An abridged version of “Colossal Youth,” my piece on Arthur Cravan, was posted on the Flux magazine website on Friday 13 November 2009:

Colossal Youth

You may never have heard of him, but Arthur Cravan was one of the most influential writers of the 20th century. The fact that he wrote precious little — and certainly nothing of any lasting literary value — should not be held against him. Quite the contrary, in fact. Oscar Wilde’s nephew put all his genius into his life, turning it into a magnum opus full of sound and fury, high farce and convulsive beauty. In so doing, he influenced every single major avant-garde movement from Dada onwards. Cravan was the original Sid Vicious, the blueprint for all the subsequent outrages committed in the name of art. “Let me state once and for all: I do not wish to be civilised,” he wrote — and he meant it, man.

Arthur Cravan (or Fabian Lloyd, to call him by his real name) was born in Switzerland in 1887. After being expelled from an English military academy for spanking a teacher, he relocated to bohemian Paris where he partied hard with the likes of Blaise Cendrars and managed to become France’s Heavyweight Champion without throwing a single punch.

Cravan first gained the notoriety he so craved through Maintenant (“Now”), the literary journal in which he wrote everything under various noms de plume. Sourced from a butcher’s shop, the very paper it was printed on highlighted his utter contempt for belles-lettres. He filled an entire issue with gratuitous insults aimed at the artists taking part in the 1914 Independents Exhibition. As a result, he was challenged to a duel by the poet Apollinaire and almost lynched by a posse of avant-garde painters. Result.

Art, for Cravan, was essentially boxing by another means, as proved by the infamous conferences he gave in Paris and New York. During these happenings, he would knock back absinthe, perform drunken stripteases, shout abuse at the spectators and even fire gunshots over their heads. His final Parisian gig descended into pandemonium when he failed to commit suicide as advertised.

The onset of the First World War marked the beginning of a convoluted vanishing act that led him — in various guises — from Paris to Mexico where he disappeared at sea on a drunken boat of his own making. His body was never found. For years to come, he would continue to be spotted throughout the world. Arthur Cravan is still at large.

Here you’ll find an excellent programme (in the Sonar series) about the mighty Arthur Cravan. Entitled “Arthur Cravan contre Arthur Cravan,” it was produced by David Collin and broadcast on Radio Suisse Romande on Sunday 20 September 2009 (8-10pm):

Arthur Cravan contre Arthur Cravan

Né à Lausanne en 1887, boxeur et poète, Arthur Cravan préfigure le mouvement Dada. Figure multiple, admiré par Breton, le neveu d’Oscar Wilde est l’un des personnages les plus fascinants du XXe siècle. On l’a dit excentrique, provocateur, il se définissait lui-même comme le poète aux cheveux les plus courts du monde. Arthur Cravan, de son vrai nom Fabian Lloyd, est né à Lausanne avant de s’établir à Paris et de voyager à travers le monde.

Anticipateur du mouvement Dada, il fut à lui tout seul directeur de la “Revue Maintenant” dont il signait également tous les textes. Poète et critique étonnant, renversant toutes les convenances au nom d’une liberté de parole, d’un sens de la performance et de l’absurde exceptionnels. Encore inconnu du grand public, Cravan mérite d’être redécouvert, à l’instar de Jacques Vaché et Jacques Rigaut, qu’on regroupait sous le terme de suicidés de la société. La plupart des intervenants de ce documentaire sont des passionnés qui collectionnent tout ce qu’ils peuvent trouver autour de Cravan, et qui n’ont de cesse d’explorer ce maigre continent (puisque son oeuvre se résume à peu de chose), qui reste toutefois d’une force incomparable.

Avec :
Jean-Luc Bitton, écrivain, journaliste, photographe, biographe d’Emmanuel Bove, et auteur d’un livre à paraître sur Jacques Rigaut
Philippe Dagen, spécialiste de l’art contemporain, auteur chez Grasset d’un roman intitulé Arthur Cravan n’est pas mort noyé (2008)
Bertrand Lacarelle, lecteur chez Gallimard, auteur d’un livre sur Vaché et d’un autre sur Cravan à paraître en 2010
Marcel Fleiss, directeur de la galerie 1900-2000 à Paris, collectionneur. A coordonné une exposition sur Cravan à Paris.
Ainsi que des extraits d’une émission de France-Culture sur Cravan (Surpris par la nuit), et d’une soirée thématique sur Cravan diffusée sur Arte.

