This passage provides biographical details about the French writer Raymond Roussel and summarizes his career. It describes Roussel's privileged upbringing in Paris and early attempts at writing poetry and music. His first book was a commercial and critical failure that plunged him into despair. He then led a reclusive life, working constantly. After World War I he began traveling but did little sightseeing. His plays met with ridicule from audiences, though the Surrealists supported him. Roussel's works are divided into four distinct periods. He died under mysterious circumstances in 1933 while traveling in Sicily. Though admired by some major modern artists and writers, Roussel remains a largely obscure figure known mostly to initiates.

1. 188 DEATH AND THE LABYRINTH
and watching him with his students al lhe university, 1
thought, He is in his e1ement, he's acquired the dis­
tinguished bearing ol' aman who is mature, serene, com­
pletely developed. 1 remember thinking, He'll live to be
ninety years old; he is one of those men whosc most POSTSCRIPT
important work will be written between the ages of sixty
and ninety. 1 do believe that in his eyes, his critical works,
his cssays, werc the preliminary sketches of something
which would have been very important and interesting. On Raymond Roussel
BY JOHN ASHBERY
RAYMOND ROUSS¡':L'S NAM¡'~ does not yet mean very
much in America; it means almost as little in France,
whcre he is remembered as an amiablc eccentríc, the
author uf nalve plays which intrigued the sunealists. And
yet in spite of the l'act rhat lhe public has always regarded
him as a curiosity. sorne ol' France's leading modern
writers and artists, l'rom Gide and Cocleau to Duchamp
and Giacometti, fmm the surrealists to lhe sehoo) of the
nouveau roman, have considered him a genius.
Who was rhe writer capable of arousing such diverse
enthusiasms, and why, in spite ofit aH, does Roussel rcmain
an obscure figure known only to a few initiates? Perhaps
there is a kind of answer in Cocteau's remarks abour him in
Opium: "Raymond Roussel, 01' genius in its purc statc....
In 19181 rejected Rousscl as likely ro place me under a spell
from which I could see no escape. Since then 1 have con­
structed defenses. I can look al him from lhe outside." It
is true thaf there is hidden in Roussel somelhing so

2. 19 0 DEATH AND THE LABYRINTH Postseript: On Raymond Roussel 19 1
strong. so ominous, and so pregnant with the darkness of Madame Roussel in Proust's correspondence with his
the "infinÍte spaces" that frightcned Pascal, that one feels mother, and a passage in a letter from Proust to Roussel,
the need for sorne son of protective equiprnent when one containing polite praise ofRoussel's La Doublure, included
reads him. Perhaps thc nature of his work is such that it in the publicity brochure which accompanied Roussel's
rnust be looked at "frorn the ()Utside" or not at aH. books. The curious similarity between the Lemperament
Though Roussel died only in 1933, at the age of fifry-six, and work of the two men (Roussel seeming a kind of dark
there exists litde biographical inforrnation about him. and distoned reflection ofProust) has been noLed: Cocteau,
What litde we do know is contained chiefly in his short for instance, called Roussel "the Proust of dreams."
mernoir published posthumously in Comtnent J'ai Éerit The Roussels' wealth increased and during the late
Certains de Mes Lívres, and in the arucles of Michel Leiris, eighties they moved from the Boulevard Malesherbes to a
the leading authority on Roussel. Luckily for us, Leiris, a large hOtel particulier off the Champs-Élysées at 50 Rue de
forrner surrealist who is one of France's most brilliant and Chaillot (now 20 Rue Quentin-Bauchart). When RousseI
original wriLers, knew Roussel from childhood, since his was thirteen, his mother persuaded his father to let him
father was Roussel's business manager. If it had not been leave the lyde and continue his studies at the Paris Con­
for this fonunate coincidence, our knowlcdge ofRousscl's servatory, where he sLudied piano with Louis Diémer and
Jife would be slight indeed. won a second and then a first honorable mention. He
Roussel was born on january 20, 1877, in París in his began to compose songs at lhe age of sixleen, but gave
parents' apartment at 25 BouIevard Malesherbes. His these up for poetry ayear later because he found rhat "the
faLher, Eugene Roussel, was a wealthy stockbroker; his words carne easier than the music."
