Signs and Designs: Art and Architecture in the Work of Michel Butor

Signs and Designs

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Signs and Designs Art and Architecture in the Work of Michel Butor A Retrospective

JEAN H. DUFFY

LIVERPOOL UNIVERSITY PRESS

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For Paul Marshall and Mary Duffy In Memory of Patrick Duffy

First published 2003 by Liverpool University Press 4 Cambridge Street Liverpool, L69 7ZU

Copyright © 2003 Jean H. Duffy The right of Jean H. Duffy to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A British Library CIP Record is available. ISBN 0-85323-778-6 cased 0-85323-788-3 paper

Set in Stone Serif and Sans by Koinonia, Manchester Printed in the European Union by Bell and Bain Ltd, Glasgow Bell and Bain Ltd, Glasgow

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Contents

Acknowledgments List of Illustrations

page vi vii

Introduction

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11 Unfulfilled, Incomplete and Indefinitely Deferred: Desire and Art in Butor and Duchamp

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12 High and Low Culture in L’Emploi du temps

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13 Art, Architecture and Catholicism in La Modification

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14 Illustration, Edification and Delusion in Degrés

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15 Beyond Words: Collage, Collaboration, Text and Image

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Conclusion

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Select Bibliography Index

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Acknowledgments

Part of Chapter 3 of this book originally appeared in The Modern Language Review. I should like to thank the editor, Professor Rachel Killick, and Maney Publishing for permission to re-use this material. I wish also to thank the British Academy and the University of Edinburgh for financial support which enabled me to carry out research in Paris. Thanks are also due to the following: the staff of the galleries and museums who supplied the reproductions that illustrate the text; the staff of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, the Centre Pompidou, the Ashmolean Library, the University of Edinburgh Library; Robin Bloxsidge, Andrew Kirk and the staff of Liverpool University Press. Once again, I should like to express my profound gratitude to my husband and my mother for their unstinting support and understanding.

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List of Illustrations Jean Duffy and Alastair Duncan

Marcel Duchamp, The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, page 19 Even (The Large Glass), 1915–23, oil and lead wire on glass (front view), Philadelphia Museum of Art, Bequest of Katherine S. Dreier, © Succession Marcel Duchamp/ ADAGP, Paris and Dacs, London, 2003; photo: © Graydon Wood, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1992 72 Jan van Eyck, The Arnolfini Portrait, 1434, oil on oak, National Gallery, London; photo: © National Gallery, London 75 Antoni Gaudí, The Expiatory Church of the Sagrada Familia, 1883–1926, Barcelona; photo: © G. P. Marshall 107 Pietro Cavallini, Apostles, detail from The Last Judgement, c.1295, fresco, Santa Cecilia in Trastevere, Rome; photo: © Bridgeman Art Library 111 Michelangelo Buonarroti, Moses, sculpture from the tomb of Pope Julius II, 1513–16, marble, San Pietro in Vincoli, Rome; photo: © Bridgeman Art Library 114 Michelangelo Buonarroti, The Last Judgement, 1536–41, fresco, Sistine Chapel, Vatican Museums and Galleries, Vatican City; photo: © Bridgeman Art Library 117 Michelangelo Buonarroti, Sistine Chapel ceiling: The Prophet Ezekiel, 1510, fresco (post-restoration), Vatican Museums and Galleries, Vatican City; photo: © Bridgeman Art Library 120 Michelangelo Buonarroti, Sistine Chapel ceiling: Cumaean Sibyl, 1510, fresco (post-restoration), Vatican Museums and Galleries, Vatican City; photo: © Bridgeman Art Library Giovanni Paulo Pannini, Galerie de vues de la Rome antique, 125 1759, oil on canvas; photo: © Réunion des musées nationaux

