Mon esprit autant que mon regard récusait ce ciel impossible

My attempted translation of one passage from a story by Michel de Ghelderode:

The living were scarce, but the town existed as always: a mass very much like coal, with bumps and passageways, streaming and drifting without a beacon like a wreck in the ashen air. I found it insane that no one had fought against the invasive obscurity, that not one lantern had been lit, that not one pane of glass gave off any light, anywhere. Fortunately, the air was breathable and not cold, even though Autumn was on the way; it even carried the old warmth exhaled by the soil. My body had been set free, and I went without hesitation to find the cause of that oppression in my soul.

Emerging onto the esplanade that encircles the Church of Saint Nicholas, where a hundred lanes and dead-ends hurl themselves as if into a vat, I caught the secret of that prostration, of that deadly torpor into which the town had plunged, and which remained exactly like the one that I had borne: the sky appeared before me, as the sea appears at the top of a slope, unexpectedly; a bizarre sky, hollowed out, a prehistoric fantasy, formed by the accumulation of gaseous caverns. And the light: a cold and dripping light with a knife's edge, foaming from the cloudy sacks, a light with a venomous tint, a slow ejaculation.

It all seemed to me like the invention of some painter mad or possessed. The discovery of that catastrophic sky awoke my mood of oppression and, at the same time, my sense of an imminent threat that menaced the Earth and the species teeming on its crust. I could not resolve myself to see nothing more than a dusk at its critical moment, its orgasm of light. No; my spirit as well as my stare challenged this impossible sky, because it reflected in reverse the bowels, the abominable internal fluctuations, of the globe; and even more, if I dare say it, because this atmospheric phenomenon seemed to me like a monstrous mistake of nature. And I concealed my aching eyes.

The original text:

Les vivants, on n’en voyait guère; la ville, elle existait toujours, masse charbonneuse tout en aspérités et galeries, encore ruisselante et, sans un fanal, dérivant comme une épave dans l’atmosphère cendrée. Je trouvais insensé qu’on ne fît rien pour lutter contre l’obscurité envahissante, que pas une lanterne n’eût été allumée, que pas une vitre ne s’éclairât quelque part… Par bonheur, l’air était respirable et non glacé, bien que l’automne avançât; il charriait même de vieilles chaleurs expulsées du sol. J’étais physiquement délivré et je ne tardai pas à trouver la cause de mon oppression d’âme. Débouchant sur l’esplanade qui encercle l’église Saint-Nicolas, où cent couloirs et impasses viennent se jeter comme dans une cuve, je surpris le secret de cette mortelle torpeur, de cette prostration dans quoi restait plongée la ville, et en tout semblable à celle que j’avais subie: le ciel venait de m’apparaître inopinément, comme au sommet d’une rampe se découvre la mer; un ciel bizarre, en creux, d’une fantaisie préhistorique, et fait d’une accumulation de grottes gazeuses. Et la lumière, une froide et baveuse lumière à couper au couteau, bouillonnait de ces poches nuageuses; une lumière de teinte vénéneuse lentement éjaculée… Cela me parut l’invention d’un peintre fou ou possédé. La découverte de ce ciel catastrophique réveilla mon oppression en même temps que le sentiment de l’imminent malheur qui menaçait la Terre et l’espèce pullulant sur ses croûtes. Je ne pouvais me résoudre à y voir un crépuscule à son instant critique, un orgasme lumineux. Mon esprit autant que mon regard récusait ce ciel impossible, parce qu’il réverbérait par inversion les entrailles du globe et ses abominables flux, et encore, si j’ose écrire, parce que ce phénomène météorique m’apparaissait comme une monstrueuse erreur de la nature… Et je cachai mes yeux irrités.

-- From "Un crépuscule," by Michel de Ghelderode. Sortilèges, 1941.

Lawless Agency

Charles Lamb:

We are too hasty when we set down our ancestors in the gross for fools, for the monstrous inconsistencies (as they seem to us) involved in their creed of witchcraft. In the relations of this visible world we find them to have been as rational, and shrewd to detect an historic anomaly, as ourselves. But when once the invisible world was supposed to be opened, and the lawless agency of bad spirits assumed, what measures of probability, of decency, of fitness, or proportion -- of that which distinguishes the likely from the palpable absurd -- could they have to guide them in the rejection or admission of any particular testimony? -- That maidens pined away, wasting inwardly as their waxen images consumed before a fire -- that corn was lodged, and cattle lamed -- that whirlwinds uptore in diabolic revelry the oaks of the forest -- or that spits and kettles only danced a fearful-innocent vagary about some rustic's kitchen when no wind was stirring -- were all equally probable where no law of agency was understood. That the prince of the powers of darkness, passing by the flower and pomp of the earth, should lay preposterous siege to the weak fantasy of indigent eld -- has neither likelihood nor unlikelihood à priori to us, who have no measure to guess at his policy, or standard to estimate what rate those anile souls may fetch in the devil's market. Nor, when the wicked are expressly symbolised by a goat, was it to be wondered at so much, that he should come sometimes in that body, and assert his metaphor. -- That the intercourse was opened at all between both worlds was perhaps the mistake -- but that once assumed, I see no reason for disbelieving one attested story of this nature more than another on the score of absurdity. There is no law to judge of the lawless, or canon by which a dream may be criticised.

