation were in any case already happening, through the increasing presence on French soil o f a diasporic work­ force and its relocated ethnicities, generations o f exiles drawn to the internationalism o f Parisian culture, and, indeed, a sizeable number o f black soldiers who married into French families during and after both World Wars.36 In addition, then, to decolonization’s effect on field­ work and collecting, and the combined negative effects on the Parisian jazz scene o f the American depression, the 10% law and the German occupation, there is also the inevitable dynamic whereby importation o f exoticism familiarizes and so neutralizes the inconnu. Assisted by intellectual and social circumstances, Leiris was further­ more personally able to move without a feeling o f contradiction from affirming the popular culture o f jazz to identifying with a ‘high’ art such as opera, for the crucial reason that both musical situations could be experienced and conceptualized as part o f a continuous psychological dépassement. As we have seen, Leiris’s social and ethno­ graphic transgressions, in the twenties and thirties especially, arose from the desire to experience rather than to categorize the ‘effer­ vescence’ o f ‘elementary’ collectivity. This means that in opera as much as in jazz, Leiris can theoretically continue to experience the intense affective discrepancies o f a cathartic ritual. The ‘sousréalisme’ o f Documents, after all, had already presented one literary model— o f juxtaposition and decategorization— for this transgressive investment, which in turn affected the intermittent autoethnography o f L ’Age d'homme, and its dual record o f jazz-accompanied rebellion from middle-class mores and their frequently operatic soundtrack. As we shall see later, Leiris’s collection Operratiques continues with this pro­ ductively disruptive binarism by including entries on Chinese opera,

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Porgy and Bess and The Gay Divorcee, works which could well have featured in Documents, as well as on the predictable examples o f a western operatic tradition.

René Leibowitz In the postwar period, then, for reasons both logical and circum­ stantial, Leiris turned towards opera as a new autobiographically invested area o f resignification. And in redefining once more his critical persona and ideological loyalties, as ever Leiris appropriates and adapts ideas and pronouncements from key intellectuals within his personal orbit. In the realm o f opera, one such influential figure is René Leibowitz, described by Leiris in C'est-à-dire as ‘un grand ami compositeur, chef d’orchestre et musicologue dont j ’appréciais fort l’intelligence et la sensibilité’.37 Music theorist, conductor and com­ poser o f Polish-Latvian descent, René Leibowitz (1913-72) is closely associated with the postwar revival in France and Darmstadt o f the Second Viennese School and above all the work o f Schoenberg. In three years after the war, he published key introductory apologies for the dodecaphonic system which he presented as a ‘rupture de silence’, while tutoring a new generation o f pupils, one o f whom— Boulez— was subsequently to denounce with oedipal obstinacy this ‘pedant’ and ‘academician’ who insisted on fidelity to the score and especially its noted tempi.38 One reason for this obsessive knowledge o f scores may be that, during the Second World War, which Leibowitz spent largely in hiding (it is said that Bataille secreted him), the study o f scores was all that was musically available.39 As we shall see, this already informs a subtle distinction between Leibowitz’s concentra­ tion on the reading o f an opera and Leiris’s reception o f it as spectacle. Though Leibowitz is not well known for his compositions, it is also interesting to note that over a thirty-year period he set many works by artist friends— Limbour, Jacob, Bataille, Picasso and Leiris (including in the last case eight different melodies)— almost always for soprano voice. Leiris’s Journal details an obvious friendship based on common acquaintance and an active social appreciation o f opera. Finally, the acknowledgements to Leibowitz’s 1957 Histoire de l'Opéra include Leiris as well as Giacometti, Kahnweiler, Limbour, Masson and Marcel Moré; while this work is in turn cited in Leiris’s Operratiques (p. 1 1 1 ) . 40 But the intellectual overlap and mutual influence run deeper than this, and centre textually on their joint contribution,

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over a ten-year period during which Leiris acted as one o f the editors, to Les Temps modernes. * 1 The obvious and acknowledged rapproche­ ments o f these essays, which become almost openly dialogic at times,42 are embedded in subsequent book publications. Leiris mentions Leibowitz four times in Operratiques (and more frequently in the cir­ cumstantial Journal); Leibowitz, for his part, refers to Leiris in both the 1971 Le Compositeur et son double and the 1972 Les Fantômes de l’opéra. * 3 Beyond these direct acknowledgements, we can discern an even broader pattern o f influence and difference, often from the modest details o f Operratiques. This occasionally involves little more than echoing (an effect, perhaps, o f having attended a performance together): thus Leibowitz s praise, in Histoire de l’opéra, o f Morels 1946 Cost fan tutte (pp. 49, 59) tallies completely with the details given by Leiris (p. 182). Elsewhere a more subtle chiasmal effect occurs, as between Leibowitz s ‘Fidelio ou l’amour de l’opéra’ and Operratiques’s entry ‘L’opéra n’est pas un oratorio’ : in the former, Leibowitz notes Wieland Wagner’s substitution o f a ‘plateau “ abstrait” ’ for the ‘traditional realism’ o f Fidelio’s ‘décor’ which, not having seen it, he is prepared to credit, while condemning as ‘absurd’ (p. 88) the same producer’s similar approach to Die Meistersinger (which he has seen); in the latter, Leiris condemns as an ‘Absurdité’ the same Fidelio (which he has seen) and adds that ‘ [d]’après ce que j ’en ai lu ou entendu raconter [from Leibowitz?] ses mises en scène de Bayreuth ne sont pas moins désastreuses’ (p. 19). Typically, however, Leibowitz proceeds thereafter to criticize the ‘valeur intrinsèque de l’exécution purement musicale’ (p. 97), whereas for Leiris the core problem is rather that ‘l’opéra est théâtre lyrique et non oratorio’ (p. 20)— that is, one o f drama and complete spectacle. In a similarly subtle mutation o f agreement into distinction, Leibowitz’s Histoire de l’opéra locates Monteverdi’s significance for the evolution o f opera in a way that recalls Leiris s general obsession with the progressive move from symbolism to verismo, while Leiris’s ‘Découverte de Monteverdi’ recognizes from a 1959 festival (which he may well have attended with Leibowitz) that this music prefigured ‘la grande dramaturgie lyrique qui, avec Puccini, atteindra son paroxysme’, but in a more individual and autobiographical gesture transforms this music into a darker and more private significance, both by noting its ‘caractère hautement “ expressionniste” ’ and its ‘ [cjonjugaison de la violence et de la délica­ tesse la plus extrême’ (pp. 64, 65), and by linking this realization

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directly back to the death o f yet another alter ego, this time Paul Eluard. Similarly, Leibowitz, in Les Fantômes this time, analyses the waltz in Dev Rosenkavalier as musically changing the rule o f the game (‘Richard Strauss se moque des règles établies’ (p. 377)), whereas Leiris, once again inhabiting the musical code in a more personally charged manner, emphasizes its relationship to travesty, eroticism, ‘le vrai style’ and the ‘grâce [...] déliquescente’ o f a bullfighter (pp. 37, 42, 153, 161). The Covent Garden production o f Moses and Aaron is praised in some detail by Leibowitz in Le Compositeur et son double (though as usual he finds fault with tempi and interpretations o f the score) for the musical excellence o f its choir, soloists and conductor, Solti, as well as in more general terms for the ‘realism’ o f its staging by Peter Hall (pp. 444-53); whereas Leiris in Operratiques jumps almost immediately from the banal phrase ‘ [r]ichesse de l’œuvre musicale’ to a much more involved reaction to the orgiastic Golden C alf scene, recounted like an ethnographic scene o f possession: ‘bourrillon, chèvre et mouton, futures victimes sacrificielles, défilant sur la scène; le sang coule à flots; très dénudées, des stripteaseuses de Soho incarnent les vierges qu’on immole; d’un bout à l’autre de la scène, on voit voltiger dans les airs des morceaux de bidoche que les sacrificateurs lancent au peuple; au moment de l’orgie sexuelle on verra voltiger de même les vêtements dont les gens se sont dépouillés. Enorme succès de ces représentations’ (pp. 127—9).44 Their general agreement regarding the respective merits o f Callas and Tebaldi is similarly expressed as a subtle chiasmal shift: thus, whereas for Leibo­ witz, in Le Compositeur et son double, Tebaldi is ‘moins spectaculaire (dans tous les sens du mot) assurément, mais plus émouvante parce que meilleure cantatrice’ (p. 464), thus emphasizing the musical over the visual, for Leiris in Operratiques the same point produces the opposite emphasis, since while Tebaldi can only ever be Tebaldi ‘ [usant] merveilleusement de sa voix merveilleuse’, Callas, ‘comme les grands toreros d’autrefois [s’adaptant] à chacun des toros qu’ils avaient à combattre [...] sait être différente d’elle-même dans chaque rôle qu’elle chante’ (p. 170). This subtle dialogue reaches its height in relation to Verdi and Puccini. Leibowitz s question ‘Connaissez-vous Verdi?’, in Histoire de Vopéra, is answered by Leiris less than four months later with his publication o f ‘Vois déjà l’ange...’ . But in certain respects we now have a ‘dialogue de sourds’ : whereas Leibowitz supports Verdi’s sober musical credentials by focusing on ensemble moments, character-

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ization and contemporary musical language, and by stressing his form, rigour and Wagnerian qualities (in contrast to a superficial association with ‘trivialities’ (p. 218)), Leiris in Operratiques emphasizes precisely the general presence o f ‘ [l]a pure ardeur à vivre’ (p. 80), theatricality, exoticism and the fantastic, and places Verdis supernatural and cele­ bratory aspects in direct contrast to the magical and ritual elements in Wagner. In ‘Vois déjà l’ange’ itself, moreover, Leiris transmogrifies the non-formal qualities, within the formal resolutions o f Fourbis, by personifying and so revivifying them, as a ‘mythe vécu’, in his use o f Aida to represent his ecstatic relationship with an Algerian prostitute.45 Turning to Puccini, Leibowitz’s ‘L’œuvre de Puccini et les problèmes de l’opéra contemporain’ (in Histoire de l’opéra) empha­ sizes the composer’s musical expansiveness, including his wide distri­ bution among the dramatis personae o f important musical roles, and a parallel orchestral inclusion o f on-stage presence, saxophones and an organ, but above all his ‘synthèse parfaite et [...] cohérence absolue’ (p. 35°); while his ‘Comment faut-il jouer La Bohème?’ repeats the explicit aim o f the essays on Verdi, namely to annul the charge o f vulgarity (pp. 406—12). Leiris’s counterpoint to this, Operratiques, once again focuses less on formal and more on iconoclastic elements, emphasizing Puccini’s modernity and exoticism, curiosity and hetero­ geneity (pp. 60-2, 1 81). In addition, as with Verdi, Leiris produces in the entry on Turandot a seemingly casual but actually highly over­ determined identification with the erotic and mortal story o f that opera. B y way o f introduction to a detailed examination o f Leiris’s reaction to this opera, however, we first need to review Operratiques as a whole. Operratiques Published in 1992, Operratiques is a posthumous collection o f essays on opera relating to thematic issues (‘The Fantastic’, ‘The Marvellous’, ‘Exoticism’, etc.), specific works (forming half the book and its core) and reminiscences (‘Une soirée d’opéra à San Gimignano’).40 Several accounts obviously relate to notes found in the equally posthumous Journal, or to contemporary writing in the autobiographical Fibrilles (1966). The collection’s limits are quite precise: in his prefatory notes, Jean Jamin tells us that Leiris began to record his impressions o f opera in January 1959, while Leiris himself had determined the order o f entries and chosen the title (whose combination o f ‘opera’ and

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‘erratic’ recalls his surrealist glossolalia) by 23 March o f the same year. Jamin believes that the ‘clean’ (‘ces feuilles sont à peine raturées’) and composed nature o f entries and overall collection confer a ‘statut d’ouvrage’ on this ‘ensemble relativement fermé, homogène et continu’ . He also characterizes Leiris’s whole approach as akin to the afición o f a bullfighting fan, given ‘ses emportements et ses retraits, ses manies et ses égarements, ses injustices et ses repentirs’ (p. 7). This in itself is an exoticist explanation for the collections genuinely erratic nature. Much o f the repertoire is notable for its absence. The Russian and English traditions are almost completely missing; there is nothing on Bartok, Dvorák, Kodály or Janácek; there are major omissions even from the French canon; and in spite o f potential politico-aesthetic affinities, postwar twentieth-century works are almost entirely absent. There is in fact remarkably little description o f actual music.47 Instead, Leiris reveals a passion for the visual and circumstantial dimensions o f opera, noting the dramatic qualities o f a ‘live’ event and the details o f production or direction. This generates some embarrassingly gushing and absolutely non-musical judgements: I Pagliacci’s popularity purportedly evidences Leoncavallo’s ‘stroke o f genius’ in realizing that ‘tout repose sur un jeu entre apparence et vérité’ (p. 106); while The Barber of Seville similarly displays ‘ce mystère dont — même brillante ou franchement comique — est chargée, de façon lancinante, la musique de Rossini [...]. C ’est probablement pour de tels cas que l’on peut, à défaut d’explication, en appeler au “ génie” ’ (p. 80). As regards actual production and direction choices, moreover, Leiris can be highly conventional (favouring Knappertsbusch’s Strauss or Parsifal, disliking Wieland Wagner’s production o f Fidelio but approving o f his Salomé, etc.), owing perhaps to his interest in opera as total theatre, his obvious desire for uncomplicated identification, and even the fastidious attention to detail o f his opera companion Leibowitz. For the very same reasons, however, Leiris is also highly unconventional in some o f his inclusions: thus entries on the standard repertoire from Verdi, Wagner, Strauss or Puccini are supplemented by others on The Three-Penny Opera, The Gay Divorcee, Porgy and Bess, Chinese opera and even voodoo. The choice confirms how Leiris’s critical acknowledgement o f genre is outweighed by his personal obsession with ritual catharsis. Running through all this is also a repeated concern for verisimilitude and a focus on contrastive effects, whether supplied by paradoxical detail or exotic and fantastic themes.

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Above all, this desire produces a focus on singers, o f whom he mentions nearly fifty (in contrast to twelve conductors and eight producers), ranging from household names (Sutherland, Callas, Freni) to the less famous (Monzelli, Renaud, Chenal), with a marked preference for soprano leads and an interesting dearth o f heroic tenors (which perhaps tells us something about the heterosexual interest and rivalry inherent in his identifications). It is in fact the less well-known singers whom Leiris if anything prefers, explicitly for their more inti­ mate associations and less intrusive aura or mannerisms, and implicitly for their greater facilitation thereby o f Leiris’s self-projection. Finally, the collections coverage is further limited by time and geography. Begun in 1959, the entries effectively peter out after 1970 (if not sooner, since we cannot really tell whether Leiris’s parenthetical dismissal o f Béjart’s ‘stupid’ production o f La Damnation de Faust indicates that he actually saw this performance). This suggests that comments on Wieland Wagner productions, or on a conductor such as Serafín, or on the rivalry between Callas and Tebaldi, are essentially reactive (and again somewhat conventional) rather than the result o f a more broadly informed but sharply refined thesis. Given the emphasis on performance, this also affects the singers and even the operas mentioned, the former being largely born in the first two decades o f the twentieth century, the latter featuring a nineteenth-century canon supplemented by certain postwar revivals, or reflecting the program­ ming o f seasons by Georges Auric (director o f the Opéra de Paris between 1962 and 1969) rather than the later Liebermann. In addition, Leiris’s examples are overwhelmingly determined by his experiences o f a Parisian winter season and an Italian summer one. In the former case, this perhaps inordinately favours mention o f people like Marisa Morel, whose company was formed in 1941 to produce Mozart opera predominantly in France, together with those who thereafter worked with her, including Danco, Simionato, Cortis, Ackermann and Bohm. In the latter case, the choice o f event is somewhat coincidental with holidays in the company o f his wife and the Leibowitzes. Even taking all this into consideration, however, there are still some puzzling if not astonishing omissions. Leiris’s recollection o f the Tristan given on 23—6 June 1948 at the Opéra mentions Max Lorenz, but not Kirsten Flagstad.48 He notes virtually everything about a 1959 revival o f Handel’s rarely performed Jephtha, except for the fact that the tenor role was sung by Fritz Wunderlich. Given the timescale, it is perhaps understandable that there is next to

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nothing on the Liebermann era, and hence no mention o f Gwyneth Jones (a 1973 Leonora in II Trovatore and Briinnhilde in Die Walküre) or Frederica von Stade (in the 1973 Versailles Marriage of Figaro) or Margaret Price (a 1973 Countess in Figaro, Fiordiligi in Così Fan Tutte, Donna Anna in Don Giovanni and Desdemona in Otello) or Kiri Te Kanawa (a 1975 Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni, Mimi in La Bohème and Fiordiligi). But there is no obvious explanation for the absence o f Regine Crespin, whom he could have seen as Elsa in the 1959 Lohengrin directed by Knappertsbusch, or as Desdemona in the Fourestier-conducted Otello; this was a singer, after all, whose Floria Tosca was considered by some to be superior to that o f Callas or Tebaldi, and who had been invited by Wieland Wagner in person to play Kundry in the 1958 Bayreuth Parsifal. Tracking o f this kind certainly endorses the work’s title, and indicates the deeply personal nature o f Leiris’s interests.49 Turandot A typical example o f Leiris’s approach, and his ‘manias and silences’, is the entry devoted to Turandot, which is by far the longest in Operratiques. This opera is circumstantially and textually significant for Leiris. Recalling that his autobiography L!Age d'homme had referred to Puccini’s work as an ‘ordure’, Leiris proceeds to rehabilitate it in a typical instance o f ‘dépassement perpétuel’ that effectively repudiates the repudiation which its original rubbishing represented, and in terms o f L ’Age d’homme’s own iconography: ‘en dehors de Turandot, je ne vois pas d’œuvre lyrique où les personnages de Judith (Turandot) et de Lucrèce (Liù) soient simultanément mis en scène’ (p. 118). (Turandot is, o f course, easily amenable to this recasting, given that it is the only one o f Puccini’s works that turns away completely from realism towards myth, and presents only archetypal characters without any naturalist or psychological development, each o f whom is inhabited by an overriding obsession.) Given that such music had been closely associated in L ’Age d’homme with bourgeois tastes and events, his own ‘Aunt Lise’ (real name Claire Friché) who professionally sang such roles as Tosca, and even his father’s voice as he sang, accompanied by Raymond Roussel, this resignification is heavily overdetermined and influences my subsequent speculations. This shift by Leiris is further relocated within L ’Age d’homme by the addition in 1964 o f a footnote (pp. 212 -14 ) based on the Operratiques

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entry, and which itself follows on from the better-known 1946 addition (pp. 209-12) where Leiris renounces psychoanalysis and specifically castration theory as an adequate explanation for what became redefined at that point as existentialist anxiety. In addition, the juxtaposition o f the two footnotes (1946 and 1964) throws into high relief some o f the aesthetic tensions existing between the two, as well as certain intervening key events about which these periphera remain silent: his mothers death in 1956 and his own suicide attempt and subsequent tracheotomy in 1957 (almost immediately following which he finally produces La Possession et ses aspects théâtraux chez les Ethiopiens de Gondar and starts to plan the work that is Operratiques). What starts to emerge through the signifier o f Turandot, then, is a complex knot o f denial and desire which the opera perfectly allows Leiris to manifest and yet maintain. The opera Turandot revolves around the eponymous Chinese princess, whose three riddles suitors must solve on pain o f death; the hero Calaf, who not only manages this but poses a question o f his own regarding his secret name; and the slave girl Liù (an addition to the tale adapted by Gozzi) who kills herself rather than reveal the name o f Calaf, whom she loves. It was Puccinis final, and unfinished, opera (subsequently completed by Franco Alfano), a postwar attempt to find a post-realist operatic language which incorporates authentic Chinese tunes, as well as standard showpieces such as ‘Nessun dorma’ . Leiris makes obvious comments about stylistic synthesis, repeats the old story about Puccini (working on Turandot and already very ill) travelling from Via Reggio to Florence just to hear the Italian première o f Schoenberg’s Pierrot lunaire, and opines that ‘la “ minute de silence” marquant le moment où la mort a forcé Puccini à passer la plume à Alfano devrait être adoptée pour toutes les mises en scène de Turandot’ (p. 121). These banal remarks none the less indicate how the opera signifies on a deeper and more dangerous level for Leiris, wherein inversions, reversals, and revisions centre on the ritualistic logic o f secrecy. Such a logic constitutes the very subject matter o f Turandot, o f course, but its play o f revelation and retention equally goes to the heart o f Leiris’s whole aesthetic. This explains Leiris’s introduction to and o f the opera, via a Covent Garden production ‘sans succès’ which he did not see, an excerpt from a film about Puccini, a recording (featuring Tebaldi) which he heard in part, a performance at Pistoia which he does not describe but mentions briefly elsewhere in the context o f ‘ [sjoirées hoflfmanniennes’ (p. 175),

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and finally, ‘pour ce dernier Noël 1958’, a recording o f the Serafin production. Only several pages later, and even then à propos o f staging details, does he recount his experience o f an actual performance (which then turns out to be the famous i960 La Scala one). To this heuristic framing, Leiris also adds three, more speculative, recon­ figurations: the first relating to the mutations o f a Persian tale into a Puccini opera (via Gozzi, Schiller and Busoni); the second concerning Turandot’s ‘expressionism’ (wherein Berg— well known, o f course, for the encoding o f amorous secrets in his work— is mentioned twice); the third postulating a Turandot (and not Hérodiade) written by Mallarmé: ‘Côté Igitur de Calaf : pas de coup de dés, mais la questionsuicide’ (p. 121). Within this structure, Leiris points up in passing a host o f contrasting or doubling details: the shouting o f the chorus and the Emperor’s frail voice; the woman who kills and the woman who kills herself; the turning around o f question and answer; deaths confirmed, deferred and anticipated; opera séria and opera buffa; a double ‘Chinese’ style (archaistic and orientalist); grace and torture; love and death. This play o f opposites, o f presence and absence, alerts us to an intensely personal (that is to say secret) form o f interrogation and recoding which Leiris seeks to effect for his own work through this reinvestment in an opera obsessed with secrecy. Thus Calaf s equation with Igitur is a clue to the fact that his suicidal gamble is also being appreciated in terms o f Leiris’s early surrealist heroics, especially as found in Aurora, where dangerous mirroring and reversibility are displayed in the alter egos name: Damoclès Siriel. Turandot s status as an exotic princess, possessed first by her ancestor’s fate and then by C alaf’s superior knowledge and force, allows Leiris clearly to see her as another projection o f the originally ethnographic ‘possédée guérisseuse’. The relationship to the revision o f L ’Age d’homme has already been mentioned. Leiris’s careful mention o f Aida in this entry recollects Leiris’s use o f that opera in Fourbis, which we have also noted. Finally, we can recall that the subsequent autobiographical volume in the series making up La Règle du jeu, namely Fibrilles, opens with Leiris’s (failed) ethnographic trip to revolutionary China, closes its first chapter with a dramatic summary o f Leiris’s suicide attempt, and in the following chapter shows the beginning o f his physical (and aesthetic) rehabilitation, which includes in particular the hallucinatory appearance o f Claire Friché, and in general the alleviating tone and touch o f opera buffa.

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Constant Lambert The opening o f the entry devoted to Turandot, in its abrupt and oblique nature, is typical o f the whole piece: ‘En juillet 1947, Constant Lambert l’avait dirigée, sans succès, à Covent Garden’ (Oi 17). The rest o f the first paragraph (the longest in the essay) is almost perversely negative, detailing Lambert’s unimpressive appearance, Leiris’s decision not to attend the opera, his dislike o f Puccini at that time, and the view conveyed to him that the opera was sado-masochistic and offered the beauty o f people all shouting at once! But as we might expect from Leiris, such a negative and purposeless beginning is anything but casual. Superficially, it is difficult to locate much common ground between the iconoclast Leiris and the Fitzrovian Lambert, the model for Hugh Moreland in Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time and one o f only two ‘approved’ performers o f Façade, the other being Peter Pears.50 One rather oblique connection is that Lambert’s associates and collaborators included Searle and Elizabeth Lutyens, the subjects o f Leibowitz’s 1946 article in Les Temps modernes. 51 More directly, Leiris’s Journal notes some typical witticisms by Lambert (significantly on women, specifically Lutyens and Isabel, his wife) and a projected poem (which never materialized) for the Lamberts (pp. 466, 470). But more importantly, there were some common musical enthusiasms, all falling into Leiris’s surrealist period. One such is jazz. Lambert produced a number o f jazz-influenced pieces, including his precocious Prize-Fight: A Realistic Ballet in One Act (1923—4) with its syncopated rhythm, allusion to Satie and farcical action reminiscent o f Cocteau and Milhaud’s Bœuf sur le toit, his popular Rio Grande (1928) and, most pertinently, Elegiac Blues (1927), his lament for the early death o f Florence Mills, star o f the Blackbirds revue, whom Lambert had seen in London and Leiris, as noted above, in Paris.52 Through all Lambert’s work, one can also discern the influence o f a generation o f Paris-based composers, including, most importantly, Stravinsky, whose music Leiris experienced and recognized early on.53 Lambert’s Diaghilev-commissioned Romeo and Juliet also brought him into conflictual contact with surrealism: the impresario replaced the set designer Kit Wood with Ernst and Miró, who were then denounced by the Breton-led surrealists for thus conforming. All this ensured a riotous reception, orchestrated by Aragon and Breton and dutifully supported by Leiris, which left Lambert traumatized. Finally, it seems Lambert was also attracted to all things Chinese, owing to an infatuation

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with the film actress Anna May Wong, producing as a result Eight Poems of Li-Po for voice (1926—9). Listing such circumstantial links draws us quickly, however, towards deeper connections. For Lambert as for Leiris, a powerful female figure dominates life and work. Rio Grande, for example, alludes three times to bars 188 and 189 o f the ‘Gretchen’ movement o f Liszts Faust Symphony. In his Operratiques entry, Leiris presents Lambert as being in love with Isabel Delmer, and does so in a way that suggests this iconic art figure is also an erotic interest for Leiris.54 This is perhaps one reason why Leiris pointedly calls Lambert’s direction o f Turandot unsuccessful, contradicting Angus Morrison’s recollection o f ‘superb performances’,55 misunderstanding or misrepresenting difficulties that led to Lambert’s resignation from Sadler’s Wells, and astonishingly failing even to mention that the title role o f this Turandot was performed by Eva Turner (considered by Alfano to be ideal, and already famous in the part) and that this performance would have been the last night.56 Such omission and aggression suggest an unconscious identification, exploiting reversal and projection, with the figure o f Lambert and the links to Lambert’s favourite opera, Turandot. If we adopt this attitude, it is not difficult to see how the unflattering presentation o f Lambert can act as simple alter ego for the ineptly musical, pathetically passionate and similarly alcoholic Leiris.57 The consciously repudiated Lambert thus starts to signify as an un­ conscious accusation. This impression is sustained if we now refer to Lambert’s idiosyncratic Music Ho! A Study of Music in Decline, origin­ ally published in the same year as Leiris’s L ’Afrique fantome. Dedicated to Lambert’s mother, whose suffering and suffocating status is not irrelevant to Leiris either, as we shall see, this non-technical work both situates music in broader contexts and contains precise assertions (some robustly wrong-headed) that sometimes resemble Leiris’s approach but act for us here in critical counterpoint to the latter’s assumptions.58 On jazz-related issues, for example, we are reminded that Milhaud’s Boeuf sur le toit may be ‘the most amusing o f the highbrow music-hall ballets’ but that ‘its extrinsic form does not disguise [its] essential inflexibility’ (p. 175). Similarly, we are told that Duke Ellington’s ‘Swampy River’ owes more to ‘the European harmonic framework’ than to native African music (p. 178),59 that jazz ‘owes its real force’ to its ‘sophistication’ , not to any ‘barbaric’ quality (p. 181), and, most critically, that in general this music ‘has become a drug for the devitalized’ (p. 199). On surrealism, Lambert settles old

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scores. Surrealists have therefore Valorized the dream’, and their art betrays an ‘extraordinary similarity and monotony’ (p. 79). All that is needed to produce a surrealist work ‘is a quick wit and a modicum o f sensibility’, such that Stravinsky can achieve ‘a surrealist incongruity by his wilful distortion o f familiar classical formulas’ (pp. 82, 84). Above all, it is on the subject o f Puccini that Lambert’s casual remarks have the effect o f recasting Leiris’s new interest and his technical approach. The music off-stage in Toscas second act is thus for Lambert an example o f incorporated pastiche (p. 66); this immediately throws Leiris’s and Leibowitz’s focus on the ‘espace sonore’ into a different perspective. The street musician in II Tabarro who sings ‘Chi ha vissuto per amore, per amore si mori’ leads Lambert to remark smartly that ‘ [t]hose who live for technique are killed by technique’ (p. 197); ignoring the phrase’s bluff emotion, such an insight opens up for us Leiris’s approach to all art (including that o f the self) and the drives it contains. Lambert is also refreshingly honest about the fact that Madama Butterfly offers ‘cinematic emotions’, that ‘D. W. Griffiths is our Puccini [and] a film like King Vidor’s Hallelujah has a far greater aesthetic significance than any opera written since the war’ (pp. 197, 216, 239); the fact that Lambert, and not Leiris, actually states this reflects ironically on the limits o f the latter’s aesthetic radicalism.