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List of Illustrations

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Giovanni Paulo Pannini, Galerie de vues de la Rome moderne, 1759, oil on canvas; photo: © Réunion des musées nationaux Giovanni Battista Piranesi, An Imaginary Prison, from the Carceri d’Invenzione series, 1745 and 1760 (etching), British Museum, London; photo: © Bridgeman Art Library Gianlorenzo Bernini, The Fountain of the Four Rivers, 1648–51 (granite, marble and travertine), Piazza Navona, Rome; photo: © Bridgeman Art Library Gianlorenzo Bernini, symbolic figure of the River Nile, from The Fountain of the Four Rivers, 1648–51, Piazza Navona, Rome; photo: © Bridgeman Art Library Claude Gellée (known as Le Lorrain), Vue du Campo Vaccino, 1630s, oil on canvas, Louvre, Paris; photo: © Réunion des musées nationaux Nicholas Poussin, L’Eté ou Ruth et Booz, 1660–64, oil on canvas, Louvre, Paris; photo: © Réunion des musées nationaux Claude Gellée (known as Le Lorrain), Port de Mer, soleil couchant, 1639, oil on canvas, Louvre, Paris; photo: © Réunion des musées nationaux Quentin Metsys or Massys, The Money-Lender and His Wife, 1514, oil on wood, Louvre, Paris; photo: © Réunion des musées nationaux Hagia Sophia, 532–537, Istanbul; photo: © G. P. Marshall Claude Gellée (known as Le Lorrain), Seaport with the Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba, 1648, oil on canvas, National Gallery, London; photo: © National Gallery, London Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin, Le Singe antiquaire, 1739, oil on canvas, Louvre, Paris; photo: © Réunion des musées nationaux Alexandre Gabriel Decamps, Le Singe peintre or Intérieur d’atelier, 1845, oil on canvas, Louvre, Paris; photo: © Réunion des musées nationaux

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Introduction

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Introduction

Michel Butor’s work has proved particularly resistant to classification. As he and his more astute critics have pointed out, Butor’s early links with the nouveau roman group were both short-lived and somewhat tenuous. Although he has always spoken with great warmth about and respect for the work of Claude Simon, Nathalie Sarraute, Alain RobbeGrillet, Robert Pinget and Claude Ollier, and although he has readily acknowledged the interests that he shared with them, Butor’s accounts of his relationship with the group stress his determination to avoid facile critical pigeon-holing and his early concerns about the restrictions which association with the nouveau roman might impose on his own output and development.1 Moreover, by the time of the publication of Mobile in 1962, Butor had apparently abandoned the novel form and embarked on a highly personal writing career that would take him in many different directions at once, would entail the simultaneous exploration of a wide range of genres, and would involve him in hundreds of collaborative ventures not only with other writers, but also with artists, photographers, composers and filmmakers. His exploration of issues relating to genre has resulted in the production of texts that combine fact and fiction, prose and poetry, words and images, and language and music. Although his ventures into electronic media have been hampered by practical and financial obstacles, he has, nevertheless, published a number of texts that were originally conceived as radio and film scenarios.2 1 See Santschi, Voyage avec Michel Butor, p. 39; Butor, Curriculum vitae, pp. 103–04; and Elaho, ‘Michel Butor’ in Entretiens avec le Nouveau Roman, pp. 14–16. See also Britton, The Nouveau Roman, pp. 36, 60–64, 100–01, 137. 2 For example, Réseau aérien and Intervalle. Réseau aérien was commissioned by the ORTF and performed on 16 June 1962, while Intervalle had its origins in an invitation to collaborate with the film director Robert Marzoyer. See Desoubeaux (ed.), Entretiens: quarante ans de vie littéraire, vol. I, pp. 197–98 and Butor, Curriculum vitae, p. 209.