mother, née Marguerite Moreau-Chaslon, carne from a In 1897, when he was twenty, his first book, a "novel" in
bourgeois family of sorne prominence. There were two verse entitled La Doublure (which can mean either "The
elder children-Georges. who died of tuberculosis in Understudy" or "The Lining"), was published al his own
1901 at the age ofthirty. and Germaine, who later married expense by the firrn of Lemerre, known especially for its
inlo lhe nobility, becoming Comtesse de Bret.euil, later editions of lhe Parnassian poets. While he was writÍng La
Duchesse d'Elchingen. Doublure, Roussel had experienced for severa) rnonths "a
We may suppose for Roussel a Proustian childhood sensation of universal glory of an eXlraordinary intensity."
dominalcd by his possessive and eccentric mother; the The complete failure ofthe book plunged him into a state
Roussels were, in fact, near neighbors of lhe Prousts, who of violent despair from which he never fully recovered.
lived at 9 Boulevard Malesherbes; they had common friends, Later he was treated by the famous psychologist Pierrc
including lhe painter Madeleine Lemaire, in whose salon janet, who describes him under the name ofMartial in his
Proust made his debut in society and who painted a portrait book De l'Angoisse al'Extase. Bere is janet on Roussel: "He
of Roussel as a child, and laler illustrated his poem Le lives alone, cut off from the world, in a way which seems
Caneert in Le Gaulois du Dimanehe, as she had illuslraled sad but which suffices to fill him with joy, for he works
Proust' s Les Plaisirs et lesJours. Proust and Roussel knew each almosl constantly.... He wiIl not accept Lhe least bit of
other-how wen, we do not know. There is a reference lo a advice; he has an absolute faith in the destiny reserved for

3. 19 2 DEATH AND THE LABYRINTH Postscript: On Raymond Roussel 1 93
him. '1 shall reach lhe heighlS; 1 was born for dazzling glory. wrote to his friend Madame Dufrene that Baghdad
It may be long in coming, but 1 shall have a glory greater reminded him of Lecoeq 's operetta Ah-Baba: "The people
than that of Victor Hugo or Napoleon.... This glory will wear coslumes more extraordinary than those of the chorus
reflecl on all my works without exception; il will casl itself at the Gaité." A<; Michel Leiris poinlS out, "Roussel never
on all the events of my Jife: people willlook up the faclS of really lravelcd. lt seems likely that the outside world never
my childhood and will admire the way 1 played prisoner's broke through ¡nto lhe universe he carried within him, and
base.... No author has been or can be superior to me.... that, in aH lhe countries he visited, he saw only what he had
As the poel said, you feel a buming sensation al your brow. put there in advance, elemenL<; whi<:h corresponded abso­
1 felt once that there was a star at my brow and 1 shall never lutcly with lhat universe that was peculiar lO him....
forget it.' These affirmations concerning works which do Pladng the imaginary aboye all clse, he seems to have
not seem destined lO conquer a large public and which expericnced a much stronger allractÍon túr everylhing
have attracted so little attention seem lo indicale weakness that was theatrical, trompe-l' oeil, ilIusíon, than for reality."
of judgment or exalted pride-yet Martial merits neilher In the 1920s Roussel began to write for the theater. He
criticismo His judgment on other subjects is quite sound, had alrcady devised a theatrical version of his 1910 novel
and he is very modest and even timid in his other conduct." lmpressions d'Afrique, which had run for a month in 1912. It
Embittered by lhe failure of La Doublure and lhe works seerns that he approached the theater because lhe public
which followed it, and no doubt al so by lhe derision that had failed to "understand" lhe work in its form as a noveL
now greeted his rare appearances in París socielY, Roussel Rousscl apparenlly believed that there was a concrete,
began to lead the retired, hennetic existence whichJanet hidden meaning lo the work which the spectators rnight
mentions. He installed himself in a Second Empire man­ grasp ir they could sec it aCled out before them. Pwduced
sion thal the family owned in Neuilly al 25 Boulevard in May 1912, al the Théatre Antoine, with sorne of the
Richard Wallace-an elegant, secluded avenue bordering leading actors of the day, induding DorÍval and Duard,
the Bois de Boulogne. Here he worked constantly behind lmpressions d'Afrique struck the Parisian publk as an enor­
lhe closed shu tters of his villa, which was set among several mous joke, though it did attract spectators like Apol­
acres of beautiful1y kept lawns and flower beds, like the linaire, Dm:hamp, and Pícabía. But Rousscl's later plays
villa Locus Solus in hís novel of that same name, lhe were rated to reccive much harsher lreatrnent.