The Matrix o f Death Cross-examining Leiris’s denigration o f Lambert in this way brings out how quickly this musician’s presence in a phantasmic mise-en-scène amounts to a defensive autofiguration within a larger primary programme that is here built around Turandot, one whose central obsession— dramatized as secret and passion— is that o f death anti­ cipated and so mastered. And just as there is more than one death connected to the opera’s accumulated circumstances, so in Leiris there are several deaths being projected here. Leiris is certainly aware o f these levels, noting the ‘ [t]hree deaths in the opera Turandot: the young Prince o f Persia, the slave Liù and the composer himself’, and adding significantly: ‘L’on peut dire aussi que tout se passe comme si, au moment du happy-end, [Puccini] avait dû céder la place à Alfano’ (p. 120). Leiris returns to this key idea o f self-effacement and self­ perpetuation several times, including in relation to both his Mallarméan analogy and that aesthetics notion o f sacrifice to beauty, and ‘le fait qu’à la villa de Torre del Lago la dépouille de Puccini

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repose quasiment dans son piano’, a symbolic perpetuation signifying that ‘ [m]ort, il n’est plus que son œuvre, se fond en elle, est absorbé’ (pp. 120, 138). To these noted projections, we can add the standard biographical interpretation that Turandot and Liù are transmutations o f Puccini’s jealous wife Elvira and domestic helper Doria Manfredi respectively, the latter being driven to suicide by the former’s unsubstantiated accusations regarding her relationship with the composer. Given Leiris’s own operatically assisted mystification o f marital infidelity, his postwar attendance at opera performances in the company o f his wife Louise, and the small detail that Manfredi had been employed to nurse Puccini during convalescence (from a car accident in 1903), such a ‘tragic’ reading would clearly appeal to a convalescing autobiographer obsessed with codes and secrets. A clear picture is beginning to emerge, therefore, one which involves Turandot acting as a post-suicide phantasy60 o f prohibition. Moreover, as phan­ tasmal scenarios bear replacement and reversibility, this investment can carry the additional significations implicit in, and perhaps suppressed within, L ’Age d’hommes rehabilitating gestures. On examination o f this, we begin to see clearly, at the heart o f Leiris’s fascination with Turandot, a resexualized death drive whose key figure is in fact the author’s mother. Simple chronology provides a clue. In Operratiquess entry for Turandot Leiris stipulates that in 1947 ‘j e pensais (comme il se devait) beaucoup de mal de Puccini’ . By 1958—60 he views the opera as a ‘beauté extraordinaire’ with a ‘caractère “ expressionniste” ’, an entire ‘symbolique’ or symbolic system and a triumphant message o f ‘l’art pour Vamour (distinct de l’“ art pour Part” )’ (pp. 117, 118 -19 , 123). An identificatory reversal has occurred in the intervening years, which itself is staged as a move from convention to expression, part to whole, perversion to fulfilment. While we have already noted the suicide attempt as a defining point during these years, a key (and largely secreted) event o f this period is the death o f Leiris’s mother in 1956. The fact is recorded in interesting ways. In the Journal, the death emerges belatedly in a dream featuring a cliff face which Leiris links to Kunming in China, it returns in 1957 in relation to his suicide bid, which he ‘would not have attempted if she had still been living’, and finally it resurfaces near the end o f Leiris’s life (in 1988) as the shame experienced at having forgotten the date o f his mother’s death (pp. 492, 524, 806). Most interesting, though, is a confluence o f Turandot, related ‘sado-masochism’ and his mother’s demise, the last o f

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these elements disappearing when the Journal entries are transposed into Operratiques. Leiris’s notes in the Journal for ‘Turandot ou le triomphe d’Holopherne’ are immediately followed by an account o f a visit to the family home (at St. Pierre les Nemours, the burial place o f his mother), where he claims to notice for the first time a large cross in the garden which has reverted to a ‘virgin’ state (pp. 548—53). This in turn leads to a contemporary political detail in which mention is made o f the sexual torture o f young girls. Suddenly, the mothers spectral presence as the prohibition o f suicide (and its causes) appears at the centre o f the opera’s psychological significance. This function is perhaps further specified by the other (rare) Journal entries concerning his mother, including a Bataillean invective from 1933 and a 1934 entry detailing his mothers record o f pages in L ’Afrique fantome recounting Leiris’s sexual anxieties or activities while on expedition. The mother complex thus additionally involves sexual aggression, condemnation and exoticism. When this key event is recorded in the public Fibrilles, though, the aforementioned cross has been superseded by a section on the absence o f Rousseau’s ashes, the place o f the spectral mother thus being taken by that o f the spectral autobiog­ rapher. It is clear from this that the mother’s authority has been fully incorporated. This introjective movement, acting in counterpoint with the projection o f spectatorship, now finds in Turandot the mise-en-scene for a resexualized death drive, wherein the sustaining/ constraining interdiction o f the mother, via the virginal/castrating princess/sphinx, can be mastered and destroyed through identification with Calaf (Oedipus/Holofernes/Igitur), a hero whose saving asset, o f course, is not his physical prowess or beauty (or even his singing, Leiris mentioning only one tenor, Mario del Monaco, in the role, in passing, in relation to part o f a recording), but his ability to decode and recodify. The opera’s actual libretto speaks powerfully to these psycho­ analytic preoccupations, and above all to the force and law o f the death drive. Its opening announces the castrating vengeance o f ‘Turandot la pura’ as ‘ [l]a legge’ . Calaf ‘suffers’ Turandot’s divine apparition, and expresses this to his father; while the soon to be decapitated Prince o f Persia is visibly ecstatic: ‘Ha negli occhi l’ebbrezza!’ . Calaf is soon experiencing the same sensory distortions, having become ‘insordito! [,] [i]ntonito! [,] [a]llucinato!’, a state described precisely by the Emperor (who has seen it all before) as ‘ebbro di morte!’. Turandot, o f course, is absolutely deaf (a ‘vagina

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dentata’, and a royal one at that, does not hear), as are the spectres o f former suitors, parading their decapitation: ‘Fa che rudiamo!\ Little wonder, then, that Leiris pays scant attention to the music, since not listening seems to be a (perfectly appropriate operatic) symptom o f entry into the drama o f orgasmic dismemberment (one suffered after all by Orpheus himself). What Calaf cathartically brings to this addiction, then, is less an auditory attentiveness than a verbal sublation, which manages (like Leiriss autobiographical process) to combine incorporation, reversal and resignified instinct. He opposes Turandot’s ‘Gli enigmi sono tre, la morte e una!’ with ‘No! no! Gli enigmi sono tre, una e la vita!’, he annuls her riddles by incorporating the essential mystery (as ‘Nessun dorma’ tells us) before then making it disappear (‘II mio mistero? No ne ho piu!’) and he is the cause o f Liu’s confession o f her unconfessed secret (‘Tanto amore segreto, e inconfessato’).61 Above all, the love that he insists on seeing, feeling and most importantly having verbally acknowledged by Turandot, is described as a profanation: ‘Non profanarmi!/Ah! Sentirti viva!’ . Schaulust, mastery and sublimation, in a fantasy world o f forbidden ecstasy and threatened dismemberment, bring us to the heart o f the Oedipal drama, and to a resolution that transforms the death drive into a life drive. Psychoanalytically analysed, Turandofs mechanism can in fact be accurately summarized with the famous phrase explored by Lacan: ‘Wo Es war, soli Ich werden’ .62 M y apparent detour here into psychoanalytic speculation, encouraged by Leiriss own non-musical interests, exemplifies both Barthes’s comment that ‘ []3]ar la niusique, nous comprenons mieux le Texte comme signifiance’03 and Leiriss own post-suicidal reflection recorded in Montecatini, and given in both the Journal (p. 533) and Fibrilles (p. 192): ‘J ’ai franchi je ne sais quel mur du son. C ’est moi seul qui ai entendu l’explosion’ . In other words, the personal and even secret signifyingness o f Turandot, and o f a complex o f operas in general, lies for Leiris beyond the sound barrier o f the actual works. In keeping with the most involved entries o f Operratiques, Leiris s response to Turandot scarcely pretends to be the account o f a per­ formance, or the historical appreciation o f a work. It is equally only opportunistically a revision o f youthful scorn, or o f L ’Age d’hommes psychomythology. It is even only mechanically a justification o f postVerist lyricism (albeit in reality via aestheticization o f Leiriss own erotic excursions). Ultimately, Turandot is the expressive exposure o f the unsaid

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that nurtures the confessional complex, a secret negotiation with the law o f the mother and the son, with passions possession and abandonment, with the knowing and unknowing female other. In breaking through the sound barrier presented to him by opera and its circumstance, Leiris has resignified the operatic spectacle for himself into a coherent, if posthumous, collection o f aperçus, a late mythopoetic resource for structural and affective resolution o f autobiographical issues, and a post war metropolitan relocation o f an originally ethnographic scene o f ecstasy, possession and rebirthing. Certain connections between music and aesthetico-political positions still remain implicit in Leiris, o f course, not least since, as we noted earlier, he continued to maintain in interviews that there was no such thing as surrealist or existentialist music per se. If the complex process o f critical rereading can be none the less already evident in Leiris’s (essentially non-musical) appreciation o f music, then it is even more evident (and complex) in Leiris s engagement with literature and its criticism. This is the area to which we now turn.

Notes to Chapter 2 1. Michel Leiris, C ’est-à-dire. Entretiens avec Sally Price et Jean Jam in, suivi de Titres et Travaux (Paris: Jean-M ichel Place, 1992), 19. 2. Emile Durkheim, Les Formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse (4th edn. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, i960). See especially Livre II: ‘Les croyances élémentaires’ , ch. V II, ‘ Origines de ces croyances (fin)’ , and Livre III: ‘Les principales attitudes rituelles’ , ch. IV: ‘Le culte positif (suite)’ . 3. See Denis Hollier (ed.), Le Collège de sociologie, 19 37-19 39 (Paris: Gallimard, 1 9 7 9 ), 5 4 8 - 9 . 4. For fascinating details o f this kind, see both William A. Shack, Harlem in Montmartre. A Paris J a z z Story between the Great Wars (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University o f California Press, 2001), and Tony Allan, Paris: The Glamour Years. 19 19 -19 4 0 (N ew York: Bison Books, 1977). Regarding the last point, Shack is careful to point out that even during the Occupation, Montmartre ‘was the locale for 49 cabarets’ (p. 115 ). As ever with colonizers and political systems, policy and practice did not coincide exactly. 5. See Leiris’s recognition o f this in both C ’est-à-dire, 22, and his interview with Michael Haggerty, ‘Michel Leiris: L’Autre qui apparaît chez vous’ , J a z z Magazine 324 (Jan. 1984), 3 4 -6 (36). I have examined this particular phenomenon in more detail in ‘ Hors de soi: politique, possession et présence dans l’ethnographie surréaliste de Michel Leiris’ , in C . W. Thompson (ed.), L ’Autre et le Sacré (Paris, L’Harmattan, 1995), 185—95. For further evidence o f Leiris’s conflation o f African, non-capitalist and surrealist identities, see his notes for a 1946 conference, ‘Le Surréalisme et l’unité’ , in Zébrage (Paris: Gallimard, 1992), 2 6 9 -7 3 .

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6. I discuss negrophilia in general terms in my book Michel Leiris: Writing the S e lf (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 4 6 -7. See also accounts given in the following: James Clifford, The Predicament o f Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature and A rt (Cambridge, M A , and London: Harvard U n i­ versity Press, 1988), 122; James Clifford, ‘ 19 33, February: negrophilia’ , in Denis Hollier (ed.), A N ew History o f French Literature (Cambridge, M A , and London: Harvard University Press, 1989), 9 0 1-8 ; Jean Jamin, ‘ Introduction à Miroir de L'A frique’ , in Miroir de l'A frique, 9 -5 8 , esp. 30 -4. 7. Léo Frobenius, Das Unbekannte Afrika (Munich: C. H. Beckshe, 1923); Robert S. Rattray, Ashanti (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1923). See Miroir de l'Afrique, 115 6 . 8. See ibid. 115 8 . 9. Ernest Ansermet, ‘ Sur un orchestre nègre’ , La Revue romande, 15 Oct. 1919. 10. The first jazz record was probably that made in 19 17 by the all-white group, the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, or O D JB , who epitomized musically the equi­ valent revolution for N e w York’s bright young things, with King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band (featuring Louis Armstrong) recording only for the first time in 1923; while the first talkie, the 19 27 J a z z Singer, featured o f course the absurd histrionics o f a white, Jewish, ‘blacked-up’ A 1 Jolson, in stark musical and stereotypical contrast to which one can place Duke Ellington’s ‘Black and Tan Fantasy’ (with, among many other generic references, its closing allusion to Chopin’s ‘Funeral M arch’), produced in the same year. For an incisive reading o f this work, as well as the ‘ Creole Love Call’ featuring Adelaide Hall, whom Leiris heard sing and whose picture he included in his Journal, see Ted Gioia, The History o f J a z z (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 1 2 1 - 2 . 1 1. Le Grand Due was founded by Eugene-Jacques Bullard, Am erica’s first black combat pilot, recipient o f the Croix de Guerre, ex-boxer and postwar impresario o f black American musical entertainment in Paris. Chez Florence was founded as M itchells in 19 24 before being renamed in honour o f the singer and its hostess, Florence Em bry Jones. For fascinating archival material on Te cake-walk: A u Nouveau Cirque — Les Joyeux Nègres’, see Jody Blake, Le Tumulte Noir: M odernist A rt and Popular Entertainment in Ja z z -A g e Paris, 19 0 0 -19 30 (Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999), 16—18. For further details on Leiris s addiction to the Charleston, see Armel, Michel Leiris, 225, for the recollections o f Jacques Baron. 12. Lyn Haney, Naked at the Feast. A Biography o f Josephine Baker (N ew York: Dodd, Mead, 19 81), 125. 13. For useful documentation o f the period, the performance routines and Baker mania, see Petrine Archer-Straw, Negrophilia. Avant-Garde Paris and Black Culture in the 1920s (London: Thames and Hudson, 2000). 14. See n. 5 above. 15. The political reason for Leiris’s enthusiasm (and the fact that he was perhaps looking for consolation, having been criticized at the festival by militants as being essentially in collusion with colonialism as an ethnographer) may account for his overly positive view o f what sounds like a disastrous concert, in which the jazz musicians (Shepp on tenor sax, Clifford Thornton on cornet, Grachan M oncur III on trombone, Dave Burrell on piano, Alan Silva on bass, and Sunny Murray on drums) at no point manage to interact meaningfully with the

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Algerian and Tuareg traditional musicians, and Shepp’s usual portentous pronouncements, at the beginning o f ‘We have come back’ , sound (all the more so given the musical integrity and vitality o f the traditional artists) patronizing and aggressive. Part o f the concert was released as Archie Shepp, blasé / live at the pan-african festival, recorded 29 and 30 Aug. 1969, Algiers. Charly, 2001, S N A F 819 CD . 16. Prior to the 1925 entry, Leiris lists the many bars, including Le Grand Due, which he had by then been frequenting for almost three months. He had by this time acquired a reputation as a drinker; he was 24. See also Fourbis, 13 1. 17. The logic behind the gold analogy can perhaps be glimpsed in a piece by Leiris called ‘Paris-Minuit’ , written originally in German and published in Der Querschnitt 9 (Sept. 1926), 685—8, in which Bricktop’s skin is described as ‘parsemée de taches de rousseur qui illuminent son visage et ses bras comme des grains d’or’ . See Journal, 846 n. 19, where this text is quoted in extenso by Jamin. 18. O f Rivière, Leiris notes in the Journal: ‘Rivière est le seul homme que je connaisse dont on puisse avoir l’impression qu’il a vraiment signé un pacte avec le diable’ (p. 193). See also Leiris’s 1985 evocation o f the recently deceased Rivière, ‘Rapace à l’œil bleu...’ , reprinted in Zébrage, 248—50, where he recalls the ‘esprit de fondamental irrespect des valeurs admises’ that drove Documents, and alludes to Rivières 1930 article ‘Religion et “ Folies-Bergère” ’ (Documents, 2/4 , 240), which concludes that ‘ [c]’est au music-hall [...] qu’il faut aller chercher, enfin rendu à l’érotisme, cet esprit de religion’ . André Schaeffner (18 9 5-19 8 0 ) founded the musical ethnology department o f the Trocadéro in the same year, 1929. O f his publications, see: (with André Cceuroy), Le J a z z (Paris: Aveline, 1926; republ. Paris: Jean-M ichel Place, 1988): all references are to this last edition; Strawinsky (Paris: Rieder, 19 31); Origine des instruments de musique (Paris: Payot, 1936; republ. Paris: Editions de l’Ecole des Hautes-Etudes en Sciences Sociales, 1994): all references are to this last edition; Les Kissi: une société noire et ses instruments de musique (Paris: Hermann, 19 51). Schaeffner was also an expert on composers such as Debussy, and engaged in a prolonged correspondence with Boulez, published as Correspondance, 1954-1970 (Paris: Fayard, 1998). 19. Michel Leiris, ‘Civilisation’ ; reprinted in Brisées (1966) 1992, 3 1 - 7 . 20. Georges Bataille, ‘Le gros orteil’ , Documents 1/6 (1929), 2 9 7 -3 0 2 (302). In this same issue, Leiris contributes to an article, jointly composed with Bataille and Griaule, on ‘Métamorphose’ which I comment on in the next chapter, and reviews William Seabrook’s sensationalist account o f voodoo initiation, in ‘L’ île magique’ . Georges Bataille, ‘La mutilation sacrificielle et l’oreille coupée de Vincent Van G ogh’ , Documents, 2/8 (1930), 11 (451)—20 (460) at 19 (459). This passage marks the first appearance in Documents o f the actual term ‘heterogeneity’ . 2 1. Michel Leiris, ‘Le “ Caput M ortuum ” ou la femme de l’alchimiste’ , Documents 2/8 (1930), 21 (4ó i ) - 26 (466) at 22 (462). 22. See Leiris’s effective admission o f this in ‘De Bataille l’Impossible à l’impossible Documents’ , republished in Brisées, 256—66, esp. 260. I return to this article in the next chapter. 23. See, e.g., Denis Hollier (ed.), Le Collège de sociologie (Paris: Gallimard, 1979), 3b-59-

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24. Michel Leiris, ‘Alberto Giacometti’, Documents 1/4 (1929), 2 0 9 -14 (209). The image is significantly recalled in the interview with Haggerty. 25. ‘Diga Diga D o ’ had already been mentioned the previous year by Schaeffner, in his article immediately following Leiris’s ‘Civilisation’, namely ‘Les “ Lew Leslie’s Black Birds” au Moulin R o u g e’ . Michel Leiris, ‘Disques nouveaux’ , Documents, 2 / 1 (1930), 48. 26. Leiris modifies this claim o f uniqueness in the interview with Haggerty (p. 35). 27. This fetish featured an inner tube running from throat to anus, which simultaneously permitted a drink given to the effigy to flow out again immediately as a urination, while acting also as a ‘porte-voix’ . It is therefore a perfect instrument for the sacred expression o f Bataillean scatology. 28. Michel Leiris et André Schaeffner, ‘Les rites de circoncision chez les Dogon de Sanga’ , Journal de la société des africanistes 6 (1936), 1 4 1 - 6 1 . 29. The following are by André Schaeffner: ‘Igor Strawinsky, musicien vivant’ , Documents, 1 / 1 (1929), 6 2 -4 ; ‘Marcel Delannoy: Le Fou de la Dame’, ibid. 1/ 2 (1929) , 119 -2 0 ; ‘Rossini: LTtaliana in Algeri’, ibid. 1/ 3 (1929), 1 4 1 —3; ‘Les “ Lew Leslie’s Black Birds” au Moulin R o u g e’ , ibid. 1/ 4 (1929), 223; ‘Des instruments de musique dans un musée d’ethnographie’ , ibid. 1/ 5 (1929), 2 4 8 -5 3 ; ‘Le Capriccio d’Igor Strawinsky’ , ibid. 1 / 7 (1929), 3 4 5 -7 (immediately followed by Leiris’s ‘Une peinture d’Antoine Caron’); ‘L’homme à la clarinette’ , ibid. 2/3 (1930) , 1 6 1 - 2 ; ‘Eddie South et ses chanteurs’ , ibid. 2/6 (1930), 372 (followed by Leiris’s ‘Le film Costes-Bellonte’, ibid.). Incidentally, Henry Crowder, who was to form a famous relationship with N ancy Cunard, played with the Alabamians, whose jazz violinist, Eddie South, was ‘ one o f the first classically trained violinists ever to play jazz’ (Shack, Harlem in Montmartre, 44). 30. See C }est-à-dire, 16—17. Leiris’s reply goes on to disagree with Leibowitz’s notion o f ‘musique engagée’ as articulated in L ’Artiste et sa conscience. Given Schaeffner s correspondence with Boulez and the latter’s vitriolic disagreement with Leibowitz, Leiris is typically maintaining a delicate distance from ideological intractability. 3 1. See, by Leiris: ‘Trois chansons guadeloupéennes’, Les Temps modernes 52 (1950), 139 4-6 ; ‘Biguines et autres chansons de la Martinique’ , ibid. 13 9 7 -14 0 7 . Alfred Métraux, ‘Chants Vodou’, ibid. 1386 -93 (1388). 32. In a typically coded gesture, Leiris’s dismissal o f Hugues Panassié may therefore be a rejection o f his colleague Schaeffner’s legacy, given Panassié’s endorsement, in his Le ja z z hot (Paris: Corréa, 1934), o f Schaeffnerian principles. In the case o f classical music, as we shall see, Schaeffner’s correspondence with Boulez, as well as his hatred o f Verdi (according to Armel, Michel Leiris, 568), puts him again at odds with Leiris and the latter’s detailed engagement with Leibowitz. 33. For Schaeffner’s approach, see Le Ja z z , 103—11, where the Revue Nègre is at least mentioned, if again contextualized in a somewhat unequal power-relation. For Leiris’s recognition o f his approach, see his interview with Haggerty (p. 36). 34. ‘André Coeuroy’ (real name Jean Béline) was a Germanist who studied with M ax Reger, founded the Revue musicale (with Henry Prunières) in 1920, and supported ‘Les Six’ . He is credited with the concluding chapters XIV, X V and X V I o f the original edition o f Le Ja z z . His 1942 Histoire générale du ja z z , strette, hot, swing, published in Paris by the then German-controlled Denoël, attempts to re-locate the fundamental elements and ultimate flowering o f jazz in

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European culture: ‘le jazz n’ est pas un art nègre. Ceux qui détestent l’art nègre peuvent donc ne point détester le jazz’ (p. 75). Some music historians simply try to write Coeuroy out o f any relationship to SchaefFner’s work: Olivier RouefF, for example, notes that ‘les commentateurs contemporains et ultérieurs considèrent généralement les trois chapitres d’André Cœuroy comme sans intérêt’ (‘Les mots du jazz. Retour sur Le J a z z d’André SchaefFner et André Cœ uroy’ , L'Homme. Revue française d ’anthropologie 15 8 -9 (Apr.-Sept. 2001), 239—59 (247)); Lucien Maison, in a more subtle gesture, derides Cœuroy s 1942 book, enjoins us to forget him and to concentrate instead on ‘SchaefFnerism’ (‘SchaefFner 1926: U n premier livre sur le jazz et ses racines africaines’ , postface to Le J a z z , 154 -6 0 , esp. 156 n. 15, 15 7, 159). See, inter alia: A. Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions o f Globalization (Minneapolis: University o f Minnesota Press, 1996); K. A . Appiah, In M y Father’s House: Africa in the Philosophies o f Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992); M . P. Baumann (ed.), Local Musical Traditions in the Globalization Process, The World o f Music, 42(3) (2000); K. Pendle (ed.), Women and Music: A History (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001); K. RallsMacleod and G. Harvey (eds.), Indigenous Religious Musics (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000). Shack, Harlem in Montmartre, 64, cites William N . Colson’s findings, presented in ‘Propaganda and the American Negro Soldier’ , that ‘there were somewhere between one thousand and two thousand marriages between black American soldiers and French women during the Great War’ . C ’est-à-dire, 17. Claude Lévi-Strauss, commenting (largely negatively) on Leiris’s Operratiques in his Regarder; Ecouter, Lire (Paris: Plon, 1993), 1 1 4 - 2 1 , opines that many o f Leiris’s opinions, such as on the Wagnerism o f Pelléas, ‘ [reprennent] des propos que j ’ai souvent entendu tenir à René Leibowitz, qui fut notre ami à tous deux’ . René Leibowitz, Schoenberg et son école (Paris: Jamin, 1947), 294. See also his Q u ’est-ce que la musique de douze sons (Liège: Dynamo, 1948), and Introduction à la musique de douze sons (Paris: L’Arche, 1949). Boulez’s aggression is recounted by several historians, including the hagiographie Joan Peyser who, in To Boulez and Beyond. Music in Europe since the Rite o f Spring (N ew York: Billboard, 1999), gives a blow-by-blow account o f Leibowitz s 1946 pedantic treatment o f Boulez’s First Sonata, and the latter’s furious reaction (‘Vous êtes de la merde!’ (p. 162)) which thereafter became an obsessive campaign o f vilification. Peyser records Boulez’s denunciation o f Leibowitz as ‘a joke [...] narrow and stupid [...], a compilation o f Adorno and Willi R eich ’ , and ‘a hanger-on to the Merleau-Ponty group’ (pp. 187, 217). The account given by Dominique Jameux in Pierre Boulez (Paris, Fayard/Sacem, 1984) is a little more discreet. Boulez makes disparaging references to Leibowitz in his correspondence with Cage (Jean-Jacques Nattiez (ed.), The Boulez-C age Correspondence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 89, 118). Elsewhere he prefers to denigrate through omission: Leibowitz is nowhere mentioned in either Penser la musique aujourd’hui (Paris: Gonthier, 1963) or Conversations de Pierre Boulez sur la direction d ’orchestre avec Jean Vermeil (Paris: Place, 1989). But it is through the Nouvelle Revue française (henceforth N R F ) that Boulez most relentlessly pursues this theme, almost ten years later. Thus in ‘La musique: recherches maintenant’ (N R F 23 (1954), 898—903) he