Lectures: Jacques Roman et Edmond Vullioud, accompagnés au saxophone de Laurent Estoppey

Une émission préparée et réalisée par David Collin

This review of Jean-Yves Jouannais’s Artistes sans oeuvres: I Would Prefer Not To appeared in the Times Literary Supplement dated 25 September 2009 (No 5556, p. 30):

Nothing At All

With his bovine-sounding surname, Félicien Marboeuf (1852-1924) seemed destined to cross paths with Flaubert. He was the inspiration for the character of Frédéric Moreau in L’Education sentimentale, which left him feeling like a figment of someone else’s imagination. In order to wrest control of his destiny, he resolved to become an author, but Marboeuf entertained such a lofty idea of literature that his works were to remain imaginary and thus a legend was born. Proust — who compared silent authors à la Marboeuf to dormant volcanoes — gushed that every single page he had chosen not to write was sheer perfection.

Or did he? One of the main reasons why Marboeuf never produced anything is that he never existed. Jean-Yves Jouannais planted this Borgesian prank at the heart of Artistes sans oeuvres when the book was first published in 1997. The character subsequently took on a life of his own, resurfacing as the subject of a recent group exhibition and, more famously, in Bartleby & Co., Enrique Vila-Matas’s exploration of the “literature of the No”. Here the Spanish author repays the debt he owes to Jouannais’s cult essay (which had been out of print until now) by prefacing this new edition.

Marboeuf has come to symbolize all the anonymous “Artists without works” past and present. Through him, Jouannais stigmatizes the careerists who churn out new material simply to reaffirm their status or iinflate their egos, as well as the publishers who flood the market with the “little narrative trinkets” they pass off as literature on the three-for-two tables of bookshops. In so doing, he delineates a rival tradition rooted in the opposition to the commodification of the arts that accompanied industrialization. A prime example is provided by the fin-de-siècle dandies who reacted to this phenomenon by producing nothing but gestures. More significantly, Walter Pater’s contention that experience — not “the fruit of experience” — was an end in itself, led to a redefinition of art as the very experience of life. A desire to turn one’s existence into poetry — as exemplified by Arthur Cravan, Jacques Vaché or Neal Cassady — would lie at the heart of all the major twentieth-century avant-gardes. “My art is that of living”, Marcel Duchamp famously declared, “Each second, each breath is a work which is inscribed nowhere, which is neither visual nor cerebral; it’s a sort of constant euphoria.”

Jouannais never makes the absurd claim that creating nothing is better than creating something: like Emil Cioran, he has little time for what he calls the “failure fundamentalists”. He does not dwell on the Keatsian notion (also found in Rousseau and Goethe) that unheard melodies are sweeter, or wonder why the attempts at a merger between life and art have so often resulted in death. Jouannais’s “Artists without works” are essentially of a sunny disposition. They are dilettantes, driven solely by their own enjoyment; cultural skivers who never feel that they owe it to posterity, let alone their public, to be productive. They let time do its work and are often militantly lazy — like Albert Cossery, the francophone writer of Egyptian origin who, on a good day, would fashion a single carefully crafted sentence, or the American artist Albert M. Fine who is quoted as saying: “If I did anything less it would cease to be art”. It is this divine indolence which differentiates Artistes sans oeuvres from darker essays on the subject.

Some of the most interesting passages in the book concern those larger-than-life figures (Félix Fénéon, Arthur Cravan, Jacques Vaché, Jacques Rigaut, Roberto Bazlen) who entered the literary pantheon as characters in other writers’ novels rather than through their own. Cravan, Vaché and Cassady — who embodied respectively the spirits of Dada, Surrealism and Beat — published virtually nothing during their lifetimes. Naturally, phantom works abound here, from Stendhal’s numerous unfinished novels to the unpublished manuscripts of the Brautigan Library (modelled on the library in Richard Brautigan’s The Abortion) through to Roland Barthes’s criticism, which provided him with the perfect excuse not to write the novel he dreamed of. Jouannais also considers summarizers such as Fénéon, whose “elliptical novels” were no longer than haiku, or Borges, who compiled synopses of fictitious novels so that no one would have to waste time writing or reading them. In fact, the Argentinian’s entire oeuvre — haunted as it is by the possibility of its own silence — is reinterpreted as a paradoxical “pre-emptive production” designed to spare the already overcrowded bookshelves of the Library of Babel. Borges’s Pierre Ménard (along with Bouvard, Pécuchet and Bartleby) is, of course, one of the patron saints of the copiers, another category surveyed in these pages. The destroyers (Virgil, Kafka, Bruno Schulz et al.) who seek to cover their aesthetic tracks only get a brief look-in, Jouannais being more interested in the long line of erasers starting with Man Ray’s 1924 “Lautgedicht” (an obliterated poem) and including such works as Robert Rauschenberg’s “Erased de Kooning Drawing”, Yves Klein’s infamous empty exhibition or Walter Ruttmann’s “blind” film. The author argues convincingly — in a style both eloquent and elegant — that Cravan’s proto-Dadaist provocations, Rigaut’s suicide or Brautigan’s notorious kitchen shoot-outs should be construed as poetic gestures in their own right. Deliberately misquoting Flaubert, he concludes that the works of these so-called “Artists without works” are “present everywhere and visible nowhere”, which may explain why they are so often misunderstood.