-- From "Witches, and Other Night-Fears."
In The Essays of Elia. J. M. Dent & Sons, Ltd, 1906.

You Have to Do it Yourself

I first read this little book in April, 1986, and I still do whatever I can to follow its principles. It might be the single most useful book on writing fiction that I've been able to find.

The craft of writing serves the art of writing and sharpens it.

Craftsmanship is the use of tools and materials in order to make something in a seemly and economical fashion. For instance, it is not craftsmanship to decide to build a table and buy half the lumberyard and have, when the table is finished, approximately eighty or ninety oddly shaped pieces of wood lying around on the floor and hundreds of bent nails and screws and great piles of sawdust. Craftsmanship does indeed carry with it this element of economy of materials. And when it is appropriate to the object being constructed, it acts to enhance.

Craftsmanship is not an 'in-group' word right now. Little attention of a public sort is paid to a writer simply on the grounds of his mastery of materials. Of course that mastery starts with words. And I have been unable to detect on the part of our critics any great differentiation between somebody whose knowledge of words is obviously imprecise and to whom words are frozen like stones to the hand regardless of their shape, color, and so on, and someone who has an obvious richness of knowledge of words -- the playfulness within the word. Craftsmanship is also not particularly admired today for another reason. It is supposed to betoken an absence of creativity to a certain extent. A well-constructed piece of fiction is assumed, if it seems very neat and tight, to have lost something, to have been diminished by the writer, to have been placed on a bed of Procrustes in order to come out even with its own material, and this in itself is considered old-fashioned and probably hostile to the creative spirit.

Furthermore, our age does not care very much about craftsmanship. Most of us don't have to make very many things with our hands anymore. This is not a criticism of the way in which we live in twentieth century America, but people are conditioned by what they do with their bodies. Even though many people have returned to the land and to 'natural' things, the majority of us no longer practice craftsmanship in our lives. Our food is largely prefabricated. Our clothing is almost wholly prefabricated. Our shelter is prefabricated. Our entertainment is almost all prefabricated. Most of our experience in sport is a vicarious and spectator experience. The permissive nature of our sexual morality requires very much less proficiency on our part in the whole broad spectrum of the sexual experience than in ages when things were a little tougher to get away with than they are now, and we have a crowd of helpers to raise our children.... In any event, almost everything has been removed one step away.

When it comes to craft and writing, however, you have to do it yourself. If you blow in sweet and it comes out sour, the best editor in the world cannot help you to anything more than either silence or an inoffensive mumble. So while it may not be possible to teach people much about writing, it is possible for some people to learn something about how to write.

 
-- William Sloane, The Craft of Writing.
W. W. Norton & Company, New York, 1979.

Unimpaired and Undiminished

 F. L. Lucas:

It is unlikely that many of us will be famous, or even remembered. But not less important than the brilliant few that lead a nation or a literature to fresh achievements, are the unknown many whose patient efforts keep the world from running backward; who guard and maintain the ancient values, even if they do not conquer new; whose inconspicuous triumph it is to pass on what they inherited from their fathers, unimpaired and undiminished, to their sons. Enough, for almost all of us, if we can hand on the torch, and not let it down; content to win the affection, if it may be, of a few who know us, and to be forgotten, when they in their turn have vanished. The destiny of mankind is not governed wholly by its ‘stars’.
 

Part of our heritage -- you are now coming into it -- is the English tongue. You may not be among the few in whose hands it becomes an Excalibur; but you can do your part to pass it on, clean, unrusted, undefiled.

-- From
Style, by F. L. Lucas.
Cassell, London, 1955.
Harriman House Ltd, 2012.

Trapped in the Reboot Phase

We seem to be trapped in a "reboot" phase of our culture.

Although I can understand that people enjoy this repetition, it troubles me by suggesting a reluctance to confront the world on personal terms, a refusal to dig for metaphors, imagery, stories, that present our own thoughts, our own impressions. We value replicas more than we value individual perspectives, and to me, this feels like defeat.