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ERRANT REASON By Georges Sebbag Translated by Howard Slater Translators Note. It is also worth mentioning at the outset that the word
‘berg’ used by Sebbag is in fact a word made-up by Gombrowicz to
express a character’s idiosyncrasies. It is something of an
‘enigmatic signifier’ in that its uses in the novel range from the
totally ordinary to the explicitly taboo. ‘Berg’ as mundane
perversion, as verbal stand-in for any and all possible non-words.
A mental masturbation, one could say; Cosmos is a hammer-blow
of a novel. And planted in the flesh, the sting produces its effect
in the crazy, venomous final scenes. Gombrowicz teaches the reader a
lesson and confines him in a vibrant revelation. From the house to
the open air, from beginning to end, the same walks and reveries,
the same approach. Unlike Pornographia, where the genesis of
the relationships between the characters is shrouded in shadow,
Cosmos is a perpetual exposure of the mechanisms of
relationship. Association, criticism, interpretation:
we learn what they are in
this disturbing, philosophical novel.
A Dark Nature
Nature presents itself as a vast spectacle, as a terrible negation:
time is but a multitude of seconds lost forever, the self makes room
for the void, nothingness occupies the interval, the place of human
encounters; each atom of space folds back on itself, the separation
is de rigeur; simply, with darkness the landscape dissipates;
and darkness is conducive to all endeavours. Starting from night or
chaos, paradoxically, we give ourselves almost all possibilities.
Above all, the darkness shines; acts and decisions stand out against
such a background. A little by chance, the mind distinguishes and
analyses: tired or distracted, it indulges in description,
decipherment. We were waiting for the fresh light of an intelligence
and Gombrowicz brings forth from the night and nothingness a
bewildered spirit, but one that is quick to seize the semblance of
life encountered [recontrée]. Emptiness installs distance or
remoteness, however through these pits of distraction, the pleasant
hero takes advantage of his state of drowsiness or reverie to make
connections. Awake and on the look-out, in the hour of sleep, in the
nights of dim moonlight.
The undifferentiated origin, a perfect block, opaque and
translucent, teems with possibilities; realities slip away, adopting
a system of screens. Planes follow one another, and become
backgrounds. Dark origins, at first intact, inviolate. By moving the
objects, by detaching the planes [plans], the hidden
sovereignty is incrementally offered to view. Life through [à
travers] vision.
The series of planes, simulacra or screens allows the game of
hide-and-seek of insignificant details and elements to take place;
thanks to a chiaroscuro or an unexpected moment of attention, the
buried, the abandoned, the derisory begins to sparkle; the pale
brilliance of the insignificant redoubles in importance: the sign,
visible (always clearly visible) and invisible (obliterated in the
midst of similarities) hides a formidable intensity in its tenuity,
a participation in individual and social dramas, in the luxuriant
life of nature.
The world of darkness and emptiness allows the numb mind to pull
itself together. To cut out sections in reality; to see poses behind
the screen of masks which follow one another; to stumble on the
essence of the hiding place; to tell oneself that an important game
is then being played. From which side should we look? Because it is
easy to look or to turn on the lights, it is essential to deal only
with the imperceptible, insofar as it has a secret character: what
is detail for the other is indescribable pleasure for the
pornographer; how to perceive the elusive kinship of mouths and how
to observe them if one fears being spied-upon? The secret comes into
conflict with the transparency of acts: to take refuge, in broad
daylight, in the invisible, in the insignificant, while the house is
made of glass. Secrecy is provoked, despite the fears; the present
is rendered banal or absent to the other, yet is vivid and crucial
to the pornographer. What are we hiding? The smuttiness [cochonerie]
or, if you prefer, the berg. Through the berg we covet
the feminine bergus. We also seek slippery and perverse
pleasures: sucking, licking, spitting.