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Butor has also been prolific. His creative prose works include his four novels (Passage de Milan, L’Emploi du temps, La Modification, Degrés); the five mixed genre works that are normally classified under the heading romanesques, which comprise Mobile, Réseau aérien, Description de San Marco, 6 810 000 litres d’eau par seconde, Intervalle; and the fivevolume ‘travel’ series published under the collective title Le Génie du lieu, the writing and publication of which have spanned his career (Le x Génie du lieu, Ou, Boomerang, Transit, Gyroscope). He has published numerous volumes of poetry, operas, one autobiographical text, and countless contributions to journals, catalogues, translations and editions. Particularly remarkable is the very considerable body of critical essays which he has published over the last half century. His critical work on literature includes the five volumes of assorted critical essays published under the collective title Répertoire, critical monographs on Montaigne, Flaubert, Baudelaire, Rimbaud and Michaux3 and a threevolume study on Balzac.4 Butor has also been a highly communicative interviewee. In addition to the various interviews given to critics and academics over the years, many of which have been collected in the three-volume set edited by Henri Desoubeaux in 1999,5 Butor has sanctioned the publication of several extended interview series given respectively to Georges Charbonnier, Madeleine Santschi, Michel Launay, Christian Jacomino, Andre Clavel, Béatrice Didier and Lucien Giraudo.6 Finally, Butor’s fascination for the visual arts and his highly varied and active contact with the art world has resulted in a quite remarkable range and volume of publications. Not only has he been a very prolific art critic; he has also collaborated with many contemporary artists in the production of limited edition livres d’artistes and textescollages. His critical writing testifies to a very broad range of personal artistic tastes. He has written numerous essays, articles and prefaces on 3 Butor, Improvisations sur Montaigne, Improvisations sur Flaubert, Improvisations sur Baudelaire, Improvisations sur Rimbaud and Improvisations sur Michaux. 4 Butor, Improvisations sur Balzac: vol. 1: Le Marchand et le génie; vol. II: Paris à vol d’archange; vol. III: Scènes de la vie féminine. 5 Desoubeaux (ed.), Entretiens: quarante ans de vie littéraire. 6 See Charbonnier, Entretiens avec Michel Butor; Santschi, Voyage avec Michel Butor; Santschi, Une schizophrénie active; Butor and Launay, Résistances, Butor, Frontières: entretiens avec Christian Jacomino; Butor, Curriculum vitae; Didier, Le Retour du boomerang; Giraudo, Pour tourner la page: magazine à deux voix. See also his published correspondence: Dotremont, Butor and Sicard, Cartes et lettres: correspondance 1966– 1979; Butor and Perros, Correspondance, 1955–1978; Jeannet and Butor, De la distance: déambulation.

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various painters and sculptors, including Holbein, Caravaggio, Hokusai, Monet, Picasso, Rothko, Hérold, Giacometti, Delacroix, Dürer, Dotrement and Parant.7 He has devoted an extended essay, Les Mots dans la peinture, and a substantial section of his autobiographical volume, Improvisations sur Michel Butor, to the relationship between word and image. He has co-authored volumes on the work of Piet Mondrian, Henri Maccheroni, Pierre Alechinsky and Christian Dotrement.8 His collaborative ventures include volumes published in conjunction with Pierre Alechinsky, Jir“í Kolár“, Alexander Calder, Camille Bryen, Jacques Hérold, Gregory Masurovsky, Bernard Dufour, Julius Baltazar, Ania Staritsky, Henri Maccheroni and Cesare Peverelli.9 Butor’s interest in art and architecture has also made a profound impact on his creative work. Each of his four novels draws heavily on his extensive art-historical knowledge for the creation of its fictional settings, the characterisation of the protagonists and the elaboration of the various text-specific networks of symbolic and metafictional motifs. Similarly, several of the romanesques offer ready evidence of the role of art and architecture as stimulus to production. Mobile was in part inspired by the sculptures of Calder and the paintings of Jackson Pollock, while, in Description de San Marco, St Mark’s Cathedral provides a site for the exploration of the relationships between the Byzantine and Venetian artistic traditions and between Judaism and Christianity. In L’Embarquement de la Reine de Saba, Butor animates or ‘actualises’ Claude Lorrain’s painting, while many of the texts of his various volumes of Illustrations are his response to the work of artists whom he admires or to exhibitions he has visited. Finally, art and architecture also figure prominently in each of the five volumes of Le Génie du lieu. The genius loci of a given site derives in large part from its artistic heritage: from the architecture, arts and crafts that have evolved there or that it has inspired in other cultural traditions. Not surprisingly Butor’s rich and diverse creative output has generated a rich and diverse range of critical responses. Butor has, on the whole, been extremely well-served by his critics and much of what follows in this study will be building on foundations that have been 7 See Butor, Répertoire, volumes III, IV, V. 8 Butor and Ottolenghi, Tout l’oeuvre peint de Mondrian; Butor and Sicard, Problèmes de l’art contemporain à partir des travaux d’Henri Maccheroni; Butor and Sicard, Alechinsky: frontières et bordures; Butor and Sicard, Alechinsky dans le texte; Butor and Sicard, ABC de correspondance; Butor and Sicard, Alechinsky: travaux d’impression. 9 See the bibliography for details of these collaborative ventures.