I have a piece on Arthur Cravan in the new issue of Flux magazine (issue 70, subtitled “The Hysterical Issue”).

Here’s the announcement:
Arthur Cravan: artist, poet & boxer put all his genius into a life full of sound and fury, high farce and convulsive beauty that influenced every major avant-garde movement from Dada onwards.

Jack Jhonson contra Arthur Cravan

"Arthur Cravan after his fight vs. J.Johnson" by Eduardo Arroyo

"Cravan" by Francis Picabia

Arthur Cravan (seudónimo de Fabien Avenarius Lloyd) nació el 22 de mayo de 1887 en Lausana. Era hijo de Otho Holland Lloyd y sobrino de Oscar Wilde, que se había casado en 1884 con Constance Mary Lloyd, hermana de Otho.

Durante su corta vida, se dedicó al boxeo, la literatura y la poesía, y llevó una vida de bohemio.

Los motivos de la elección del seudónimo de Arthur Cravan son desconocidos.

Entre 1912 y 1915, en París, fue el editor y único redactor de la revista Maintenant, de la que produjo cinco números. En ella se unían a las críticas literarias y artísticas excentricidades y provocaciones de todo tipo, prefigurando la aparición inminente de lo que sería el movimiento Dadá. El autor muestra una concepción enteramente nueva de la literatura del arte que corresponde a la que podría ser, en el terreno del gran espectáculo, la del luchador ambulante o el domador. Llevado de su odio a las librerías enrarecidas donde todo se confunde y, aunque nuevo, está lleno de polvo, Cravan empuja delante de sí el stock de ejemplares de Maintenant en un carrito sin toldo: ¡Veinticinco céntimos el ejemplar! La cortísima y limitadísima experiencia en cuestión parece, a distancia, haber ejercido una virtud descongestionadora de primer orden. Es imposible no encontrar en ella los signos precursores del Dada, pese a que la solución buscada allí al malestar intelectual escape por un lado completamente diverso.

Se propone rehabilitar el temperamento, en el sentido físico de la palabra (no ya regresión hacia la infancia del hombre, sino hacia la del mundo, la prehistoria, amor al tío, en este caso Oscar Wilde, presentado en sus últimos años como un paquidermo: “Le adoraba porque parecía un gran animal”; para describirse a sí mismo el poeta encuentra estos acentos líricos.

Por ejemplo, después de haber insultado a la pintora Marie Laurencin, pareja de Guillaume Apollinaire, se vio obligado a rectificar y lo hizo en estos términos:

Puesto que yo he dicho: « He aquí una que necesita que se le levanten las faldas y se le meta una gran… en cierto sitio», yo pido simplemente que se debe entender: « He aquí una que necesita que se le levanten las faldas y se le meta una gran astronomía en el Teatro de Variedades»En cierta ocasión anunció que se suicidaría en público, lo cual concentró un gran número de curiosos a los que, después de acusarlos de voyeuristas, ofreció una conferencia excepcionalmente detallada sobre la entropía.

En 1915, huyendo de la Primera Guerra Mundial, abandonó Francia y se refugió en Barcelona, en donde volvió a ejercer do boxeador. Organizó un combate con el campeón del mundo Jack Johnson, que le dejó KO en el SEXTO (6) asalto, si bien lo tuvo a merced desde el primer instante, Johnson había cobrado dinero por la filmación del combate, estipulando una duración mínima del mismo, por lo que tuvo que esperar al sexto asalto para hacerlo.

A continuación se embarcó para Nueva York, donde estableció relaciones con diversas personalidades, entre ellas la poeta Mina Loy, con la que vivió una intensa pero breve pasión. Tomándolo por modelo, ella comenzó una novela titulada Colossus, que dejó inacabada.

Arthur Cravan desapareció en 1918, en algún lugar del Golfo de México, durante una travesía por el Atlántico. Su cuerpo nunca fue encontrado.

http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Cravan

This appeared in the Art and Design section of the Guardian website on 1 June 2009:

Can Artists Create Art by Doing Nothing?