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sneers at ‘dodécaphonie’ and dismisses its explicators as compilers o f a ‘fiche de police’ . In ‘Expérience, autruches et musique’ (N R F 36 (1955), 117 4 -6 ), he speculates sarcastically: ‘Et de décider que le Grand Maître de l’ordre est le matricule A S -7 4 , non le matricule AW -83 [...] et de partir, en fin de compte, à la rocailleuse recherche d’ Offenbach et de Verdi’ , these last references showing that Boulez none the less remained familiar with Leibow itz’s latest historiographical research. In ‘La corruption dans les encensoirs’ (N R F 48 (1956), 1078-84), he establishes Debussy, Cézanne and Mallarmé at the root o f modernity before adding, in a gesture that suddenly sounds anti-Kahnweilerian and aggressively nationalist: ‘Cependant, les fulgurences du Coup de dés font tituber certains éclairs surréalistes pour personnes pâles; les Montagnes SainteVictoire gardent un prestige plus hautain et plus secret que la plupart des avatars du cubisme et de l’abstraction’ . ‘Aléa’ (N R F 59 (1957), 8 39-57) sneers at the ‘interprète-robot à l’effarante précision’ . Boulez’s disagreement with Leibowitz actually helped to establish a fifteen-year correspondence between the former and Schaeffner, since Boulez’s critical article ‘Trajectoires’ , published in Contrepoints 6 (1949), provoked a correction from Schaeffner, ‘Variations Schoenberg’ , published in issue 7 o f the same journal (19 51). See Pierre Boulez, André Schaeffner, Correspondance 1934-1970, présentée et annotée par Rosângela Pereira de Tugny (Paris: Fayard, 1998). Both o f the original articles are also reprinted here. For typical attacks on Leibowitz from Boulez, see 10 0 -1 n. 1, 132. Leibowitz himself could also engage in some (more discreet) denigration: see 102 n. 3. 39. See Anne Boschetti, Sartre et ‘les Temps Modernes’ . Une entreprise intellectuelle (Paris: Minuit, 1985), 195. 40. René Leibowitz, Histoire de l ’opéra (Paris: Buchet/Chastel, 1957). 4 1. The following articles in Les Temps modernes (henceforth TM ) are by René Leibowitz: ‘Prolégomènes à la musique contemporaine’, T M 2 (1 Nov. 1945), 269-90; ‘Prolégomènes à la musique contemporaine (fin)’ , T M 3 (1 Dec. 1945), 4 2 0 -4 1; ‘Darius Milhaud’ , T M 4 (1 Jan. 1946), 7 5 1; ‘Musiques d’Angleterre’ , T M 12 (Dec. 1946), 4 9 7 -5 19 ; ‘Béla Bartok’, T M 25 (3 Oct. 1947), 70 5-34 ; ‘On triche sur tous les tableaux (les compositeurs “ formalistes” en U R S S ) ’, T M 32 (May 1948), 2 0 72 -8 ; ‘Le musicien engagé (à propos du manifeste de Prague)’ , T M 40 (Feb. 1949), 3 2 2 -3 9 ; ‘Le compositeur et son double’ T M 103 (June 1954), 2 1 4 2 - 5 3 ; ‘Connaissez-vous Verdi?’, T M 108 (Dec. 1954), 8 9 0 -9 15; ‘Fidelio ou l’amour de l’opéra’, T M n i (Apr. 1955), 1 5 0 5 -17 . 42. For example, issue 4 includes both Kahnweiler’s ‘La naissance du cubisme’ and Leibowitz’s ‘exposé’ o f Darius Milhaud. Issues 5 and 6 carry Leiris’s ‘Dimanche’ , the final chapter o f Biffures, while issue 7 includes ‘exposés’ by Leibowitz, Limbour and Leiris. Issue 8 contains Leiris’s ‘De la littérature considérée comme une tauromachie’ , which became the preface for his 1946 reissued L ’Age d ’homme, while issue 40 presents Leibowitz’s ‘Le musician engagé’ on the Prague manifesto, which he was to include in his existentialist L ’Artiste et sa conscience. Esquisse d ’une dialectique de la conscience artistique, prefaced by Sartre and published by L’Arche in 1950. As noted earlier, Leiris significantly takes issue with this book, in C ’est-à-dire, arguing that there can be no such thing as ‘committed’ music, and saying o f the example Leibowitz offers— Schoenberg’s Survivor from Warsaw (dating from 1947)— that ‘c’est les paroles qui sont engagées, pas la

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musique’ (p. 17). Leiris supports this view by pointing out how the famous chorus from Verdis Nabucco has been used by both left-wing and right-wing political movements, to their own ends. This dissension is very interesting in view o f Leiris’s contemporary political recasting o f L ’Age d ’homme effected by its added 1946 preface, suggesting that the many musical references in Leiris’s autobiography, both jazz and classical, quietly resist (and survive) the prefatory imposition. See later in my discussion for Leiris’s presentation o f the low opinion he still had in 1947 (he specifies this date) o f Puccini. Issue 108 o f Temps modernes (Dec. 1954) includes Leibowitz’s ‘Connaissez-vous Verdi?’ , later incorporated into the 19 57 Histoire de l ’opéra and here additionally opening with an italicized paragraph crediting the ‘nombreuses et longues discussions avec mes amis André Clailleux, Michel Leiris, Marcel M oré and Luigi Rognon, connaisseurs enthousiastes et profonds de cette musique. Puisse cette étude témoigner de la reconnaissance que je leur dois’ . Issue 1 1 1 o f April 1955 carries both the first half o f Leiris’s ‘Vois déjà l’ange...’ (sic), the conclusion to Fourbis, which, as the title suggests, depends on a cathartic analogy with the end o f Verdi’s Aida (the latter half appearing in issue 1 1 4 —15), and Leibowitz’s ‘Fidelio ou l’amour de l’opéra’ (also later incorporated into Histoire de l ’opéra), a review o f the Stuttgart Opera’s Paris programme produced by Wieland Wagner, which is also reviewed by Leiris in Operratiques (pp. 19 and 76). René Leibowitz, Le Compositeur et son double. Essais sur l ’interprétation musicale (Paris: Gallimard, (19 71) 1986). All references are to this last edition. René Leibowitz, Les Fantômes de l ’opéra. Essais sur le théâtre lyrique (Paris: Gallimard, 1972). In the former, Leibowitz dedicates to Leiris the chapter ‘Comment fautil jouer La Bohème?’ , and notes in the final footnote o f ‘La foire aux virtuoses’ that Leiris provided him with the information regarding Callas’s effect on other singers, which Leiris himself records in Operratiques (p. 199). In the latter’s more focused interaction, Leibowitz opens the introductory chapter (devoted to des Forêts) with a quotation from Leiris’s article ‘L’opéra, musique en action’ which he thereafter requotes extensively, abstracting and incorporating key ideas such as the ‘espace sonore’ , which he reveals was alluded to in the very title o f the article’s first two versions, both submitted to him by Leiris, and expanding in his usual score-based way on the example given o f the phenomenon by Leiris, namely the ‘Miserere’ from II Trovatore. See Michel Leiris, ‘L’opéra, musique en action’ , L ’Arc 27 (1965); reprinted in Brisées, 3 1 5 - 2 2 , with the dedication ‘Pour René et M ary-Jo Leibowitz’ . The phrase ‘espace sonore’ does remain the title o f the related entry in Operratiques, 2 1 - 2 . Leiris and Leibowitz disagree about the date: Leiris gives it as July 1965, whereas Leibowitz states it to be July 1966. I have analysed in detail Leiris’s presentation o f Khadidja, including in terms o f her musical transformation, in my article entitled ‘Reveiling the woman: passion, presence, and intertextuality in Michel Leiris’s Fourbis’ , French Studies 5 8 /1 (2004), 47-6 0 . Michel Leiris, Operratiques (Paris, P.O.L., édition établie par Jean Jamin, 1992). Lévi-Strauss reaches the same conclusion in Regarder, Ecouter, Lire: ‘C ’est un grand sujet d’étonnement que, dans ces textes qui tiennent constamment sous le charme, quelque cinquante opéras fassent l’objet de commentaires pleins de poésie et de finesse sans que jamais ou presque il y soit question de musique’ (p. 115 ).

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48. For historical facts relating to Paris productions during this period, see in particular: Jean Gourret, Encyclopédie des Cantatrices de VOpéra de Paris (Bordeaux: Mengès, 1981); Jean Gourret, Dictionnaire des Chanteurs de VOpéra de Paris (Paris: Albatros, 1982); Stéphane WolfF, VO péra au Palais Garnier (1875-1962) (ParisGeneva: Slatkine, 1983). 49. Tracking o f this kind also incidentally highlights the fact that the production inspiring Leiris s use o f Aida in Fourbis was not some memorable occasion, like the 1959 performance starring Renata Tebaldi, which Leiris notes approvingly, but was perhaps the apparently rather insipid 19 52 production conducted by Louis Forestier and featuring Hoerner as Aida and Luccioni as Radames. 50. It was Sitwell herself who thus approved, according to Victoria Glendinning, Edith Sitwell. A Unicorn Among Lions (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1981), 350. Elsewhere the view that Lambert was the best interpreter is attributed to Walton and to Lambert himself See Andrew Motion, The Lamberts (London: Chatto and Windus, 1986; Faber and Faber, 1995), 147. O n its publication in 19 5 1, Façade was dedicated to Lambert in recognition o f his death that same year. 51. Searle and Lutyens both helped with last-minute orchestration o f Lambert’s ballet Tiresias, commissioned for the Festival o f Britain and premièred at a gala performance in Covent Garden before the then Queen Elizabeth (later the Queen Mother) on 9 July 19 5 1. Its critical failure and subsequent disappearance from view (the O U P refused to publish it on account o f its lubricious content) arguably hastened Lamberts death six weeks later, at the age o f 45. 52. Lambert first heard Florence Mills, together with Will Vodery’s Plantation Orchestra, in a M ay 1922 performance o f Dover Street to D ixie at the London Pavilion, and then again, with the Blackbirds and the black American Pike Davies Orchestra, at the Queen’s Theatre, in September 1926. ‘Blackbird’ parties were apparently thereafter chic events for some time in London. See Motion, The Lamberts, 135 and 154. The Elegiac Blues was played at Lambert’s own funeral. R io Grande was inspired by Sacheverell Sitwell’s poem o f the same name. Leiris mentions Dover Street to D ixie in Afrique Noire: la Création plastique, 115 6 . $3. Leiris’s Journal opens with an account o f Stravinsky’s ‘animalistic’ orchestra, and its penultimate entry mentions Stravinsky, along with Milhaud, Poulenc and others. 54. Born Isabel Nicholas, she changed her name by deed poll to Epstein when she became the sculptor’s mistress and model (there exists a bronze bust o f her aged 21). During her first marriage to the war correspondent Sefton Delmer, Isabel— who became an accomplished painter— also allegedly enjoyed relationships with Derain, Miró, Picasso and Giacometti. After the death o f Lambert, her second husband, she married his friend and fellow composer Alan Rawsthorne. It is as Isabel Rawsthorne that Francis Bacon painted her many times, including Portrait o f Isabel Rawsthorne Standing in a Street in Soho, 1967. 55. Angus Morrison, ‘Constant Lambert: A M em oir’ , the introduction to Constant Lambert, Music H o! A Study o f Music in Decline (London: Faber and Faber, 1934; Hogarth Press, 1985), 20. 56. This Turandot, which was essentially a reprise o f the 1939 production also directed by Lambert and starring Turner, ran for eight performances in all, from 29 M ay to 1 July 1947. 57. Lambert’s lack o f long-term success and eventual early death, which we feel is foreshadowed in Leiris’s presentation, were certainly assisted by alcoholism; it is

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maudlin drunkenness that propels Leiris towards his suicide attempt and subse­ quent tracheotomy. On the dysfunctional nature o f Lamberts family, including the extraordinary absence o f his father, see Motion, The Lamberts. Lambert is o f course guilty here o f a basic Eurocentrism whose ‘over­ simplification’ and ‘snobism’ are rightly criticized by Gunther Schuller, in The History of J a z z , i. Early Ja z z : Its Roots and Musical Development (N ew York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, (1968) 1986), 347. There is also a nasty subtext at this point about the omnipresence in jazz o f ‘cosmopolitan Jew s’, this accounting for its ‘masochistic melancholy’ (pp. 177, 185). I am using the term phantasy in a technical (and in this context very appropriate) sense, to denote ‘des scénarios, meme s’ils s’énoncent en une seule phrase, de scènes organisées, susceptibles d’être dramatisées sous une forme le plus souvent visuelle’ (Jean Laplanche et J.-B . Pontalis, Vocabulaire de la psychanalyse (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1967), 156). In both her containment o f secrecy and structural balancing o f Turandot/Judith, Liu gives the lie to Anthony Arblaster’s moralistic remark that the ‘torture and death o f Liu [are] more objectionable because they are so superfluous to both the plot and character development’ ( Viva la Libertà! Politics in Opera (London: Verso, 1992), 249). This is before we consider what the death o f a Liù(ise) might mean unconsciously for a Leiris. See Jacques Lacan, ‘La chose freudienne’, in Ecrits (Paris: Seuil, 1966), 4 16 —18. Roland Barthes, ‘Rasch’, in L'O bvie et Y Obtus (Paris: Seuil, 1982), 277.

CHAPTER 3

Reading Rules: Leiris and Literature Revolution and Renewal: Leiris and Surrealism It is the surrealist movement that launches Leiris as an author. Family acquaintance with Roussel, an apprenticeship under Jacob, a temporary seduction by Jouhandeau, an enthusiasm for Nerval and a meeting with Bataille merely prelude Leiris’s introduction, via André Masson, to the ‘Bureau de recherches surréalistes’ in December 1924. His first poetic works are all produced within the initial ‘heroic’ period o f surrealism neatly delineated by Breton’s first and second manifestoes published in 1924 and 1930 respectively.1 Leiris’s first literary criticism is naturally born o f this same movement, and seeks at once to imitate the group’s polemical denunciation o f pre-war conservatism and championing o f radical psychological and formal possibilities. An idiosyncratic feature o f Leiris’s rapid development in this area, though, which remains significant throughout his literary criticism, is a technique o f tri­ angulation whereby contrastive scenarios enable the construction for him o f a new intellectual avenue together with an ever-growing network o f aesthetic and ideological alliances within which he maintains a relative detachment, momentarily captivated by, yet simultaneously commenting on, a current conviction. The earliest example o f this effect already at work is the review ‘La vie aventureuse de Jean-Arthur Rimbaud’, first published in Clarté no. 2 in 1 926.2 Although merely alluding to Carrés contemporary hagiography o f the same title (and ambiguously concluding: ‘Tout ceci n’a peut-être pas grand rapport avec le livre de Jean-Marie Carré, sur la vie de Rimbaud’), the essay in fact constructs a parallel critique o f the book’s humanist conflation o f poetic vocation and colonial adventure, by relocating its own rebellious iconoclasm within the schematic certainties o f revolutionary rhetoric.3 In this way, the

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opening subjective equation made between poetry and a pure existential rebellion (‘J e conçois mal ce que pourrait être la poésie, si elle n’était une manifestation de la révolte essentielle d’un être contre les lois absurdes de l’univers dans lequel il se trouve, bien malgré lui, jeté’) mutates into the final dogmatic assertion: ‘ [tjoute poésie est inséparable de la Révolution’. The circumstances governing this move involve not only Carrés work, but a key contemporary positional essay by André Breton which itself isolates the figure o f Rimbaud, together with the significant outlet for both Breton’s and Leiris’s pieces. The organ in question was Clarté, founded in 1919 by the novelist and journalist Henri Barbusse: originally designed to promote humanist internationalism, it gradually moved closer to the Com ­ munist Party. By the end o f 1924, political circumstances had gener­ ated a growing rapprochement between the surrealist activists grouped around the journal La Révolution surréaliste and the editors o f Clarté, Victor Crastre and Marcel Fourrier. The latter, while berating the surrealists’ political ‘confusion’, none the less publicly approved o f their revolutionary fervour, notably their attack on Anatole France, as epitomized in the tract ‘Un cadavre’ . The 15 November 1924 edition o f Clarté, entitled ‘Clarté contre Anatole France’, included an approv­ ing review, by Jean Bernier, o f the famous surrealist denunciation. This gesture on the journal’s part effectively signalled the end o f its own ‘progressist’ revolutionary position and its realignment, in open association with the surrealists, along more anarchist and Trotskyist lines. Clarté's invitation to ‘intellectuels pacifistes, anciens combattants, révoltés’ to express their opinion o f the R i f colonial war, produced several replies from surrealists, including notably from Eluard, whose call for victory for France’s enemies was republished in L ’Humanité on 23 July under the banners: ‘Les intellectuels français aux côtés du prolétariat’ and ‘Un appel à la Révolution de Paul Eluard’ .4 This common cause led to a co-signed tract, La Révolution d’abord et toujours, thence to a decision to contribute to one another’s journals, and eventually, at the end o f 1925, to the (unrealized) decision to replace both La Révolution surréaliste and Clarté with a new, joint review entitled La Guerre civile, whose founders were to include Leiris.5 By April 1927, five surrealists (Breton, Eluard, Aragon, Péret and Unik) had symbolically announced in Au Grand Jour their membership o f the PCF.6 The growing tension between literary and political priorities which this gesture indicated, however, climaxed in 1929, on the occasion o f ‘le cas Trotsky’, with the expulsion from

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surrealism’s ranks o f a supposedly ‘right-wing’ literary orientation that notably included Desnos, Limbour, Baron and Leiris. This excom­ munication was pronounced ex cathedra by Breton in the Second Manifeste, which itself was published in what was to be the final issue o f La Révolution surréaliste, in December 1929. If the outlet for Leiris’s review was unlikely, no less singular was its ostensible subject-matter. The work o f the humanist comparatist and Germanist Jean-Marie Carré hardly promoted the dictatorship o f the proletariat. His contextual presentations o f Fromentin, R . L. Steven­ son or Rimbaud are literal more than formal celebrations o f the author as audacious explorer (and in an often specifically colonial setting). Thus in Carrés 1928 Les Deux Rimbaud the poet is ‘avide d’inconnu, épris d’inconnaissable, le type le plus audacieux peut-être de l’explorateur’ (p. 63);7 while the Vie de Rimbaud in question is explicitly structured according to a basic heroic dualism, wherein the ‘aventurier de l’idéal’ progresses to being an ‘aventurier du réel’ , before finally and inevitably becoming ‘vaincu’.8 All opportunism aside, what Leiris’s review demonstrates is an immediate assimilation and schematization o f this standard humanist drama o f ‘dédouble­ ments’, ‘contradictions’ and ‘retours’ (which Leiris’s own poetic and exoticist tendencies o f the period bear out for some time afterwards), to which he then attempts to add both Clartés political programming and Breton’s contemporary repositioning o f poetic struggle.9 As we shall see later, Leiris also uses this transformation to generate and incorporate his own autocritical comparatism. Each o f these already compromised positions is therefore placed by Leiris within an implicit mimetic triangulation in an early attempt to concoct a critical homology. It is a strategy o f simultaneous mimicry and mutation that will continue to be developed throughout Leiris’s literary criticism, and one that operates precisely through a negatively admitted ‘rapport’ with an established critical position. At its most complex, this counterpointing engagement will create within Leiris’s critical apologies a ventriloquism whose performance is as precise as its identificatory position is ambiguous. Crucial to Leiris’s performance in this instance is Breton’s essay ‘La force d’attendre’, first published in Clarté at the beginning o f the same year, that is in the same issue as Desnos’s denunciation o f academic literature and prizes, Leiris’s review o f the Calmann-Lévy edition o f Nerval’s Les Illuminés, and the unfulfilled promise o f La Guerre civile. 10 In its conscious attempt to fuse the surrealist and marxist visions o f

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revolution, this essay also uses Rimbaud, who now becomes the poetic icon o f Revolution’s redefinition. Alluding in the title to his protracted attempts to formulate this reconciliation o f ideals (and to his unease regarding the joint statement published in L'Humanité on 8 November asserting that the Revolution could only be thought through economically and socially), Breton draws repeatedly on the figure o f Rimbaud both in order to argue for action over quietism (in an obvious reference to Rimbaud’s supposed deathbed conversion, he remarks tartly: £[l]e témoignage de toute la vie d’un homme ne vaut, paraît-il, rien contre deux ou trois mots puérils qu’il prononce avant de mourir’ (p. 917)) and none the less to resist an over-hasty abandon­ ment o f surrealism’s intellectual and ‘spiritual’ engagement in order solely to focus on socio-economic theory.11 Notwithstanding the fact that both paths are supposedly ‘essentially compatible’ , Rimbaud (together with Lautréamont) is again alluded to as an exemplary reminder o f the surrealists’ true field o f analysis: ‘En France, la poésie de ces cinquante dernières années nous soumet avec insistance plu­ sieurs cas de cette espèce. C ’est à cette circonstance, et non à une autre, que le plus grand nombre d’entre nous doivent d’être engagés’ (p. 918). Falsely attributing the negative epithet ‘Rimbaud bolchevik’ to Ernst Delahaye, Breton denounces the deliberate betrayal o f Rimbaud’s intentions on the part o f opponents o f revolutionary ideo­ logy, before claiming that Dada and surrealism were just the propitious ‘terrain’ on which to fight this ideological battle for freedom. This leads Breton to remark significantly that a poet’s separation from the masses is engineered by those who have ‘everything to lose’ rather than produced by the special nature o f poetic language, that every true ‘œuvre de l’esprit’ is conditioned by ‘le désir d’amélioration réelle des conditions d’existence de tout un monde’, and, finally, that this rapprochement ‘se produira à la faveur de la Révolution’ (p. 920). The remaining paragraphs carefully qualify this delayed declaration. The Revolution is the resolution o f a conflict ‘en apparence beaucoup moins général’ : in other words, its socio-political nature is merely one aspect o f a surrealist total revolution. The surrealist ‘esprit pur’ should not be negatively contrasted with that o f the Revolution in order to oblige surrealists to engage in ‘greater specialization’ or to renounce their surrealist activities for more utilitarian ends. More pragmatically, there is no point in rejecting surrealism’s tactical support, and especially not on ‘the speculative terrain’ where it will remain for some time yet effective against ‘the enemies o f the Revolution’ .

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Cleverly, Breton thus concludes that it is in the service o f the Revolution that surrealism will maintain ‘l’indépendance irréductible de la pensée ainsi que le grand déterminisme révolutionnaire qu’elle implique comme une sanction’ (p. 921). In a final ambiguous touch, Breton presents surrealism as one o f the veils with which reason protectively disguises itself Before gauging how this article and its complex positioning is absorbed by Leiris, it is instructive also briefly to peruse Leiris’s contemporary review, ‘E n jo u é!’, o f Philippe Soupault’s 1925 novel o f that name, which was published in the same issue o f Clarté as Breton’s article.12 The rapid ideological development which takes place between this piece and Leiris’s later review is quite stark, and points up clearly how his articulation and conceptualization o f the poet’s task alters abruptly in the wake o f Breton’s essay. In other words, as indicated earlier, Leiris’s earliest critical attempts already contain an autocritical process that results not simply in a move to a more progressive or revolutionary position but in a more complex dislocation o f his critical position and suspension o f any single identificatory identity. Ranging Soupault’s hero, Julien, alongside melancholy romantics such as Adolphe and Obermann (who in turn are pale imitations o f the more pyrotechnic Saint-Just, Manfred and Maldoror), Leiris evokes this character’s aimless existence with a faintly autobiographical13 familiarity: ‘Il hante les bars. Il a des aventures sentimentales qui ne sortent pas de la banalité. La jalousie n’arrive qu’à peine à le tirer de son ennui’ . In response to Juliens failure to embody true revolt by grasping hope and rejecting ‘l’acceptation’, however, Leiris weakly frames the possible solution with a similarly despairing question: ‘Mais que répondre à ceux qui n’ont même plus cette unique espérance, s’opposer de toutes leurs forces au monde qui les écœure, lui tenir tête jusqu’au bout et être persuadés qu’en faisant cela ils agissent noblement?’ (pp. 11 - 1 2 ) . He concludes by citing at length (in a journal called Clartél) the char­ acter’s literal lack o f vision, and adding simply: ‘Le désert’ . Contrasting this somewhat indulgent empathy with the later review’s brisk sublation o f poetic revolt further emphasizes how the apparently straightforward resolution o f ‘La vie aventureuse’ in fact results from a series o f complex negotiations with several conflicting aesthetic and political positions. The later review immediately dis­ misses melancholic revolt as inauthentic (‘ce n’est pas la vraie révolte’) in its evasion o f the ‘destruction’ or modification that must necessarily

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be inflicted on prevailing social structures. The vague and purely individualistic ‘manière d’espoir, un optimisme relatif’ o f ‘En joue!’ becomes the more precise and political ‘minimum d’optimisme, un certain pragmatisme’ o f ‘La vie aventureuse’ . The optimism o f ‘En joue!’, moreover, relates merely to the hope that one might ‘choisir quelque chose qui vaille mieux que l’acceptation’; whereas this essentially poetic revolt, wherein ‘un homme [...] croit avoir [...] repoussé toutes les formes de l’acceptation’ is at once dismissed by the later review as an ‘aveuglement [...] de courte durée’ . This self­ critique occurs within the essay’s more visible importation o f Carré’s and Breton’s taxonomies, the latter being used to transform and effectively critique the former. Leiris’s review moves clearly from the poet’s ideal adventures (‘ [I]l se sépare [...] de l’univers matériel, ne restant en communication avec lui que par le vague lien magique des mots, bouleversant les relations en agitant ces mêmes mots, construisant parfois un nouveau monde à son image’ (p. 14)) to his struggles with the real world, which (in another implicit reference to Rimbaud) he attempts to subdue through drug-taking or anarchistic rejection o f ‘tous les rapports sociaux’ . At this point, however, Leiris replaces Carré’s final image o f the ‘vanquished’ artist with that o f the poet’s conversion to the cause o f social revolution. This becomes the ‘seule voie efficace pour exercer sa révolte’, linguistic ‘bouleverse­ ment’ now being linked directly to the struggle against oppression. From this point, Leiris’s concluding paragraphs echo those o f Breton. The latter’s somewhat apologetic ‘ [n]ous appartenons, corps et âme, à la Révolution’ is echoed more unambiguously in Leiris’s view that ‘tout poète véritable s’y dévoue corps et âme’ . Bretons assumption for poetry o f ‘un rôle moins grand que certain autre’ becomes in Leiris the more bullish ‘le plus grand [bouleversement] qu’il soit donné à un homme de produire’ . Finally, Bretons suspenseful recognition o f ‘la Révolution’ is reflected in Leiris’s deliberately climactic final paragraph: ‘Toute poésie vraie est inséparable de la Révolution’ . This confident conclusion serves to disguise the deeper paradox which Leiris’s rapid and autocritical shift has generated. For in dis­ missing as an illusory revolt and a mere ‘truchement des mots’ the idealistic belief in pure, ‘magical’ poetry, Leiris effectively criticizes his own contemporary surrealist productions in La Révolution surréaliste, which were to form the core o f his major surrealist work, the anti­ dictionary Glossaire j ’y serre mes gloses, as well as the basis o f many later works, both creative and critical, right up to and including his 1985

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Langage tangage ou ce que les mots me disent. 14 Indeed, the terminology o f Breton’s careful resistance, in ‘La force d’attendre’, to utilitarian restriction directly points up Leiris’s own internal contradiction.15 Promoting the special nature o f poetic language and its com­ munication o f emotions over ‘celle qui a pour but de nous faciliter toutes sortes d’autres échanges inférieurs’, Breton pleads: ‘Encore moins comprendrais-je qu’à des fins utilitaires on tienne à obtenir de moi le désaveu de l’activité surréaliste’ (pp. 919-20, 921). These words recall the opening remarks o f what became the prière d’insérer to Leiris’s Glossaire, published in the third isssue o f La Révolution surréaliste: ‘Une monstrueuse aberration fait croire aux hommes que le langage est né pour faciliter leurs relations mutuelles. C ’est dans ce but d’utilité qu’ils rédigent des dictionnaires’ (p. 1 1 ) .16 In this light, Leiris’s ‘La vie aventureuse’ emerges as a reactive, rather than progressive, gesture, a recalibration by ideology that facili­ tates neither political clarity nor surrealist occultation, but rather the development o f a ‘chassé-croisé’ critical movement that generates simultaneous association and detachment. Prior even to the com­ pletion o f his major surrealist works,17 therefore, and from within the movement’s own programme, Leiris sets in motion an objectivation o f the surrealist ‘merveilleux’. As part o f the same shift, Leiris had already agreed on 9 April 1926 to undertake for Jacques Doucet the composition o f a dossier on ‘le Merveilleux’ (only to abandon the project formally on 14 December 1927, having fled to Egypt and Greece in the intervening period18 to avoid or postpone various commitments). What is significant is that the surviving unfinished manuscript,19 in relating the emergence o f ‘le Merveilleux’ to a basic human desire to transcend utilitarianism and definition and commune with the ‘Inconnu’ and the absolute, such that it is to be found ‘au centre de tous les paroxysmes’ including the ‘bouleversement’ created by writing, places the particular surrealist programme, or rather ‘tout ce que peut résumer ce terme encore mystérieux et imprécis: la SURRÉALITÉ’ (p. 49) only at the end o f a history o f the pheno­ menon that is coterminous with that o f western literature itself. In the chronologically final section o f the manuscript, entitled ‘Le Merveilleux “ moderne” ’, a more particular lineage runs basically from Nerval to Nick Carter, with a focus more on Rimbaud and Roussel, say, than on surrealism itself. The former, with Lautréamont, is presented as ‘la véritable souche de tout le mouvement surréaliste au point de vue moral’ ; while the latter is praised for his pure and

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strictly poetic inventions and the compositional ‘séries de coïnci­ dences’ underlying both these and his ‘anecdotes’.20 Neither o f the two bibliographies in the manuscript contains a work o f the surrealist school. Notwithstanding the work’s incompletion, the contextualization, including its astonishing omission o f any reference to the fundamental status o f the ‘merveilleux’ within surrealism, clearly demonstrates the concrete emergence o f a technical and moral distantiation from within an originally surrealist-inspired pursuit.21 The same mechanism, employed in counterpoint fashion, resurfaces twenty years later in Leiris’s notes for a conference organized by Présence africaine.22 Entitled ‘Le surréalisme et l’unité’, the new postwar and developing post-colonial context, once more gravitating around a journal, leads Leiris this time to evoke a historical backdrop o f advanced capitalism, class division and mass production within which surrealism now purposefully emerges as the moral abolition o f epistemological, social and economic antinomies, and thus the true path o f a perpetual Revolution designed to restore complete human freedom. Once again, as with Clarté, Leiris’s presumed audience leads him to champion surrealism in a strategic way, triangulating pure identification in order to generate new identificatory possibilities. It is not surprising, therefore, that prior to his eventual expulsion in 1929, and for inherent as much as circumstantial reasons, Leiris had already effectively moved away from the controlled and absolutist climate o f the surrealist group and towards the cultural and critical eclecticism cultivated by yet another journal, this time Batailles dissident Documents. Leiris’s parting shot, ‘Le bouquet sans fleurs’, a brief contribution to the 1930 anti-Breton pamphlet Un cadavre, already conforms to the Bataillean celebration o f ‘base materialism’ in its sneering rejection o f Breton’s (and surrealism’s) tendency to idealistic moralizing, ‘l’érudition de cours du soir’ and ‘les déclarations toutes verbales à la louange de la révolution (ce dont la révolution se fout bien!)’.23 Within Leiris’s patricidal gesture, though, there is inevitably another moment o f ‘dédoublement’ and ‘contradiction’ . For in aping Breton’s now denounced postures, Leiris evinced quite technically the parasitic possession and exploitation o f which he accuses Breton, and for the same infusion o f vitality. While such hypocrisy is standard polemics, Leiris notably uses triangulation once more to germinate his own critical renewal. Condemning Breton to ‘decompose dialectically , Leiris actually uses the ‘germes de sa propre déchéance’ or viral disintegration which he predicts for Breton, in his

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quest for a new inhabitation. In an attempt to move beyond the ideal/ real antinomy, Leiris therefore turns to Documents s desire to become that ‘mythological destruction’ which Breton at best ‘would have liked to be’ .

