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.
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Charles Trénet - L’âme des poètes
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.
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