Impressions of Africa (French Literature Series)
IMPRESSIONS OF AFRICA
OTHER WORKS BY RAYMOND ROUSSEL IN ENGLISH TRANSLATION
Locus Solus
New Impressions of Africa
How I Wrote Certain of My Books
Among the Blacks
IMPRESSIONS OF AFRICA
Raymond Roussel
In a new translation from the French and with an introduction by
MARK POLIZZOTTI
Dalkey Archive Press
Champaign - Dublin - London
Originally published as Impressions d’Afrique by Alphonse Lemerre, Paris, in 1910
Republished in 1963 by Jean-Jacques Pauvert, Paris
Translation and introduction copyright © 2011 by Mark Polizzotti
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Roussel, Raymond, 1877-1933.
[Impressions d’Afrique. English]
Impressions of Africa / Raymond Roussel; translated [from the French] and with an introduction by Mark Polizzotti.
p. cm.
ISBN: 978-1-56478-624-1
1. Shipwreck victims--Fiction. 2. Captivity--Fiction. 3. Africa--Fiction. 4. Experimental
fiction. I. Polizzotti, Mark. II. Title.
PQ2635.O96168I513 2011
843’.912--dc22
2011012937
Partially funded by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency, and by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Cet ouvrage, publié dans le cadre du programme d’aide à la publication, bénéficie du soutien du Ministère des Affaires Etrangères et du Service Culturel de l’Ambassade de France représenté aux Etats-Unis.
This work, published as part of a program of aid for publication, received support from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States.
www.dalkeyarchive.com
Cover illustration: Trevor Winkfield, Voyager IV. Acrylic on linen, 45 ½ x 61 inches, 1997. Courtesy Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York.
Contents
Introduction: A Child’s Garden of Eccentricities
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Chapter XV
Chapter XVI
Chapter XVII
Chapter XVIII
Chapter XIX
Chapter XX
Chapter XXI
Chapter XXII
Chapter XXIII
Chapter XXIV
Chapter XXV
Chapter XXVI
INTRODUCTION: A CHILD’S GARDEN OF ECCENTRICITIES
KNOWN—TO SOME—AS the Houdini of French literature, Raymond Roussel might also be its Peter Pan. The consummate verbal prestidigitator (André Breton dubbed him “the greatest mesmerizer of modern times”) carried in his bag of tricks enough material for at least ten times his actual output, and devised the sort of technological novelties that invite comparison both with his idol Jules Verne and with another of the twentieth century’s underrated oddballs, Nikola Tesla. In terms of compositional mechanics, his celebrated procédé (method), though its full implications remain largely unexplored, has resurfaced in the writings of the Surrealists, the New Novelists, the Oulipo, and the New York School. But in many ways, Roussel was also the boy who never grew up. In page after page, the reader of his novels finds himself seated before a seemingly endless spectacle, staged, it would appear, for Roussel’s benefit alone. And as with many children of privilege—which Roussel was in spades—any discomfort or damage suffered by the performer takes a distant backseat to the demanding tot’s enjoyment.
On the surface, in fact, Impressions of Africa, with its titular whiff of exoticism and H. Rider Haggard derring-do, would seem to appeal largely to an adolescent’s sense of thrill. On the Ides of March, somewhere at the dawn of the twentieth century, European passengers bound for Argentina survive a shipwreck and wash up on the shores of a fictive African nation. There they are taken captive by the vainglorious local potentate and held for several months, until sufficient ransom can arrive from Europe. So far we have the makings of a relatively standard adventure tale set in a far-off latitude where curious things can, and often do, occur. But these are no ordinary passengers, and this is no pastiche of King Solomon’s Mines (though Roussel, a fan of popular fiction, might well have read the book, judging by the similarity of the sovereign names Twala and Talou). In place of the intrepid Allan Quatermain, Roussel introduces a singularly gifted collection of castaways, ranging from circus freaks to inventors to scholars to theatrical prodigies, each, as luck would have it, a nonpareil in his or her specialty.
Indeed, very quickly the ostensible plot of African exile falls away, yielding to the author’s real interest: a series of minutely described performances given by these castaways, as part of a gala they have devised to while away the time until deliverance. Theater—or, more precisely, theatrical effect, the sense of marvel produced by magical and well-disguised artifice—proves the most formidable protagonist of Impressions of Africa, and the novel’s various characters merely its instruments. The human plight of these characters, the suspense surrounding their release from captivity, ultimately takes on far less importance than the question of whether their performance will come off without a hitch—and even that suspense is muted, for the true motor here is not whether the gimmick will work, but rather that it works and how it works. One can easily imagine Roussel, an avid theatergoer in real life, gaping with juvenile glee at the kaleidoscopic succession of wonders he has devised for his own amusement, each one following the last in a seamless and flawless procession, forming a world that is itself (as one critic put it) “a theater in which people go to the theater.”
The matter of performance is no idle conceit.
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