The Coincidence o f Contraries: Leiris and Documents The most immediately obvious feature o f Leiris s involvement with Documents is the sudden creative energy which this unleashes. Within the space o f two years, he contributes thirty-seven articles on almost every aspect o f the journal’s chosen field o f ‘Archéologie, Beaux Arts, Ethnographie, Variétés’, in addition to acting as its editorial assistant. This enthusiastic engagement with the heterological and anti-idealist philosophy o f Bataillean ‘base materialism’ also greatly expands the range and receptivity o f Leiris s work. Embracing an aggressive dehierarchization o f aesthetic, social and political assumptions, Leiris suddenly begins publishing on music, art, social organization and the body’s materiality in a manner designed to challenge violently the tacit distinctions between high and low art, civilized and primitive cultures, beauty and obscenity. An important consequence o f this adjustment in demeanour and definition is the reorientation it confers, including in Leiris s contributions, on several key surrealist features, including the body as fetish, the supremacy o f the visual, the transmutation o f the everyday, the uncovering o f the unconscious and the witnessing o f the ‘miraculeux’, all o f which will become re­ grounded in a materialist mission that refuses to relate, however implicitly, to an assumed ideal form, as explicitly articulated by Bataille in the form o f a dictionary entry: ‘il est temps, lorsque le mot matérialisme est employé, de désigner l’interprétation directe, excluant tout idéalisme, des phénomènes bruts et non un système fondé sur les éléments fragmentaires d’une analyse idéologique élaborée sous les signes des rapports religieux’24. Documents therefore provides Leiris with both an immediate outlet for excited submissions o f ‘materialist’ experience or evidence and, through its oppositional relationship to surrealism (and later also Sartre’s existentialism), a new set o f contexts with which to compose his own critical distinctions. The other immediately striking feature o f Leiris’s work with Documents is the relative paucity o f pieces by him specifically based on or devoted to literature or literary criticism. This actually follows on logically from everything stated above, and betokens not a move away from the

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sphere but a triangulation o f the very practice, resulting in very precise reiterations and redefinitions by Leiris that are fully aware o f the key, and ostensibly literary, debates between Bataille, Breton and Sartre, extending through the thirties and into the forties. As we shall see, Leiris’s productions covering this greater period, including im­ portantly his subtle retrospections, carefully weave a critical argu­ mentation that seeks to absorb the implications o f a heterological disruption o f idealist unity but also to blend this lesson into a larger process that can transform mere contradiction into the suspenseful maintenance o f multiple alliances. An early example o f this re-engineering is Leiris’s short article ‘Métaphore’, appearing immediately after Batailles ‘Métamorphose’ cited above.25 Its definition as a ‘dictionary’ entry already signals an apparent abandonment o f the closed world o f ‘secret ramifications’ and oracular transmutation praised by Leiris in the prière d’insérer to Glossaire j ’y serre mes gloses; he now thus embraces the formerly derided ‘aberration’ that language existed to help humans com­ municate or, indeed, compose dictionaries. Its content reinforces this message: metaphor is a potentially limitless phenomenon, drawing all knowledge and known objects into ‘des rapports d’interdépendance’ . Thus supporting the journal’s basic insistence that all cultural values and hierarchies are discursively produced, he simultaneously overturns his own earlier articulation o f surrealist ideality and develops the mechanism o f ‘rapport’ without ‘rapport’ used to exploit Carré and later Breton. In addition, Leiris’s self-consciously abyssal conclusion: ‘Cet article lui-même est métaphorique’, signals how his own article is in effect a translation o f his new critical context, including the immediately preceding piece by Bataille, the irony o f this connection being that the latter article may corroborate Leiris’s public statement but may unwittingly expose some o f its more private motivations. Bataille not only tells us to reject idealistic systems, but reminds us that most materialists, in banishing spiritual entities (such as Leiris’s earlier surrealist evocation o f oracular guidance), end up just positing a new version o f ‘des rapports hiérarchiques [...] rapports religieux établis précédemment’ . A more elaborate version o f the same process can be seen at work in the ‘Dictionary’ section o f Documents no. 7. In another gesture towards discursive production (though more cynically it could also be read as hierarchical deferment to his professional superior), Leiris’s ‘L’eau à la bouche’26 here accompanies a piece by Marcel Griaule,

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‘Crachat-âme’,27 the two forming one dictionary entry, entitled ‘Crachat’ . This is then immediately followed by two further entries, ‘Débâcle’ by Leiris and ‘Informe’ by Bataille.28 Griaule’s ethnographic commentary on the status and attributions o f saliva throughout Christian, Muslim and animist societies isolates its magical or miraculous instances in a manner that neatly supports Documents’s base materialism (in spite, perhaps, o f its seeming attraction to hierarchies). Leiris’s more charged complement, on the other hand, focuses pre­ cisely on ‘the abolition o f hierarchies’ effected by sudden recognition o f the viscosity and ‘integral reality’ o f our bodily organs, most especially the mouth, as the site o f both our greatest idealism (speech, breath, kiss) and our ‘organic’, demythologizing mucosity. Equating spit with manifestations o f eroticism, since both scandalously disrupt the controlling classification o f our organs, shaming the mouth’s ‘intelligence’ and soiling its ‘divinity’ , Leiris presents the substance as ‘le symbole même de Yinforme’, a formlessness that precisely cannot be hierarchized. Thus neatly recalling basic Bataillean fixations while resisting those o f Griaule, he concludes with another abyssal deferment o f his own piece’s paradoxical power o f definition, by imagining a human being as being in reality ‘le crachat d’un démiurge en délire, riant aux éclats d’avoir expectoré cette larve vaniteuse’. The next piece, ‘Débâcle’, alluding to Zola’s novel o f that name, situates the term historically and emphasizes its grotesque and debasing associations, but does so primarily in order to build its own violent vision o f an absolute annihilation (one which therefore entails no subsequent resurrection or rehierarchization) that destroys everything ‘hostile et étranger’, itself included. Humanist revolt or the surrealist ideal revolution are here returned to an unresolving ‘primitive violence’ . Batailles rhetorically cooler ‘Informe’ then effectively recapitulates these key terms and attitudes, by stating that a (true) dictionary would give not a word’s meaning but its task or job, such that informe is a term ‘servant à déclasser’, designating a nonidealized life-form like a crushed spider or worm (rather than a conceited larva), whose usage rejects philosophical recuperation and affirms that the world is indeed ‘comme une araignée ou un crachat’ . Notwithstanding the denunciation o f philosophy’s sole aim in ‘Informe’, the articles together generate their own meaningful ‘rapport’ o f reinforcing assertions, becoming a collective and largely de-individuated statement within which we can none the less discern a certain sublation o f internal difference.

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Where Leiris focuses specifically on literature, as in his reviews o f de Chiricos Hebdomeros or Frazers Myths of the Origin of the Fire (sic), which are once again accompanied by a Bataille piece, this time a reading o f Berls Conformismes freudiens, this process still applies.29 The first o f these contributions is little more than a self-confessed ‘plaisanterie’ sandwiched between the other two. Bataille uses Berl to bemoan the domestication o f psychoanalytic phenomena, blaming the ‘literature o f decadent esthetes’ who are incapable o f establishing contact with ‘les basses couches sociales’ . Conflating racial, social and intellectual oppression, he concludes: ‘Que l’on grince les dents, comme des forçats, ou qu’on éclate de rire, comme des nègres, il faudra bien passer à un autre genre d’exercice’ (p. 3 11). Leiris operates a parallel critique on Frazer who, with his ‘great idealism’, falls into the ‘tendance [...] bien pensante et optimiste’ o f locating the seeds o f present-day religions in primitive practices, thus supporting notions o f revealed religion and our divine origins, instead o f displaying Leiris’s preferred ‘tendance [...] subversive et pessimiste’ for viewing modern religion as a scarcely evolved version o f primitive cults (p. 312). Frazer’s ‘elegant’ , ‘seductive’ , ‘refined’ approach, for the same reason, does not delve into the real economic and sexual factors bound up with myth, preferring to present the ‘thief’ o f fire as ‘a civilizing hero, a sort o f technological revolutionary’ rather than as a murdering or castrating agent who demonstrates how sexual and technological dimensions together constitute a single connaissance. In a stinging conclusion, Leiris claims that this is what a complete study o f such myths would allow us to determine. In a similar manner, therefore, both essays logically surpass the elegant and decadent reading o f an isolated text in order to advocate a complete, deidealized practice. We can see, in their presentation o f fetishism, materiality and iconoclasm, but also in their structural procedure, that Leiris’s articles closely imitate Batailles obsessive dualism. As such, they support at least indirectly the latter’s key disagreements with Breton, pursued through Documents as well as elsewhere. Particularly convincing, indeed, is Leiris’s reflected knowledge o f contemporary pieces by Bataille which remained unpublished at the time. For example, the immediate target o f ‘La “ vieille taupe’” , with its particular de­ nunciation o f Breton’s accusing Second Manifeste, was o f course already familiar to Leiris, but the essay’s specific challenge to abandon the ‘ascèse mentale’ o f a purely literary vision o f the world, and to

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exchange Icarian idealism for materialist mucosity, has obviously been concretely accepted by Leiriss change o f content, metaphor and tone.30 Similarly, the closing remarks made in ‘La valeur d’usage de D. A. F. de Sade’ regarding ‘les collectivités de couleur [...] par rapport à l’hétérologie’ (p. 69), echo Leiriss own contemporary ‘Civilisation’, analysed earlier in relation to music.31 Similar connections can be found in Bataille’s ‘Le Jesuve’ or ‘L’oeil pineal’ . Within the pages o f Documents, the connection is even more obvious. Leiris never bor­ rowed the coprophiliac language employed against Breton by Bataille in ‘Le langage des fleurs’ and ‘Le “Jeu lugubre’” ; we may say, indeed, that there is no waste in his use o f these essays.32 Thus the formal break with Breton, ‘Le bouquet sans fleurs’, clearly acknowledges by its title the exposure in ‘Le langage des fleurs’ o f a rose’s hairy sex organs and its closing image o f de Sade tossing petals into a manure ditch (to which Breton had snifflly replied in the Second Manifeste that the rose minus its petals still remains the rose). An equally productive move is facilitated for Leiris by ‘Le “Jeu lugubre’” , published in the same issue o f Documents as Leiriss ‘Une peinture d’Antoine Caron’ (which Bataille prefaces with details o f the painting’s provenance). Bataille first presents a psychoanalytic analysis o f Dali’s eponymous painting, focusing on its representation o f a shit stain that is ‘à la fois cause primitive et remède’, then evokes de Sade screaming down his waste-pipe that the Bastille prisoners’ throats were being cut only for the prison governor to be subsequently beheaded, and then concludes, in an obvious attack on Breton, that ‘il est devenu impossible dorénavant de reculer et de s’abriter dans les “ terres de trésors” de la Poésie sans être publiquement traité de lâche’ (pp. 213, 216). These details are subtly reproduced in Leiriss extensive article on Caron, which in describing the ‘sadistic or masochistic’ motivation behind the painter’s ‘Massacres d’une proscription de la République romaine’ in­ cludes apocalyptic background details regarding a child being ‘égorgé’ and then beheaded. More significantly still, Leiriss appreciation o f the painting actually emerges from an opening suite o f autobiographical recollections, which resurface much later in L ’Age d'homme as some o f its earliest surviving material.33 Leiris therefore typically absorbs Bataille’s obsessive polemics into a much longer personal programme o f dépassement perpétuel, using the original inspiration derived from what Bataille terms the ‘figurations contradictoires du sujet’ to construct both an autobiographical transformation o f fixated presentations o f wounds, ignominy and nausea, and a coincidental critical distinction.

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It was inevitable that Leiriss process o f mimicry and mutation would in time lead to an objectivation o f Bataillean dilapidation, as it had done o f humanism and surrealist idealism. Leiriss private ad­ mission in the Journal, as early as 28 October 1929, that he is already losing interest in Documents and its ‘recherches théoriques’, is there­ fore merely symptomatic o f the triangulation inherent in each o f his critical progressions.34 The physical fugue which Leiris adds soon afterwards to this intellectual distantiation (repeating his 1927 reaction), the 19 3 1-3 ethnographic Mission Dakar—Djibouti, facili­ tates his break with Batailles subsequent activities. Avoiding the explosive excesses o f both ‘Acéphale’ and ‘Contre-Attaque’, Leiris continues thereafter to elaborate a more dogged demythologization o f the self, based on ethnographic application, which the intellectually and stylistically subtle article on Caron had indicated from within its ostensible affiliation. This new exploration, combining all the elements o f his critical apprenticeship to date, was to culminate in the autobiography L ’Age d'homme, completed in 1935 but only published in 1939. Subsequently, in a further reframing, Leiris was to preface the book’s 1946 edition with ‘De la littérature considérée comme une tauromachie’, a redefinition o f critical commitment that uses the rigours o f existentialist authenticity to judge both his own surrealist alchemy and Bataillean abjection. As we shall see presently, this in turn involved adjudication by Leiris o f the emerging critical contest between Bataille and Sartre. Finally, as part o f this larger and ever more complex triangulation, Leiriss retrospective essays on Bataille, dating from 1958 to 1967, and collected late in his life in the 1988 volume A propos de Georges Bataille, historicize Batailles critical crises.35 Dilapidation by now has faded into ‘un reflet très pâle et très incertain de l’ami disparu’ . Incorporating Leiriss contemporary interest in opera, the 1958 essay ‘Donjuanisme de Georges Bataille’ now benignly glosses the destructive and acephalic urges in Batailles work as the ‘dramma giocoso’ o f a Don Giovanni. Erotic interest was therefore in fact born o f the libertine’s light touch and moral ‘rupture de limite’, and ultimately just the context through which Bataille could explore the infinity o f human desire and give exuberant expression to the heroic defiance o f death. As part o f this genial rehabilitation, we are also reminded o f the play o f pseudonyms and disguises that Bataille is said to have maintained, a gesture that deli­ cately externalizes Leiriss own masking and unmasking. The following article, ‘De Bataille l’impossible à l’impossible Documents’,

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first published in 1963 within a year o f Batailles death, smoothly merges memories o f the individual (whose course, we learn, ran from being the Dostoyevskean ‘“ impossible” man’ to the Dionysian ‘man o f the Impossible’) with those o f the ‘impossible’ (that is, internally divided) magazine made in his image. Leiris none the less manages to synthesize this maelstrom o f impossibility, subtly introducing another masking self-projection in the figure o f Jacques Lavaud, who had originally introduced the two ‘pour voir en observateur détaché quel curieux précipité pourrait résulter de ce contact’ . Leiris simul­ taneously notes and plays down each stage o f Documents's evolution: the young intellectuals’ flirtation with starting a review magazine, Batailles first (destroyed) efforts at writing, the identification with the hero (‘ridicule et odieux au-delà de toute limite’) o f Notes from Underground (pp. 20, 2 1-2 , 23). The journal itself is then treated to the same equivocal description, being remembered as made in Batailles own image, ‘publication Janus tournant l’une de ses faces vers les hautes sphères de la culture (dont Bataille était bon gré mal gré un ressortissant par son métier comme par sa formation) et l’autre vers une zone sauvage où l’on s’aventure sans carte géographique ni passeport d’aucune espèce’ (p. 26). The impression given is o f a selfdenying, contradictory and aimless venture. Leiris then recalls specific issues and articles, notably the ‘inaugural’ ‘Le langage des fleurs’ and the ‘expression achevée’ o f anti-idealism, ‘Le bas matérialisme et la gnose’, with its significant focus on the figuration o f ‘incongruity’ and ‘stunning lack o f regard’ (pp. 32, 33-4). Noting its momentary success as a shocking art magazine (which, we are reminded, was the first in France to pay tribute to Caron!), Leiris concludes his ambiguous praise by referring to Documents as an ‘adventure’ and a ‘bizarre partie de qui-perd-gagne’— a notion that might be applied to this recol­ lection itself; while his closing image o f Bataille as someone who created around himself ‘une marge infranchissable’ seems equally selfdescriptive in this as in other contexts. As a ‘detached observer’, one can see this essay as designedly offering ‘un reflet très pâle et très incertain de l’ami disparu’ (p. 40). The final article, ‘Du temps de Lord Auch’, dating from 1967, perhaps brings this ambiguity o f account to a new pitch o f sophistication. Leiris’s opening citation o f Bataille s citation o f Pierre Boaistuau’s evocation o f monstrous works (of nature) ‘renversées, mutilées et tronquées’ prepares us for the following re-reading o f Histoire de l’œil. Leiris tells us at once that he prefers the 1928

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‘primitive edition’, ‘suppressed’ by a subsequent ‘autocritical’ philo­ sophical development, and that he will refer none the less to this first version, ‘la plus primesautière’, since he would have preferred the book to remain ‘sans retouches’ and thus to retain its ‘allure d’une version révélée’ (pp. 46-50). The beautiful subtlety o f this critical gesture lies obviously in the manner by which Leiris manages to associate his following résumé o f an obliterated version o f a text with the projected notion o f an original, unmutilated, pre-autocritical integrity. This contrasts with the essay’s subsequent use o f the phrase ‘the coincidence o f contraries’ in order to break down the book’s compositional process into facile opposites (‘l’éclatant et l’écœurant, le lourd et le léger’ (p. 63)) as well as to relate it to Documents’s mechanism o f de-hierarchization and even Leiris’s own entry for ‘Métaphore’ in the third issue: ‘univers devenu dictionnaire où le sens des mots s’évanouit puisque tous ils se définissent les uns par les autres’ (p. 67). The essay’s conclusion, evoking the story’s own end, wherein the characters simply sail away, ‘à la fois hors de toute loi et hors d’eux-mêmes’, seems like yet another figure found within the text itself to project and objectify the ‘extreme ambiguity’ o f Leiris’s own representation and de-presentation o f Histoire de Vœil’s logical and moral integrity. B y this stage, though, Leiris’s own autocritical de­ velopment has already compressed the whole o f Bataillean chaos into a much larger coincidence o f contraries, involving a dialectical en­ gagement with Sartrean existentialism. D épassem ent perpétuel :

Leiris and Existentialism

Leiris’s first unambiguous autobiography, H Age d’homme, published in 1939, bears the dedication: ‘A Georges Bataille, qui est à l’origine de ce livre’ . It is a typically ambiguous phrase that effects a sublation through its retrospection. The Second World War was to provide the backdrop and context for Leiris’s increasingly critical attitude towards the political consequences o f Batailles aesthetic, and an accompanying rapprochement (assisted by actual close personal contact in 1944 during the events leading to the liberation o f Paris) with the literary and philosophical convictions o f Jean-Paul Sartre. Leiris’s entry for 16 February 1941 in his Journal records a personal exchange with Bataille, enflamed by a subsequent correspondence, regarding the latter’s apparent willingness to publish in a collection edited by Georges Pelorson, whose Association Jeune France was financed by the Vichy

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government. Reacting against both Bataille and Jacques Audiberti, Leiris adds an important passage that goes beyond resistance to compromised publication during the period to form the basis o f a major aesthetico-moral shift. Rejecting the claim by ‘les Bfataille], et autres partisans d’une mystique, poétique ou non, mais à coup sûr de tout repos’ that his ‘raidissement’ or resistance to publication entails ‘intellectual sclerosis’, Leiris describes his position with a vocabulary resembling that o f existentialism: ‘ [p]lutôt l’inertie, le silence, l’ensevelissement dans une négativité complète, que parler, agir, dans des conditions telles que cela représenterait de ma part, un reniement de nature à dévaloriser, à priver de toute vertu les quelques témoignages que j ’ai pu donner de moi précédemment. Il y a plusieurs semaines déjà que je réfléchis sur cette vraie maladie des “ gens de lettres” qui ne conçoivent pas la possibilité de se taire et pour qui ne plus publier équivaut à une espèce d’anéantissement’ (p. 337). The terminology, including on the psycho-medical level, strikingly anticipates Sartre’s later denunciation o f Bataille as a ‘nouveau mys­ tique’ incapable o f overcoming ‘unusable’ experience.36 Leiris then proceeds to formulate an important politico-aesthetic revision o f the place and value o f poetic activity and thinking that becomes, in this new context, an explicit criticism o f surrealist and Bataillean narcissism (as well as an implicit defence o f the conscious techniques o f negation, condensation and defabulation underpinning L ’Age d’homme) . 37 Denouncing the ‘escroquerie plus ou moins inconsciente qui consiste à identifier l’activité poétique avec la “ Pensée” [et] à déclarer qu’il est d’une importance cruciale de continuer d’écrire des poèmes, parce qu’il faut bien que l’“ Esprit” continue’, Leiris specifies that poetic thought (his personal favourite) is just one o f many forms, but must not be used, especially ‘par le temps qui court’, to ‘mask’ the desire to elevate spirit and ‘spirituality’ over the political mêlée, or worse, to justify a collaborationist collusion with the ‘côté du manche’ (pp. 338). The Journal subsequently records Leiris s first real meeting with Sartre in 1942, his several trips to a performance o f Les Mouches in 1943 (which led Leiris to break his publishing silence by producing, anonymously, an article on the play towards the end o f that year in the then clandestine Les Lettres françaises) and his reading, spread over several months, in 1943 and 1944 o f L ’Etre et le Néant.38 A clear transfer o f critical affiliation, from Bataille to Sartre, and from ‘inner experience’ to ‘appropriating project’, therefore takes place during this period.

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Sartre’s ‘Un nouveau mystique’ directly opens up this conflict. First published in December 1943, it situates L'Age d'homme as the latest in a series o f textual ‘géométries passionnées’ now joined by Batailles L'Expérience intérieure. But whereas Leiris’s work is an ‘admirable’ example o f literature becoming ‘un acte véritable’, Batailles ‘essaimartyre’, with its explicit aim o f constructing a combinatory emotional and rational connaissance (one recalls Leiris’s earlier review o f Frazer), is a fundamentally anti-discursive expression o f jouissance intuitive’, figuring an ‘explosion instantanée’ through its spasmodic and negative poetics (pp. 144-8). Likening this language and vision formally to the writing o f mystics (and surrealists) in its aggressivity, abjection and non­ reciprocity, Sartre then criticizes the content as lacking Hegelian synthesis, remaining a vision o f perpetual suffering arising from an unhealable déchirure or inherent contradiction. Batailles distortion o f the cogito and o f Heideggerian ipseity, together with a skewed scientism, create in Sartre’s view a dehumanizing notion o f simul­ taneous autonomy and dependence which he claims was already encouraged by the activities o f the Collège de Sociologie. Batailles view that our construction o f projects is an avoidance o f the experience o f the instant is beautifully turned round by Sartre when he notes that Bataille gives himself‘le projet de sortir du monde des projets’ (p. 169). Rejecting Bataillean ecstasy (in a description that goes to the heart o f Leiris’s ethnographic fascination with possession, ritual and the ‘hors soi’), Sartre reaffirms that ‘nous sommes projet, [n]on par lâcheté ni pour fuir une angoisse: mais projet d’abord’ (p. 187). This key conclusion is exactly what Leiris isolates in his private reading o f L'Etre et le Néant4 as recorded in the Journal (p. 386). Batailles ‘Réponse à Jean-Paul Sartre’, extensively requoting Sartre’s essay, points up in defence the difficulty that a philosophy ‘in movement’, that is therefore affected from within by its self-produced ‘différence’, must represent for a systematic but stagnant critique.39 Replying: Je n'aboutis jamais', Bataille holds up to Sartrean critique the prospect o f its becoming ‘un nouveau moyen d’angoisse, partant d’ivresse’ for Bataille, and in adding: je pense et m'exprime à la merci de hasards’, insists precisely on the coincidence o f contraries at the heart o f selfhood: ‘ [m]a pensée se connaît mal elle-même. Elle devrait du même coup s’éclairer entièrement, se dissoudre’ (pp. 199, 200). Bataille suggests that risk, unknowing and movement are factors banished from the realm o f thought by Sartre, and with them the absolute revolt that is ‘le désir indéfini’.

