Locus Solus

RAYMOND ROUSSEL

“The president of the republic of dreams.”

Louis Aragon

“An experience unique in literature.”

John Ashbery

“Roussel truly created, or in any case, broke through, embodied, and created a form of beauty, a lovely curiosity.”

Michel Foucault

“The procession of strange set pieces comes so fast in Roussel, the effect — an intoxicating disquiet out of a world that is ravishingly gorgeous, if wholly unrecognizable — is almost punishing. Nothing in literature has prepared us for something so reasonable to still seem so mad.”

Ben Marcus

“An imagination which joins the mathematician’s delirium to the poet’s logic — this, among other marvels, is what one discovers in the novels of Raymond Roussel.”

Raymond Queneau

“Raymond Roussel belongs to the most important French literature of the beginning of the century.”

Alain Robbe-Grillet

“My fame will outshine that of Victor Hugo or Napoleon.”

Raymond Roussel

LOCUS SOLUS

1

That Thursday in early April my learned friend Martial Canterel had invited me, along with several other close friends of his, to visit the huge park surrounding his beautiful villa at Montmorency.

Locus Solus, as the property is called, is a quiet retreat where Canterel enjoys the pursuit of his various fertile labors with a perfectly tranquil mind. In this solitary place, he is adequately sheltered from the turmoil of Paris — and yet is able to reach the capital within a quarter of an hour whenever his research requires a session in some specialist library or when the moment comes for him to make some sensational announcement to the scientific world at a prodigiously packed conference.

Canterel spends almost the entire year at Locus Solus, surrounded by disciples full of passionate admiration for his continual discoveries, who lend their enthusiastic support to the completion of his work. The villa contains several rooms fitted out as luxurious model laboratories, run by numerous assistants. Here the professor devotes his entire life to science — for he is a bachelor with no commitments, whose large fortune at once removes any material difficulties incurred by the various targets he sets himself in the course of his strenuous labors.

Three o’clock had just struck. It was a fine day and the sun was sparkling in a nearly flawless sky. Canterel received us not far from his villa, in the open air, beneath some ancient trees whose shade enveloped a comfortable little arrangement of cane chairs.

When the last guest had arrived, the professor moved off at the head of our group, which obediently followed him. Canterel was a tall man, dark-complexioned, with an open countenance, regular features, a small moustache and keen eyes lit up by his marvelous intellect: all in all he bore his forty-four years remarkably well. A warm, persuasive voice lent great charm to his engaging delivery, the seductiveness and precision of which made him a master of the spoken word.

We had been advancing up a steeply sloping path for a while. Halfway up, we caught sight of a curiously ancient statue standing in a fairly deep stone niche beside the path; it seemed to be composed of dry, hardened, blackish earth and represented — not without charm — a naked, smiling child. His arms were stretched forward as though to offer something — both hands open toward the ceiling of the recess. A small, dead and extremely decayed plant was standing in the middle of his right hand, where it had once taken root.

Canterel, continuing absentmindedly on his way, was obliged to answer our unanimous questions.

“That is the santonica Federal which ibn Batuta saw in the heart of Timbuktu,” he said, pointing to the statue — the origin of which he thereupon disclosed.

∗ ∗ ∗

The professor had been an intimate friend of Echenoz, the famous traveller who had reached Timbuktu in the course of an African expedition made in his early youth.

Before setting out, Echenoz had delved into all the literature on the regions that attracted him and had reread several times one narrative in particular by the Arab theologian ibn Batuta, considered the greatest explorer of the fourteenth century after Marco Polo. Toward the end of a life fertile in noteworthy geographical discoveries, when he might well have rested peacefully upon his laurels, ibn Batuta had ventured one more distant exploration and seen mysterious Timbuktu.

Echenoz had singled out the following episode in his reading.

When ibn Batuta entered Timbuktu alone, the town was shrouded in silence and dismay. At that time the throne was occupied by a woman, Queen Duhl-Serul, who was barely twenty years old and had not yet chosen a husband. Duhl-Serul occasionally suffered from violent attacks of amenorrhoea which brought on apoplectic attacks that affected her brain and induced fits of raving insanity.

These disorders caused grave harm to the inhabitants, since the queen, who wielded absolute authority, was inclined at such times to issue insane commands and mete out death sentences in ever-growing numbers without reason. A revolution might well have broken out. However, apart from these moments of aberration, Duhl-Serul governed her people with the greatest wisdom and benevolence; rarely had they known so happy a reign. Rather than launch into the unknown by deposing their sovereign, they patiently endured such short-lived calamities, compensated by long periods of prosperity.

Until then, not one of the Queen’s doctors had been able to check the disease.

Now at the moment when ibn Batuta arrived, Duhl-Serul was struck by a more violent attack than any that had gone before. Time and time again, at a word from her, large numbers of innocent people had to be executed and whole harvests burnt. Stricken with terror and famine, the inhabitants waited from one day to the next for the fit to end; but incomprehensibly it continued, creating an intolerable situation.

A kind of fetish used to stand in the main square of Timbuktu, which according to popular belief possessed great power. It was the statue of a child made entirely of dark-colored earth, erected long before under curious circumstances, during the reign of Duhl-Serul’s ancestor King Forukko. Possessing the mild and sensible qualities displayed in normal times by Duhl-Serul and passing laws and taking personal responsibility, Forukko had brought a high level of prosperity to his country. An enlightened agronomist, he personally supervised cultivation and introduced many fruitful improvements in the antiquated methods of planting and harvesting.

The neighboring tribes were amazed by this state of affairs and allied themselves with Forukko in order to profit by his decrees and counsels, each preserving its autonomy and the right to resume full independence whenever they wished. It was a pact of friendship rather than of submission, which bound its members moreover to combine together against a common foe whenever necessary.

Amid the wild rejoicing which followed the solemn announcement of the vast unification that had been accomplished, the decision was taken to create, by way of a commemorative emblem fit to immortalize the illustrious event, a statue made entirely of earth from the soil of the various united tribes. Each people sent its share of loam, chosen to symbolize the state of bountiful abundance ushered in by the protection of Forukko. When all the humus had been mixed and kneaded together, a famous sculptor, whose choice of subject was ingenious, used it to construct a graceful, smiling child who was indeed the common offspring of the numerous tribes now merged into one family, and seemed to make their established bonds still firmer. On account of its origin, this work, set in the main square of Timbuktu, received a name which, translated into a modern tongue, would be rendered as “The Federal.” Modeled with charming skill, the naked child, with the backs of his hands turned flat toward the ground and arms outstretched as though to make an invisible offering, evoked by his symbolic gesture the gift of wealth and felicity promised by the idea he represented. This statue soon dried and hardened to become a permanently solid structure.

Just as everyone had hoped, a golden age began for the united peoples, who attributed their good fortune to the Federal and ardently worshipped this all-powerful image which so readily answered their innumerable prayers. In the reign of Duhl-Serul the tribal association still existed and the Federal inspired the same fanatical devotion.

As the sovereign’s present madness became steadily worse, the people decided to visit the earthen statue en masse and implore it to remove the scourge at once.

Ibn Batuta witnessed and described the great procession led by priests and dignitaries, which wended its way to the Federal to offer up long and fervent supplications to it, according to special rites. That very evening a terrible hurricane swept over the land, a kind of devastating tornado which rapidly traversed Timbuktu without damaging the Federal, sheltered as it was by surrounding buildings.