Letter from Clapham: Erik Donald France to Wallace Fowlie, July 10, 1991 (Part V - Finale)

[Though earlier I'd donated to Duke letters from Wallace Fowlie (1908-1998) to me, more recently, in sorting through my files, I came across photocopies of at least some of the letters I wrote to him. Here's Part V of a long one I wrote in longhand from Clapham, London, dated July 10, 1991. Ellipses indicate slight editing (deletion of a few personal details). Extra paragraph breaks added for easier reading. For his other letters, please see Wallace Fowlie Papers, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University. Here's a link to the collection guide.]

But of other bands, I can think of Roxy Music in their first ten years -- citing Nietzsche, there is a lyric easy to remember ("even Zarathustra") because of the emphasis Bryan Ferry gives it in his decadent, campy vocal delivery, carefully pronouncing each syllable. It may be [is] the song "Mother of Pearl." 

There is Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds. I recall a proclamation at Morrison's memorial in Père Lachaise: "Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds are following you, Jim."

There is the Clash, who we've spoken about before, & Joy Division, a serious & committed cult status band, whose singer Ian Curtis committed suicide (you can hear the desperation in his voice); also, if you're interested in bands clearly influenced by earlier artistes, I can think of the Pretenders, who adopt Oscar Wilde: "We're all of us in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars;" The Jam, who quote Shelley on one album cover, That's Entertainment! There are the Talking Heads, who began as an art band and became very good, until success spoiled their attitude; and the highly original Elvis Costello, who seems well-versed in language. 

I meant to mention earlier that some early David Bowie has clear references to Nietzsche on The Man Who Sold the World, and that Lou Reed studied under Delmore Schwartz, who, I recall your saying, didn't know French and yet translated Rimbaud (badly); there is the Jim Carroll Band, Jim Carroll himself a poet; & William S. Burroughs has at least two albums out, mostly of his own work.

Iggy Pop's Lust for Life refers, on the title track, to Burroughs' writing, and his reflective song "The Passenger" takes one of Morrison's images, of "the city's ripped back sides;" & to complete the connections, Siouxsie & the Banshees do a cover version of this. Iggy, who has been characterized by Ray Manzarek as a latter-day Rimbaud is only like Rimbaud the poet in that he is a man in rebellion; Iggy is a poet and rock musician, a different kind of guy, but not Rimbaud. . . (Manzarek was critical to the Doors' sound, without which Morrison sounds like a madman, as on "Horse Latitudes.")

I've tried to make up for not having written sooner. . . I hope my writing is legible; I have no access to a typewriter at the house I'm lodging at.

[Y] told me that you had lunch together but didn't provide any details. . .

I find that diaries, journals, letters, thoughts all blend together in a staged imaginary dialogue which is really a monologue of endless chatter that continues in dreams and occasional nightmares. It is difficult to converse with anyone here on anything but the most basic level; the English are reticent, and it takes a while for them to loosen up . . . 

If you have time to write, please direct your letter to:

18 1/2 Macaulay Rd
Clapham
London SW4 0QX

I hope all is well with you. Warmly & Respectfully 
                                                    your friend,
                                                           Erik

[FINIS.]

Letter from Clapham: Erik Donald France to Wallace Fowlie, July 10, 1991 (Part IV)

[Though earlier I'd donated to Duke letters from Wallace Fowlie (1908-1998) to me, more recently, in sorting through my files, I came across photocopies of at least some of the letters I wrote to him. Here's Part IV of a long one I wrote in longhand from Clapham, London, dated July 10, 1991. Ellipses indicate slight editing (deletion of a few personal details). Extra paragraph breaks added for easier reading. For his other letters, please see Wallace Fowlie Papers, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University. Here's a link to the collection guide.]

Other bands Rimbaud has influenced --we've talked about Patti Smith, and of course the Doors and Bob Dylan; probably the Velvet Underground, certainly [John Cale and] Lou Reed; indirectly, David Bowie and Iggy Pop. A Dead Kennedys book has a direct quotation from Nietzsche, but not Rimbaud.