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It is very interesting to turn now to Leiris s review o f Sartre’s Les Mouches, in the light o f this ongoing debate. It soon becomes obvious that the play’s significance for Leiris lies not just in its immediate political resonance but also in its oblique dramatization o f a critical choice, wherein the existential act is personified by Orestes, while the Bataillean experience is embodied in Electra. Sartre’s changes to the traditional tragedy are therefore key: ‘de victime de la fatalité, Oreste est devenu champion de la liberté’ . In what I take to be a coded reference both to Bataille and to Leiris s own L!Age d'homme, we are told that Orestes finally exists as a man ‘au lieu d’etre le vague adolescent que les fleurs de la plus fine culture avaient simplement affranchi des communs préjugés sans lui fournir le moyen d’accéder à la virilité’ . Indeed, in another instance o f autofiguration regarding Leiris’s progressive abandonment o f critical positions, Orestes’s gesture is compared to the initiatory murder that the young man carries out in so-called primitive societies in order to take his place among the adults. In contrast to that o f Orestes, whose act is obviously syn­ onymous with existential authenticity, Electra’s description recalls Sartre’s (but even Batailles own defensive) characterization o f Batailles position reviewed above, being inconsistent rather than rigorous, ‘vehement and sacrilegious’, consumed by hatred but unable to act freely, and ultimately confined ‘entre l’érotisme et une sorte de contre-religiosité qui n’est en somme qu’une piété retournée’ . Around the drama o f this fundamental choice, the rest o f Leiris’s article moreover subtly suggests his own critical trajectory: Orestes thus performs an act o f self-affirmation that frees him from both his inherited ‘humanist and liberal culture’ and a ‘révolte élémentaire d’Electre qui n’est qu’aveugle déchaînement’, that is from all the textual stages that we have analysed to date. Moreover, his actions, particularly in refusing to become the new leader o f Argos such that each o f the citizens has to ‘accomplir le saut, s’engageant dangereuse­ ment et de sa propre décision’, both embody and resolve into collective yet enabling significance the risk, unknowing and movement that Bataille pointed to as the limits o f the Sartrean vision. If the forging o f freedom, then, is the ‘great moral lesson’ o f Les Mouches, ‘au niveau de la cité’, for Leiris, its more private lesson for him is perhaps the unrepentant transferring o f critical allegiance from a Bataillean to a Sartrean position, which his review in effect has just rehearsed and performed. This single annulment o f different stages is somewhat further assisted

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by Sartre himself, in his already historical survey ‘Situation de l’écrivain en 1947’, included in Qu’est-ce que la littérature?, where he uses the same terminology to dismiss both surrealism’s and Batailles paralysis in their merely confusing rather than synthesizing search for the ‘impossible’ or Impossible.4° Though Leiris, in his subsequent prefatory remarks to Sartre’s 1947 Baudelaire, gently chides Sartre for his ‘singularly rigid’ approach to poetry in general and this ‘summary execution o f surrealism’ in particular, such an enabling synthesization, as we shall see, is effected by Leiris in the almost contemporary preface to his own autobiography.41 Meanwhile, it is the key poetic figure o f Baudelaire that provides the immediate context for another major encounter between the conflicting visions o f Bataille and Sartre, as mediated by Leiris. In reviewing how Baudelaire negotiated the fundamental truth that ‘le choix libre que l’homme fait de soi-même s’identifie absolument avec ce qu’on appelle sa destinée’,42 Sartre reintroduces all o f the key terms he has employed thus far to describe existential choice and to characterize the bad faith o f writers who have failed to grasp this destiny. Baudelaire thus immerses himself in ‘une mer de projets [...] comme une perpétuelle attente, un perpétuel désir’ , in order to hide from himself the intuition o f our fundamental human freedom. This ‘mauvaise conscience’ relies on the sterile repetitions o f a ‘révolté’ rather than assuming the transforming futural act o f a revolutionary. Baudelaire precisely lives out the unresolved coincidence o f absolute contraries, with his work remaining a ‘dépassement’ without a goal, his sexual relations evidencing sado-masochistic bad faith, and his personality and deportment remaining imprisoned within the ‘contraintes féroces et stériles’ o f bourgeois dandyism. Like the surrealists and Bataille, he is captivated by an ‘impossible ideal’ and a perpetual ‘au-delà’, the ‘tension vide, aride et comme exaspérée qui constitue son climat intérieur’, ultimately representing the bad faith o f his ‘choix originel’ . Several o f these unflattering details in fact resemble L ’Age d’homme’s self-critical portrait o f irresolution, in spite o f the latter’s earlier completion. Certainly, Leiris’s preface to Baudelaire is actually provoked into reproaching Sartre for an over-schematic ‘rational reconstruction’ o f Baudelaire, and in particular his ‘casual’, not to say ‘sacrilegious’ appropriation ‘par effraction’ o f Baudelaire’s consciousness. As though defending himself from this ‘breaking and entering’ (which we might say he has engaged in himself previously) even as he prefaces it, Leiris describes Sartre’s approach overwhelmingly in terms o f its negative virtues. It is not a critic’s or a psychologist’s or a sociologist’s reading.

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It does not weigh the poetry in the balance or conversely analyse the poet’s person. It did not originally pretend to be anything more than an ‘introduction’ to a collection o f Ecrits intimes. It does not claim to account for what is unique, or attempt to find a ‘common measure’, nor does it attempt to ‘démonter des rouages mentaux’. It does not present Baudelaire as victim or saint or case-history. It does not even show any irreverence! What it does do, in Leiris’s eyes, is pay an exemplary and unremitting attention to the Baudelairean ‘fait poétique’ in order to ascertain ‘le choix de lui-même qu’il a fait’ within his historical ‘situation’ . It is instructive to compare this with Batailles own immediate retort to Sartre’s vision in ‘Baudelaire “ Mis à nu” . L’Analyse de Sartre et l’essence de la poésie’ .43 Bataille begins by accusing Sartre o f being a ‘moral judge’ who wants to suppress poetry rather than read it, to the point o f manifesting the perverse symptoms he locates in the poet. He then attributes the negative figure projected o f the poet to Sartre’s refusal to open his eyes poetically to the world, this ‘narrowness o f perspective’ contrasting with the ‘anguish o f poetry’ which reveals a humanity that both politics and philosophy none the less still serve. Notwithstanding the guarded nature o f Leiris s reading, it is obvious that his position has by now clearly diverged from Batailles, not only in its basic incorporation o f the existential conceptualization but notably in its new appreciation for factual, forensic and futural self-examination over poetic dilapidation and the intense instant. This technical as well as ideological transference, with its explicit revisionary strategy, is unabashedly demonstrated by Leiris in the postwar preface which he bolts to the front o f F 'Age d'homme, entitled ‘De la littérature considérée comme une tauromachie’ .44 Leiris neatly demonstrates the appropriative project by recasting in Sartrean terms not just an already written autobiography which we are about to read, but the prière d'insérer to its previous publication, which now becomes the first pages o f the preface (pp. 9 -11). In a genial moment, Leiris does this by grasping the bull by the horns, in every sense. The end o f the original prière d'insérer had resurrected the dramatic, tragic and exoticist imagery o f the corrida, previously exploited in both surrealist work o f the twenties (specifically Grande Fuite de neige) and Bataille-associated texts o f the thirties (that is, Tauromachies and Miroir de la tauromachie), in order to propose that the art o f autobiography should run the same risk as that faced by the bullfighter. Leiris’s new preface now sublates this image, together with its associated earlier productions and their affiliations, by further placing such a solitary

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gesture within the general moral category o f the existential act. ‘Faire un livre qui soit un acte’— with this decisive redefinition (in itself a form o f illocutionary act), Leiris already accomplishes a move from quasi-sociological reminiscence o f linguistic transmutation and abject experience to social commitment: the completion, that is, o f the ‘ [a]cte par rapport à moi-même’ through the simultaneous ‘ [a]cte par rapport à autrui’, which in turn becomes an ‘ [a]cte, enfin, sur le plan littéraire’ (pp. 14, 15). Mentioning the label ‘littérature engagée’ at this point, Leiris in fact goes further by conflating the notions o f intense existence and committed literature into one total enterprise, i.e. the composition o f a literature ‘dans laquelle j ’essayais de m’engager tout entier’ (p. 15). Once again, his own literary history up to this point is reformulated. Thus he manages to trace his new insistence on ‘rien que ces faits et tous ces faits’ back to the surrealist Nadja and— in an uncanny resonance with Sartre’s technical and conceptual approach to that poet— to the ‘projet inspiré à Baudelaire par un passage des Marginalia d’Edgar Poe’ (pp. 15 -16 ). In the process, anticipating Batailles rejection o f the existential Baudelaire, Leiris willingly be­ comes his own moral judge, setting himself the autobiographical task o f the suppression o f poetry: ‘dire la vérité, rien que la vérité, n’est pas tout: encore faut-il l’aborder carrément et la dire sans artifices’ (p. 19). As a consequence, Leiris will precisely not permit himself to think or express him self‘à la merci de hasards’, as Bataille had argued; on the contrary, as in the corrida, ‘le hasard doit apparaître dominé’, as part o f a strict ‘rule o f composition’ that guarantees the work an ‘authentic’ status (p. 2 1, 22). The ‘engagement essentiel’ o f this act, based precisely on a prescriptive use o f language, is, moreover, what justifies the work as an ‘affranchissement de tous les hommes, faute de quoi nul ne saurait parvenir à son affranchissement particulier’ (p. 24), that is, as a political realization. This concluding assertion, completely congruent with Sartrean ethics, represents an inversion o f Bataillean priorities. The end o f the forties saw Leiris involve himself intellectually in the postwar process o f decolonization, an area that combined his ethno­ graphic, political and aesthetic interests. (Later, in the fifties, when Leiris sat on the editorial board o f Les Temps modernes with Sartre and others, his strong support for this field was to enable that journal, and subsequently Sartre himself, to champion the poetry o f négritude.) By 1949, Leiris’s relations with Bataille, in the wake o f this latest critical triangulation, had improved again, as Journal entries show. Beyond

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this period, though, Leiris’s most obsessive literary and critical interest becomes belatedly foregrounded. It is perhaps above all in Leiris’s intense negotiations with the work o f Raymond Roussel that we can observe the complex processes o f mimicry and mutation, masking and demasking, reproduction and resistance, at work in his literary criticism.

Conception and Reality: Leiris and Raymond Roussel Leiris is the guardian o f Roussels work. In his lifetime, the publication o f six important articles and an interview, spanning more than fifty years, preserved key details and encouraged fresh appre­ ciation o f a singular author whose seemingly bizarre narratives in fact often conformed to a secret order o f linguistic structuration revealed in his posthumous Comment j'a i écrit certains de mes livres.45 Where in other contexts Leiris tended to adapt (to) already established critical positions, here he becomes a vital source o f radical experimentation for a generation o f novelists and thinkers searching to move beyond marxist and phenomenological models. Leiris’s essays are also able to draw uniquely on childhood acquaintance (his father being Roussels financial adviser) as well as later correspondence and interviews. In addition, Roussel becomes fully interiorized in Leiris’s non-critical writings, acting as both celebrated and secreted matrix for some o f the latter’s most complex technical and psychological tournures. Having announced to Schaeffner in 1935 that he would write a biography o f Roussel, Leiris produces instead the autobiographical L ’Age d'homme.46 The constant and imbricated presence o f Roussel in Leiris’s formation is illustrated by the posthumous publication o f Roussel & Co., painstakingly edited by Jean Jamin and Annie Le Brun.47 In bringing together all Leiris’s writings referring to Roussel, it includes correspondence from as early as 19 15, Journal entries from 1924 onwards, articles dating from 1930 with the appearance in Documents o f ‘L’œil de l’ethnographe’ (which opens with the memory o f seeing a performance o f Impressions d'Afrique at the age o f 11), extracts from postwar autobiographical writing covering thirty years, in which Roussel frequently occupies a metacritical rather than merely circumstantial function, and, most fascinatingly, the previously unpublished Cahier Raymond Roussel, begun by Leiris in 1934 (soon after Roussel’s death) and maintained throughout the rest o f his writing life. It is obvious already that Leiris’s relationship to Roussel differs

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fundamentally from that entertained with other artists, representing a comprehensive internalization and exploitation that outlasts critical circumstance. More than in any other case, ‘Leiris traite Roussel comme un autre lui-même’.4 Ranging from mere vestimentary fastidiousness through correctness o f verbal and textual form, this alter ego projection reaches an extreme with Leiris’s suicide attempt, on 29—30 May 1957, at the age o f 56, from a drugs overdose, which in addition to being an act in its own right also resembles a performance o f Roussel’s suicide, on 13 - 14 July 1933, at the age o f 56, from a drugs overdose. In this light, the whole o f Leiris’s work shows up the ghostly features o f Roussel: thus the glossolalia o f Glossairej ' y serre mesgloses, the phantasmic dramas o f L'Afriquefantôme, the ethnographic studies o f ritual, possession and secret languages, the use o f repetition, dédoublements and metatextual commentary in L ’Age d'homme, the ‘réglomanie’ o f La Règle du jeu, to name just the most obvious, are processes that reveal the holographic image o f Roussel within their own imprint. In fact, certain striking images in Roussel’s Locus Solus suggest themselves as figures o f this inhabitation or haunting o f Leiris by a simultaneous Rousselian voice, including that o f Danton’s floating reanimated head, or the singer Ludovic using different parts o f his mouth to sing at once all parts o f the round ‘Frère Jacques’ . In general, then, ‘Roussel’ returns constantly as both the strictures o f technical procedure, and the projection o f a transcendent possession. (O f course, as the one dreams o f ‘la gloire’ or ‘le merveilleux’, the other generates its contradiction.) What obviously distinguishes ‘Roussel’, in this contest between the work’s conception and its reality, from other assumed and imitated positions is the degree to which Leiris goes beyond explication and its discursive formations, into a realm o f non-discursive assumption. Triangulation becomes less dominant in this situation, in spite o f Leiris’s hagiography and critique, for a more obsessive dynamic is simultaneously at work, wherein Leiris also guards Roussel against investigation, including, ultimately, by himself. As dépassement becomes complicated by discretion, a more tortuous model o f mimicry and mutation emerges, wherein ‘Roussel’ becomes synonymous with a logic o f secrecy that silently influences the course o f Leiris’s writing. Given the real function o f this logic, which is to develop out o f circumstantial content the bond o f initiation and complicity, it is impossible ultimately to distinguish in Leiris’s envelopment o f Roussel between significant protection and complex exploitation. What is clear is that the persistent presence o f Roussel in Leiris’s critical decisions transforms the work o f a

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‘pauvre petit malade’ into a determining and somewhat conspiratorial instrument o f self-transformation.49 This obsessive relationship runs beneath the more openly operative significance which Roussel’s work still has for the ongoing critical debates that situate Leiris.50 Roussel’s self-sustaining world diverges totally from an existentialist authenticity, its linguistic construction and internal logic almost parodying the Hegelian-realist aesthetic. His figuration o f this fundamental difference was in fact one reason for the postwar revival o f interest in his work, o f which the clearest examples date both from 1963: Robbe-Grillet’s ‘Enigmes et transparence chez Raymond Roussel’ and Michel Foucault’s Raymond Roussel. 51 As we might expect, the former foregrounds narrative techniques in Roussel (specifically linguistic modification, plastic reproduction, visual hypertrophy and instantaneity) that make him a precursor o f the nouveau roman, while polemically praising the absence o f transcend­ ence or ‘dépassement humaniste’ (pp. 74—6, 70). As Roussel’s content is apparently composed o f cliches and conventions, and his style is deliberately ‘terne et neutre’, he is the ‘envers parfait’ o f ‘good’ literature, since he has nothing to say and he says it badly. RobbeGrillet challenges the easy recourse to secrecy and codes in explaining and so recuperating his work for a humanist, surrealist or existentialist interpretation, asserting that behind the mechanical accumulation o f minutiae and the narrative use o f mystery, riddle and revelation, there is ‘pas d’intérieur, pas de secret, pas d’arrière-pensée’ (p. 71). This view o f the secret as a formal parade will help us to raise the question about the actual formal significance o f Roussel’s work within Leiris’s autobiographical and critical output, where we might feel that here too ‘le mystère [...] se contrôle sans cesse trop bien’ . In fact, the ‘Roussel’ o f Leiris’s work perhaps operates even more powerfully as a ‘machine déroutante’ to the extent that Leiris does not offer an exhausting explanation o f all its functions. In this way, as we indicated above, the logic o f secrecy is retained rather than contradicted. Recalling the now well-known connection between Roussel and Robbe-Grillet (the former’s La Vue providing a model for the latter’s Le Voyeur), Foucault’s involved reading also represents an explicit critical surpassing o f marxism and phenomenology in its focus on Roussel as an exemplary case o f language’s self-generation.52 Echoing the view that Roussel’s words are ‘tendus et mats’, he is equally soph­ isticated about the notion o f secrecy, articulating clearly the paradox and deceitfulness o f Comment j ’ai écrit certains de mes livres, ‘car sa forme

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[...] transforme en énigme le procédé qu’elle met au jo u r’, thereby handing over the epithet but holding back the substance (pp. 8, 12). Resisting the encoded desire to chase after a different or deeper meaning (and dismissing in passing the simplistic notion o f a ‘sexualité soigneusement enfermée dans un rituel’ (p. 204), which would render each word o f the text ‘animé et ruiné, rempli et vidé’), Foucault emphasizes instead the works’ exemplification o f the quasi-struc­ turalist principle that ‘le langage, et lui seul, forme le système de l’existence’ (p. 203). This diverges sharply from the surrealist valor­ ization o f automatism, dreams and the marvellous, for it understands the textual mechanism involved as the mastery o f chance, and consequently the production o f a materialist, not an idealist, model o f language: ‘Roussel a inventé des machines à langage qui n’ont sans doute, en dehors du procédé, aucun autre secret que le visible et profond rapport que tout langage entretient, dénoué, reprend et indéfiniment répète avec la mort’ (p. 71). The mechanical devices to be found everywhere in Roussel’s narratives are therefore ‘une image du procédé lui-même’, one that narratologically and linguistically turns on the ultimately unavoidable fact o f death. Foucault’s reading o f Nouvelles Impressions d}Afrique, with its new syntactic process o f parenthetical envelopment, suggests a negative figuration o f this ineluctability in the text’s hollowing out o f a void at its heart, even as these new impressions also graphically ‘define the space o f language in which all [his other works] are placed’ . Having recalled the link between Roussel and Leiris at several points (thus obliquely analysing the Leirisian ‘espace tropologique’), Foucault concludes by praising Leiris for preserving Roussel’s ‘invention’ twice: in his ‘souvenir maintenu de Roussel’, and in its incorporation by La Règle du jeu, ‘si profondément parente des Impressions et de Locus Solus’ (p. 210). In suggesting both a maintained memory and a literary lineage, Foucault refrains from declaring whether the presence o f Roussel within Leiris represents a latent birth or a luxurious entombment. Towards the end o f his reading, Foucault recalls and dismisses Breton’s understanding o f Roussel as occultist (pp. 155—6).53 This serves to highlight the major differences that also exist between Roussel and surrealism, notwithstanding Leiris’s attempt to introduce Roussel to the aesthetic o f Masson and Miró, Breton’s inclusion o f his name in the Manifeste as a fellow-traveller, and the surrealists’ noisy defence o f Roussel’s failed plays.54 The obvious discrepancy is that Roussel’s world results from a patient fabrication, rather than a

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fortuitous combination. As demonstrated by Leiris himself in ‘Conception et réalité chez Raymond Roussel’ (pp. 253-4), Roussel’s ‘method’ o f composition consists in staging each step in the rapprochement o f two apparently distinct elements, or the similar distancing and subsequent return to proximity o f two supposedly related ones. This process differs fundamentally from Breton’s postulation in the Manifeste that it is ‘du rapprochement en quelque sorte fortuit des deux termes qu’a jailli une lumière particulière’ .55 The basic dialogue de sourds between Roussel and the avant-garde o f the day is summed up by the writer himself, in his remark to Leiris: ‘On dit que je suis dadaïste; je ne sais même pas ce que c’est que le dadaïsme!’56 One interesting feature o f these differences is the significance that Leiris’s enduring involvement with Roussel therefore has for his progressive adherence to politico-aesthetic conceptualizations. His continued fascination with the Rousselian cosmogony and complex incorporation o f its implications belatedly reveal a further triang­ ulation within each explicit adherence, one that locates in its core a fundamental otherness that is all the more influential for remaining in each argumentation as an unexpressed and essentially secretive factor. Thus it is even possible to see Leiris’s chassé-croisé movements o f adherence to and estrangement from different positions as partaking o f a single, vast Rousselian exercise. At all events, we can observe a growing discretion in Leiris’s none the less informative and even confidential articles on Roussel. Leaving aside ‘L’œil de l’ethno­ graphe’, which is not centrally concerned with Roussel, these begin chronologically with the simultaneous publication in 1935 o f both ‘Documents sur Raymond Roussel’ and ‘Le voyageur et son ombre’, closely followed in January 1936 by ‘Comment j ’ai écrit certains de mes livres’. These pieces represent a first phase o f explication, in the wake o f Roussel’s death, and prior to the publication o f Comment j ’ai écrit certains de mes livres, and therefore expose for the first time many subsequently assumed details. The first o f these essays covers his artistic tastes, his treatment by Janet, his working habits and his desire to recover the momentary sensation o f ‘gloire universelle’; the second focuses on his exotic trips and the fact that ‘Roussel n’a jamais à proprement parler voyagé’ since his obsessive preoccupations left him ‘toujours identique à lui-même’ (pp. 213, 214); the third describes Roussel’s ‘magic nominalism and his ‘assujetissement volontaire à une règle compliquée et difficile’, squaring the two processes by evoking

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Mallarmé, ‘pure poetry’ and ‘constellations’ (pp. 216, 217). The second phase o f Leiris’s reading involves his attempt to enter— and then defend— Roussel’s final published work, in the 1939 ‘Autour des Nouvelles Impressions d'Afrique’, to which, almost fifty years later, he added the companion ‘Addendum 1987’ in the volume Roussel l'Ingénu. There is here a perceptible change o f approach. Leiris immediately emphasizes the enigmatic nature o f this work, the fact that it lies outside the compositional processes explained in Comment j'a i écrit certains de mes livres, and that, ‘soit de façon préméditée, [...] soit involontairement’, this work retains ‘la plus grande épaisseur de secret’ (p. 219). Explaining that it is based on a superseded work which has ‘left only a symbolical trace’ , and is composed o f four poems each o f which multiplies subsidiary phrases in parenthesis, ‘s’emboîtant les unes dans les autres’, until there are five sets o f brackets at the heart o f a canto, Leiris draws an analogy once again with Mallarmé, this time recalling the blank spaces o f Un coup de dés in order to propose that Roussel’s intention was the ‘disintegration o f language’, and his result a ‘texte quasi crypto­ graphique qui dans sa texture même semble une image du vertige’ (p. 220).57 Noting in passing what we already know from Leiris’s ‘Documents sur Raymond Roussel’ regarding the illustrations for the Nouvelles Impressions d'Afrique (which Roussel commissioned from the popular illustrator Zo via a private detective who communicated Roussel’s precise instructions but did not reveal his identity or the existence o f the text), Leiris then proposes a thematic reading o f each poem in turn, prefaced by the remark that ‘ [il laisse] à d’autres chercheurs plus patients et sagaces le soin de pousser jusqu’à son maximum d’achèvement l’élucidation de l’énigme que posent les Nouvelles Impressions d'Afrique’ (p. 221). Noting with some growing hesitancy the recurrent imagery o f fire, snow or stars in the first poem, fortune in the second and science in the third, Leiris concludes that the fourth and final poem contains allegorical yet personal references to suicide, and brings these all together in a passing reference to Nerval and a final poetic phrase: ‘Mort volontaire: mur de neige et de feu, point d’orgue, ultime extase, unique façon de savourer — en un instant — la “ gloire” ’ (p. 226). The ‘Addendum 1987’ focuses uniquely on the same work’s desire to make itself ‘luxuriante au maximum sans rien perdre de son côté lapidaire’ and its structural aim o f being ‘en boucle strictement bouclée mais dont, paradoxalement, l’intérieur s’ouvre à l’infini’ (pp. 228, 229). Evincing the process it

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describes, with its own baroque descriptions o f ‘internal proliferation’ being displayed in four paragraphs, it is interesting for the abstraction it brings to the already previously abstracted presentation o f thematics in ‘Autour des Nouvelles Impressions d’Afrique’ . Together, the two essays also embody a repetition o f the compositional process they reveal, acting as temporally extended brackets within which a series o f disclaimers, negations, diversions and analogies throws up a ‘negative image’ o f a work that Leiris realizes puts into crisis both Roussel’s previous texts and the ‘Roussel’ internalized by Leiris.58 After a significant silence lasting fifteen years, Leiris’s 1954 ‘Conception et réalité chez Raymond Roussel’ returns to a thematic and anecdotal synthesis that is studied in its quasi-official re-presentation o f many details and even turns o f phrase previously supplied, and within which Nouvelles Impressions d’Afrique is isolated only for its confirmation o f general Rousselian tendencies.59 The clear symptomatic illustration to emerge is o f Leiris’s encrypting o f Roussel’s last full text, sucking it into the ‘boucle bouclée’ o f a ‘Roussel’ whose enigma remains intact. This defensive gesture is also, o f course, a hugely productive one (as it was for Roussel). Not only did it generate ‘Conception et réalité’, indirectly oblige Leiris to publish his article on Duchamp and perhaps assist the production o f Fourbis (whose prière d’insérer stated the desire to ‘apprivoiser la mort’), but the recuperation from the later suicide attempt saw Leiris finally finish La Possession et ses aspects théâtraux chez les Ethiopiens de Gondar and renew work on Fibrilles. The ‘abondance record’ o f Nouvelles Impressions d’Afrique produced its mutated repe­ tition in Leiris’s critical reaction, each matching the other’s ‘épaisseur de secret’ . This specific encrypting in fact becomes a general practice, with Leiris producing a set o f articles that are a version o f the oraison funèbre, on Jacob, Métraux, Eluard and Rivière as well as on Roussel, which often have the incidental but scrupulously pursued effect o f bestowing serene closure on the differences within and between surrealism, Documents, existentialism and ethnography.61 If Leiris’s obsession with Roussel points to the latter acting as the formers zar or possessing spirit, as Jamin and Le Brun suggest at one point, this technique whereby Leiris speaks through the dead (or reanimates them like Danton s head) reminds us o f the zars essentially theatrical use by the possessed individual to express what otherwise cannot be articulated, including o f course on the level o f interdiction: ‘ [I]l est fréquent qu’un zâr, apparaissant en rêve à la personne qu’il possède ou s’exprimant par sa bouche quand il la met en transe, vienne rappeler

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un interdit ou en édicter un’ (p. 17).62 To have an indication o f what Nouvelles Impressions d’Afrique might represent for Leiris as a specific interdiction, it is instructive now to look both at its content and at the important Cahier Raymond Roussel. ‘Pas d’intérieur, pas de secret, pas d’arriére-pensée.’ The secret o f Nouvelles Impressions d’Afrique is o f course that there is no secret at its heart, only a form enclosing a void, the figuration o f binocular vision and a set o f banal illustrations culminating in a starry night. For the texts formal constriction, as several critics have noted, generates a literal release o f forbidden content.63 Shit, jets o f urine, menstrual discharges, nosebleeds, goat’s pills, horse droppings, birdlime, intimate wipings with The Times, smear and spatter the text. The obsessively hygienic Roussel, whose clothes and writing hold in and back the secret smell o f being, in this final text bursts forth with an irrepressible scatology. It is a rather obvious symptom o f the book’s aesthetic recognition o f failure, equally suggested through the theme o f im­ pending suicide. The ideal cosmogony, generated from the constellatory explosion o f language itself, is now imploding back towards its emptied interior. The book’s final illustration is less o f a starry night than o f an approaching black hole. Leiris’s ‘épaisseur de secret’ here is simply cloacal. It is not difficult to understand why Leiris would have preferred not to acknowledge Roussel’s final, obscene message, either on the level o f this content or in terms o f its formal signification (the revelation that Roussel’s enfolding parentheses contain no secret nugget exposing Leiris’s enfolding o f Roussel as a secret). With this in mind, it is therefore fascinating to look finally at the unpublished Cahier Raymond Roussel, on which Leiris worked a great deal during 1953 and 1954.64 For it is not only a stubborn encrypting or interiorization o f Roussel; it also displays the same symptomatology as Nouvelles Impressions d’Afrique, through its admission o f a Rousselian cor­ poreality expunged from the published pieces, specifically in relation to Roussel’s homosexual activities with plumbers, navvies, sailors, soldiers, Reynaldo Flahn et a l, in contrast to the sham relationship with his ‘official’ companion Mme Dufréne. These details serve to expose the articles as perpetrating a whitewash (‘Le voyageur et son ombre’ , for example, never mentioning in relation to Roussel’s travels what the Cahier Raymond Roussel acknowledges: namely, that each trip was made in order to avoid a sexual blackmail).65 The public discretion masks both the power acquired through the retention o f

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secret knowledge (as Leiris had already noted ethnographically in La Langue secrète des Dogons de Sanga) and the desire Leiris shares with Roussel to reformalize and so master the anxieties produced by irrepressible content. Thus in the Cahier Raymond Roussel, Leiris rehearses no fewer than three different possible contextualizations for Roussel.66 The first, ‘Mon mythe personnel de Roussel’, transforms him into a ridiculous cross between the Great Gatsby and Fred Astaire, a dapper, wealthy man-about-town, ‘immensément comblé et souverainement malheureux’, and evidently not a writer at all. Regis­ tering the impact o f the Nouvelles Impressions d'Afrique in the Cahiers following pages, though, produces next by way o f significant reaction the plans (formulated around 1964) for a ‘Tombeau de Raymond Roussel’ which was to include four o f the five articles we analysed earlier (minus the later ‘Addendum 1987’) and from which, after deliberation, Leiris had chosen to exclude all personal corres­ pondence. This gives way in turn to a project sketched earlier in his Journal (where it is called ‘Roussel et quelques’ (p. 535)), and which here becomes ‘Roussel and Co Ltd’, a collection that in addition to the four articles mentioned above now acquires a new chapter called ‘Avec Charlotte Dufrène’ as well as the article on Duchamp and the recently written ‘Alberto Giacometti en timbre-poste ou en médaillon’, the very tenuous connection for the last perhaps being that Giacometti sketched Leiris as he recovered from the suicide attempt.67 In this way the three possible configurations range from extreme subjectivity through reactive objectivity to a set o f official portraits and analyses within which are secreted more personal significations and connections: the precise formal conclusion reached by Roussel himself. Le Brun very accurately calls this compromise a ‘degré de neutralisation supérieur’. We can see, then, that for all his obsessive rather than openly discursive relationship with Roussel’s work, Leiris has instinctively composed for himself his own model triangulation, in an attempt to absorb, transform and finally neutralize the Rousselian ‘euphoria’ o f reality’s obliteration. Leiris thus secretes the objectivation o f Roussel that is needed to produce a funda­ mentally suppressive late work such as the superficially idealistic Langage tangage ou ce que les mots me disent, with its studied celebration o f ‘les mots en fete’ and absorption o f Roussel into a scene o f affectionate pardon.68 But this is merely part o f a generally encrypted interdiction o f Roussel (that is, both by Leiris o f key Rousselian facts and by

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‘Roussel’ o f Leirisian critical acts), which more profoundly shows up as a ghost writing within the ostensible rules o f the game. The reality o f each instance o f literary criticism by Leiris is therefore already haunted by the conception o f the Rousselian secret. However, Leiris’s assumption o f this responsibility, far from silencing his critical voice, is the moment o f initiation into the circuit o f debt and secretion, oppression and preservation, at which the acolyte receives the secret vocabulary that transforms his communication and status. It thus generates the productive cultural framework for all o f Leiris’s texts and their own potential for cathartic rupture and release. The complex mechanism elaborated by Leiris from ‘Roussel’, one that operates with the double movement o f indebtedness and answerability on the one hand, and encryption and masking on the other, therefore brings together the critical practice with the autobiographical dynamic. Reviewing the core preoccupations o f Leiris’s readings o f art, music and now literature, it becomes clear that the critical and the autobiographical meet in a total thanatography. In taking on Roussel’s death, as both a passive and an active possession, Leiris transforms the suicidal act (se donner la mort) in the responsibility o f the haunted production. Accepting the burden o f Roussel’s testament, and the strictures o f his multiple phantasmic procedures (the elucidation o f formal constraints, the internalization o f suppressed content, the repetition and transformation o f the negative image o f a cavernous void), Leiris’s literary criticism gives itself the death o f Roussel, and through this finally attains the true ‘épaisseur de secret’, the vigilance and strangeness o f his autobiographical works.