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laid by the numerous books, essays and articles that preceded it. The diversity of critical responses to Butor is, in part, explained by the very evident and undeniable referential and thematic dimensions of his fiction. While the prominence of linguistic association and ludic structures in the fiction of Alain Robbe-Grillet and Claude Simon offered Jean Ricardou a foothold for the development of his dogmatic formalist approach to nouveau roman techniques and procedures, the fact that Butor’s fiction lent itself to fairly ready naturalisation made it much more resistant to Ricardou’s theorisation. Consequently, the critical stranglehold that Ricardou was to maintain on nouveau roman criticism in the late 1960s and early 1970s scarcely affected Butor studies.10 The early general critical monographs on Butor’s work were of a high standard. Jean Roudaut’s 1964 study Michel Butor ou le livre futur consists of a brief summary of Butor’s aesthetic, a chapter-length study of Mobile that offers a useful analysis of its typographical deviations, and a much lengthier section devoted to the dominant themes of the fiction. Roudaut’s wide-ranging survey of Butor’s thematic repertoire and his correlation of examples and passages from different texts show an early grasp of some of the elements that were to ensure a degree of continuity within Butor’s diverse oeuvre. The ‘compendium’ format of Georges Raillard’s Michel Butor (1968) was, in part, determined by the series in which it figures. Beginning with a brief, telegraphically written portrait and a biographical table, it devotes the final hundred pages to summaries of Butor’s works, extracts from them, an interview and a detailed bibliography. Despite its somewhat piecemeal structure, the main section of the volume offers perceptive and coherent readings of each of Butor’s four novels, and brief but incisive commentaries on the work produced after Degrés. Indeed, Raillard’s measured and discerning criticism established a research agenda that was to inform the work of other critics for many years thereafter. Among the numerous issues that he raised, the following would attract particular attention: the relationship between Butor’s work and phenomenology; the didactic dimension of his fiction; his exploration of genre; the status and treatment of the United States in Mobile and other works; the role of visual and musical allusion. Lucien Dällenbach’s 1972 seminal study of mise en abyme in Butor, Le Livre et ses miroirs 10 See Britton, Claude Simon: Writing the Visible, pp. 8–9, The Nouveau Roman, pp. 189– 90, and Duncan, Claude Simon: Adventures in Words, pp. 30–31.

