Les lettres, Monsieur – A Pierre Michon Thread

Fizzles wrote this on thread And The Snow Fell Softly On ILB: What Are You Reading Now Winter 2017/18 on board I Love Books on 26-Dec-2017

Michon's Winter Mythologies are good so far. They're very short so you want to savour each one. They're also opaque in meaning, so you want to reflect on each one. The first three were commissioned by The Alliance Française of Ireland, and describe brief anecdotal or sacred moments in the early Irish engagement with Christianity. They're also attempts on the part of the people they describe to understand where Grace resides. Patrick, not yet saint, archbishop of Armagh, 'the founder', converts many of the tribal kings with simple 'conjuring tricks' and a well-rehearsed patter:

And perhaps because he is growing old, and his ardor and his malice are becoming blunted, Patrick regrets this facility as he walks along this road. He would like a real miracle to occur, just once, and for once in his lifetime, matter in all its opacity to be converted to Grace before his eyes.

These short texts mix the style of the fable - precise language in short sentences - and mystical texts, in that they stop short of complete meaning, leaving understand and meaning just out of reach. That seems appropriate to the matter of an early uncertain engagement with Christianity. These are not btw Christian apologetics or anything like them. Michon is cynical within the mysticism. His concern is with the *pagans*, and the uncertainty of the Christians, the He manages to 'cinvert' precise detail (I was going to say realism, but it's not that, not really) into intimations of Grace (to rephrase Patrick's desire).

I was reminded of the Kierkegaard line: Mysticism has not the patience to wait for God's revelation. It seems pertinent to each of the three stories, but they *are* patient and precise in their execution. Very good. Moving on to the Vendée stories now.

xyzzzz__ wrote this on thread "And sport no more seen / On the darkening green" -- What are you reading SPRING 2020? on board I Love Books on 18-Jun-2020

Pierre Michon - Masters and Servants

As for Michon I really liked it, as I love almost anything by him (one of my favourite discoveries in the last couple of years). His pieces are these fake autobiographical tales, re-tellings (a lot of them in this volume are to do with painters like Goya, or Vasari -- someone who did not succeed as an artist) that allow for a set of thought-flights. Just finished an hour ago, the three books I have read need a week's worth of re-reading and more of a think. I love the writing, but find I do wonder what he is driving at.

I do wonder what he is driving at might also have been a thread title.

Fizzles wrote this on thread Poetry uncovered, Fiction you never saw, All new writing delivered, Courtesy WINTER: 2019/2020 reading thread on board I Love Books on 22-Mar-2020

(On Wolf Hall)

...this paragraph is utterly wonderful, the very best writing and almost a poem in itself:

There was a moment when Anne gave him all her attention: her skewering dark glance. The king, too, knows how to look; blue eyes, their mildness deceptive. Is this how they look at each other? Or in some other way? For a second he understands it; then he doesn’t. He stands by a window. A flock of starlings settles among the tight blackbuds of a bare tree. Then, like black buds unfolding, they open their wings; they flutter and sing, stirring everything into motion, air, wings, black notes in music. He becomes aware that he is watching them with pleasure: that something almost extinct, some small gesture towards the future, is ready to welcome the spring; in some spare, desperate way, he is looking forward to Easter, the end of Lenten fasting, the end of penitence. There is a world beyond this black world. There is a world of the possible. A world where Anne can be queen is a world where Cromwell can be Cromwell. He sees it; then he doesn’t. The moment is fleeting. But insight cannot be taken back. You cannot return to the moment you were in before.

a paragraph of pairs - anne and henry, now and just then, now and beyond. it starts with a single quite powerful observation - how do two people you know who are intimate look at each other? he sees it momentarily, instinctively, which note is then sounded at the end again. in between those two notes, the paragraph breaks out through the flocking starlings, into the future, into prescience and the beyond, before returning to that single contemplate note, but not in the same place where you started – reflecting the meaning of the paragraph.

it reminded me of a paragraph i've read a number of times - i'll quote it in the excellent translation's english, but it's really in the french that it comes alive, so i'll quote that after, and I'll also give it the context of the para before:

I
It is to some secondhand chronicles, to the General Statistics of the Vendée published in Fontenay-le-Comte in 1844, and to a belated happenstance in my own life that I owe the tale I am about to relate.