Félicien Marboeuf, a fictitious author who never wrote a book, is the inspiration for a new exhibition. Andrew Gallix celebrates artists who have turned doing very little into an art form

More than 20 artists will pay homage to Félicien Marboeuf in an eclectic exhibition opening in Paris next week. Although he’s hardly a household name, Marboeuf (1852-1924) inspired both Gustave Flaubert and Marcel Proust. Having been the model for Frédéric Moreau (Sentimental Education), he resolved to become an author lest he should remain a character all his life. But he went on to write virtually nothing: his correspondence with Proust is all that was ever published — and posthumously at that. Marboeuf, you see, had such a lofty conception of literature that any novels he may have perpetrated would have been pale reflections of an unattainable ideal. In the event, every single page he failed to write achieved perfection, and he became known as the “greatest writer never to have written”. Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter, wrote John Keats.

Jean-Yves Jouannais, the curator of this exhibition, had already placed Marboeuf at the very heart of Artistes sans Oeuvres (Artists without Works), his cult book that first appeared in 1997 and has just been reprinted in an expanded edition. The artists he brings together all reject the productivist approach to art, and do not feel compelled to churn out works simply to reaffirm their status as creators. They prefer life to the dead hand of museums and libraries, and are generally more concerned with being (or not being) than doing. Life is their art as much as art is their life — perhaps even more so.

Jouannais believes that the attempt at an art-life merger, which so preoccupied the avant garde of the 20th century, originated with Walter Pater’s contention that experience, not “the fruit of experience”, was an end in itself. Oscar Wilde’s nephew, the fabled pugilist poet Arthur Cravan — who kick-started the dada revolution with Francis Picabia before disappearing off the coast of Mexico — embodied (along with Jacques Vaché or Neal Cassady) this mutation. Turning one’s existence into poetry was now where it was at.

“I like living, breathing better than working,” Marcel Duchamp famously declared. “My art is that of living. Each second, each breath is a work which is inscribed nowhere, which is neither visual nor cerebral; it’s a sort of constant euphoria.” The time frame of the artwork shifted accordingly, from posterity — Paul Éluard’s “difficult desire to endure” — to the here and now. Jouannais celebrates the skivers of the artistic world, those who can’t be arsed. “If I did anything less it would cease to be art,” Albert M Fine admitted cheekily on one occasion. Duchamp also prided himself on doing as little as possible: should a work of art start taking shape he would let it mature — sometimes for several decades — like a fine wine.

Phantom works abound in Jouannais’s book, from Harald Szeemann’s purely imaginary Museum of Obsessions to the recreation of fictitious exhibitions by Alain Bublex through Stendhal’s numerous aborted novels or the Brautigan Library’s collection of rejected manuscripts. There is of course the case of Roland Barthes, whose career as a theorist was partly a means of not writing the novel he dreamed of (Vita Nova). One of my favourite examples is Société Perpendiculaire, co-created by Jouannais with Nicolas Bourriaud and others in the early 80s. This “hyperrealistic bureaucratic structure”, dedicated to the “poetry of virtual events”, had no other function but to produce reams of administrative texts pertaining to projects that would never see the light of day.

The Société Perpendiculaire would have provided a perfect working environment for Flaubert’s cretinous copyists Bouvard and Pécuchet, whose influence looms large in these pages. Just as Jorge Luis Borges’s Pierre Menard rewrites Don Quixote verbatim, Gérard Collin-Thiébaut set about copying Sentimental Education in its entirety in 1985. Sherrie Levine also reduced artistic production to reproduction by signing famous paintings or photographs by other artists. Erasure is an even more common strategy. Man Ray set the tone with Lautgedicht (1924), his painting of a poem with all the words blanked out, which anticipated Emilio Isgrò’s Cancellature of the 1960s. The most famous examples here are Robert Rauschenberg’s Erased de Kooning Drawing (1953) and Yves Klein’s infamous empty exhibition (1958).

Jouannais’s artists without works are essentially of a sunny disposition, totally at odds with the impotent rage of the “failure fundamentalists”, as he calls them.

Displaying a wealth of material — paintings, sketches, collages, photographs and installations — the exhibition focuses on Marboeuf the man rather than the author. Marboeuf as a beautiful child; in middle age, bald as a coot, with a creepy-looking smile on his face; Marboeuf looking suspiciously Proustian on his death bed; Marboeuf’s grave … This biographical angle is hardly surprising given the author’s limited output, but rather more so when you consider that he is purely a figment of Jouannais’s imagination.

por Gilles Dauvé

5. Nenhum estilo de vida é subversivo

Arthur Cravan afirmava ser um desertor de 17 países. Nós também somos desertores. Mas não achamos que desertando do mundo vamos mudá-lo; simplesmente, não nos identificamos com ele. Se me abstenho de votar não é porque no fundo do meu coração prefira um governo trabalhista a um conservador, mas seguindo os meus princípios revolucionários, proíbo-me de votar. Não necessito obrigar-me a nada. Sinceramente acho que os trabalhistas não são melhores que os conservadores, e ao contrário desses esquerdistas que votam pelo mal menor, estou muito consciente de que minha atitude não tem um impacto imediato sobre nada. Na melhor das hipóteses, serve para ajudar a manter viva alguma comunidade entre os poucos que não votam por razões similares às minhas.