There is a current band, which I expect has been influenced so, and that's Siouxsie and the Banshees. I was able to see them here, and was most impressed. This is an understatement. I was "blown away" by their performance. I saw them at the Town & Country, a rock club in an old theatre about the size of Memorial Hall at UNC [Chapel Hill], but with much better fittings and services -- in Kentish Town.

What blew me away was the continuous, relentless precision, the brilliant, glittering originality and dedicated studiousness of their performance, without the usual rock star egos and accompanying sexual flaunting: here is a band that is serious, philosophical, visionary, hardworking, and continuing. They have an almost decadent lustre, a smoky, intelligent lyrical style, and the right attitude toward themselves & toward their audience.

As the show progressed, I drew down from my balcony perch into the swirling mass beneath the stage, drawn by the energy of the band's delivery, the strange textures which included a cowbell and cello, strong guitars, drums and percussion, played upon with collaborative light swaths, an enormous Tantric Hindu icon, a god and goddess in conjugal embrace. I can recall it clearly, feeling like a hoplite in the sixth rank of a phalanx, until pressing & pressed forward as the first rank seemed to fall away crushed between the crowd and the stage, scattering to the sides, filtering back through the crowd, as I sweated and danced like a Bachannal. I could almost feel the crowd's expatiated nihilism forced upwards into a smoking overhead dome as Siouxsie sang Cassandra-like the words to "Cities in Dust," the imagery shimmering like an opium vision --

"Your city lies in dust, my friend
. . . All our cities will rise in dust . . ."

It was indeed a dithyrambic performance, Siouxsie & the Banshees playing the role of urban shaman, forcing the hollowness out of the spectators until they, we, became the performance & the dance. Long afterwards, I felt the afterglow of the experience. I still do. It was rock at its richest, and I feel in a position to judge, after experiencing a strange variety of different performances in a short time.

I feel certain that Siouxsie & the Banshees, besides maintaining a vital thread in rock music, have been and are guided by nineteenth century impulses like French symbolism and twentieth century movements such as the Surrealists, but I have no lyric sheets in hand and no cultural reviews to back me. I think that what has kept them on track is their only modest success; they are too strange, apparently, for mass popularity, unlike the Doors, who despite their strangeness, managed to be too successful in too short a time, which drew Jim Morrison onto the rocks. (I wonder what he would have been doing if he had gotten through that time. Poetry & pictures, or exile to remote places. . .)     

[The experience strongly persists in memory, somehow floating outside of linear time. "Esta es musica / Del otro mundo" = This is music from the other world," -- "El Día de Los Muertos," part of the first encore, after "Trust in Me." 

The night's performance ended with "Cities in Dust." 

Siouxise earlier joked before starting "Dear Prudence," after "Fear of the Unknown:" "Doesn't it make you sick?" 

"Kiss Them for Me" and "Peek-a-Boo" were real cool times, too.

The Town & Country had a capacity of about 2,100. It's now the O₂ Forum Kentish Town, with added capacity.] 

Erik Donald France to Wallace Fowlie, January 4, 1989

[Though earlier I'd donated to Duke letters from Wallace Fowlie (1908-1998) to me, more recently, in sorting through my files, I came across photocopies of at least some of the letters I wrote to him. Here's another one of them, from when I lived near Little River Church Road in Hurdle Mills, North Carolina. Ellipses indicate slight editing (deletion of a few personal details). For his other letters, please see Wallace Fowlie Papers, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University. Here's a link to the collection guide.]