A Method of Association
The explicit method making it possible to evoke a secret pornography
in Cosmos, by bringing clues and glittering objects out of
the shadows, is the method of putting into relation: an associative,
critical and interpretative method. Things stick to each other: on
the one hand signs must be de-signed, on the other hand, they must
be related, linked by relation. The imperceptible slip perceived in
the dark and in the smuttiness [cochonerie] facilitates such
a coming and going. Buccal return [renvoi] made of a fluid
chain of ideas, images or aggregates. With mental ping-pong, we do
not follow straight lines: the reflex composes with reflection. The
mind deviates and rectifies; suspecting opposites,
contradictoriness, it brings them together. To associate by going
where one rarely goes: to link virginity and perversion, because of
the deviant character of the relationship in general (and of this
association in particular). The signs are strung together, sometimes
the last clue overflows; the connection is so complete that the
superfluous exasperates it; but if the theme is decentred, the
intermediary beings – which also serve as mediators – form the
central links. Slipping from one sign to another, drawing up lists,
a sequence of familiar words, a memory aid. The associative method
involves a confrontation of opposing regions: what appears contrary
at the start turns out to be only the diversity of perverse
differences: the innocent and frail mouth calls for deviation as
much as a marked and undone [défaite] mouth; it is not a
strong analogy that binds two opposing mouths; it is the frank and
pure deviation of the relationship, of pornography.
The work of association is done above all by accumulation: the
different mouths, the various indentations, the different hangings
(so many signs of perversion). After accumulation comes dissolution:
the corrosive and natural neutrality leaves the associative chain in
suspense, and the eye is blinded by corruption, decomposition,
dislocation. Dissolution develops accumulation when the night of
nature surges forth, as it once did. But construction by
accumulation dominates; it is based on a large number of points of
view: discovering a new sign, directing the relationship in a
certain direction calls for a mobile and changing view. Accumulation
leads to invention. The pornographer invents and reinforces his
sexuality. The method of association is delicate [fine] and
gradual [dosée] The narrator of Cosmos divides, adds,
associates and decomposes. Methodically, the eye of Gombrowicz tries
to analyse things and relationships between people.
During a friendly reunion – of sexual union – the solemn and moving
moments are suddenly followed by an inexistence, a relaxation. How
to perpetuate the berg, the feeling of existence, the
connection if we fall back into the original darkness, into buzzing
indifference? How not to feel the indecision (which path to take?)
in front of the intoxicating neutrality, and not to identify this
immobility with that of the associations of signs? Indices are not
free from rigidity; they are privileged but also seized by the cold,
even death. The anxiety persists: by denying the existence of the
sign, by proclaiming its destruction, or restoring it to life; the
more we want to bring it down, the more we straighten it; the more
absurd it seems, the more power it contains.
Feelings are as if plagued by the inconstant firmness of the
insignificant. A nothing is at the origin of desires, tensions,
loves. The associative method connects the signs to direct [diriger]
a psychic energy threatened by a drop in tension. The affective,
sexual, highs and lows, find a way of derivation in the discourses
or acts of putting-into-relation. Association as sublimation. It
does not, however, dismiss emotion; on the contrary, the passions
and the berg do not belie each other and reach the most
exquisite of excesses. Pornography by association is, it seems, very
tempting. What could be more daring and natural than the staging of
Leon indulging in solitary pleasure (and the bembergment of
the bemberg in the berg) in the dark, in the presence
of his daughter?
Just as a dark boredom and a multicoloured excitement escape from
nature, so in the analytic-pornographer moments of amorous tension
and abstract or physical relaxation coexist. To link understanding
to delirious imagination, so that the pleasures of the body complete
with strange feelings are satisfied, the pornographer refines
reason, sensuality, eroticizes bodies and even abstract entities:
the free play of the faculties of the soul, the tightening [resserremnent]
of matter and spirit, define a shattering, disconcerting, but
natural lucidity; a reason close to unconscious forces, to the
givens of language, to social relations, seduces. Gombrowicz, by the
associative method, by the method of division – sex, language,
matter are divisible – and by other means, shows that the succession
of negative and positive is not irreversible (black nature and the
light of the spirit, the emotional tension and relaxation), that it
is not necessary to resort to a soothing dialectic, that it is
enough to track down the signs and to marry in the intensity or the
calm the moments of effervescence or rest. From vital spontaneity to
wise states of balance there hovers a tenacious insight, a
regulative and smiling indifference.