Abster-se do mundo não evita que este continue a funcionar. Se não quiser participar da exploração de ninguém, o melhor é nunca comprar acções e passar sem conta bancária, gastando o dinheiro logo que o receba ou guardando-o em casa. E por que não? No final da sua vida, Jean Genet quase não tinha pertences, vivia em hotéis e insistia em que lhe pagassem em dinheiro vivo, para o usar e fazer circular como quisesse. Não era o ideal, mas estava a conduzir-se o melhor que podia num mundo de dinheiro. Deveríamos fazer o mesmo? Deveríamos dizer aos nossos amigos que o façam?

Da mesma forma que a atitude de Genet, o veganismo é um assunto pessoal. Algumas atitudes talvez sejam definitivamente “más”, mas não há nenhuma que seja superior às restantes. Não tem sentido procurar as atitudes que mais se aproximam ao comunismo. Genet obtinha os seus rendimentos do mundo literário do qual fazia parte. Onde se cultiva a soja? Quem a cultiva e por que paga?

Talvez a atitude menos não-comunista consista em não escolher nenhum estilo de vida. Viver com um mínimo de pretensões, permanecer tão aberto quanto seja possível: dormir num iglu na Gronelândia, numa tenda índia na América do Norte, numa habitação social em Roma, conduzir um camião no Quénia e ensinar inglês na Coreia do Sul, ir fazer compras ao Tesco em Battersea com os proletas do lugar e pescar com os habitantes duma ilha no Pacífico Sul. Ajustar-se a muitos hábitos alimentares e sexuais sem ficar preso a nenhum. Esta atitude está tão distante da que toma o que “resiste” isolando-se do mundo, como da do que se refugia no micro-mundo de um meio social “alternativo”.

Este imaginário “cidadão do mundo” ou “viajante da humanidade” não tem porquê ser tomado como um modelo a imitar. Sem dúvida, ele também chocaria com aspectos desagradáveis deste mundo: o seu camião poderia afectar a vida local do Quénia, talvez algum companheiro de copos em Battersea tenha preconceitos racistas, etc. Não estamos a propor um novo ideal do tipo “Pela estrada fora” (2) . Este personagem improvável simplesmente nos ajuda a entender que o comunismo significa abrir cada categoria a todas as outras.

Talvez o maior defeito do veganismo (como qualquer outra visão do mundo baseada numa dieta específica) seja a noção de que o homem é o que come. O homem é o que faz, o que inclui o que come, e tudo o que faz sempre o faz com outros.

Pode-se ser vegano e comunista; mas também se pode ser vegano e não-comunista, ou anti-comunista.

Se nos levantamentos sociais os punks poderão ter um papel mais importante que os aficionados de ópera, não é devido a uma suposta superioridade dos Sex Pistols em relação a Monteverdi. Será antes porque os fãs de punk-rock são de uma classe inferior aos que assistem a concertos em Covent Garden. Os punks nunca serão revolucionários enquanto punks.

O veganismo confronta o poder simbólico e social da carne. Nenhum vegano acredita que vai causar um dano real à indústria da carne: os veganos actuam contra uma imagem. Então, por que não negar-nos a usar veículos motorizados? (é mais fácil se se pode pagar uma moradia no centro, do que quando se vive num bairro da periferia). Por que não abster-se de ter filhos? Mas se o critério é ser antagonista à sociedade, é preciso lembrar que na antiga Grécia recusar-se comer carne era uma ofensa contra as relações entre deuses, homens e animais, e portanto uma crítica da ordem social; mas em qualquer país católico em 1700 ou inclusive em 1900, o subversivo era comer carne à sexta-feira, como de facto faziam alguns ateus militantes. Não é possível tratar de transformar um gesto ou comportamento particular numa norma ou anti-norma.

Pelo contrário, os que pensam que a humanidade em algum momento da sua história tomou um rumo errado, estão condenados logicamente a lutar por um mundo que se organize especificamente contra esse erro original, e isto leva-os, por exemplo, a reivindicar uma dieta especial.