                                                      Hurdle Mills, NC
                                                      January 4th, 1989

Dear Wallace,

. . . Happy New Year's to you -- I hope you've had a pleasant holiday. How did your lecture on Marcel Proust go? Was Roger Shattuck there? I wish I could have been a fly on the wall. I read the C.K. Scott Moncrieff translation [of] Swann's Way and the first part of Within a Budding Grove. Before I proceed on this course, do you think it's disastrous? Is there another translation you prefer? I can tell you I've gotten much out of Moncrieff. I wish I could tackle the original -- someday I will, in another life perhaps. I'm much taken by the descriptions of the streets of Paris, just the little incidents. They bring back memories of Balzac. The Paris I saw was very different, modern. Proust's is so nineteenth century, before the 1914 war.

Did Germaine Brée talk at Birmingham? I learned a lot from Twentieth-Century French Literature.

I love Paris, can't not think about it. I love reading descriptions and passages about [the city]. 

I finished reading, a couple of weeks ago and on your recommendation, a Henry Miller book. Tropic of Cancer. A thoroughly enjoyable book! To think that it was held back from American publication for thirty years. it's difficult to imagine now. I'm getting ready to dive into Black Spring. Do you think that's the one to read next? I picked up a copy at the Gothic.

I want to absorb everything quickly, but there's work and my library classes. . . There's so much to do. I don't like working for other people at all. My family, my friends, yes, and for myself. Everything else is a farce. (Isn't that Rimbaud?) Or Voltaire: "Men judge everything without knowing anything." That's me.

What are you up to? How is your fourth memoir coming? Are you teaching this semester? I have been tracking you in newspapers and flyers as you teach Proust, appear in an October R & R Weekly, give lectures on Dante. I can't guess your next move. Are you still giving French lessons?

Please find enclosed "Rimbaud" by Jack Kerouac, which I promised you some time ago. I should have sent it to you sooner. I found it in Scattered Poems (City Lights, 1971), comp. by Ann Charters. I was lucky enough to hear a tape of Kerouac and can now answer your question about his accent -- definitely not French. New England and New York, not French or Quebec. He did speak and read it, and felt devotion to his French Catholic background. I like him. 

I include also a little thing, a feuilleton written in 1986 and included in the little review Dog Food from that fall. I think you will understand why I sent it. Please give me your honest opinion as to what you think.

Have you been able to work any more on that Rimbuad-rock thesis? There are references and groups that I've come across and I will piece them together when I have some spare time. . .

What was that French compilation of Jim Morrison's poems you mentioned? I couldn't find it anywhere. 

By the way, did you see Bob Dylan when he came to Chapel Hill? I saw him, and I saw Iggy Pop in Charlotte. Iggy is a type of Rimbaud, a fan of Morrison and a wild performer in his own right!

                                            Warmly Yours,
                                             Erik France

P.S. Do you know of any 75th Anniv. translations of Alcools? I can't get enough of "Zone."

     

ZONE (Apollinaire, 1913)

À la fin tu es las de ce monde ancien

Bergère ô tour Eiffel le troupeau des ponts bêle ce matin

Tu en as assez de vivre dans l’antiquité grecque et romaine

Ici même les automobiles ont l’air d’être anciennes
La religion seule est restée toute neuve la religion
Est restée simple comme les hangars de Port-Aviation

Seul en Europe tu n’es pas antique ô Christianisme
L’Européen le plus moderne c’est vous Pape Pie X
Et toi que les fenêtres observent la honte te retient
D’entrer dans une église et de t’y confesser ce matin
Tu lis les prospectus les catalogues les affiches qui chantent tout haut

Voilà la poésie ce matin et pour la prose il y a les journaux
Il y a les livraisons à 25 centimes pleines d’aventures policières
Portraits des grands hommes et mille titres divers

J’ai vu ce matin une jolie rue dont j’ai oublié le nom
Neuve et propre du soleil elle était le clairon
Les directeurs les ouvriers et les belles sténo-dactylographes
Du lundi matin au samedi soir quatre fois par jour y passent
Le matin par trois fois la sirène y gémit
Une cloche rageuse y aboie vers midi
Les inscriptions des enseignes et des murailles
Les plaques les avis à la façon des perroquets criaillent
J’aime la grâce de cette rue industrielle
Située à Paris entre la rue Aumont-Thiéville et l’avenue des Ternes