property of a Jules Verne inventor-hero named Martial lmagining that lhe failure of lmpre,Híons was due LO hís
Canterel, who is of course Roussel himself. lack of experience in writing for the stage, Roussel commis­
Mter the First World War, during which he held a rela­ sioned Pierrc Frondaie, a popular pulp-fictlon writer of the
lively safe and simple post, Roussel began to travel widely, Maurice Dekobra variety, to turn his novel Locus Solus ¡nto
sometimes using the luxurious roulotte (a kind of prototype a play. But neither the adaptation, the fa'ihionable Caligari­
of today's "camper"') which he had ordered specially con­ esque sets, the expensive COSlumes by Paul Poirel nor the
structed. But he did Hule sightseeing as a rule, preferring to "Ballet de la Gloire" and the "Ballet Sous-Marin" which filled
remain in his stateroom or hotel room working. He visited up most of lhe second act could save the play from lhe
Tahiti because he admired Pierre Lotí; from Persia he guffaws of the public and the spleen of the crities. Roussel

4. 194 DEATH AND THE LABYRINTH Postscript: On Rayrnond Roussel 195
and his strangely titled work became the butt of jokes sal public adoratíon tor which Roussel believed himself des­
overnight, and everyone waited with impatient matice for Lined. He never mingled much with the surrealísts, though
his next play. they tried in vain to establish friendly relations with him.
This was L 'li'toile au .Front, which opened on May 5, 1924, Sorne times he wouId I'eceive them politely, but he seems
at the Théatre du VaudeviJIe. Still undaunted, Roussel had IlOt to have appreciated their work: once when asked his
hoped to attain success at last by writing an original play, opiníon of il, he replied that he found it "un peu obscur."
rather than by adapting his novels. But the uproar at the His last play, La Poussiere de Soláis, was produced in 1926.
opening wen t beyond anything seen previousIy. The text This time the reviews were as hostile as ever, but a note of
was drowned out by the jeers of the pubJic, who threw faLigue had crept into them: the joke was beginning to wear
coins at the actors; the latter (who indudedJean Yonnel, thin. Díscouraged, Rousscl decided to abandon the lheater.
Iater doyen of the Comédie Franc;aise) moved up to the He completed and published a long poem, Nouvelles ImlffBs­
footlights and began to argue strenuously with the specta­ sions d'Afrique, on which he had been working since 1915,
torso But this time Roussel had his partisans: the surreal­ and began a final novel which was published in iL<; un­
ists, induding Breton, Aragon, Leiris, Éluard, Desnos, and finÍshed state in rhe posthumous collection, Comment Jai
Masson, who applauded wildly and battled those who had Écrit Certains de Mes LivreJ (1935). In the spring of 1933,
come to attack the play. determÍned to leave París foI' good, he travcled to Sicily
PauI Éluard, reviewing the play in La Revolution Sur­ with his companion Madame Dufrene, the only person with
réaliste, wrote: "Th{~ characters are all marked with th{~ whom he ever was al all in timate (though their rclationship
same sign; each is prey of the same imagination, which appears to have been entirely pIatonic). For several years he
carries earth and heaven on its head. AH the stories in had been drugging himself in a vain attempt to recapture
the world are woven out of their words; all the stars in the la gloire, and he had spent somt: t.ime at Ihe dinic in Sr.­
world are al their foreheads, mysterious mirrors of the Cloud where Cocteau was undergoing the treatment he
magic of dreams and of the strangest and most miraculous describes in Opiurn. At the Grande Albergo e dclle Palme in
events. WiII they succeed in distracting these insects, who Palermo Rousscl grew increasingly weaker; on one occasion
make a monotonous music wilh their lhinking and eating, he cut his wrist." in the batht.ub, and expressed pleasant
who hardly listen to them and cannot fathom the grand­ surprise afterwaI'd at "how easy it was to die." On the
eur of their delirium? Conjurers, lhey transform pure and morning o[July 14, 1933, his body was found on a mattress
simple words into a crowd of characters overwhelmed by on the floor, close to the door that connected his room
the objects of their passion. What they hold in their hands with Madame Dufrcne's; the causes and cÍrcumstances of
is a goIden ray, the blossoming of truth and dignity, of his death have never been satisfactoríly explained.