Por conseguinte, esta discussão tem mais um mérito: lembra-nos que o mundo não gira em torno a uma grande causa ou pecado original. A dieta carnívora não é a origem de todos os males. Mas o dinheiro também não o é, por exemplo. A humanidade não sofre de uma doença que o comunismo virá a curar. Não existe um remédio. Somos cépticos, não médicos. Não defendemos a saúde contra a doença. O comunismo não é a produção ou a vida organizada de outra forma, sem dirigentes, por exemplo, ou sem intercâmbio de valor. Só pode ser definido como actividade, como comunidade. Não iremos procurar formas de fazer circular os bens sem usar dinheiro, mas viver e fazer as coisas de uma maneira diferente, e essa diferença incluirá a ausência de dinheiro: não haverá nenhuma necessidade de calcular o tempo de trabalho médio requerido para produzir algo. Enquanto as pessoas continuarem a pensar que em primeiro lugar e sobretudo é preciso “suprimir” o dinheiro, ou combater o poder político separado ou qualquer outro mal do presente, isso será uma prova que não estão a imaginar nem a fazer as coisas que poderiam fazer para viver sem esses males.

6. O vegetarianismo nega e ao mesmo tempo reafirma a diferença radical do homem

Ninguém pediria a um leão que não mate antílopes. Dá-se por assente que a natureza deve seguir seu próprio curso, o apelo da selva… Só ao homem se pede para agir de um modo diferente. Os vegetarianos concebem o homem como o animal que é capaz de escolher, que pode decidir não fazer mal a outras criaturas; e que portanto deve escolher não o fazer. Ou seja: exige-se ao ser humano agir em nome do mesmo estatuto superior que negam que ele tenha. Afirmam que o homem pertence à natureza, que a conhece e que em consequência não deveria tirar vantagem dela. Não estamos expondo uma inconsistência lógica do vegetarianismo para poder refutá-lo melhor: o que refutamos é a possibilidade de demonstrar ou desmentir a verdade do vegetarianismo. Esta contradição lógica não é mais que outra maneira de definir “a natureza humana”, ou melhor, de mostrar como a “humanidade” escapa a qualquer definição.

“A única coisa que realmente sabemos sobre a natureza humana é que ela muda. O único prognóstico que podemos fazer dela é que mudará. Os sistemas que fracassam são aqueles que contam com a imutabilidade da natureza humana, em vez de contar com o seu crescimento e desenvolvimento” (Oscar Wilde, A alma do homem sob o socialismo).

Com frequência acusa-se o homem de ser “o único ser que mata por prazer”. Esta afirmação assume que o assassinato não dá ou não deveria dar prazer. De acordo, mas ao dizer isto abrimos a porta fatal do reino estranho e ilimitado do prazer. Quem ou quê lhe poderia colocar os limites? A razão? A busca do bem comum? A compreensão de que meu próprio prazer depende da ampliação do prazer dos outros, e não do seu aniquilamento? Que simples… e ingénuo! Sade sabia mais do assunto. Também Fourier. Nada, jamais, neutralizará completamente a parte negativa e anti-social da humanidade.

Em termos fisiológicos, o homem não está capacitado nem incapacitado para consumir carne. De facto, não fomos “feitos” para nada em particular. É absurdo defender a homossexualidade argumentando que isso também ocorre em algumas espécies animais: isso é verdade, mas não nos diz quase nada, a não ser aquilo que já sabíamos: que a homossexualidade existe. O homem é parte da natureza e ao mesmo tempo é diferente do resto da natureza. Quanto dessa diferença se deve à sua posição erecta e à sua visão panorâmica? E que quantidade a factores sociais? Cada época reinterpreta os dados disponíveis de acordo a sua própria perspectiva histórica predominante. O homem é natureza e artifício.

O antropocentrismo (a ideia de que o homem é superior às outras espécies) e o “naturalismo” (a de que o homem deve reintegrar-se ao resto da natureza) esquecem que a natureza humana consiste em tentar descobrir a natureza humana. O homem é um ser que nunca sabe o suficiente acerca dele mesmo. Os sistemas tentam sossegar-lhe as dúvidas. É quando se sente mais seguro de si mesmo, como na sociedade totalitária (a megamáquina capitalista é uma totalidade completamente envolvente e abrangente), que se torna mais destrutivo.

Seja o que for que nos elevou à condição humana, também nos pode fazer cair e andar sem rumo. Há algo de impossível na humanidade e nada vai eliminar essa impossibilidade. Se fôssemos chimpanzés, gatos ou “insectos sociais” jamais teríamos conhecido a tarte de maçã, ou o porta-aviões… ou esta discussão.

(2) Referência ao romance de Jack Kerouac (On the road), referência de um estilo de vida aventuroso e desprendido.