Voilà la jeune rue et tu n’es encore qu’un petit enfant
Ta mère ne t’habille que de bleu et de blanc
Tu es très pieux et avec le plus ancien de tes camarades René Dalize
Vous n’aimez rien tant que les pompes de l’Église
Il est neuf heures le gaz est baissé tout bleu vous sortez du dortoir en cachette

Vous priez toute la nuit dans la chapelle du collège
Tandis qu’éternelle et adorable profondeur améthyste
Tourne à jamais la flamboyante gloire du Christ
C’est le beau lys que tous nous cultivons
C’est la torche aux cheveux roux que n’éteint pas le vent
C’est le fils pâle et vermeil de la douloureuse mère
C’est l’arbre toujours touffu de toutes les prières
C’est la double potence de l’honneur et de l’éternité
C’est l’étoile à six branches
C’est Dieu qui meurt le vendredi et ressuscite le dimanche
C’est le Christ qui monte au ciel mieux que les aviateurs
Il détient le record du monde pour la hauteur
Pupille Christ de l’œil
Vingtième pupille des siècles il sait y faire
Et changé en oiseau ce siècle comme Jésus monte dans l’air
Les diables dans les abîmes lèvent la tête pour le regarder
Ils disent qu’il imite Simon Mage en Judée
Ils crient s’il sait voler qu’on l’appelle voleur
Les anges voltigent autour du joli voltigeur
Icare Enoch Elie Apollonius de Thyane
Flottent autour du premier aéroplane
Ils s’écartent parfois pour laisser passer ceux que transporte la Sainte-Eucharistie

Ces prêtres qui montent éternellement en élevant l’hostie
L’avion se pose enfin sans refermer les ailes
Le ciel s’emplit alors de millions d’hirondelles
À tire-d’aile viennent les corbeaux les faucons les hiboux
D’Afrique arrivent les ibis les flamands les marabouts
L’oiseau Roc célébré par les conteurs et les poètes
Plane tenant dans les serres le crâne d’Adam la première tête
L’aigle fond de l’horizon en poussant un grand cri
Et d’Amérique vient le petit colibri
De Chine sont venus les pihis longs et souples
Qui n’ont qu’une seule aile et qui volent par couples
Puis voici la colombe esprit immaculé
Qu’escortent l’oiseau-lyre et le paon ocellé
Le phénix ce bûcher qui soi-même s’engendre
Un instant voile tout de son ardente cendre
Les sirènes laissant les périlleux détroits
Arrivent en chantant bellement toutes trois
Et tous aigle phénix et pihis de la Chine
Fraternisent avec la volante machine

Maintenant tu marches dans Paris tout seul parmi la foule

Des troupeaux d’autobus mugissants près de toi roulent
L’angoisse de l’amour te serre le gosier
Comme si tu ne devais jamais plus être aimé
Si tu vivais dans l’ancien temps tu entrerais dans un monastère
Vous avez honte quand vous vous surprenez à dire une prière
Tu te moques de toi et comme le feu de l’Enfer ton rire pétille
Les étincelles de ton rire dorent le fonds de ta vie
C’est un tableau pendu dans un sombre musée
Et quelquefois tu vas la regarder de près

Aujourd’hui tu marches dans Paris les femmes sont ensanglantées
C’était et je voudrais ne pas m’en souvenir c’était au déclin de la beauté

Entourée de flammes ferventes Notre-Dame m’a regardé à Chartres
Le sang de votre Sacré-Cœur m’a inondé à Montmartre
Je suis malade d’ouïr les paroles bienheureuses
L’amour dont je souffre est une maladie honteuse
Et l’image qui te possède te fait survivre dans l’insomnie et dans l’angoisse