It is the year 976. Ancient Gaul is a hotchpotch of names bolted to lands, which are themselves names: Normandy belongs to Guillaume, Guillaume Long-Sword; Poitou belongs to Guillaume, Guillaume Towhead; France belongs to Eudes, duke of France; the crown, that trinket, belongs to Lothaire, the king, which is to say squire of Beauvais and Laon. For Anjou and the Marches it's Robert the Calf and Hugues the Abbot. Alain of the Twisted Beard controls Brittany. And the diocese of Limoges is in the hands and under the miter of Èble, brother of Guillaume, not the Long-Sword, but the fair-haired, frizzled Towhead. The towhead has two characteristics: it is too fair and too full; it blazes up in an instant. Guillaume is too fair and his anger gallops like fire. Èble has his brother's towhead but without the tow's two qualities: beneath the miter of the one and the helmet of the other you can see the same hirsute swirl of frosted locks, the same frothing fuzz, the same crushed straw with short curls, but on Èbles head the tow does not catch fire at the least impediment; on Guillaume's head it does.

Whether Èble's towhead might blaze for other reasons, this tale will tell.

I think it's the pace at which it moves from the dry context and that brief 'It is the year 976' and then it just explodes through a family tree that circles and repeats until it catches ablaze through its fantastical names and images. look how Michon gets from 'It is the year 976' to 'Whether Èble's towhead might blaze for other reasons, this tale will tell', and look at the manner in which he gets there - an exuberant chronicle, completely showing off.

The reason it's worth quoting the French is that what is added to the mix is a beautiful poetic economy and rhythm, almost lyrical. I also struggle with the word 'towhead' and while it's quite clear that's pretty much the only translation, its absence in the original is welcome. I should add before I quote that my french is execrable, and i had to pore over this with a dictionary in hand *and* the translation above to get anywhere. it is written in the literary historical tense, which is not spoken, which i imagine gives it a certain flavour all to itself. I have not got to the bottom of 'Je tiens', with which every one of the stories in Abées starts - I am holding, yes, but is this rather in the meaning we might (at a push) say 'It is held that...' etc? Not sure. For those of you whose French is even worse than mine, I think you get a perfectly decent impression of the poetic lyricism and concision by seeing the rhythm of the punctuation and the comparatively few words between the punctuation and the names, the balance of the clauses:

Je tiens de chroniques de seconde main, de la Statistique générale de la Vendée imprimée à Fontenay-le-Comte en 1844, et d'un hasard tardif de ma propre vie, le récit que je m'apprête à raconter.
L'an 976. Le vieille Gaule est un fatras de noms enclavés à des terres, qui sont elles-mêmes des noms: La Normandie est à Guillaume, Guillaume Longue-épée; le Poitou est à Guillaume, Guillaume Tête d'étoupe; la France est à Eudes, duc de France; la couronne, le colifichet, est à Lothaire, roi, c'est-à-dire sieur de Beauvais et da Laon. Sur L'Anjou, sur la Marche, c'est Robert le Veau et Hugues l'Abbé. Alain à la Barbe torte tient la Bretagne. Et l'évêché de Limoges est entre les main et sous la mitre d'Èble, frère de Guillaume, non pas la Longue-épée, mais le frisé, le blond, la Tête d'étoupe. L'étoupe a deux qualités: elle est trop blonde et volumineuse, elle flambe d'un seul coup. Guillaume est trop blond et sa colère galope comme le feu. De son frère, Èble a bien la tete d'étoupe: sous la mitre de l'un comme sous le casque de l'autre on voit le meme tourbillon hirsute de poils gelés, la mousse crêpelée, la paille concassée à boucles brèves; mais sur la tête d'Èble l'étoupe ne prend pas feu à la moindre contrariété; sur celle de Guillaume, si.

Que l'étoupe d'Èble s'enflamme peut-être pour d'autres causes, le récit le dira.

Three examples - I think all in a sense to do with positioning and balance:

'Sur L'Anjou, sur la Marche' - the gliding, rather full 'L'Anjou' followed by the strict iambic taps and heavy final word of 'sur la Marche' - it creates real momentum for the next roll of names, it's a delight to say, to read.

Same trick, extended, here, after a rather prosaic section starting 'Et l'évêché de Limoges'...

'frère de Guillaume, non pas la Longue-épée, mais le frisé, le blond, la Tête d'étoupe' <- after the 'frère', a long-ish clause, then the sharp short clauses, then the final rat-tat-tat emphasising the key image of 'la Tête d'étoupe', and look at the almost palindromic sounds in that phrase.

and immediately after the analytic, forensic: 'L'étoupe a deus qualities' - needs to be said I think with that lovely and slightly airy precision 'kali'tay' (sorry for the barbarous phonetics).