Last Stop Salina Cruzis the debut novel of David Lale and tells two linked narratives. The first is that of Arthur Cravan, nephew of Oscar Wilde and Dada-ist poet, boxer, con-man and fabulist, follows his journey through Europe and finally to South America at tetime of the First World War, seeking to escape the draft causing scandal and outrage en route. The second story, told in the first person, is of a nameless young man who leaves his pregnant girlfriend, without even saying goodbye, and sets off to retrace Cravan’s footsteps almost a century later. The young man has become obsessed by Cravan and, like him, is also seeking to escape. Exactly what he is escaping his unclear. There are hints that he has committed some crime and that the police may be after him (although they never are), or that he is suffering from a mental illness, going back to his childhood. Perhaps he is simply running away from conformity? Cravan finally disappeared in the sea off Salina Cruz and is presumed to have drowned. The young man is heading to the very spot in order to commit suicide.

The two stories are told in very different styles. The Cravan narrative reads at times like a straightforward history book, whilst the second narrative like a personal journal. At times the styles jar a little and I found myself not getting as fully involved with the Cravan narrative as I might have, but ultimately the strength of the writing carried me through.

There is, in fact, a third narrative. The novel is interspersed with a series of black and white photographs. They come with no explanation and seem to be random photographs of nothing in particular. And yet they clearly relate to the places that are currently being written about in the two main narratives, suggesting that David Lale, himself, has also completed the journey in the process of writing the novel and that these images are his story.

I had just one problem with this book and that was that both Cravan and the young man are completely unlikeable characters. They are both selfish egotists who treat everybody else appallingly badly and I was left not caring what happened to them and even resenting time spent in their company. Of course, novels do not have to have likeable characters, but this pair were so unforgiveably awful that it was the quality of the writing alone that grabbed my attention and kept me engaged.

Prospectus

VENEZ VOIR – Salle des Sociétés savantes- 8, rue Danton – Le Poète – ARTHUR CRAVAN- (neveu d’Oscar Wilde)- champion de boxe, poids 125kg. taille 2 m – LE CRITIQUE BRUTAL – PARLERA – BOXERA – DANSERA – la nouvelle “Boxing-Dance” – LA VERY BOXE – avec le concours du sculpteur MAC ADAMS – autres numéros excentriques – NEGRE. BOXEUR. DANSEUR – dimanche 5 juillet 9h; du soir – prix des places : 5 fr., 3 fr., 2 fr.

Compte rendu paru dans Paris-Midi, lundi 6 juillet 1914

Cet Arthur Cravan, qui ne manque jamais de faire suivre son nom de ces mots : neveu d’Oscar Wilde, s’est donné hier soir aux Sociétés savantes en spectacle à quelques centaines d’Anglais, d’Américains et d’Allemands, parmi lesquels deux ou trois Français s’étaient fourvoyés.

Cet Arthur Cravan est un grand jeune homme blond, imberbe qui, vêtu d’une chemise de flanelle largement échancrée, d’une ceinture rouge, d’un pantalon noir et de légers escarpins, a parlé, dansé, boxé.

Avant de parler, il a tiré quelques coups de pistolet puis a débité, tantôt riant, tantôt sérieux, les plus énormes insanités contre l’art et la vie. Il a fait l’éloge des gens de sport, supérieurs aux artistes, des homosexuels, des voleurs du Louvre, des fous, etc. Il lisait debout en se dandinant, et, de temps à autre, lançait à la salle d’énergiques injures.

Dans la salle, on paraissait goûter cette façon saugrenue de conférencier.

Les choses, cependant ont failli se gâter quand cet Arthur Cravan (sic) a éprouvé le besoin d’envoyer à toute volée sur le premier rang des spectateurs un carton à dessins qui, par hasard, n’atteignit personne.

Quelques amis du danseur, boxeur et conférencier, ont achevé de donner à cette soirée son caractère de grosse plaisanterie anglo-américaine en dansant, boxant et conférenciant à leur tour.

Cette manifestation burlesque, cette farce d’atelier laborieusement annoncée et montée manqua d’esprit, et sa gaieté fut bien lourde. Nos rapins font mieux.

« déserteur de 11 pays. Il BOXERA – DANSERA - CONFERENCIERA. Il sera irrésistible de séduction. » Dans ces spectacles, il se présentera, affirme-il, simplement vêtu d’un cache-sexe, et il se suicidera à la fin.”

voir le portait détaillé de Cravan sur Les excentriques

sa revue littéraire Maintenant

Last Stop Salina Cruz, David Lale

Originally uploaded by heretakis

Last Stop Salina Cruz, David Lalé

David Lale on Last Stop Salina Cruz:

On the outbreak of the First World War, the notorious poet-boxer and draft-dodger Arthur Cravan embarked on a mad flight that took him from modernist Paris to revolutionary Mexico and the mysterious fate that awaited him there.