felicity and love. May Rayrnond Roussel continue to show Roussel' s career can be dh~ded with almost Iudicrous
us everything which has not been. We are a smalI group facility into four periods, each quite different from the
for whom this reality alone matters." And Aragon called others. The first two books consist entirely of rhymed, photo­
Roussel a "president of the republic of dreams." graphic descriptions of people and objects; the next two
Such tributes, while gI'atifying, were far from the univer- are novels in which descripúon agaín dominates, but here

5. 19 6 DEATH AND THE LABYRINTH Postscript: On Raymond ROllssel 197
the things described are fantastic scenes or inventions; the lhe whole spectacle. Il is not surprising, of course, that a
two plays which follow are merely collections of anecdotes young, hypersensitive poet would settle on this ready­
which the characters recount to each other. The last work made symbol of the vanity of appearances. But Roussel's
published in his lifetime is the intricate poem Nouvelle.s real interest is in the visual aspects of the carnival-its
lmpressions d'Afriqlle, whose complex arrangements of par­ syrnbolic potentíal is merely a pretext for mathematically
enthetical thoughts prefigure the stories-within-stories of precise description. Just as his exaltation while writing the
the last, incomplete novel, entitled Documents pOllr Servir de book and his subsequent despair are the normal reacüons
CanevaoS. of a young poet magnified to an extent where they no
Though the failure of La Doublure apparently ruined longer make sense in terms of ordinary human behavior,
Roussel's life, we can be thankful that the book did not so the conventional literary elements in La Doublllre are
have the success he had hoped foro Janet says that Roussel dístorted past all recognítion.
considered it his greatest work, and continued writing La Vlle (1904) is made up of three long poems: La Vue,
only to can the attention of the public to this first master­ Le Concert, and La SOllrce. In the first the narrator describes
piece. Actually it is the leas! interesting of the texts, in incredible detail a tíny picture set in a penholder: the
though it is evident from the first line that we are in the view is that of a beach resembling that of Biarritz, where
presence of a writer who cannot be judged by ordinary Roussel spent his summers. The second poem is a descrip­
literary standards. In La Doublure he starts out to teH a tion of an engraving of a hand concert on the letterhead
sordid Zo1aesque story of a romance hetween a flfth-rate of a sheet of hotel stationery. In the third the narrator is
actor, Caspard, and a demimondaine, Roherte; their seated al lunch in a restaurant:
lovemaking is recounted in a way that suggests how TOlLt es! lmnquille dans la .~alle Otl. je déjeune.
Fran(,;ois Coppée might have wriuen if he had been Occupanl une piare en angle, un couPle jeune
influenced hy Alain Rohhe-Grillet: Clzuchote avec finesse el gaieté; l'entretien
Sur sa poitrine a la peau blanche des dessins
Plein dI' sous-pntendus, de 1'Íres, manhe bin!.
Compliquis ,mnlJormés d 'un cóté par des veines;
AlI is cahn in thc dining room whcrc I am having lunch.
Son COTset par devant a ses agraJes pleines
A young couple al a comer table are whispering gaily
De reflets sur leur cuivre étincelant, plato ...
and wittily together. Their conversation, full of
On the left side ofher hosom, complicated designs private jokes and laughter. is goíng well.