Notes to Chapter 3 1. See Maurice Nadeau, Histoire du surréalisme (Paris: Seuil, 1945). André Breton, Manifeste du surréalisme, in Œuvres complètes, édition établie par Marguerite Bonnet (Paris: Gallimard, Pléiade, 1988), i. 309-46. André Breton, Second Manifeste du surréalisme, in Œuvres complètes, i. 7 75—833. 2. Michel Leiris, ‘La vie aventureuse de Jean-Arthur Rim baud’, Clarté 5 / N S 2 (1926). Republished in Brisées (Paris: Mercure de France, 1966; reissued Paris: Gallimard, Folio Essais, 1992), 1 3 - 1 6 . All page references are to this last edition. Henceforth referred to as ‘La vie aventureuse’ . 3. Jean-M arie Carré, La Vie aventureuse de Jean-Arthur Rimbaud (Paris: Plon, 1926). 4. Clarté 75 (June 1925), 10. It was on the evening o f 2 July 1925, at the banquet given in honour o f Saint Pol-R oux, that Leiris shouted ‘Vive Abd el-K rim ’ and ‘A bas la France’ out o f the window, and was saved from an angry mob by the police, who subsequently beat him up themselves.

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5. La Guerre civile ultimately failed to appear not only because o f obvious personal and ideological differences, but also owing to the opposition o f the PCF, which refused even to publicize it. For a long account o f the 5 Oct. meeting regarding the conflation o f Clarté, La Révolution surréaliste and Philosophies, see Leiris’s journal entry for 7 Oct., in Journal, 1922-19 89 (Paris: Gallimard, 1992), m - 1 7 . It concludes with the account o f a dream which Leiris did not subsequently use. 6. Leiris himself adhered to the P C F between 1925 and 1927. 7. Jean-M arie Carré, Les D eux Rimbaud: L ’Ardennais — L ’Ethiopien (Paris: Editions des Cahiers Libres, 1928). 8. Carré, La Vie aventureuse de Jean-Arthur Rimbaud, p. v. 9. For a use o f the terms ‘dédoublements’ and ‘contradictions’ in relation to Carré, see B. Munteano, ‘Jean-Marie Carré, sa personnalité humaine et intellectuelle, vues synthétiques’, in Connaissance de l ’étranger. Mélanges offerts à la mémoire de Jean-M arie Carré (Paris: Didier, 1964), 7 -3 9 , esp. 2 5 -7 . 10. André Breton, ‘La force d’attendre’, Clarté 79 (Dec. 1925-Jan. 1926), 38 0 -1. Republished in Œuvres complètes, i. 9 1 7 - 2 1 . Robert Desnos, ‘A vils prix...’ , Clarté 79, republished in Nouvelles Hébrides et autres textes, 19 22-19 30 , édition établie, présentée et annotée par Marie-Claire Dumas (Paris: Gallimard, 1978), 2 34 -6 . Michel Leiris, [‘Les illuminés. Les faux saulniers.’], Clarté 79, 392. A review o f Gérard de Nerval, Œuvres complètes, iv (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 192$). 1 1. C f. Bretons different presentation o f the supposed deathbed conversion, wherein Rimbaud is also at fault for permitting misinterpretations ‘genre Claudel’, in his Second Manifeste du surréalisme, 78 3-4 . 12. Michel Leiris, [‘E n jo u é !’], Clarté 79 (Dec. 1925-Jan. 1926), 3 9 2 -3 . A review o f Philippe Soupault, E n jou e! (Paris: Grasset, 1925) (not 1926 as Leiris claims). Reprinted in Zébrage (Paris: Gallimard, Folio Essais, 1992), 1 1 - 1 2 . All page references are to this last edition. 13. Cf. Batailles description o f Leiris at this time, contained in ‘Le surréalisme au jour le jour’ in Œuvres complètes (Paris, Gallimard, 1976), viii. 1 7 1 - 2 . 14. Michel Leiris, Glossaire j ’y serre mes gloses (Paris: Editions de la Galerie Simon, 1939); reprinted (minus the illustrations by André Masson) in Mots sans mémoire (Paris: Gallimard, 1969), 7 1 - 1 1 6 . Extracts were published in four separate issues o f La Révolution surréaliste: 3 (15 Apr. 1925), 6 -7 ; 4 (15 July 1925), 2 0 -1; 5 (15 Oct. 1925), 7; and 6 (1 Mar. 1926), 2 0 -1. Langage tangage ou ce que les mots me disent (Paris: Gallimard, 1985). 15. Breton was to give more angry expression to his defence in the later Légitime défense, originally published in Sept. 1926 before being collected in the 1934 Point du jour, and republished eventually in André Breton, Œuvres complètes (Paris: Gallimard, Pléiade, 1992), ii. 282—96. Here L ’Humanité is dismissed as ‘puérile, déclamatoire, inutilement crétinisante, [...] illisible’, and Barbusse ‘sinon un réactionnaire, du moins un retardaire’ (pp. 283, 287). He also argues that the emancipation o f style desired by surrealists could only come about through the practical and creative efforts o f a Rimbaud ‘ [qui] jurait ne pas être au monde’ and not via some ‘travail de laboratoire’ or effect o f social engineering (pp. 289—90), that the failure o f Clarté was not due to any antinomy within surrealist thought, and that the project to produce La Guerre civile failed because o f the opposition o f the Internationale and the P C F (pp. 295-6). In a note (July 1926) attempting

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to work out the reconciliation o f marxism and surrealism, Leiris s Journal already records the basic contradiction: ‘le marxisme ne fait aucune place en lui pour la morale. Seule importe l’économie’ (Journal, 19 22-19 89 , 124). 16. Michel Leiris, ‘Glossaire: j ’y serre mes gloses’ , La Révolution surréaliste 3 (15 Apr. 1925), 6 -7 , reprinted in Brisées, 1 1 - 1 2 . AU references are to this last edition. 17. Though Simulacre (published in 1925) and Le Point cardinal (eventuaUy published in 1927) are already complete by the time, and the core o f Glossaire j ’y serre mes gloses (eventuaUy published in 1939) and o f Nuits sans nuit (eventuaUy published in 1945, and republished in augmented form as Nuits sans nuit et quelques jours sans jour in 1961) have similarly been produced and in part already published in La Révolution surréaliste, Grande Fuite de neige (published first in 19 34 in Les Cahiers du Sud, then in (prefaced) book form in 1964 and further republished in definitive form in 1982) was composed only from Sept. 1926, and Aurora was written between 19 27 and 1928. O n the details o f these last publications, see nn. 5 and 8 byjean jam in , in Journal, 19 22-19 89 , 850. 18. Leiriss ‘voyage en Orient’ lasted from 11 Apr. to 17 Sept. 1927. Having embarked on it only two months after his marriage, he stayed with Georges Limbour in Egypt until 21 June, before travelling to Greece, from which he was to return apparently with a bout o f malaria. 19. See Michel Leiris, Le Merveilleux, édition établie, présentée et annotée par Catherine Maubon (Brussels: Didier DeviUez, 2000). 20. One senses here a careful qualification o f the bare remark in the Manifeste du surréalisme that ‘Roussel est surréaliste dans l’anecdote’ (p. 329). 2 1. See, e.g., ibid. 3 19 —2 1. 22. See the notes for the article ‘Justice pour Jacques Rabemananjara’ included in Zébrage, 2 6 8 -7 3. 23. Michel Leiris, ‘Le bouquet sans fleurs’ , in Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes et al., Un cadavre (Paris: Imprimerie spéciale du Cadavre, 1930). Republished in Tracts surréalistes et déclarations collectives, 1922—1969, i: 1922—1939, présentation et commentaires de José Pierre (Paris: Terrain vague, 19 80 -2), 139. 24. Georges Bataille, ‘Matérialisme’ , Documents 3 (June 1929), 170, republished in Œuvres complètes, i (Paris: Gallimard, 1970), 17 9 -8 0 (180). All page references are to this last edition. 25. Michel Leiris, ‘Métaphore’ , Documents 3 (June 1929), 170, republished in Brisées, 29—3°- All page references are to this last edition. 26. Michel Leiris, ‘L’eau à la bouche’ , Documents 7 (Dec. 1929), 3 8 1 -2 , republished in Brisées, 49—51. All page references are to this last edition. 27. Marcel Griaule, ‘ Crachat-âme’, Documents 7 (Dec. 1929), 381. 28. Michel Leiris, ‘Débâcle’ , Documents 7 (Dec. 1929), 382. Georges Bataille, ‘Informe’ , Documents 7 (Dec. 1929), 382. 29. Michel Leiris, [‘Hebdomeros’], Documents, 2 /5 (June-July 1930), 3 1 1 . [‘Myths o f the origin o f the fire’], ibid. 3 1 1 - 1 2 . Georges Bataille, [‘Conformismes freudiens’], ibid. 3 1 0 - 1 1 . 30. Georges Bataille, ‘La “ vieille taupe’” , first published in Tel Quel 34 (1968), and republished in Œuvres complètes (Paris: Gallimard, 1970), ii. 9 3 -10 9 . All page references are to this last edition. 3 1. Georges Bataille, ‘La valeur d’usage de D. A . E de Sade’ , Œuvres complètes, ii.

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54-69. For similar reciprocations, see also Batailles ‘Le Jesuve’ , Œuvres complètes, ii. 13 -2 0 , and ‘L’ceil pineal’ , first published in L ’Ephémère 3 (1967), and repub­ lished in Œuvres complètes, ii. 2 1 - 3 5 . 32. Georges Bataille, ‘Le langage des fleurs’ , Documents 3 (June 1929), 16 0 -8, reprinted in Œuvres complètes (Paris: Gallimard, 1970), i. 2 1 1 - 1 6 . ‘Le “Jeu lugubre’” , Documents 7 (Dec. 1929), 2 9 7-30 2 . The excretory function will none the less momentarily re-emerge for Leiris as a radical figure o f autobiographical figuration in La Règle du jeu (see Biffures, 85), and o f self-annihilation in Roussel’s Nouvelles Impressions d ’Afrique. The former is significantly sublated by Leiris’s (idealist) projection o f Persephone and her relationship to the underworld. The latter equally significantly marks the point at which Leiris’s revelatory reading stops. We could legitimately view both cases as the deliberate curtailment o f a Bataillean vision. See my later references to Roussel. 33. Michel Leiris, ‘Une peinture d’Antoine Caron’ , Documents 7 (Dec. 1929), 3 4 8 -5 5 ; republished in Zébrage, 13 -2 0 (prefatory note by Bataille given at 26 4-5). All page references are to this last edition. 34. Leiris, Journal, 1922—1989, 202. 35. Michel Leiris, ‘Donjuanisme de Georges Bataille’, La Ciguë 1 (Jan. 1958), reprinted in Obliques 5 (1974) and then in A propos de Georges Bataille (Paris: Fourbis, 1988), 7 - 1 3 . All page references are to this last edition. ‘De Bataille l’impossible à l’impossible Documents’ , Critique, nos. 19 5—6 (Aug.—Sept. 1963), republished in Brisées, and then in A propos de Georges Bataille, 15 -4 0 . AU page references are to this last edition. ‘Du temps de Lord A uch’, L ’Arc 32 (June 1967), republished in L ’Arc 44 (Mar. 19 71) and then in A propos de Georges Bataille. All page references are to this last edition. 3 6 . Jean-Paul Sartre, ‘U n nouveau mystique’, Cahiers du Sud 262 (Dec. 1943), reprinted in Situations I (Paris: Gallimard, 1947), 14 3-8 8 . All page references are to this last edition. 37. For references to this characterization o f L ’Age d ’homme, see the Journal, 336. 38. Michel Leiris, ‘Oreste et la cité’, Les Lettres françaises 12 (1943) (attributed to Jean Lescure 'Les Lettres Françaises’ clandestines, Paris, 1947); republished in Brisées, 84-8. AU page references are to this last edition. 39. Georges Bataille, ‘Réponse à Jean-Paul Sartre (Défense de L ’Expérience intérieure)’ , in La Somme athéologique, ii: Sur Nietzsche. Volonté de chance, in Œuvres complètes (Paris, Gallimard, 1973), vi. 11-4 8 6 (19 5-20 2). For the details o f composition and publication o f this piece, see 377. 40 . Jean-Paul Sartre, Q u ’est-ce que la littérature?, in Situations II (Paris: Gallimard, 1948), 5 5 -3 3 0 (see esp. 2 1 7 - 1 8 and 241). 4 1. Michel Leiris, Preface to Jean-Paul Sartre, Baudelaire (Paris: Gallimard, 1947), pp. vii-xiii; reprinted as ‘ Sartre et Baudelaire’ , Brisées, 136 -40 . All page references are to this last edition. 42. Sartre, Baudelaire, 224. 43. Georges BataiUe, ‘Baudelaire “ Mis à nu” . L’analyse de Sartre et l’essence de la poésie’ , Critique 8—9 (Jan.-Feb. 1947), 3 -2 7 . Part o f this was included in the notes section to La Littérature et le mal, in Œuvres complètes (Paris: GaUimard, 1979), ix. 4 4 1-9 . AU page references are to this last edition. 44. Michel Leiris, ‘De la littérature considérée comme une tauromachie’, preface to

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the new edition o f L ’Age d ’homme (1939; Paris: Gallimard, 1946; republished in Gallimard Folio, 1973), 9 -2 4 . All page references are to this last edition. 45. Raym ond Roussel, Comment j ’ai écrit certains de mes livres (Paris: Jean-Jacques Pauvert, 1963). See also Locus Solus (Paris: Jean-Jacques Pauvert, 1965). Impressions d ’Afrique (Paris: Jean-Jacques Pauvert, 1963); Nouvelles Impressions d ’Afrique (Paris: Jean-Jacques Pauvert, 1963). 46. See Jean Jamin, ‘Note sur la présente édition’ in Michel Leiris, Roussel & Co., édition établie par Jean Jamin, présentée et annotée par Annie Le Brun (Paris, Fata M organa/Fayard, 1998), 9. 47. Leiris, Roussel & Co. The edition contains the following by Leiris: ‘Documents sur Raym ond Roussel’ , Nouvelle Revue Française 259 (Apr. 1935), republished in Roussel l ’ingénu (Fontfroide-le-Haut: Fata Morgana, 1987), and in Roussel & Co., 2 0 1-8 (all page references are to this last edition); ‘Le voyageur et son ombre’, La Bête noire 1 (Apr. 1935), republished in Roussel l ’ingénu, and in Roussel & Co., 209—14 (all page references are to this last edition); ‘Comment j ’ai écrit certains de mes livres’ , Nouvelle Revue Française 268 (Jan. 1936), republished in Roussel l ’ingénu, and in Roussel & Co., 2 1 5 - 1 8 (all page references are to this last edition); ‘Autour des Nouvelles Impressions d ’Afrique’, Cahiers G L M 9 (Mar. 1939), republished in Roussel l ’ingénu, and in Roussel & Co., 2 1 9 -2 6 (all page references are to this last edition); ‘Addendum 19 8 7’ , in Roussel l ’ingénu, and republished in Roussel & Co., 2 2 7 -9 (all page references are to this last edition); ‘ Conception et réalité chez Raym ond Roussel’, Critique 89 (Oct. 1954), republished in Roussel l ’ingénu, and in Roussel & Co., 2 4 7 -6 3 (all page references are to this last edition; henceforth ‘Conception et réalité’); ‘Entretien sur Raym ond Roussel’ , Le Promeneur 50 (Oct. 1986), republished in variant form in Roussel l ’ingénu and in Roussel & Co., 265—70 (all page references are to this last edition). 48. Annie Le Brun, ‘ “ Raym ond Roussel — source de rayons réels, ma roue, mon sel, mon aile’” , in Roussel & Co., 1 5 -6 1 (26). 49. The dismissive description was used in an interview with Leiris by Pierre Janet, who had analysed Roussel and recounted his case (naming him ‘Martial’, after Martial Canterel, the hero o f Locus Solus) in his D e l ’angoisse à l ’extase (Paris: Alcan, 1926). See esp. i. 1 1 5 —17 for Roussel’s apparent account o f his mo­ mentary attainment o f ‘la gloire’ and sense o f the ‘merveilleux’ at the time o f writing his early work La Doublure (the failure o f which provoked a crisis being treated by Janet). Leiris records the phrase in the Cahier Raymond Roussel, 126, and in ‘Conception et réalité’, 2 5 1, where he adds that it reveals ‘une totale méconnaissance de son génie’ . See also Elisabeth Roudinesco, Histoire de la psychanalyse (Paris: Fayard, 1994), ii. 45, for an account o f how Leiris reacted furiously to this remark by storming out. 50. It is recognized, though, by his more intelligent readers o f the period. Thus, on the occasion o f the publication o f Fourbis, Michel Butor isolated Roussel as the ‘fantôme qui hante évidemment toutes les pages de La Règle du je u ’ . See ‘Une autobiographique dialectique’ , Critique 11 (19 55), 10 4 6 -5 5 , reprinted in Répertoire I (Paris: Gallimard, i960), 2 6 2 -7 0 (269). 51. Alain Robbe-Grillet, ‘Enigmes et transparence chez Raym ond Roussel’ , in Pour un nouveau roman (Paris: Minuit, 1963), 70 -6 . Michel Foucault, Raymond Roussel (Paris: Gallimard, 1963).

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52. See the ‘Postscript: A n Interview with Michel Foucault, by Charles Ruas’ , in the English-language translation o f Foucault’s Raymond Roussel, entitled Death and the Labyrinth: The World o f Raymond Roussel (Berkeley: University o f California Press, 1986), 169-86, esp. 17 4 -5 . 53. See André Breton, ‘ Fronton-virage’ (written as a preface to Jean Ferry, Une étude sur Raymond Roussel), in La C é des champs, Œuvres completes, édition établie par Marguerite Bonnet (Paris: Gallimard, Pléiade, 1999), iii. 8 40 -6 1. 54. For accounts o f Roussel’s purchase o f works by these painters, Breton’s failed attempt to interest Roussel in surrealism and the première o f L ’Etoile au front, see Aliette Armel, Michel Leiris, 20 1, 201 n. 208, 203, respectively. 55. André Breton, Manifeste du surréalisme, 337. See Roussel & Co., 99 n. 83. M y emphasis. Desnos hinted at this difference in 1924, when he pointed up Roussel’s ‘patience cérébrale’ . See Nouvelles Hébrides et autres textes, 19 1. 56. Leiris, ‘Documents sur Raymond Roussel’ , 205. 57. A clear explanation o f the construction o f Nouvelles Impressions d ’Afrique is given by Mark Ford in Raymond Roussel and the Republic o f Dreams (London: Faber and Faber, 2000), 18 7-9 9 . 58. C f. Foucault’s description o f Nouvelles Impressions d ’Afrique as the ‘negative image’ o f Roussel’s previous work, in Raymond Roussel, 22. 59. The article was given first as a paper to the Collège philosophique on 17 May 195460. Michel Leiris, Fourbis (Paris: Gallimard, 1955); La Possession et ses aspects théâtraux chez les Ethiopiens de Gondar (Paris: Plon, 1958; republished Paris: Le Sycomore, 1980) (all page references are to this last edition); ‘A propos d’une oeuvre de Marcel Duchamp...“ la Mariée mise à nu par ses célibataires, même’” , Dossiers acénonètes du Collège de Pataphysique 7 (1959), 7 5 -9 ; Fibrilles (Paris: Gallimard, 1966). It was on the occasion o f the presentation o f ‘Conception et réalité’ that Leiris agreed to write the article on Duchamp for the review o f the Collège de Pataphysique. See Armel, Michel Leiris, 564. 6 1. O n M ax Jacob (d. 1944): ‘Saint Matorel martyr’ , Cahiers d ’Art, 1 5e—19e année (19 40 -4, Spring 1945), republished in Brisées, 9 3 -10 3 . On Paul Eluard (d. 1952): ‘Art et poésie dans la pensée de Paul Eluard’, Europe, 3 1 / 9 1 —2, republished in Brisées, 190-200. On Alfred Métraux (d. 1963): ‘Regard vers Alfred Métraux’ , Le Mercure de France 1200 (1963), republished in Brisées, 28 0 -7. On GeorgesHenri Rivière (d. 1985): ‘Rapace à l’œil bleu...’ , L ’Homme 96 (O ct.-D ec. 1985), XXV (4), republished in Zébrage, 248-50 . 62. For the suggestion that Roussel is Leiris’s zar, see Annie Le Brun, “ ‘Raymond Roussel — source de rayons réels” ’, 55. For details o f the zar s theatrical nature, see Michel Leiris, ‘La Croyance aux génies “ zâr” en Ethiopie du N ord’ , in La Possession et ses aspects théâtraux chez les Ethiopiens de Gondar, 9 -2 8 , esp. 1 7 - 1 8 . 63. See, e.g., Ford, Raymond Roussel, 19 5-8 . 64. See Armel, Michel Leiris, 562. 65. See Roussel & Co., 2 8 -9 and 129 n. 166 for further details. 66. Michel Leiris, La Langue secrète des Dogons de Sanga (Soudan français) (Paris: Institut d’ethnologie, 1948). Le Brun traces the relationships between these contextualizations and Leiris’s publications very well. See esp. 30 -5.

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67. Leiris, ‘Alberto Giacometti en timbre-poste ou en médaillon’ , republished in Brisées, 2 7 5 -9 . 68. Michel Leiris, Langage tangage ou ce que les mots me disent, esp. 16 3 -5 .

CO N CLU SIO N * Being-with-Leiris

Failure in Picasso, death in Puccini, haunting in Roussel: Leiris’s criticism seems superficially to lead to impasse. Reading the essays in the wake o f the autobiography and ethnography, we also register their opportunism, compromise and contradiction, arising out o f their largely circumstantial and unsynthesized nature, thus generating an impression that Leiris’s criticism acts at best as the atelier o f a polished autobiographical sublation. Such a teleology is countered, though, by the temporal and spatial implications o f our promotion o f the criticism. Read as part o f an intratextual reappraisal o f Leiris’s œuvre, the critical writing assumes a founding and predetermining status. It acquires this firstly by disordering an established hierarchy o f texts based on the modalization o f presence, and then by dramatically figuring the biffure and décalage (i.e. the internal splits, erasures, spatializations and discrepancies) held within the autobiographical pursuit o f self-presence. Read primarily, then, the essays signify not only within their own spheres but also within the context o f the writing seifs emergence; and in doing this, they do not just foreground autobiographical blockages and secretions, but crucially confirm the originary negotiation o f identificatory positions from which singularity is generated as a mutational possibility. This means that the otherness critically encountered in these essays is in no sense simply an alien element; as we saw from the intense involvement and ‘de­ hiscence’ o f their responses, the other confronted is an alterity indissociable from critical consciousness, which is to say consciousness tout court. Indeed, in Heideggerian terms the overlooking o f the primary nature o f the critical encounter is a repetition o f the deficiency o f Being-alone, which any idea o f autobiographical purity or integrity perpetuates. The Being-with o f critical being is for Heidegger ‘an essential characteristic o f Dasein’, such that the relationship o f Being-with is one that ‘with Dasein’s Being, already is’ .1 The dramas o f Leiris’s criticism bring out this inherently relational

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nature o f Mitseins Being-ness. In so doing the revalorized criticism comes to stand as evidencing the aboriginal condition o f (auto­ biographical) interiority and integrity. Beyond their specific engage­ ment, then (which none the less in each case is a necessary condition o f emergence), the essays in their temporal, formal and ideological transformations both figure and compose the way in which Being cannot be without ‘with’. This notion o f the inherent relationality o f interiority is merely a developed version o f Leiris’s conclusion in the early 1930 article ‘L’homme et son intérieur’, originally published in Documents.2 While Leiris’s reference here is in fact to one’s physical insides, his presentation o f the body as ‘le théâtre mystérieux où s’élaborent tous les échanges, tant matériels qu’intellectuels ou sensibles, entre ce qui est intérieur et ce qui est extérieur’ (pp. 62—3) provides us with a figure o f both Bataillean heterology and inherently dramatized relationality. For Leiris in 1930, such an encounter is still obviously exotic, sensual and dualist; but for us, in its figuring o f inherent alterity, the description o f such an encounter’s necessity and value carries a radical significance: Si nous devions nous tenir seuls, et réduits à l’usage du seul corps qui est le nôtre, en face de la nature externe, cette position serait grandiose peutêtre — celle d’un dieu ou d’un héros — mais plus épouvantable que toute autre, car nous ne comprendrions jamais quelle est cette autre chose, si distincte de notre être, si indifférente à nous, étrangère d’une étrangeté à tel point distante et glaciale. Ce qui nous donne la possibilité de nous relier à elle, c’est l’existence de créatures humaines autres que nous, qui font alors fonction de médiatrices [...]. (p. 59)

In its radical figuration, the essay’s dramatic moment becomes a description o f both critical consciousness and the original impurity and non-originality o f Being which the essays acknowledge by their existence. It is imperative at this point, given the logic o f what is propounded above, to draw at least brief comparisons with certain contemporary theorizations o f alterity or plurality within singularity in order to situate the Leirisian critical composition o f identity. A number o f ethnographic, postcolonial, psychoanalytic and philosophical problematizations o f presence fairly naturally suggest themselves here, and can act usefully as independent definitions o f Leiris’s productivity, in the sense o f being not invoked by any o f his critical engagements. That is, they can represent the metacritical dramatization o f mediation.