So, yes, add to the wonder present in the english translation, the cadences of the original french.

anyway both paras seem to fill you up and then deposit you back down, ready to continue, but with very much more than you had before. both are fantastic pieces of writing.

and that completes the survey of existing ilx matter on michon.

in chapter 1 of The Eleven the narrator conjures the artist of Les Onze out of figments, first, in the introductory paragraphs, in the image of the crown-bearing page in Tiepolo's frescoes at the Kaisersaal in Würzburg. It is not quite as simple as that though:

He is there, so they say, and you can go and see him

or

So he is there as well, tradition has it that he is there, and that he is the page who bears the crown of the Holy Empire on a gold-tasseled cushion

or

This identification is most appealing, even it is only a fantasy: this page is a type, not a portrait.

and in a line that obliquely sums up Michon's approach to history:

c'est un page, c'est le page, c n'est personne - it is a page, it is the page, it is no one. such are the figures in Michon.

The narrator then finds him forty years later in 'almost as dubious a legend' among the witnesses of David's sketch of the Tennis Courth Oath:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tennis_Court_Oath_(David)#/media/File:Serment_du_Jeu_de_Paume_-_Jacques-Louis_David.jpg

There is another supposed portrait of him aged and ravaged by time and vice

A 'handsome indubitable portrait' 'was lost during the Terror'.

Between the Holy Empire's page and the raging oblique old man, we possess nothing that resembles him

A late portrait of him attributed to Vivant Denon is a fake.

And that is all for appearance – for the posterity of appearance. It is little, and it is enough.

In those words 'for appearance – for the posterity of appearance' is an entire method of Michon's, which we see in his Nine Passages on the Causses.

How stories are handed down, created, forged, recovered, and create real meaning and tangible impact on the land and lives as they go through this process.

The posterity of appearance... 'It is little, and it is enough' - 'ce peut, et cela suffit bien'.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/87/Serment_du_Jeu_de_Paume_-_Jacques-Louis_David.jpg

Michon's paragraphs swirl up in lists, descriptions, inventories, explanations, arguments, a congeries of associated matter, and then come back down to single sentences. The effect is very appealing.

oh that sounds very very in my zone.

Thanks v much for this thread! I read Small Lives last week and it blew me away, and also turned out to be a singular reading experience, because I slowly realized that the familiar place names were not a coincidence, and the whole book is set within a few miles of where my parents live, in small villages that I've been going to for over 30 years.

How stories are handed down, created, forged, recovered, and create real meaning and tangible impact on the land and lives as they go through this process.

I really need to read Les Onze. That opening quote in the OP is splendid.
I have excellent memories from Vies Minuscules, while I don't remember much from Rimbaud le Fils (though I read that in a plane, not the best).

This reminds me to add some more notes from Les Onze. It's a very curious book, not as strong as any of the others of his that I've read, but with an odd force and bravura to it. Creating entire histories is of course what fiction, or more emphatically what the novel does, and this is a very potent example of it... an entire reality, modulated and shaped by what Michon perceives to be the forces - not mystical or magical forces as such, but a mixture of aesthetic and hereditary and commercial influences operating in tectonic ways that have the equivalent force and mystery of the mystical or magical.

more long posts. sorry.

Was lending Les Onze out and although I've forgotten a lot of the notes I wanted to put down, there were a couple of things I just wanted to put a pin in here.

There's a curious force at play, to which Michon... or the curious, garrulous narrator, whose agenda is never quite clear... only refers twice to my recollection. It's first captured near the beginning, where Michon is assembling the painter Corontin out of fragments, glimpses in artworks, moments in history. He's caught him initially in the frescos of Tiepolo (the 'magician' Tiepolo) at Würzburg, 'brought over' from Venice in Tiepolo's 'great Mozartian cloak' to appear as a pageboy in the wedding procession of Frederick Barbarossa.

The narrator:

But time is pressing me to rejoin the other, the grim, ageless man who resembles the cobbler Simon – so I will not listen to those Germanic sirens; nor the others, the more tuneful, higher, Venetian ones, the siren Venice herself who in 1750 was like that beautiful young girl our grandmothers spoke of, whom they all had known, who was here below like an apparition of new, insatiable joy,, who had danced all night, who danced on, and who in the morning, having drunk in one draft a tall glass of cold water, had fallen dead. No, no Venice, no young women, no romance; because all that, youth fairness, wine of magic, Mozartian cloak, Giambattista Tiepolo the father with his four continents under the cloak, all those moving, living forms mean nothing more than this, tossed out to end up in a painting that repudiates them, exalts them, bludgeons them, weeps for that devastation and inordinately delights in it, eleven times, through eleven stations of the flesh, eleven stations of wool, silk, felt, elevent forms of men; all that makes sense and is spelled out clearly only in the page of darkness, The Eleven

You certainly want that last bit in the original French:

... onze fois, à travers onze stations de chair, onze stations de drap, de soie, de feutre, onze formes d'hommes; tout cela ne prend sense et n'est écrit en clair que dans la page de ténèbres, Les Onze

What are these sirens though? What's going on here? Michon analyses the mechanisms of my which history is transferred, how it's paid for, how it's transacted, and how art is part of that transaction. Although Michon has plucked Corontin out of a moment in history, in art history, he, or the slightly feverish narrator, throws up their hands to block out the romantic, or the nostalgic perhaps. This is done to reassert the belligerent and matter-of-fact, 'incontrovertible' (as Michon says) reality of the painting, Les Onze, a full stop to this book, the only thing that truly coheres the event in this narrative.

Those grandmothers telling those stories about the young woman that died after dancing all night... In Vies Miniscules the stories that wrap around objects and people, that are passed down as an inheritance, have complex influence. In Nine Passages on the Causses (see above itt), where monastic chicanery, local power politics, and the guesses of scribes create stories that are passed on and down through history, mutating at the service of the tellers and the listeners, yet always retaining something resistant to that service, that mutation.

Later, detailing the family background of the painter Corentin, in the Loire valley, these forces appear again.

I wonder, Sir, if it is really useful to tell you all this, these family histories and these noble ancestries, so prized by our era; if it is necessary to go back so far, to these pale existences that are only hearsay after all, hypothetical causes, when for two hundred years, before our eyes, we have had the indubitable existence of _The Eleven_, that definite block of existence, irrefutable, unchanging, the solid effect that does perfectly well without causes and that would do perfectly well, too, without my commentary. They are sirens, still singing in Combleux on that Loire shore in the flights of herons, as they sang in Venice and Würzburg, only more mezza voce, the role of the maestro no longer played by Tiepolo, with his spirits of the air, but by a savage old man with his battalions of Limousin Calibans. They call to us with all their might, mezza voce. They circle over the river, over the dredgers' pulley, and we stay there, heads raised, listening to their circular song as if it were the inextricable story of the world itself that they were revealing to us. They beat the Loire sands, they tell stories as naturally as washerwomen beat their laundry, they trace signs in the air, let them drop to the water and relaunch them, and that great meaningful gesture they make suddenly with the flight of a gray heron skimming over the reeds, can you read it? These sirens prefer signs in the air to the tangible stretchers and tangible painted surface, four by three meters, called The Eleven. They want to prevent me from speaking of The Eleven, they turn my ear toward the din of their washing, the old clothes of two poor dead girls that they beat in the Loire like washerwomen beat their sheets. Ah Sir, you have to be clever to resist them. Because they tell stories, Sir, and so do we.

(I wish I had chosen 'Because they tell stories, Sir, and so do we' as the tag line for this thread). Again, I'm curious about this anti-historical, seductive force and its power in Michon's writing. It almost feels like, although immanent in the Loire landscape, it is in fact a force with which Michon battles in his writing. He truffles out, and is ruthless towards, the elements that make intellectual history and spiritual experience *tangible*. Of course, those elements in themselves have a paradoxical ontology, or to put it another way, 'they tell stories, Sir, and so do we'.

The second element I wanted to capture and put a pin in, before I relinquish the book temporarily, was the question of negritude. Of course, negritude as a concept, as an intellectual movement, is highly significant in French cultural history. Here Michon uses it as a concept to capture the experience of Limousin labour that landed Loire wealth used to dredge and fortify the river. This made me a bit jumpy when I was reading it, but I don't know enough about that period of French history, or this specific moment, to be able to say whether the application of negritude to Limousin labour is justified. My instinct says not – in fact I can't see how it could be unless they were actually black slaves – and I meant to return to it, although my limited googling didn't really find anything to support its use here.

Part of what he's doing, as with his _Abbés_ stories, is to show what comes out of hard labour transforming the land, of being knee deep in muck and sludge, and what comes out of that labour, how it turns into gold, into love and marriage, and envy, and art. The relation of clay to fire, a cthonic inheritance to history and culture; again, that *tangible* elemental force behind what we see in the Louvre behind the bulletproof glass. If his use of 'negritude' here is purely to form another version of things being spelled clearly only on 'the page of darkness' (and I don't say it is that, but I suppose it might be)... that I think that would be in poor taste and badly misjudged.

But as I say, there's very little to go off here, especially if you're as ignorant as I am about the detail, so I will hold my judgment until I can do a bit more reading.

Really enjoying The Eleven. Art making at a proximity to power.

It reminded me of Hermann Broch's 'The Death of Virgil' at times (both in subject and in the shape of much of the prose).