are forroed on the white skin by veins; the flat,
gleaming copper of the hooks at the front of her The next fifty pages describe aspa pictured on the label
corset is fu1l of reflections ... of a boule of mineral water on the narrator's tableo Only at
Roberte and Caspard decide to leave París for Níce on the end of the poem do we return to the dining room; the
Roberte's money; at Nice they mingle in the carnival and couple "chuchote toUjOllTS des choses qu 'on 'entend pas" (are still
thereafter the book is given over to a description of the whispering things which can't be overheard). Love is even
parade: Roussel insists on the tmmpery character of the farther out of the picture than it was in La Doublure; the
papier-m~khé floats, and lavishes his scorn on the sham of poet, like a prisoner fascinated by the appearance of the

6. 19 8 DEATH AND THE LABYRINTH Poslsnipt: On Raymond Roussel 199
wall of his cell, remains transfixed by the speetacle before ing complexity and strangeness. Again, exposition is
his eyes, which is not even a real scene but a vulgar repro­ invariably followed by explanation, the cold hysteria of the
duction. The other poems in the volume end on a similar former giving way to the innumerable ramifications of the
note of despair for the unattainable world of human rela­ lauer. After an aerial pile driver which is eonstructing a
tionships; at the end of La Vue the objective tone is suddenly mosaie of teeth and a huge glass diamond filled with water
dropped as the author evokes "le souvenir vivace el latenl in whieh Ooat a dancing girl, a hairless eaf, and the pre­
d'un été/Déja morl, déja loin de moi, vite emportR' (the latent, served head ofDanton, we come to lhe central and longest
undying memory of a summer/ Already dead, already far passage: a deseription of eight curious lableaux vivants tak­
from me, borne swiftly away). One sees how much the ing place inside an enormous glass cage. We learn thar the
"new novelists," especially Alain Robbe..Grillet, whose title ~.1ctors are actually dead people whom Cantercl has revived
Le Voyeuris an intentional allusion to La Vue, have learned with "resurreetine," a fluid of his invention which if
from Roussel. Their exasperatingly complete descriptions injected into a fresh corpse causes it eontinually to act out
of uninteresting oqjects originated with Roussel, and so the most important incident of its life. This passage, one of
did the idea of a universe in which people are merely objeel<; (he most unforgettable in Roussel's work and one of lIIany
and oqjeet<; are endowed with an almost human hostility. which are haunted by the idea of death, was written
Reality, so very unsatisfaclory, has made its last appear­ around the time his mother died, after a long series oi"
anee for sorne time in Roussel's work. In the novel hnpres­ famiIy deaths. (Giacomettí, who rcad Locus Solus a number
sions d'Aftique (1910) he lurns his attention lo "what has of times, toId me once that Roussel's inventiolls, and rhis
not been." Bere again the plot ofthe novel is a pretext for one in partÍ<:ular, had direetly inspired mueh of his cady
description. A group of Europeans has been shipwreeked work, including the seulpture Tite Palace al 4 A.M.)
off the coast of Mrica. Talon, a tribal king, is holding them Mter completing thdr tour of Locus Solus, the guests
for ransom. In order to distraet themselves until the ran­ follow Canterel to the villa for a ':ioyous dinncr," and this
som money arrives, the travelers plan a "gala" for the day very full day comes to a c1ose.
of their liberation. Eaeh contributes a number milizing In Locus Solus and IrnjJTessions d'Alíique, Roussel use? a
his or her parlicular talento;, and the first half of lhe book mcthod of writing which he describes in Cornrnenl j'ai Heril
is an aeeount of the gala, punctuated by a series of exeeu­ Cerlains de Mes Livres. Somctimes he would lakc a phrase
tions which Talou has ordained for eertain of his subjeel<; (:ontaining two words, each of which had a double mean­
who have incurred his wrath. The second half is a logical ing, and use the leastlikely meanings as the basis of a SlOry.
explanation of the preposterous and fantastic seenes Thus the phrase "maüon (J, espagn(JIl'ttes" (house with win­
which have gone before. dow latches) served as the basis for an episode in lmjmssions
Lows Solus (1914) recounts a similar chain of events. A d'Afrique about a house (a royal family or house) d(~scended
prominent scientist and inventor, Martial Canterel, ha<; from a pairofSpanish twin girls. EIsewhere he would trans­
invited a group ofcolleagues lo visit the park ofhis eountry form a common phrase, a book title, or a line of poetry
estate, Locus Solus ("Solitary Place"). As the group tours into a series of words with similar sounds. A hne of Victor
the estate, Canterel shows them inventions of evcr-increas- Hugo, .. Un vase loul rernplí du vin de l'esPémnce' was dcna­

7. 200 DEATH AND THE LABYRINTH Poslscripl: On Raymond Roussel 201
tured by Roussel into "'sept houx rampe lit Vesper,'" which he interrupted by a parenthetical thought. New words sug­
dcvcloped into a tale of Handcl using scven bunches of gest new parentheses; sornetÍmes as many as five pairs of
holIy tied with different colored ribbons to compose, on a parentheses « « O»» isolate one idea huried in the sur­
banister, the principalthcme of his oratorio Vesper. rounding verbiage like the central sphere in a Chinese
Just as the mcchanical task of finding a rhyme some­ puzzle. In order to fmish the first sentence, one must turn
times inspires a poet to write a great line, Roussel's "rimes de ahead to the last line of the canto, and by working backward
faits" (rhymcs for cvents) heIped him to utilize his and forward one can at last piece the poem together. The
unconscious mind. Michel Leiris says, "Roussel here odd appearance which the bristling parentheses give the
rediscovered one of the most ancient and wideIy uscd pat­ text is completed by the militant banality of the fifty-nine
terns of the human mind: the formation of myths starting illustrations which Roussel commissioned of a hack painter
from words. That is (as though he had decided to illustrate through lhe intermediary of a prívate detective agency.