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Leiris’s ‘L’homme et son intérieur’ is quoted by Marc Augé near the end o f his Le Sens des autres: Actualité de Yanthropologie, in order to indicate that we are now beyond this possibility o f mediation, having entered a time o f generalized anthropology, that is to say having become a completely mediatized society, where exoticism no longer exists.3 Both here, and at more length in Non-Lieux, Introduction à une anthropologie de la surmodernité, Augé attributes this mutation o f otherness to the spatio-temporal changes o f ‘supermodernity’, which we can also see operating within Leiris’s criticism in its own ne­ gotiation o f internal exoticism. Leiris’s essays can therefore in certain interesting respects be thought through as an internal rather than exteriorized version o f the non-place described by Marc Augé.4 Augé’s ‘positive definition’ o f anthropological research recognizes at once that it deals with ‘the question o f the other’ in the present (thus making it distinguishable from history) and ‘simultaneously in several senses’ (thus distinguishing it from the other social sciences), a de­ marcation that, laying aside culturalist objections relating to anthro­ pology’s self-regard, can describe the investigative activities o f Leiris’s essays. In particular, Augé’s isolation, within this research, o f the major importance o f ‘l’altérité essentielle ou intime’, and his emphasis on a culture’s perpetually unfinished existence and the individual’s partisan and semi-detached relationship to the cultural order (pp. 29, 33) (thus dissenting from the Maussian view o f sociology in which individuality is typically a synthesis or representation o f cultural totality), equates to the relationship o f Leiris’s critical individuality to the cultural totality.5 Equally resonant, given Leiris’s traversal o f ideologically driven solu­ tions, dispersion o f critical energy across different and even contra­ dictory symbolic fields, and non-teleological registration o f totalizing yearning, is Augé’s specific linkage between growing anthropological attentiveness to ‘lieux de mémoire’, and ‘l’effacement des références sartrienne et marxiste de l’immédiat après-guerre’ by the move towards a more postmodern ‘patchwork des modes signifiant l’efface­ ment de la modernité comme aboutissement d’une évolution qui s’apparenterait à un progrès’ (pp. 37, 38). It is at this point that Augé introduces the positive term ‘supermodernity’ (of which the obverse is postmodernity) and the new notion o f ‘non-lieux’, superseding the Maussian location and localization o f ethnological tradition: the former involving an accumulation o f ‘les composantes qui s’addition­ nent sans se détruire’, and where ‘on est toujours et on n’est plus jamais “ chez soi’” (p. 136) (the reference to the Heideggerian bei sich

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being obvious); the latter being a non-anthropological space that ‘n’existe jamais sous une forme pure’ (pp. 100, 101) and ‘ne crée ni identité singulière, ni relation, mais solitude et similitude’ (p. 130). There is a sense in which Leiris s own work helps us here to review Augé critically, and to appreciate that the final picture he presents o f solitary consciousness within individualized cosmologies is in itself more persistently exoticist and romantic than his supermodern break is prepared to admit. But in its emphasis on the new categories o f space and otherness opened up by the disappearance o f distance, it provides us with one way to conceptualize the traumatology o f Leiris s critical writings. A parallel shift is proposed by George Marcus in his contemporary metacritical meditations on ethnography.6 Marcus also testifies to the emergence o f a new mode o f ethnographic research, which ‘moves out’ from the traditional scenario o f single sites and local situations in order ‘to examine the circulation o f cultural meanings, objects, and identities in diffuse time-space’ (p. 79). Shifting from the single-site ‘intensive investigation’ towards a ‘mobile’ tracing o f cultural forma­ tion across and within multiple sites o f activity, this ‘still emergent mode’, with its consequent challenge to the disciplinary perspective itself, responds fundamentally to the new world system processes o f ‘post-Fordism, time-space compression, flexible specialization, the end o f organized capitalism, and most recently, globalization and trans-nationalism’ (pp. 80, 81). The newly generated states and accounts o f dissolution and fragmentation in turn transform ethno­ graphic method, as it engages now with ‘chains, paths, threads, con­ junctions, or juxtapositions o f locations’ (p. 90), a process Marcus attempts to characterize positively by comparing its practice to that o f Russian constructivism in order to describe the ethnographer as a ‘circumstantial activist’, whose ‘sense o f doing more than just ethno­ graphy’ can act as psychological substitute for the bygone ‘reassuring sense o f “ being there’” (pp. 98, 99). Leaving aside the nostalgia re­ vealed in this final suggestion (and implicit in Marcus’s denegation o f a stereotyped intellectual postmodernism), we can exploit this idea o f a multi-sited, mobile, emergent tracing o f cultural formation to appreciate the manner in which Leiris’s intensive critical immersions, with all their dramatic Dasein, are actually already an example o f the conjunction and dissolution which emerge through recurrence as in­ herent in critical consciousness. Pushing beyond Marcus’s functionalist view o f globalization’s relations, therefore, we can think o f the ‘still

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emergent mode’ o f multi-site activity as the model o f singularity's always subsequent emergence in Leiris’s criticism. The postcolonial enthusiasms o f Leiris’s own ethnography lead us on now to consider those models o f relationality and Being-withalterity which Leiris had hoped colonized societies would develop eventually for themselves and ultimately for all society, including that o f the original colonizers.7 The most obvious example, in its visibility and relevance to Leiris’s ‘contacts de civilisations’ in a Caribbean setting, is the 1989 Eloge de la créolité composed by Bernabé, Chamoiseau and Confiant.8 It also provides, rhetorically and politically, an exuberant contrast with the metropolitan melancholy o f Augé s ‘solitude and similitude’ . Dialectically acknowledging surrealism’s his­ toric role as promoting ‘une des premières réévaluations de l’Afrique opérées par la conscience occidentale’, as well as the way in which ‘la Négritude fit, à celle d’Europe, succéder l’illusion africaine’ (pp. 19, 20), the Eloge moves from these forms o f ‘exteriority’ to the building o f a ‘vision intérieure’ o f and for Caribbeanness through ‘la minuti­ euse exploration de nous-mêmes, faite de patiences, d’accumulations, de répétitions, de piétinements, d’obstinations’ (p. 22), an interiority that is also ‘un bouleversement intérieur et sacré’ that must be first accepted and thereafter promoted as ‘le vecteur esthétique majeur de la connaissance de nous-mêmes et du monde’, a positive rather than ‘disglossic’ notion o f non-purity. Creoleness is therefore declared to be the ‘agrégat interactionnel ou transactionnel’ o f several different cultural phenomena, a History that is ‘une tresse d’histoires’, a world ‘diffracté mais recomposé’, and a ‘conscience non totalitaire d'une diversité préservée’ (pp. 26, 27, 28). These key notions, with their dynamic o f unfinished­ ness, irruption, polysémie interaction and, in a word, diversality, can suggest, in micrological and radicalized form, quite powerful and positive correspondences with the fundamentally interactional nature o f Leiris’s critical identity. Leiris has already, o f course, recognized the above scenario to be a wholly utopian projection, in his own relevant ethnographic pronouncements as well as in his autobiographical and critical work (which reveals not just that the desire for purity is impure but also that the desire for impurity is equally difficult to attain).9 There is obviously an unacknowledged contradiction in the Eloge's pure celebration o f the ‘annihilation [...] o f purity’, and a limitation imposed by the very confidence o f its declaration that ‘le principe même de notre identité est la complexité’ (p. 28). In relation to our conceptualization o f Leirisian critical consciousness, the ulti­

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mately political agenda o f the Eloge necessarily relegates alterity to the progressivist function o f supporting solidarity and the emergence o f ‘la Créolité’ . Paraphrasing the final sentence, then, all alterities are good ‘à condition qu’elles n’entravent pas la bonne marche de la société’ (p. 57). Though this political determination is internalized by some o f Leiris’s own essays, a comparison here with this manifesto o f Creoleness highlights how his criticism, often beginning with a parallel affiliation, contains implications and effects which eventually outstrip and expose such intentionality. In their own complex rela­ tionship to the ideological or generic affirmation o f métissage, we have seen how Leiris’s essays reveal the paradoxes, tensions and sup­ pressions subtending the pure affirmation o f impurity. Running alongside his recurring political disappointments, then, is a parallel aesthetic dynamic o f extremity and exhaustion, assent and dissent, which his criticism not only works with, but works from, in confirmation o f Being’s com-positionality. ‘ [T]here is always a need to keep community before coercion, criticism before mere solidarity, and vigilance ahead o f assent.’ 10 Edward Said’s alertness to the reification o f opposition seems particularly appro­ priate to Leiris’s critical consciousness, given its politico-aesthetic terrain o f colonial and imperial representations o f the other, and the way in which, as part o f his (excessively resolved) overview o f culture and empire, Said clearly denounces the essentializations o f négri­ tude and its degeneration o f the ‘transformation o f social consciousness’ into an ‘appalling pathology o f power’ (p. 277). Said seeks to sustain his own vigilance in Culture and Imperialism by way o f a contrapuntal reading, one that in criticism brings out the ‘organized interplay’ operating between a commanding discourse and its own hidden histories o f domination: thus, for example, the suppressed presence o f slave planta­ tion conditions in Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park, where the elegance o f the latter actually depends on the exploitation o f the former. As a result, ‘alternative or new narratives emerge’, which support a more general realization that cultural identities are always ‘contrapuntal ensembles’ (p. 60). Said’s approach would seem to parallel Leiris’s on several counts, then, including on the most abstract level o f identificational con­ formity, as well as in its politico-aesthetic attendance to the fact that ‘ [c]ultural experience or indeed every cultural form is radically, quintessentially hybrid’ and thus requires ‘affiliated criticism’ (pp. 68, 71). However, a comparison between the dynamics o f Said’s and Leiris’s criticism also draws out problems inherent in the oppositional mission

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underlying Saids performance o f affiliation or critique, as well as re­ calling tensions within Leiris’s own committed criticism. Said’s critical counterpointing must inevitably be a part o f the power relation which it decries, being in pure intellectual and theoretical terms no less exploitative than economic or political forms o f domination, which themselves depend crucially on discursive means. Whatever awareness his critical position may already have o f its own internal biffures is resolved, however, by the contrapuntal method which is employed to raise dissension in the first place. In Said, notwithstanding the origin o f his own cultural and discursive compositions, the teleology o f his critical consciousness therefore leads beyond awareness and per­ formance to a successful exposure o f those same epistemological groundings in their projection o f an imperialist alterity. The potentially abyssal structure arising from a metacritical self-critique is weakly suggested only to be forgotten: thus alternative narratives or oppo­ sitional effort may both become ‘institutionalized’ (including, no doubt, in the form o f the well-known institutional performance known as ‘Said’), but this realization does not lead to a textual revolution. Instead, with Culture and Imperialism, Said composes a masterful and relentless transcendence o f oppositional ambivalence, that relies on a ‘continuity o f attack and rhetorical address’ that Said explicitly admired in the polyphonic playing o f Glenn Gould.11 Beyond counterpoint, critical consciousness here envisions triumph, in a universalist gesture that internalizes the humanist, Western, liberal cultural assumptions which it also critiques.12 B y contrast, Leiris’s essays do not resolve the implications o f their own position so comfortably. In particular, they evince in their textual body an exilic condition that in Said generates an epistemological revendication. A key element here is the different relationship in the two authors between their individual critical and autobiographical obsessions. In Said, this resolution is strongly political; in Leiris, it is more obviously traumatological. Thus Said’s claim that ‘ [m]ost histories o f European aesthetic modernism leave out the massive infusions o f non-European cultures into the metropolitan heartland during the early years o f [the twentieth] century’ (p. 292), in its gross schematization is both inaccurate and repressive o f that internal schism which Leiris’s more intensely involved appreciation o f art (in addition to being authoritative on non-European influences) unwittingly demonstrates. Said’s re-presentation o f Aida as ‘an imperial article de luxe (p. 156) appreciates the opera only as product and effect, in contrast to Leiris’s more passionate recognition o f the art form’s dramatization o f

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psychological as well as political suppression. Saids silence on the projection o f a phantasmic Africa in writers such as Roussel or the surrealists is perhaps also symptomatic o f his determined resolutions, which in assuming a political (counter)point prefer not to take on, as Leiris does with Roussel, the abyssal and encrypting consequences o f affiliation with the formal, narrative and psychological dimensions o f such work. Saids musical figure, Leiris s retention o f the others unheimlichkeit and the general idea o f Being-with together recall Julia Kristeva s 1988 Etrangers à nous-mêmes, which opens with a ‘Toccata et fugue pour l’étranger’ , describes ‘Etranger’, in a manner reminiscent o f Leirisian glossolalia, as ‘rage étranglée au fond de ma gorge’ (p. 9), and evokes near its conclusion ‘l’inquiétante étrangeté [qui] installe la différence en nous [...], et la donne comme condition ultime de notre être avec les autres’ (p. 285).13 Just as her opening plea to ‘ [n]e pas chercher à fixer, à chosifier l’étrangeté de l’étranger’ neatly brings out both the object and the inherent danger o f Said’s approach, so Kristeva’s use o f the Bachian figure to suggest ‘la reprise harmonieuse des différences [que l’étrangeté] suppose et propage’ (p. 11) effectively emphasizes psychopathological unrest over political understanding. Alterity is at once literally envisaged as a ‘singularity’ and a ‘difference’ that exposes our (self-)objectifications: ‘le visage de l’étranger force à manifester la manière secrète que nous avons d’envisager le monde, de nous dévisager tous, jusque dans les communautés les plus familiales, les plus closes’ (p. 12). The condition o f foreignness for Kristeva is an existential experience o f suffering or displacement or silence, which she rapidly and repeatedly locates, as a culturally defining objectifi­ cation, in a somewhat stereotyped Western cultural heritage, running from ancient Greece and Judeo-Christian foundations through the Enlightenment and ultimately to Freud. (Passing references to con­ temporary French society are absolutely schematic and devoid o f any popular political or cultural indicators.) The glaring paradox is o f course that obsessional characterization and evidencing contradict the rapidity and delicacy o f designation associated with the original musical analogy, while the staged moral decision to ‘simply sketch the perpetual movement’ o f Vétrangeté does not disguise an effect o f essentialization and dehistoricization imposed by the confident singu­ larity o f the critical position. The best feature, then, o f this cultural (psycho)analysis is its cumulative evidence o f how ‘ [1]’étranger est en nous’, such that all critical consciousness perhaps culminates in self­

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discovery (and self-alienation). In this way, we may all move from the individual vocabulary o f resentment and abjection, imitated at the beginning o f the text, to the collective statement o f understanding that exploits our ‘weakness’ as the basis o f a ‘multinational society’ evoked at the book’s conclusion. But while, as Kristeva rightly says, this ethics implies a politics, which is traced essentially in European terms, this ethico-political movement entails an irrepressible tendency to homogenization, wherein the ‘être avec, nurtured historically by exemplary sceptics such as Montaigne, flowers fully in a trans-political and trans-economic cosmopolitanism working for ‘une humanité dont la solidarité est fondée sur la conscience de son inconscient’ (p. 284). While this affectively parallels the chronological trajectory— from hysteria to encryption— o f Leiris’s critical affiliations, and ac­ cords very generally with his repeated politico-moral ideals, its simple espousal and thematic exposition o f inner alterity largely glosses the phenomenological emergence o f the ‘Being-with’ as witnessed by Leiris. Comparison here helps to bring out the lived, inter-racial, con-sensual and inter-textual composition o f critical identity in Leiris’s essays, as well as to remind us o f their frequently unresolved or secreted involvements; just as it also contextualizes the ‘individualisme extrême, [...] conscient de ses malaises et de ses limites’ which Kristeva presents in conclusion as the basis o f multinational society, but which itself is composed via a critical ‘power o f homogenization’ that is unproblematically equated with ‘French civilization’ (p. 290, 288). Some o f the logical consequences o f ‘Being-with’ for the dis­ position o f the critical consciousness are realized in the work o f Jean-Luc Nancy. Inverting the political, epistemological and dis­ cursive assumptions still retained in Kristeva s final idea that strange­ ness is in us, for example, Nancy’s 2000 L'Intrus concludes with the crucially different and more extreme idea that ‘ [1]’intrus n’est pas un autre que moi-même et l’homme lui-même. Pas un autre que le même qui n’en finit pas de s’altérer’ .14 This inherently relational and unabsolute ‘self’ is what Nancy locates at the heart o f (the dereliction of) community, beyond totalitarian or neo-liberal models. For to be absolutely alone, as Nancy comments in a work that acts also as a critical commentary on Bataille, ‘il ne suffit pas que je le sois; il faut encore que je sois seul à être seul. Ce qui précisément est contra­ dictoire’.15 This betokens a relational character not based simply on contractual adherence to enlightenment, as it still is in Kristeva, but already inherent in ‘l’être-extatique de l’être lui-même’ (p. 23).

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Singularity, in other words, always co-appears for Nancy, since there cannot be a singular emergence o f a singular being (something ‘l’être extatique’ already embodies): as a result, sociality is ‘originary or ontological’ rather than willed. Such a communauté désœuvrée enacts truly political ‘sharing’ . This notion o f being as always emerging through ‘com parution’ is developed further in Nancy’s 1996 Etre singulier pluriel. Here the meaning o f Being is not a property or a givenness, but the communi­ cation or sharing o f the community. So meaning only begins where presence, far from being pure, ‘se disjoint pour être elle-même en tant que telle’ (p. 20). Such a recognition o f the originary nature o f the ‘écartement, espacement et partition de la présence’ recalls the impli­ cations o f the biffure o f presence as dramatized by Leiris’s critical consciousness. This leads logically to a statement by Nancy o f Being’s original inhabitation by alterity (i.e. not by an aliud or alius or alienus), o f ‘Being-with’ as having the status and consistency o f ‘l’altérité originaire en tant que telle’, o f every ‘position’ as therefore being also a ‘dis-position’, and every ‘parution’ a ‘com-parution’, and o f pres­ ence as being the access not to a thing or state but only to a ‘venue’ or coming (pp. 29—30, 33). In a move that recalls explicitly Heidegger and implicitly Levinas, philosophy for Nancy must thus be first re­ figured, in order to begin from ‘the plural singular o f origins’ or the ‘Being-with’ (p. 45). The double, contradictory or chiasmatic nature o f this singular-plural is the essence o f Being as Being-with, or presence as presence-with, and is described in a manner that recalls critical consciousness in Leiris: ‘la co-originarité est la structure la plus générale de toute con-sistance, de toute con-stitution et de toute con­ science’ (p. 61). This ‘with’ is therefore not presentable as such, being co-originary with Being’s emergence, but is evidenced as the forces already within Being. Leiris’s essays therefore become conceptualizable here as the evidence o f the ‘with’, as the immanent and intrinsic condition o f (critical) consciousness: thus, as with the ‘with’, they are ‘un trait tiré sur le vide, qui franchit et souligne ce vide à la fois, qui fait sa tension et sa traction’ (p. 84). In this light, the Beingwith o f the essays is the grounding o f the autobiographical emergence o f singularity, their multiple generic and circumstantial demonstration o f the ‘partage originairement singulier des voix’ being the pre­ condition to all voicing, and the existential ‘mineness’ o f auto­ biography being the ‘possibility’ that occurs in the essays’ ‘réalité con­ currente de Vêtre-à-chaque-fois-avec (p. 121).

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C onclusion

This final contextual view o f Leiris s critical writings, to which we have been brought by a series o f logical relations, brings out their most radical potential, both for their own enterprise and for the status and implications o f critical practice in general. Through comparisons with postmodern, postcolonial, psychological and philosophical models o f critical being, these essays emerge powerfully as both a model o f passionate practice and a sustained and involved projection o f the corn-position o f Being s emergence. Leiris s critical writing is therefore a historically and technically important appreciation o f the visual art, music, literature and critical debates at the heart o f the twentieth-century avant garde. More intimately, it is an exemplary instance o f sensual and con-sensual critical activity, one fully engaged, to the point o f adoption and transformation, with the other gener­ ating its own critical Being. And it is finally a complex and composed body that forces a fundamental re-evaluation o f the supposed singularity and centrality o f Leiris s autobiography, and o f Being in general, through the ways in which it explodes the alterity and distantiation held within autobiographical compression, and reveals the existential drama o f Being-there to depend on the unprecedented existence o f Being-with.

Notes to Conclusion 1. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time (Oxford: Blackwell, 1962), 156, 162. 2. Michel Leiris, ‘L’homme et son intérieur’, Documents 2 /5 (1930); republished in Brisées, 5 8 -6 3. All page references are to this last edition. 3. Marc Augé, Le Sens des autres: Actualité de Vanthropologie (Paris: Fayard), 1994. 4. Marc Augé, N on-Lieux, Introduction à une anthropologie de la surmodernité (Paris: Seuil, 1992). 5. The breakdown o f the total social fact is a key feature o f A ugé’s metacritical position. See, e.g., Un ethnologue dans le métro (Paris: Hachette, 1986): jamais aucun fait social ne sera perçu totalement au sens où l’entendait Lévi-Strauss’ (p. 88). 6. George E. Marcus, Ethnography through Thick and Thin (Princeton, N J: Princeton University Press, 1998), esp. ch. 3, ‘Ethnography in /o f the World System. The Emergence o f Multi-Sited Ethnography’ (1995), 79—104. 7. See Leiris, ‘L’ethnographe devant le colonialisme’, esp. 16 0 -1. 8 . Jean Bernabé, Patrick Chamoiseau, Raphaël Confiant, Eloge de la créolité (Paris: Gallimard, 1989; republished 1993). All references are to this last edition. 9. For Leiris s use o f the term ‘utopia’ , see ‘L’ethnographe devant le colonialisme’ , 160. 10. Edward W. Said, Culture and Imperialism (London: Chatto and Windus, 1993), 63. 1 1. See Edward W. Said, Musical Elaborations (London: Chatto and Windus, 19 9 1; republished Vintage, 1992), 2 4 -5 . All references are to this last edition.

C onclusion

125

12. See Clifford, The Predicament o f Culture, where Clifford isolates how Said is able from this perspective to absorb the anti-humanism o f Foucault into his earlier work Orientalism. 13. Julia Kristeva, Etrangers à nous-mêmes (Paris: Fayard, 1988; republished Gallimard, Folio, 1997). All page references are to this last edition. 1 4. Jean-Luc Nancy, LTntrus (Paris: Galilée, 2000), 45. 15. Jean-Luc Nancy, La Communauté désœuvrée (Paris: Bourgois, 1986), 18. 16 . Jean-Luc Nancy, Etre singulier pluriel (Paris: Galilee, 1996).

C\ Taylor & Francis ~Taylor & Francis Group

http://taylorandfra ncis.co m

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I: Works by Michel Leiris This is a selective bibliography that covers the works mentioned in the main text. It also details here only those articles not subsequently collected in book form; for details relating to original publication, see the notes at the end of each chapter. For more complete bibliographies of Leiris, see Louis Y vert’s Bibliographie des écrits de Michel Leiris: 1924-1993, Les cahiers de Gradhiva 24 (Paris: Jean-Michel Place, 1996), and my Michel Leiris: Writing the Self (Cam­ bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). Unless otherwise stated, the place of publication is Paris and the year that of the heading under which the citation is listed.

1925 Simulacre (Editions de la Galerie Simon). 1926 ‘[Les illuminés, Les faux saulniers]’, Clarté 79 (1925—6), 392. ‘Paris-minuit’ , Der Querschnitt 9, 685-8.

1927 Le Point cardinal (Editions du Sagittaire). 1929 ‘Alberto Giacometti’, Documents 4, 209-14. ‘L’ île magique’, Documents 6, 334-5. ‘Débâcle’, Documents 7, 382.

1930 ‘Le bouquet sans fleurs’, in Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes et al., Un cadavre (Imprimerie spéciale du Cadavre), 2. Republished in Tracts surréalistes et déclarations collectives, 1922-1969, i: 1922—1939, présentation et commentaires de José Pierre (Terrain vague, 1980-2), 139. ‘ [Disques nouveaux’], Documents 2/1, 48. ‘[Hebdomeros]’, Documents 2/5, 3 11.

128

B ibliography

‘[Myths of the origin of the fire]’, Documents 2/5, 3 11. ‘Le “ Caput Mortuum” ou la femme de 1’alchimiste’, Documents 2/8, 21 (46i )-26 (466). 1934

L’Afrique fantôme (Gallimard; republished 1981). 1936 ‘La Mariée mise à nu par ses célibataires, même’, Nouvelle Revue Française 279, 1087-9. (and Schaeffner, André) ‘Les rites de cironcision chez les Dogon de Sanga’, Journal de la Société des africanistes 6, 14 1-6 1. 1937

Tauromachies (Guy Lévis Mano). 1938 Miroir de la tauromachie (Guy Lévis Mano). 1939 L’Age d’homme (Gallimard; republished 1946, 1964, 1966, 1973). Glossaire j ’y serre mes gloses (Editions de la Galerie Simon). m3 Haut Mal (Gallimard). 1944 ‘Ce que parler veut dire’, Les Lettres françaises 27, 1 and 5.

ms Nuits sans nuit (Fontaine). Republished in augmented form as Nuits sans nuit et quelques jours sans jour (Gallimard, 1961). 1946 Aurora (Gallimard). ‘De la littérature considérée comme une tauromachie’, preface to the new edition o f L’Age d’homme (Gallimard). 1947

(and Limbour, Georges), André Masson et son univers (Trois Collines).

1948 Biffures (La Règle du jeu I) (Gallimard). La Langue secrète des Dogons de Sanga (Soudan français) (Institut d’ethnologie).

B ibliography

129

1949 ‘Trois chansons guadeloupéennes’, Les Temps modernes 52 (1950), 1394-6. ‘Biguines et autres chansons de la Martinique’, Les Temps modernes 52 (1950), 1397-1407-

1951 Race et civilisation (UNESCO). Toro (Editions de la Galerie Louise Leiris). 1955

Fourbis (La Règle du jeu II) (Gallimard). Contacts de civilisations en Martinique et en Guadeloupe (UNESCO). 1956 Bagatelles végétales (Aubier). 1958 La Possession et ses aspects théâtraux chez les Ethiopiens de Gondar (Plon; Le Sycomore, 1980). 1959

‘A propos d’une œuvre de Marcel Duchamp... “ la Mariée mise à nu par ses célibataires, même” ’, Dossiers acénonètes du Collège de Pataphysique 7, 75—9.

1961 Vivantes cendres, innommées (J. Hugues). 1964 Grande Fuite de neige (Mercure de France; Montpellier: Fata Morgana, 1982). Miroir de la tauromachie, précédé de Tauromachies (Guy Lévis Mano). 1966 Brisées (Mercure de France). Fibrilles (La Règle du jeu III) (Gallimard). 1967 (and Delange, Jacqueline), Afrique Noire: La Création plastique (Gallimard).

1969 Cinq Etudes d'ethnologie (Denoël/Gonthier). Haut Mal, suivi de Autres lancers (Gallimard). Mots sans mémoire (Gallimard). Fissures (Maeght; republished 1974).

130

B ibliography

1971 André Masson, massacres et autres dessins (Hermann). 1973 U Emerveillé merveilleux (Le Vent d’Arles). 1976 Frêle Bruit (La Règle du jeu IV) (Gallimard). 1977 ‘Le grand jeu de Francis Bacon’, préfacé to Francis Bacon: œuvres récentes (Galerie Claude Bernard), n.p.

1980 Au verso des Images (Montpellier: Fata Morgana). 1981 Le Ruban au cou d’Olympia (Gallimard). 1983 ‘Face et profil’, introduction to Francis Bacon (Oxford: Phaidon), 243-55. Reprinted as introduction to Francis Bacon (Albin-Michel, 1983).

1984 (Interview with Michael Haggerty), ‘Michel Leiris: L’Autre qui apparaît chez vous\Jazz Magazine 324, pp. 34-6.

1983 Langage tangage ou ce que les mots me disent (Gallimard). 1987 Ondes (Cognac: Le Temps qu’il fait). Roussel l’ingénu (Montpellier: Fata Morgana). 1988 A cor et à cri (Gallimard). A propos de Georges Bataille (Fourbis). 1989 Images de Marque (Cognac: Le Temps qu’il fait). 1990 (Interview with Jean Shuster), Entre augures (Terrain vague/Losfeld).

Jadis (Fourbis).