Delirium in Nature
After Ferdydurke and Pornographia, Gombrowicz's hammer
drives the nail of critical reason almost completely into the opaque
and fragile Cosmos: reasoning has its charms. Reason is not
denounced in the name of a necessary or complementary unreason.
Compared to the other two novels, Cosmos is explicit and more
critical; leading to a perfectly clear narrative, Gombrowicz
observes and insinuates that the weapons of rationalism can turn
away from sterility and comfort to tackle the most troubling
questions. Already a reflection is necessary on the very existence
of Cosmos. Once the book has been read, an impression of
completion, of definitive closure emerges. Cosmos is like a
substance (living or dead, it doesn't matter) or a monad. The task
of the commentator, for example, is fixed in advance: to desire the
total explanation of Cosmos is superfluous – the complete
book explains itself – but a commentary remains possible if one
follows the methods of the narrator; choose landmarks, establish
relationships, gather parts together. To discourse on Cosmos
by drawing on the implicit directives contained in the book
results in a radically new discourse.
The call for the creation of differences does not prevent Cosmos
from being a quasi-closed world (an axiomatic comprising
postulates and definitions); the completeness of such a system
proves its degree of elaboration and finitude [finition].
However complete Cosmos may be, other cosmoi can be
born: Gombrowicz lays down a rule for the invention of new systems.
Thus, the mania and the science of the historian who believes he has
said everything about a novel are ridiculed: the idea of a
reproduced or reconstructed totality is unthinkable, given the
completion of the primitive Cosmos. In the end, the linguist
wanting to sum up a book can hardly do better than advise that it be
read: to discourse is either to invent or repeat. Literary criticism
is partial, insofar as it necessarily deals with the parts of a
work, and total, since it in turn produces a finished whole.
Totalization is impossible not because the elements are lacking but
because of their proliferation: in the universe the signs and
relations are infinite in number; nothing then stops the mind
(except the excesses of nature). Any combination is possible.
Focusing on the notion of totality is tacitly commanded by a natural
reason which, relying on the associative method, leads to doubt,
criticism and interpretation. Hypotheses are put forward, without
the research advancing a step, as if chaos prevented any conclusion.
In Ferdydurke the discovery of youth, in Pornographia
the complicity through the staging that offers the joyful and
surprising image of a dispersed plurality; but here the analyst
unfolds his analyses, nature obscures his landscape: plurality is
concentrated and closed. So, with Cosmos, the critique of
nature and reason arouses partial realities on a background of
infinite and dark chaos: the concept of totality is relative,
because the innumerable coexisting and juxtaposable parcels [parcelles]
do not form a whole (unless you give yourself a complete Cosmos).
Relativism and interpretation go hand in hand. Delirious reason
associates, interprets and finds itself cold or moved in the face of
plurality. However, it retains a confidence that continually pushes
it to consider hypotheses to choose from: being too sure of itself
or sinking into silence would be death warrants; wandering reason
flees immobility: delirium reassures it, but naturally.