Max Müllcr's thcory that myths werc born out of a sort of The reslIlt is a tumultuous impression of reality which
'disease oflanguage'), transposition of what was at first a keeps swiping at one like the sails of a windmill. The hic­
simple fact oflanguage into a dramatic action." EIsewhere coughíng parenthetícal passages that accumulate al the
he suggests that these childish devices led Roussel back to beginning ami end of each canto tend to subside in lhe
a common source of mythology or collective um:onscious. middle, giving way lo long catalogues or lists: ror example,
Both of the published plays, L 'f.'toile au Front and La lists of gratuítous gifts; idle suppositions; ohjeCL'i that have
Poussii!re de Soleils, are collections of anecdotes. In the for­ the form of a cross; or others thal are similar in appear­
mer the pretexts are provided hy the various curios in a ance hUI nor in síze, and which one musl be careful not to
collection; in the latter, by the clues in a treasure hunt confuse, such as apile of red eggs lInder f~dling snow on a
which eventually lead to the discovery of a will. The thread windless day and a heap of strawbcrrics bcing sprínklcd
of narration is passed from one character to another, with sugar. JUSI as lhe hazards of language resultcd in lhe
resulting in a lilting and oddly dramatic language. strange "rhyming events," here othcr banal mechanisrns
There is, of course, no more attempt at plot or charac­ create juxtapositions that are equally convincing. The
terization lhan in the novels. And yet the plays are logic 01' the strangc positions of iL<¡ clement<¡ is what makcs
theatrical in a curious way. The anecdotes cast on the the poern so heautiful. It has what Mariannc Moorc calls
characters who teH them an unearthly glimmer that is like "mysteries of conslruction."
a new kind of characterization. And these stories, cut up Michcl Leiris says 01' lhe poem, "We find herc, trans­
and distributed among the spcakers, somehow propel llS posed onto lhe levcl of poetry, lhe technique of lhe stories
breathlessly forward. The plays are among the strangest with multiple interlocking episodes (tiroirs) so frequent in
and most enchanting in modern literature. Roussel's work, bul here the episodes appear in the sen­
Nouvelles lmpressions d'Afrique (1932) is Roussel's master­ tcnces themselves, and not in the story, as though Rousscl
piece: a long poem in four cantos which bear the names of had decided Lo use lhese parentheses to speed I.he disinte­
Mrican curiosities. Each canto start", off innocently to des­ gration of language, in a way comparable lo Lhat in which
cribe the scene in question, but the narrative is constantly Mallarmé used blanks to produce those 'prismatic subdivi­

8. 202 DEATH AND THE LABYRIKTH Postscript: On Raymond Roussel 20 3
sions ofthe idea' which he mentions in the preface to the admire its inhuman beauty, and be stirred by a language
Coup de Dés." Roussel is the only modern French poet whose that seems always on the point of revealing its secret, of
experiments with language can be likened to those ofMal­ pointing the way back to the "republic of dreams" whose
larmé. And there is, in fact, a feeling of disintegration in insignia blazed on his forehead.