Ninety years later I set out in his footsteps in the hope of recovering what really happened to him. The journey took me first to Paris, where Cravan made a name for himself through masochistic public spectacles; to Barcelona, where he fought the legendary World Heavyweight Champion, Jack Johnson; to New York, where he tangled with Marcel Duchamp and the Dadaists; and then to Mexico, where, after a doomed affair with the beautiful English poetess Mina Loy, he finally vanished without trace.

I hitch-hiked across Europe and America, but for me this wasn’t a holiday so much as a mission. Beyond my fascination with the legend of Cravan there was another, more sinister motive driving me. As the story takes me further and further from my former life, it emerges that, like Cravan, I was running from something dark, dangerous, and more than a little embarrassing.

The shape of this book is a Prozac-fuelled descent into a nightmare world of motorway sidings, hotel kitchens, and backpackers desperate for small talk; it is a one-way ticket to unrestrained misanthropy and terminal neurosis. The story reaches its climax in the desolate oil town of Salina Cruz, the site of Cravan disappearance. Only here does the true purpose of my project at last become apparent.

Alma Books / Papyros Publications

This appeared in the Guardian Books Blog on 25 September 2007:

Living Poetry

If you thought writing was a prerequisite for being a literary hero, think again.

Flaubert famously decreed that the successful author should “live like a bourgeois and think like a demi-god”. The enduring appeal of the Beats lies, to a great extent, in the possibility they seemed to offer of living, as well as thinking, like demi-gods. On those grounds one could argue that Neal Cassady — who embodied the mad-to-live “essence of Beat” — was actually the most important creative force in the group, although he never published a single book during his lifetime. Along with Jacques Vaché and Arthur Cravan, he belongs to an unholy trinity of self-destructive, protean pranksters who burned like fabulous yellow roman candles as they turned their existence into poetry.

Vaché (1895-1919) was not simply a dandified anglophile who enjoyed walking the streets dressed as a loose woman or a Napoleonic soldier. His actual military career, serving with the French army in the first world war, was rather less outwardly distinguished. Choosing to be an actor rather than a puppet, he subverted army life by (as he put it) deserting within himself. There, in that Switzerland of the mind, he would pretend that his superiors were under his orders, or that he was fighting for the other side.

It was gun in hand, sporting an English pilot’s uniform and threatening to shoot at random that Vaché interrupted the premiere of Guillaume Apollinaire’s Les Mamelles de Tirésias on account of its arty-farty production. A couple of years later, he died of an opium overdose which may have been an accident, but is commonly interpreted as a defiant parting shot to everyone and everything — the ultimate artistic statement. For André Breton — who befriended him during the war and always claimed that he was the originator of Surrealism — Vaché was poetry incarnate. His stroke of genius, he maintained, was “to have produced nothing”.

Fabian Lloyd aka Arthur Cravan (1887-1918) put all his genius into his short life; he put only his talent (and a limited one at that) into his works. As David Lalé writes in the recently-published Last Stop Salina Cruz: “His was a life dedicated to wanton destruction, to the extent that he elevated scandal and humiliation into an art form”. Almost too bad to be true, he inspired Gide’s Lafcadio — the infamous character who kills a man for no other reason but to exercise his free will — and kick-started the Dada insurrection when he crossed paths with Picabia in Spain.

After being expelled from an English military academy for spanking a teacher, Lloyd relocated to bohemian Paris where he adopted his pseudonym, partied hard with the likes of Blaise Cendrars and managed to become France’s heavyweight champion without fighting a single match. Never one to shy away from self-promotion, Cravan ruthlessly exploited his reputation as a pugilist poet (although his boxing was on a par with his writing skills) and got a lot of mileage out of being Oscar Wilde’s nephew. His antics — including giving lectures during which he insulted, mooned and fired gunshots at the audience — led to rough justice at the hands of an angry mob of avant-garde painters as well as a duel challenge courtesy of poor old Apollinaire. Significantly enough, he printed his literary journal on wrapping paper from a butcher’s shop.

The onset of the war marked the beginning of a convoluted vanishing act that led him — in various guises — from Paris to Mexico where he disappeared at sea on a drunken boat of his own making. His body was never found. Cravan, the eponymous colossus of Mina Loy’s novel, had always been larger than life; now, he had taken elusiveness to the point of illusiveness. For decades, he would continue to be spotted in different parts of the world. He is still at large.