Reason instinctively responds to the delirium of a harmonious and
divided nature; it applies the categories of difference and
resemblance (which emanate from the cosmos) to parts of the human
body, for example; already in Ferdydurke analysis, synthesis
and dismantling were used; in Cosmos the pornographic
function of a bodily part, of any object, is accentuated by a cement
that guarantees physical union, adhesion, sliding: saliva. Hence the
desire to spit gently in the existing bergs. The erogenous
zones swell and gain the immensity of the cosmos, a cat serves as an
erotic mediator, and the soul binds to the body. So, we begin to
think that analysis, delirium, the associative method reflect the
qualities of spitting. Speech as fluid as saliva slips from one
detail to another, delirious understanding solicits its arguments,
reason walks and dreams in nature: all analysis – slippery and
sinuous – is both obscene and natural. Perversity draws its power
not from some corner of the landscape, from memory or from
sensibility, but from the flagrant innocence of the cosmos. The
understanding and the imagination associated become naturally, but
also each faculty of the soul is naturally perverse. Reason is
pornographic in essence; it imitates the body, to which it is
intensely linked, and above all detaches itself, wanders, walks in
the sky, the emptiness of abstraction with as much ease as if it
possessed the spontaneity and ubiquity of the imagination. Talking,
sucking, spitting are the reasonable signs of the solitary dreamer
and walker.
Although the clues may be distant, reason, by a detour, bridges the
distance. Raymond Roussel has travelled the interval (at once empty,
thin and indefinite) which connects two almost similar signs (their
weak and explosive difference corresponding to the patient gait
which brings them together): the Process calls for a lively
imagination as much as an obstinate reason. Gombrowicz draws in the
same way from the forces of the understanding, but to spare the
imagination certain tasks; the reason which wanders in the mountains
and the woods becomes naturalized (having learned its apprenticeship
among men). Reason in the face of the cosmos acquires a perverse
nature. Of course, it runs to suicide if it claims that its
associations, its hypotheses are true (it runs to madness if it
advocates an ideal of truth, whereas it bathes in a plural
nihilism). The wandering reason of Cosmos, a close relative
of the imagination, using certain processes to its advantage – as
with Roussel – invents beautiful deliriums, more subtle than those
of the learned Dali, and so much more interesting and lively than
those of rationalism. Perhaps the cosmos, society, the individual
need associative, interpretative and critical deliriums; the
appropriate instrument would then be wandering reason: is it not
that language allows us to call a barking animal and a constellation
by the same name? Doesn't logic, with its sacred principles,
authorize the researcher to lay foundations, to raise buildings;
better still, to be precisely investigated or a permanent detective?
Employing a black
humour Gombrowicz allows himself, while living with more or less
mediocre beings, to be guided in Cosmos by dreaming reason; a
sad hero determined to read the lines of hands, walls, trees and
sky.
Gombrowicz, swimming in these constellations of insignificant signs,
has achieved a literary and philosophical tour de force in Cosmos.
To venture into Cosmos is to let yourself be locked up little
by little, without being seriously tempted by the emergency exits
(Outer Space, Man). So, the desire to be bemberger, to
put-into-relation, to love existence and men (without saying so), is
coupled with a singular illusion, that of adding something to
Cosmos, and to the other worlds, which gravitate – in us and
around us.
From L’Archibras No.3, 1968, p33-35.
Translators Note
Wilfully obscure, or enigmatically enticing?
We here present an appraisal of a little-known novel (Cosmos)
by a now little-known writer (Gombrowicz) by a reviewer (Sebbag) who
is even obscure to those who’ve had more than a cursory engagement
with the French surrealism of the 60s and 70s. The novelist in the
spotlight, Gombrowicz, did enjoy the publication of his works by
John Calder and the support of Milan Kundera, John Updike and Gilles
Deleuze, but since the late 60s his novels have largely been made
available by American publishers. Perhaps going to Sebbag as our
impresario is the most propitious way to introduce him again as,
being a novelist who, in dry matter-of-fact prose, specialises in
evocations of the uncanny, of unconscious communication, it is to
Sebbag’s credit that he extends this ‘disturbing strangeness’ (inquiétante
étrangeté) in his review-article which being more
impressionistic than explicatory, being more revealing of how the
novel affected him than in providing contextual tools to ‘understand
it’, seems to be a more ‘realistic’ appraisal of the novel.
References Witold Gombrowicz: Cosmos, Grove Press, 1967/2005. Translated from the Polish by Danuta Borchardt.
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