B ibliography

13 1

1991 La Course de taureaux (Fourbis). Pierres pour un Alberto Giacometti (Caen: L’Echoppe). 1992 Le Forçat vertigineux, in U Evasion souterraine (Montpellier: Fata Morgana), 43 - 5 , 5 4 -

Zébrage (Gallimard). Journal, 1922-1989 (Gallimard). Operratiques (P.O.L.). Un génie sans piédestal (Fourbis). C ’est-à-dire. Entretiens avec Sally Price et Jean Jamin, suivi de Textes et travaux (Jean-Michel Place).

L’Evasion souterraine (Montpellier: Fata Morgana). 1994 Journal de Chine (Gallimard). L’Homme sans honneur: notes pour Le Sacré dans la vie quotidienne, édition établie, présentée et annotée par Jean Jamin (Jean-Michel Place).

1995 Francis Bacon ou la brutalité du fait (Seuil). 19 9 6

Miroir de l’Afrique (Gallimard, Quarto), j 997

Wifredo Lam, édition établie et annotée par Jean Jamin (Brussels: Devillez). 1998 Roussel & Co., édition établie par Jean Jamin, présentée et annotée par Annie Le Brun (Fata Morgana/Fayard).

2000 Le Merveilleux, édition établie, présentée et annotée par Catherine Maubon (Brussels: Devillez).

II: Selected Works on Michel Leiris A

rm el

B

e a u jo u r

, A

B

lanch o t

Notes

l ie t t e ,

, M

Michel Leiris (Paris: Fayard,

ic h e l ,

19 9 7).

‘Leiris: poétique et ethnopoétique’, Modem Language

10 5 (19 9 0 ), 6 4 6 - 5 5 . , M

a u r ic e

1943 ), 1 5 7 - 6 2 .

,

‘Poésie et langage’, in his Faux Pas (Paris: Gallimard,

132

B ibliography

B lanch ot , M au rice , ‘Regards d’outre-tombe’, in his La Part dufeu (Paris:

Gallimard, 1949), 247-58. ------‘Combat avec l’ange’, in his L'Amitié (Paris: Gallimard, 1971), 150-61. B u t o r , M ichel , ‘Une autobiographie dialectique’, Critique 11 (1955), 1046-55. Reprinted in Répertoire I (Paris: Gallimard, i960), 262-70. G lissant , E douard . ‘Michel Leiris, ethnographe’, Les Lettres nouvelles 43 (1956), 609-21. ------‘Michel Leiris: the Repli and the Dépli\ Yale French Studies 81 (1992), 21- 7 -

H a n d , Seâ n , ‘The Sound and the Fury. Language in Leiris’, Paragraph 7

(1986), 102-20. ------‘The Orchastration of Man: the structure of L'Age d'homme’, Romance Studies 8 (1986), 67-80. ------ ‘Hors de soi: politique, possession et présence dans l’ethnographie surréaliste de Michel Leiris’, in C. W. Thompson (ed.), L'Autre et le sacré (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1995), 185-95. ------‘Breaking the Circle of Selfhood: Non-intentional Response and the Reading of Leiris’, Journal of the Institute of Romance Studies 8 (2000), 279-92. ------ Michel Leiris: Writing the Self (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). ------ ‘Secret du secret: l’homotextualité du Journal de Michel Leiris’, Romance Studies 20/2 (2002), 145-53. ------ ‘The Quick and the Dead: Riffaterre’s Hypogramatic Reading of Leiris’, Nottingham French Studies 42/2 (2003), 67-77. ------ ‘Reveiling the Woman: Passion, Presence, and Intertextuality in Michel Leiris s Fourbis’, French Studies 58/1 (2004), 47-60. H ollier , D enis , ‘Leiris’, Mercure 353 (1965), 317-20. ------ ‘La poésie jusqu’à Z ’, in his Les Dépossédés (Bataille, Caillois, Leiris, Malraux, Sartre) (Paris: Minuit, 1993), 23-35. ------ ‘A l’en-tête d’Holopherne: notes sur Judith’, in his Les Dépossédés (Bataille, Caillois, Leiris, Malraux, Sartre) (Paris: Minuit, 1993), 139-52. ------and J amin , J ea n , ‘Un homme du secret discret’, Magazine littéraire 302 (19 9 2 ), 1 7 - 2 4 .

J am in , J ea n , ‘Un sacré collège ou les apprentis sorciers de la sociologie’,

Cahiers Internationaux de Sociologie 68 (1980), 5-30. ------‘Quand le sacré devient gauche’, L'Ire des Vents 3-4 (1981), 98-118. ------‘Introduction à Miroir de l'Afrique’, in Michel Leiris, Miroir de l'Afrique (Paris: Gallimard, Quarto, 1996), 9-58. ------‘Présentation d’Afrique Noire: la création plastique’, in Michel Leiris, Miroir de l'Afrique (Paris: Gallimard, Quarto, 1996), 1105—15. L ejeune , Philippe, ‘Michel Leiris, autobiographie et poésie’, in Le Pacte autobiographique (Paris: Seuil, 1975), 245-307. ------ Lire Leiris. Autobiographie et langage (Paris: Klincksieck, 1975).

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‘La transcendance des mots’, Les Temps modernes 44

m m anu el,

(1949), 1090-5. , J e f f r e y , ‘Reading (with) Leiris’, in his A Structural Study of Auto­ biography: Proust, Leiris, Sartre, Lévi-Strauss (Cornell: Cornell University

M

eh lm an

N

a n c y

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ean

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u c

, ‘ L e s Iris ’ ,

Revue de l'Université de Bruxelles

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(19 9 0 ),

10 3 -12 . Po

n t a l i s , J e a n - B e r t r a n d , ‘Michel Leiris ou la psychanalyse interminable’ in his Après Freud (Paris: Gallimard, (1968) 1971), 313-35.

III: General Works A

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o n y

,

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1 9 7 7 ). A

n ser m et

, E

r n est

,

‘Sur un orchestre nègre’, La Revue romande, 15 Oct.

1919. A

p o l l in a ir e ,

G

A

p p a d u r a i,

r ju n

A

Chroniques d’Art (Paris: Gallimard, i960). Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization

u il l a u m e ,

,

(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996). , K w a m e A n t h o n y , In My Father's House: Africa in the Philosophies of Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992). A r b l a s t e r , A n t h o n y , Viva la Libertà! Politics in Opera (London: Verso, A

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1992). - S t r a w , P e t r i n e , Negrophilia: Avant-Garde Paris and Black Culture in the 1920s (London: Thames and Hudson, 2000). A u g é , M a r c , Un ethnologue dans le métro (Paris: Hachette, 1986). ------ Non-Lieux, Introduction à une anthropologie de la surmodernité (Paris: Seuil, 1992). ------ Le Sens des autres: Actualité de l'anthropologie (Paris: Fayard, 1994). B a r t h e s , R o l a n d , ‘Rasch’, in his L'Obvie et l'Obtus (Paris: Seuil, 1982), 277. B a t a i l l e , G e o r g e s , [‘Conformismes freudiens’], Documents 5 (1929), 3 10 - 11. ------‘Le gros orteil’, Documents 6 (1929), 297-302. ------‘Le “Jeu lugubre’” , Documents 7 (1929), 369-72. ------‘Informe’, Documents 7 (1929), 382. A

r ch er

------ ‘La mutilation sacrificielle et l’oreille coupée de Vincent Van Gogh’, Documents 8 (1930), 11 (45i)-20 (460). ------ Œuvres complètes, 9 vols. (Paris: Gallimard, 1970—9). B a u d e l a i r e , C h a r l e s , Œuvres complètes (Paris: Gallimard, Pléiade, 1961). B a u m a n n , M a x P e t e r (ed.), Local Musical Traditions in the Globalization Process, The World of Music, 42(3) (Berlin: Verlag fiir Wissenschaft und Bildung, 2000). B e n n i n g t o n , G e o f f r e y , Interrupting Derrida (London: Routledge, 2 0 0 0 ). B e r g e r , J o hn , The Success and Failure of Picasso (London: Writers and Readers, 1965; reprinted Granta, 1992).

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------‘La corruption dans les encensoirs’, Nouvelle Revue Française 48 (1956), 1078-84. ------‘Aléa’, Nouvelle Revue Française 59 (1957), 839-57. ------ Penser la musique aujourd'hui (Paris: Gonthier, 1963).

----- Conversations de Pierre Boulez sur la direction d'orchestre avec Jean Vermeil (Paris: Place, 1989). ------ The Boulez—Cage Correspondence, ed. Jean-Jacques Nattiez (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). ------ and S c h a e f f n e r , A n d r é , Correspondance 1934-1970, présentée et annotée par Rosângela Pereira de Tugny (Paris: Fayard, 1998). B r e t o n , A n d r é , Les Constellations de Joan Mirô (New York: Pierre Matisse, 1 9 5 9 ).

------ Œuvres complètes, vols, i and iii, édition établie par Marguerite Bonnet (Paris: Gallimard, Pléiade, 1988 and 1999). C a r r é , J e a n - M a r i e , La Vie aventureuse deJean-Arthur Rimbaud (Paris: Plon, 1926). ------ Les Deux Rimbaud: L'Ardennais — L'Ethiopien (Paris: Cahiers Libres, 1928). , T i m o t h y J a m e s , The Painting of Modem Life: Paris in the Art of Manet and his Followers (London: Thames and Hudson, 1984). C l i f f o r d , J a m e s , ‘ 1933, February: Negrophilia’, in Denis Hollier (ed.), A New History of French Literature (Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard C

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INDEX

Abstract expressionism 12 Ackermann, Otto 57 Adorno, Theodor 71 n. 38 Alfano, Franco 59, 62 Algeria 3 Ansermet, Ernest 41, 68 n. 9 A p p el des 12 1 3 Apollinaire, Guillaume 12, 32 n. 12 Aragon, Louis 77 Arblaster, Anthony 7$ n. 61 Armel, Aliette 8 n. 4, 9 n. 9, 34 n. 24, 112 nn. 54, 60 & 64 Armstrong, Louis 68 n. 10 Arnaud-Vauchant, Leo 43 Arte Povera 12 A u Grand Jo u r 77 Audiberti, Jacques 92 Augé, Marc 116 -17, H8, 124 nn. 3, 4 & 5 Auric, Georges 57 Bach, Johann Sebastian 48 Bacon, Francis 4, 7, 14, 19, 20-3, 25-7, 35 n. 46, 74 n. 54 Baker, Josephine 40, 41, 42 Balzac, Honoré de 28 Barbusse, Henri 77, 108 n. 1$ Baron, Jacques 78 Barthes, Roland 66, 75 n. 63 Basie, William (Bill) ‘Count’ 43 Bataille, Georges 2, 3, 4, 5, 25, 36 n. 60, 44-7, 52, 76, 83-97, 108 n. 13, 109 nn. 24, 28, 29, 30 & 31, 110 nn. 32, 39 & 43, 122 Baudelaire, Charles 36 n. 61, 95-6 Bazille, Frédéric 36 n. 62 Beaudin, André 15, 16 Beauvoir, Simone de 4 Bechet, Sidney 41

Beckett, Samuel 26-7 Béjart, Maurice 57 Bennington, Geoffrey 9 n. 8 Berg, Alban 60 Berger, John 29, 36 n. 73 Beri, Emmanuel 87 Bernabé, Jean 118 -19 , 124 n. 8 Bernheimer, Charles 36 n. 63 Bernier, Jean 77 Bête Noire, La 6 Blackbirds 7, 40, 42, 44-7, 48, 74 n. 52 Black People 40

Blanchot, Maurice 3 Bœuf sur le toit, Le 40, 42, 43 Bòhm, Karl 57 Borei, Adrien 2 Boulez, Pierre $2, 69 n. 18, 71 n. 38 Braque, Georges 12, 15, 28, 32 n. 14 Breton, André 4, 11, 31 n. 10, 61, 76, 77-82, 83-4, 85, 87, 88, 101-2, 107 n. i, 108 nn. 10, 11 & 15, 1 12 nn. 53, 54 & 55 ‘Bricktop’, see Ada Smith Bullard, Eugene-Jacques 68 n. 11 Busoni, Ferruccio 60 Butor, Michel 3, n i n. 50 Cahiers d ’études africaines 6

Caillois, Roger 3 Calder, Alexander 42 Callas, Maria $4, 57, 58, 73 n. 43 Caron, Antoine 10, 16, 88, 90 Carré, Jean-Marie 76-8, 81, 85, 107 n. 3, 108 nn. 7, 8 & 9 Carter, Nick 82 Cause du people, La 4 Césaire, Aimé 3, 8 n. 4 Cézanne, Paul 12 -13, 20> 7 2 n- 3 8

140

Index

Chamoiseau, Patrick 118 -19 , 124 n. 8 Chenal, Marthe 57 Chevalier, Maurice 41 Chez Florence 41, 68 n. 11 Chirico, Giorgio de 87 Clailleux, André 73 n. 42 Clark, Timothy James 36 n. 62 Clarté 76-80, 83, 107 n. 4, 108 nn. 5 & 15 Clifford, James 4, 8 n. 7, 68 n. 6, 125 n. 12 Cocteau, Jean 42, 61 Cœuroy, André (Jean Béline) 45, 50, 7 0 n. 34 Colin, Paul 42 Collège de Sociologie 3, 93 conceptual art 12 Confiant, Raphaël 118 -19 , 124 n. 8 Cortis, Antonio 57 Cranach, Lucas the Elder 16 Crastre, Victor 77

Critique 6

Cuba, 3 Cubism 12—13, 16, 18-19, 32 n- 2 I > 33 n. 23 Dakar-Djibouti expedition 2, 5, 15, 45, 48, 89 Dali, Salvador 88 Danco, Suzanne 57 Debussy, Claude 41, 69 n. 18, 72 n. 38 decolonization 50—1, 97 Delannoy, Marcel 49 Deleuze, Gilles 27, 36 n. 68, 37 n. 76 Delmer (née Nicholas), Isabel 62; see also Isabel Rawsthorne Derain, André 14, 33 n. 24, 74 n. 54 Derrida, Jacques 4, 5, 9 n. 8 Descartes, René 34 n. 32 Desnos, Robert 8 n. 3, 78, 108 n. 10, 112 n. 55 Documents 5, 6, 10, 21, 44-7, 51, 83-91, 98, 104, 115 Douglas, Louis 40 D over Street to D ixie 40, 74 n. 52 Duchamp, Marcel 104, 106, 112 n. 60 Dufour, Pierre 12, 32 nn. 17 & 20 Dufrène, Charlotte 105 Durkheim, Emile 39, 67 n. 2

Ellington, Edward ‘Duke’ 47, 62, 68 n. Eluard, Paul 54, 77, 104, 112 n. 61 Ernst, Max 14, 61 ethnomusicology 47-9 Europe, James Creese 41 existentialism 9 1-7 Expressionism 35 n. 51 Fauvism 12 Flagstad, Kirsten 57 Ford, Mark 112 nn. 57 & 63 Foucault, Michel 3, 100-1, h i n. 51, 112 n. 52, 125 n. 12 Fourestier, Louis 58, 74 n. 49 Fourrier, Marcel 77 France, Anatole 77 Frazer, Sir James George 87 Freni, Mirella 57 Freud, Sigmund 25, 29, 36 n. 64, 121 Friché, Claire (aka ‘Tante Lise’) 58 Frobenius, Ferdinand Georg 40, 68 n. 7 Fromentin, Eugène 78 Galerie Louise Leiris 5, 19, 29 Géricault, Théodore io, 16 Gérôme, Jean-Léon 36 n. 63 Gershwin, George 41, 44 Giacometti, Alberto 4, 5, 10, 11, 14, 18 19, 27, 31 n. n , 52, 74 n. $4, 106 Gillespie, Dizzy 43 Glissant, Edouard 4, 5, 9 n. 8 Gozzi, Carlo 60 Graâhiva 6

Le Grand Duc 41, 68 n. 11, 69 n. 16 Griaule, Marcel 2, 15, 45, 48, 85—6, 109 n. 27 Gris, Josette 44 Gris, Juan 11, 15, 16, 28 Guernica 2 Guerre civile, La 77—8, 108 nn. 5 & 15 Habermas, Jurgen 37 n. 74 Hadengue, Sébastien 1$ Haggerty, Michael 43, 67 n. 5 Hahn, Reynaldo 105 Hall, Adelaide 42, 68 n. io Hall, Sir Peter 54

Index Handel, Georg Friedrich 57 Heidegger, Martin 31 n. 1, 34 n. 27, 114, 123, 124 n. 1 Hemingway, Ernest 33 n. 24 Heyward, DuBose 44 Hollier, Denis 9 n. 9, 67 n. 3, 69 n. 23 Humanité, V 79, 108 n. 15 Jacob, Max 14, 32 n. 18, 34 n. 29, $2, 76, 104, 112 n. 61 Jamin, Jean 9 n. 9, 34 nn. 26 & 33, 55-6, 68 n. 6, 98, 104, 109 n. 17, 111 n. 46 Janet, Pierre 102, m n. 49 jazz 2, 7, 17, 38-52, 6 1-2 Jolson, Al 68 n. 10 Jones, Florence Embry 68 n. 11 Jouhandeau, Marcel 14, 76 Joyce, James 26 Kahnweiler, Daniel-Henry 5, 7, 12 -17, 2 1 . 25, 29, 32 nn. 12 -16 & 18-21, 33 n. 22 & 23, 52, 72 nn. 38 & 42 Kermadec, Eugène de 15, 16 Knappertsbusch, Hans 56, 58. Krauss, Rosalind 29, 36 n. 71 Kristeva, Julia 12 1—2, 125 n. 13

141

A cor et à cri 8 n. 6 L ’A frique fantôme 1, 5, 8 n. 2, n , 39, 62,

65, 99 Afrique Noire: L a Création plastique 18,

34

n. 33, 40, 74 n. 52

L ’A ge d ’homme 1, 6, 8 n. 2, 10, 17, 25,

38, 39, 40, 51, 58-9, 60, 64, 66, 73 n. 42, 89, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95-6, 98, 99, 110 n. 37 André Masson et son univers 31 n. 7, 36 n. 59 A ndré Masson, Massacres et autres dessins,

34 n. 38 A propos de Georges Bataille 89 Aurora 10, 25, 60, 109 n. 17 A u verso des Images 1, 8 n. 1,

31 nn. 6-8, 34 nn. 36 & 37, 35 n. 49, 36 n. 70 Biffures 5, 8 n. 2, 10, 17 Brisées 1, 8 n. 1, 34 nn. 34, 35, 34 & 39, 36 n. 59, 69 n. 19, 107 n. 2 Cahier Raym ond Roussel 98, 105—6 ‘Le “ Caput Mortuum” ou la femme de l’alchimiste’ 46—7 C ’est-à-dire. Entretiens avec Sally Price et Je a n Ja m in 67 n. 1 C inq Etudes d ’ethnologie 8 n. 4, 9 n. 11

Lacan, Jacques 37 n. 75, 66, 75 n. 62 Lam, Wifredo 11, 27, 35 n. 47 Lambert, Constant 4, 7, 6 1-3, 74 nn. 50-2

‘Civilisation’ 45-6 ‘Communication au Congrès culturel de la Havane’ 9 n. 11

& 55-7, 75 nn. 58 & 59 Lascaux, Elie 14, 32 n. 18, 34 n. 29 Laurens, Henri 11, 14, 18 Lautréamont, Comte de (Isidore Ducasse) 79, 82 Lavaud, Jacques 90 Le Brun, Annie 98, 104, 106, n i n. 48, 112 n. 62 Leenhardt, Maurice 2 Léger, Fernand 28, 42 Leibowitz, René 4, 7, 52-5, 71 n. 38, 72 nn. 40-2, 73 nn. 43 & 44 Leiris, Marie-Madeleine (dite Marie, née Caubet, mother of Michel Leiris) 44, 64-5 Leiris, Michel: ‘Acéphale’ 89

Contacts de civilisation en M artinique et en Guadeloupe 3, 8 n. 4 ‘Contre-Attaque’ 89 ‘De la littérature considérée comme une tauromachie’ 10, 89, 96-7 L ’Emerveillé merveilleux 31 n. 9 ‘L’ethnographe devant le colonialisme’ 3, 5, 8 n. 4, 9 n. 11, 50-1 Fibrilles 8 n. 2, 17, 60, 65, 66, 104, 112 n. 60 Fissures 31 n. 9 Fourbis 8 n. 2, 10, 17, 25, 55, 60, 73 n. 42, 104, 111 n. 50, 112 n. 60 Francis Bacon 35 n. 51 Francis Bacon ou la brutalité du fa it

35 nn. 45 & 51 Frêle Bruit 8 n. 2, 17

142

Index

Un génie sans piédestal 31 n. 6,

36 nn. 59 & 70

Luter, Claude 43 Lutyens, Elizabeth 61, 74 n. 51

Glossaire j ’y serre mes gloses 5, 9 n. 10,

81-2, 99, 108 n. 14, 109 n. 17 Grande Fuite de neige 96, 109 n. 17 Images de marque 8 n. 6 Journal, 19 2 2 -19 8 9 8 n. 5, 43, 53, 64-5,

66, 69 nn. 17 & 18, 74 n. 53, 89, 91, 92, 97, 98, 108 n. 5, 109 n. 17, n o n. 37 Langage tangage ou ce que les mots me disent

8 n. 6, 82, 108 n. 14, 113 n. 68 La Langue secrète des Dogons de Sanga 106,

112 n. 66 ‘Le Merveilleux’ 82, 109 n. 19 M iroir de la tauromachie 9 n. 10, 96 Mots sans mémoire 108 n. 14 Nuits sans nuit et quelques jours sans jo u r

109 n. 17

Magritte, René 14 Mallarmé, Stéphane 13, 26, 60, 72 n. 38, 103 Manet, Edouard 7, 12, 20-1, 23-5 Marcus, George 117-18 , 124 n. 6 Masson, André 4, 5, n , 14, 19, 27, 32 n. 18, 52, 76, 101 Mauss, Marcel 2, 5, 48 Mehlman, Jeffrey 4, 9 n. 7 Mendelssohn, Felix 41 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice 30-1, 37 n. 75, 71 n. 38 Métraux, Alfred 49, 70 n. 31, 104, 112 n. 61 Milhaud, Darius 8 n. 3, 42, 61, 62, 74 n. 53 Mills, Florence 40, 42, 61, 74 n. 52

Ondes 8 n. 6

Minotaure 6

Operratiques 1, 6, 8 n. 1, 51, 52, 55—67

Miró, Joan 4, 5, n , 14, 19, 61, 74 n. 54,

L e Point cardinal 109 n. 17 La Possession et ses aspects théâtraux chez les éthiopiens de Gondar 59, 104, 112 n. 60 Race et civilisation 3, 8 n. 4 La Règle du je u 1, 6, 8 n. 2, 16-17, 99,

n o n. 32; see also Biffures, Fourbis, Fibrilles, Frêle Bruit Roussel & Co. 1, 8 n. 1 Roussel l ’Ingénu 103 L e Ruban au cou d ’ Olympia 6, 7, 9 n. n ,

35 n. 48 ‘Le sacré dans la vie quotidienne’ 11 Simulacre 5, 9 n. 10, 10, 109 n. 17 Tauromachies 96 Toro 9 n. 10 Vivantes cendres, innommées 9 n. 10 Wijredo Lam 35 n. 47 Zébrage 1 , 11, 69 n. 18 Lejeune, Philippe 4, 9 n. 7 Leoncavallo, Ruggero 56 Levinas, Emmanuel 123 Lévi-Strauss, Claude 71 n. 37, 73 n. 47 Liebermann, Rolf 57, 58 Limbour, Georges 52, 78, 109 n. 18 Liszt, Franz 62 Lorenz, Max 57 Lowry, Vance 42

101 Mistinguett, 41 Mitchell, Louis 41 Mitchell’s Jazz Kings 41, 42 Monaco, Mario del 65 Monteverdi, Claudio 53 Moré, Marcel 52, 73 n. 42 Morel, Marisa 53, 57 Morrison, Angus 62, 74 n. 55 Mourlot, Fernand 34 n. 40 Musée de l’Homme 2 Musée national d’art moderne 14 Music Box 44 Nadeau, Maurice 107 n. 1 Nancy, Jean-Luc 122-3, 125 nn. 14-16 Nerval, Gérard de 76, 78, 82, 108 n. 10 Oliver, Joe ‘King’ 68 n. 10 opera 17, 52—67 Original Dixieland Jazz Band 68 n. 10 Panassié, Hugues 43, 70 n. 32 Pears, Peter 61. Pelorson, Georges 91 Péret, Benjamin 77 Philosophies 108 n. 5

Index Picasso, Pablo 4, 5, 7, 11, 12-14, 19, 20-2, 27, 28-30, 32 n. 14, 33 n. 23, 48, 52, 7 4 n. 5 4 , 114 Pontalis, Jean-Bertrand 4, 9 n. 7 Poulenc, Francis 74 n. 53 Présence africaine 6, 14, 83 Puccini, Giacomo 7, 53, 54-5, 56, 58-60, 63- 7 ,

114

Rachmaninov, Sergei 41 Raphaël, Max 29, 36 n. 72 Rattray, Robert 40, 68 n. 7. Ravel, Maurice 41, 43 Rawsthorne, Isabel 74 n. 54; see also Isabel Delmer Reagan, Caroline Dudley 40 Reich, Willi 71 n. 38 Renaud, Maurice 57 révolution 78-80, 83 La Révolution surréaliste 77-8, 81-2, 108 nn. 5 & 14, 109 n. 17 R evu e Nègre 40, 42 Richardson, John 33 n. 24 Rimbaud, Jean-Arthur 76—9, 82 Rimsky-Korsakov, Nikolai Andreyevich 48 Rivière, Georges-Henri 7, 44, 45, 48, 69 n. 18, 104, 112 n. 61 Robbe-Grillet, Alain 3, 100, m n. 51 Roger, Suzanne 14, 34 n. 24 Rognon, Luigi 73 n. 42 Rossini, Gioacchino 49, 56 Roussel, Raymond 58, 82, 98-107, 109 n. 20, 110 n. 32, n i n. 45, 112 nn. 54, 55 & 62, 114, 121 Rouvre, Yves 15 Roux, Gaston-Louis 15 Sade, Donatien Alphonse François de, Marquis de 88 Said, Edward 119 -2 1, 124 nn. 10 & 11, 125 n. 12 Sartre, Jean-Paul 3, 84, 85, 91-7, n o nn. 36, 40 & 42 Satie, Erik 42 SchaefFner, André 4, 7, 45, 47-50, 69 n. 18, 70 nn. 25, 28-30, 32 & 33, 71 nn. 34 & 38, 98 Schiller, Friedrich 60

143

Schoenberg, Arnold 52, 54, 59, 72 n. 42 Schutzenberger, Louis-Frédéric 36 n. 62 Seabrook, William 46 Searle, Humphrey 61, 74 n. 51 Serafin, Tullio 57, 60 Seurat, Georges 13 Seven Spades, 41, 42 Shepp, Archie 43, 68 n. 15 Simionato, Giulietta 57 Sitwell, Edith 74 n. 50 Sitwell, Sacheverell 74 n. 52 Smith, Ada (‘Bricktop’) 41, 43-4, 69 n. 17 Solti, Sir Georg 54 Soupault, Philippe 80, 108 n. 12 Southern Syncopated Orchestra 40, 41 Spies, Werner 34 n. 28 Stein, Gertrude 33 n. 24 Stevenson, Robert Louis 78 Strauss, Richard 54, 56 Stravinsky, Igor 41, 42, 45, 48, 49, 61, 63, 7 4 n. 53 surrealism 2, 76-84 Sutherland, Dame Joan 57 Sylvester, David 35 nn. 46 & 52, 36 nn. 65 & 66

‘Tante Lise’, see Friché, Claire Tebaldi, Renata 54, 57, 58, 59, 74 n. 49 Tchaikovsky, Pyotr Ilyich 48 Temps modernes, Les 3, 6, 14, 53, 97 Turner, Eva 62, 74 n. 56 Unik, Pierre 77 Valéry, Paul 20, 25 Van Dongen, Kees 14 Verdi, Giuseppe 49, 54-5, 56, 73 n. 42 Vlaminck, Maurice de 14, 33 n. 24 Wagner, Richard 55, 56 Wagner, Wieland 53, 56, 57, 58, 73 n. 42 Whiteman, Paul 41, 45, 50 Wiéner, Jean 42 Wong, Anna May 62 Wood, Kit 61 Wunderlich, Fritz 57 Zola, Emile 86

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