Que l’histoire commence. Que la réalité et la fiction se rejoignent. Paris 1871. Un Paris qui lèche encore les plaies de sa Commune éloignée à jamais, un Paris qui s’effondre comme les ruines de ses immeubles incendiés à la rue Royale. Un pari perdu. Dans le sombre labyrinthe de ses ruelles et le sourire en coin de ses pavés édentés, un certain Auguste Bretagne loue un appartement dans lequel l'ancien locataire a laissé des objets mystérieux et personnels. Cet ancien locataire de la rue du Faubourg-Montmartre, était nul autre que Monsieur Isidore Ducasse, alias Comte de Lautréamont, auteur des délirantes et sombres "Chants de Maldoror".
L’insaisissable fantôme de Ducasse plane sur les pages de cette fascinante bande dessinée en compagnie de Rimbaud, Verlaine, Baudelaire, les frères Cros ainsi que d'autres sacrés personnages du cycle des poètes maudits. Entre rêve et hallucination, enquête policière et farce mystique, Edith (dessin) et Corsal (scénario) nous plongent dans un récit dense, plein de surprises. Sinistres colis et étranges inventions, un piano qui parle, une écriture révélée par le feu..., en tournant les pages de cette bande dessinée, on a envie de relire cet œuvre exaltant et sulfureux qui fut "Les Chants de Maldoror". Le premier Chant a été publié à compte d'auteur en 1868, et l'œuvre complète a été imprimée en Belgique un an plus tard, pour le compte d'un editeur qui a refusé de mettre l'ouvrage en vente, par crainte de poursuites judiciaires. Le livre n'a rien perdu aujourd'hui de sa force et de sa conviction provocatrice.
Dans le "Chants de Maldoror", le Comte de Lautréamont dit à un certain moment:
"Je soulevai avec lenteur mes yeux spleenétiques, cernés d'un grand cercle bleuâtre, vers la concavité du firmament et j'osai pénétrer, moi, si jeune, les mystères du ciel..."
Quelles paroles prophétiques... D'après tout, Isidore Ducasse est mort le 24 novembre 1870, à 24 ans. Son corps fut jeté dans la fosse commune du cimetière de Montmartre mais sa légende et son âme restent vivantes et éternelles à travers ses écrits et des ouvrages comme celui-ci.
The following poem can be found in the book "The Flash Of Lightning Behind The Mountain" by Charles Bukowski. Published in 2005 by Ecco (Harper Collins), this book contains previously uncollected poetry and prose from his later years. From January 1949 to March 1951, Bukowski worked at the "Sunbeam Lightning Co" in Los Angeles, packing lighting fixtures for shipment. It was certainly not an easy job and the repetitive nature of work on the assemly line combined with intolerable working conditions strictly controlled by the foreman, pushed the workers to the limit. Bukowski didn't take long to spoil these ideal conditions for reaching the productivity targets set by the company. Here is how it all started...
Sunbeam By Charles Bukowski
sometimes when you are in hell and it is continuous you get a bit giddy and then when you are tired beyond being tired sometimes a crazy feeling gets a hold of you.
the factory was in east L.A. and of the 150 workers I was one of only two white men there. the other had a soft job. mine was to wrap and tape the light fixtures as they came off the assembly line and as I tried to keep pace the sharp edges of the tape cut through my gloves and into my hands. finally the gloves had to be thrown away because they were cut to shreds and then my hands were completely exposed each new slice like an electric shock.
I was the big dumb white boy and as the others worked to keep pace all eyes were watching to see if I would fall behind.
I gave up on my hands but I didn't give up.
the pace seemed impossible and then something snapped in my brain and I screamed out the name of the firm we were all slaving for, "SUNBEAM!"
at once everybody laughed all the girls on the assembly line and all the guys too although we still had to struggle to keep up with the work flow.
then I yelled it again: "SUNBEAM!"
it was a total release for me.
then one of the girls on the assembly line yelled back, "SUNBEAM!"
and we all laughed together.
and then as we continued to work a new voice would suddenly call out from somewhere, "SUNBEAM!"
and each time we laughed until we were all drunk with laughter.
then the foreman, Morry, came in from the other room.
"WHAT THE HELL'S GOING ON IN HERE? THAT SCREAMING HAS GOT TO STOP!"
so then, we stopped.
and as Morry turned away we saw that the seat of his pants was jammed up in the crack of his ass, that fool in control of our universe!
I lasted about 4 months there and I will always remember that day, that joy, the madness, the mutual magic of our many voices one at a time screaming "SUNBEAM!"
sometimes when you are in a living hell long enough things like that sometimes happen and then you're in a kind of heaven a heaven which might not seem to be very much at all to most folks but which is good enough especially when you can watch someone like Morry walk away with the seat of his pants jammed up in the crack of his ass.
The Finnish painter Akseli Gallen-Kallela came to Paris in 1884. He soon found himself dragged into the midst of the bohemian lifestyle of artists living and working in the Quartier Latin and Monmartre. At cafés such as the "Momus" or the "Brasserie des Martyrs" he would meet other famous artists and writers of the time who were opposed to every form of conventionality in life and in art. In the smoke filled rooms, discussions and exchanges of views and ideas, fueled by excessive absinthe consumption, would drag on to the early hours of the morning.
One of his paintings, inspired by that period in Paris, is a painting called "Démasquée" (Unmasked). In a bohemian styled room, which could be Gallen-Kallela's own rented premises in Paris at the time, a model sits on a canape covered with a Finnish ryijy weaved rug. She is staring back at us, with a cigarette in her hand, smoking. A guitar is lying next to her feet on the carpet which partially covers the parquet floor. A skull can also be seen in the background behind the floor vase with the milk white lilies. The El Greco paleness of the model's body is in tune with the faded tapestry colors surrounding her. The enigmatic expression in her face almost hypnotises the viewer or, as someone put it, it's a "fin-de-siecle expression of playful exhaustion and nervous vividness." There is a hint of a smile there. A kind of dark, calm Mona Lisa playfulness that is also reflected in the mysteriously languid eyes.
Akseli Gallen-Kallela managed in this painting to capture the essence of this bohemian way of life. Revolt and decadence are both present as the masks of propriety fall. Beneath the façades and veneer of society's norms stands nakedness and fragile beauty revealed by the artist. The brevity of life that should be enjoyed to the full.