Nouvelles Impressions which has been building up ever since
the dangerous accumulations of adjectives in La Doublure,
the perilously conserved corpses of Locus Solus and the piti­
less chains of anecdotes in the plays (which resulted in a POSTSCRIPT
"theater of cruelty" unlike anything Artaud ever dreamed
of, turning a proper bourgeois audience in to a horde of wild The aboye essay was written in 1961 and published in Port­
beasl<;). In Nouvelles lmpressions the unconscious seems to folio and ARTnews Annual in 1962. Much of the informa­
have broken through the myths in which Roussel had tion carne from my own research in France at a time when
carefully encased it: it is no longer the imaginary world very few people there ar elsewhere took Roussel seriously
but the real one, and it is exploding around us like a fire­ as a writer. (1 even gained a bríef notariety in París as "that
works factory, in one last dazzling orgy of light and sound. crazy American who's interested in Rayrnond Roussel.")
Many ~riters, including André Breton and .lean Ferry Since then, Roussel has been rediscovered and is now con­
(whose Etude sur Ra.vmond Roussel is invaluablc as a key to sidered an ancestor of much experimental writing being
Nouvelles Impressions) , have kIt that Rousscl hid sorne secret done today both in Europe and America. Volumes have
meaning or message in his work. Breton (in his preface to been devoted to him, notably Michel Foucault's study and
Ferry's book) makes a convincing case for Roussel as an a biography by Fran~ois Caradec, Vie de Raymond Roussel
alchemist whose books are coded messages concealing le (Paris: Pauvert, 1972). The novels lmpressions oJ AJrica and
Grand Oeuvre-the Philosopher's Stone. According to Bre­ Locus Solus have been published in English translation by
ton, the various clues in the treasure hunt in LaPoussiere de the U niversity of California Press; and a collection of post­
SoleiLs form a decipherable message, while Michel Leiris humous fragments (Flio) has appeared in France. In add­
sees an autobiographical "chain" in the illustrations for ition to the foregoing essay, I published an anide on
Nouvelles Impressions: "Voluntary death: wall of snow and Roussel's plays in an all-Roussel number of the French
fire, organ point, ultimate ecstasy, unique way ofsavoring­ review Bizarre and a short introduction to an unpublished
in an instant-' la gloire.' " But if it seems possible that chaptcr from his final unfinished novel Documents pour ser­
Roussel did bury a secret message in his writings, it seems vir de canevas in the review L 'Are in 1963. At that time the
equally likely that no one wil1 ever succeed in uneanhing chaptcr, which 1 found in Paris, was the first unpublished
it. What he leaves us with is a body of work that is like the work of Roussel's to come to light in the thiny years since
perfecdy preserved temple of a cult which has disap­ his death.
peared without a trace, or a complicated set of tools whose In view of the attention Roussel has received in the last
use cannot be discovered. But even though we may never decade or so, my introductory essay reprinted here, written
be ablc to "use" his work in the way he hoped, we can still befare Foucault's book appeared, seems rudimentary. At

9. 20 4 DEATH AND THE LABYRINTII
the time, however, there was nothing on Rousse1 in Eng­
lish, and therefore 1 considercd my job to be that of iden­
tifying and describing him for English-speaking readers. 1
am happy that othcrs are now cxamining the texts more
close1y, encouraged in large part no doubt by Foucault's
ground-breaking analysis.
JA.
BibliograPhy 01
Primary and Secondary
Works
Adamson, Ginette (1994) Le Prorédé de Raymond Ro1t.md. Faux
litre 15. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Amiot, Anne-Marie (2001) "Le Feuilleton critique roussellicn
résumé des dcrniers épisodcs (;1 suivrc)". In Rayrrwnd Ro'U.ncl
1; nouvclles imprcssiolls critiques. Ed. Anne-Marie Amiot
and Christelle Reggiani, pp. 23-54. La Revue des !ettres
modernes. Paris: Lettres moderne minard.
Amiol, Anne-Marie, and Chris!elle Reggiani. eds. Raymond
R01Luel 1: nouvellcs impressions critiques. La Revue des let­
tres modemes. París: Lctlrcs rnoderne minard.
Ashbery,John (2000) Othn- Traditions. The Charles Eliot Norton
lectures. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Busine, Lauren! (1995) Raymond Rrnu~el ContemPlato,. enim.
Brussels: !rIle Post.
Caradec, Fram;ois (2001) Raymond Roussel. 'hans. (an Monk.
London: Atlas Press.
Eribon, Didier (1991) Michel Foucault. Trans. Betsy Winl!. Cam­
bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Faubion, James D. (1998) lntroduction. In Fssenlial Works (Jf