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dans l’oeuvre romanesque de Michel Butor, highlighted the often underresearched metafictional aspects of the novels and offered astute and persuasive interpretations of individual mises en abyme. By the 1970s, Butor’s work had attracted also a sizeable critical and academic audience abroad, in particular in the United States, Canada and Australia. Between 1970 and 1980, four major general critical studies were published in English: Michael C. Spencer, Michel Butor (1974); Jennifer R. Waelti-Walters, Michel Butor: A Study of his View of the World and a Panorama of his Work, 1954–1974 (1977); Dean McWilliams, The Narratives of Michel Butor: The Writer as Janus (1978); and Mary Lydon, Perpetuum Mobile: A Study of the Novels and Aesthetics of Michel Butor (1980). This ‘crop’ of monographs, written by scholars who had been largely responsible for the development of Butor studies outside Europe, laid the foundation stones for much of the future research in the field. Michael Spencer’s monograph offers an overview of Butor’s career from Passage de Milan (1954) to Intervalle (1973). The great strength of Spencer’s study lies in its combination of sharply focused analysis of textual detail with a grasp of the broader patterns within Butor’s diverse oeuvre: the recurrence of certain themes (decay, memory, loss of faith, exploitation, consumption); his attribution to literature of the dual function of denunciation and transformation of reality; the structural Utopianism of the oeuvre ouverte; the formal mobility of his texts; the prominence of intertextual allusion and citation. Waelti-Walters eschews the chronological approach in favour of a thematic structure that allows her to illustrate her central thesis that Butor’s work is ‘a systematic exploration of one man’s world in all its daily complexity, historic density and geographic possibility’ (p. ix). Of the early criticism, Waelti-Walters’s study shows the greatest awareness of the prominence of visual culture in Butor’s work: adopting the chapter headings devised by Butor for the special number of L’Arc which was devoted to him in 1969, she considers the roles played by arts and crafts, the site, the museum and the spectacle in his creative work (novels, autobiography, poetry, romanesques and travel writing) and in his criticism and aesthetics. This approach yields numerous, often unexpected insights into the relationships between individual works and genres, while the reproductions of various visual sources – for example, one of Butor’s own collages, a page from one of his collaborative hand-made books, bicentenaire kit and a game invented by Butor and Pousseur to accompany the recorded version of Votre Faust – constitute a very useful body of documentary evidence.

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In The Narratives of Michel Butor: The Writer as Janus, Dean McWilliams focuses on Butor’s ‘excavation’ of Western man’s collective past and argues persuasively that, despite the often grim perspectives which Butor’s work offers on human behaviour and, in particular, on European treatment of other nations, races and creeds, it is informed by a fundamental optimism about man’s capacity to learn from other epochs and other cultures. McWilliams’s evaluation of Butor’s Januslike aesthetic stance and his ‘dual commitment’ to both vigorous formal experimentation and engagement with social and cultural issues also offered a salutary warning against exclusively formalist approaches. Finally, Mary Lydon’s Perpetuum Mobile: A Study of the Novels and Aesthetics of Michel Butor offers a broadly based survey of Butor’s fiction, romanesques, autobiography and criticism. Lydon’s analysis of the relationship between Butor’s fiction and music, her exploration of the relationship between citation and authority, her examination of his experimentation with page layout in the romanesques, her correlation of his critical and creative writings, and the very wide range of her cultural references make for a lively and intellectually stimulating volume, which remains one of the best general studies of Butor’s work. Although Butor’s work has generated a substantial body of articles, essays and book chapters in the intervening years, there have been relatively few major general studies published on his work since 1980. Of these Else Jongeneel’s 1988 book is of particular note. Jongeneel’s highly cogent study – Michel Butor et le pacte romanesque: écriture et lecture dans ‘L’Emploi du temps’, ‘Degrés’, ‘Description de San Marco’ and ‘Intervalle’ – focuses on the evolution of the relationship between writing and reading in Butor’s oeuvre. Through close readings and scrupulous correlation of textual data, she demonstrates the way the ‘pacte romanesque’ evolves to give an increasingly prominent and important role to the reader who progresses from ‘gap-filler’, to coordinator of narrative fragments and, then, to co-author whose responsibility is to correct, revise and complete the data with which he or she is presented. Although a slim volume, Michael C. Spencer’s Site, citation et collaboration chez Michel Butor (1986) made a major contribution to the study of intertextuality in Butor’s ‘post-fictional’ work. Spencer identifies the principal intertextual sources of a selection of the prose works (both romanesques and travel-works) produced since the publication of Degrés, analyses the various functions of intertextual quotations within these works, and demonstrates the ways in which