C’est toujours près de toi cette image qui passe

Maintenant tu es au bord de la Méditerranée
Sous les citronniers qui sont en fleur toute l’année
Avec tes amis tu te promènes en barque
L’un est Nissard il y a un Mentonasque et deux Turbiasques
Nous regardons avec effroi les poulpes des profondeurs
Et parmi les algues nagent les poissons images du Sauveur

Tu es dans le jardin d’une auberge aux environs de Prague
Tu te sens tout heureux une rose est sur la table
Et tu observes au lieu d’écrire ton conte en prose
La cétoine qui dort dans le cœur de la rose

Épouvanté tu te vois dessiné dans les agates de Saint-Vit
Tu étais triste à mourir le jour où tu t’y vis
Tu ressembles au Lazare affolé par le jour
Les aiguilles de l’horloge du quartier juif vont à rebours
Et tu recules aussi dans ta vie lentement
En montant au Hradchin et le soir en écoutant
Dans les tavernes chanter des chansons tchèques

Te voici à Marseille au milieu des pastèques

Te voici à Coblence à l’hôtel du Géant

Te voici à Rome assis sous un néflier du Japon

Te voici à Amsterdam avec une jeune fille que tu trouves belle et qui est laide
Elle doit se marier avec un étudiant de Leyde
On y loue des chambres en latin Cubicula locanda
Je m’en souviens j’y ai passé trois jours et autant à Gouda

Tu es à Paris chez le juge d’instruction
Comme un criminel on te met en état d’arrestation
Tu as fait de douloureux et de joyeux voyages
Avant de t’apercevoir du mensonge et de l’âge
Tu as souffert de l’amour à vingt et à trente ans
J’ai vécu comme un fou et j’ai perdu mon temps
Tu n’oses plus regarder tes mains et à tous moments je voudrais sangloter
Sur toi sur celle que j’aime sur tout ce qui t’a épouvanté

Tu regardes les yeux pleins de larmes ces pauvres émigrants

Ils croient en Dieu ils prient les femmes allaitent des enfants
Ils emplissent de leur odeur le hall de la gare Saint-Lazare
Ils ont foi dans leur étoile comme les rois-mages
Ils espèrent gagner de l’argent dans l’Argentine
Et revenir dans leur pays après avoir fait fortune
Une famille transporte un édredon rouge comme vous transportez votre cœur
Cet édredon et nos rêves sont aussi irréels
Quelques-uns de ces émigrants restent ici et se logent
Rue des Rosiers ou rue des Écouffes dans des bouges
Je les ai vus souvent le soir ils prennent l’air dans la rue
Et se déplacent rarement comme les pièces aux échecs
Il y a surtout des Juifs leurs femmes portent perruque
Elles restent assises exsangues au fond des boutiques

Tu es debout devant devant le zinc d’un bar crapuleux
Tu prends un café à deux sous parmi les malheureux

Tu es la nuit dans un grand restaurant

Ces femmes ne sont pas méchantes elles ont des soucis cependant
Toutes même la plus laide a fait souffrir son amant
Elle est la fille d’un sergent de ville de Jersey

Ses mains que je n’avais pas vues sont dures et gercées

J’ai une pitié immense pour les coutures de son ventre

J’humilie maintenant à une pauvre fille au rire horrible ma bouche

Tu es seul le matin va venir
Les laitiers font tinter leurs bidons dans les rues

La nuit s’éloigne ainsi qu’une belle Métive
C’est Ferdine la fausse ou Léa l’attentive

Et tu bois cet alcool brûlant comme ta vie
Ta vie que tu bois comme une eau-de-vie

Tu marches vers Auteuil tu veux aller chez toi à pied
Dormir parmi tes fétiches d’Océanie et de Guinée
Ils sont des Christ d’une autre forme et d’une autre croyance
Ce sont les Christ inférieurs des obscures espérances

Adieu Adieu

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