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they have been integrated thematically, formally and typographically into Butor’s texts. In focusing on Le Génie du lieu, the Répertoire series and the Illustrations, Yéhuda Lancry’s Michel Butor ou la résistance (1994) acted as a useful reminder of the volume and range of Butor’s nonnovelistic work. As its title indicates, Lancry’s unashamedly partisan study examines the various manifestations in Butor’s work of the theme of resistance: resistance by the conquered through cultural ‘contamination’ of the conqueror; resistance to academic and critical rigidity and to the compartmentalisation of disciplines and genres; resistance of the natural world to human endeavours to control it physically or through symbolic means; resistance to institutionalised power in its multifarious forms; resistance (i.e. resilience) of the reader, for whom the reading of Butor’s text is inevitably, to some extent, an endurance test. In addition to these single-authored studies, special numbers of The Review of Contemporary Fiction and Romance Quarterly, both published in 1985, brought together contributions on a wide range of topics from some of the world’s foremost Butor scholars. Topics addressed in The Review of Contemporary Fiction include the following: the relationship between prose and poetry in Butor; the narrative structure of Intervalle; the train compartment as microcosm in La Modification; the treatment of the United States in Mobile; the role of collage in Illustrations IV; Baudelaire in L’Emploi du temps; the writer as Don Juan. The range covered by the Romance Quarterly number was equally wide: the dream sequence in La Modification; the myth of Osiris in Le Génie du lieu; the themes of motion, travel and ‘passages’ in Réseau aérien; 6 810 000 litres d’eau par seconde; intertextual and self-citation in Intervalle; the relationship between rage and creativity in L’Emploi du temps and Répertoire V; onomastic play in Boomerang; the figure of Don Juan; Butor’s aesthetics; the image of the city in Butor’s fiction; the representation of the United States. Recent collections of essays have focused on the theme of travel and, in particular, on Le Génie du lieu, the five-volume ‘travel’ series launched in 1958 and completed with the publication of Gyroscope in 1996. Butor aux quatre vents, edited by Lucien Dällenbach and published in 1997, combines general essays on the theme of travel by Jean Roudaut and Claudine Fabre-Cols with more precisely focused essays by Fawzia Assaad, Lois Oppenheim, Toru Shimizu, Jean-Charles Gateau and Dällenbach, each of which examines Butor’s perspective on a given country or continent: respectively, Egypt, America, Japan,

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Australia, China.11 Butor et L’Amérique, edited by Mireille Calle-Gruber and published in 1998, is an engaging collection of twenty-one essays and commentaries, which focus on aspects of Butor’s approach to and treatment of North America in Mobile, 6 810 000 litres d’eau par seconde, Le Génie du lieu and on his various collaborative ventures with, or influence on, Canadian artists.12 The diversity of these essays illustrates the complexity of Butor’s relationship with the North American continent and the multi-dimensional nature of his representations of it. Of particular note are Brian T. Fitch’s Bakhtinian analysis of Butor’s search for the exotic, Agnès Conacher’s examination of the theme of fear in Mobile, Françoise van Rossum-Guyon’s analysis of the Clifton’s Cafeteria sections of Mobile and Jacques La Mothe’s essay on bicentenaire kit.13 Butor’s own contribution to Butor et l’Amérique14 and the reproductions of collaborative work and visual works inspired by Butor’s writing make the volume a valuable documentary source. One of the most striking features of Butor criticism is the number of monographs devoted to single texts. La Modification, long considered to be Butor’s most accessible novel, was the first to be subjected to this sort of close and sustained textual analysis. Françoise van RossumGuyon’s 1970 monograph, Critique du roman: Essai sur ‘La Modification’ de Michel Butor, was the first of several studies devoted to Butor’s third novel. It was to be followed by Lois Oppenheim’s phenomenological study of 1980, my own 1990 monograph and Patricia Struebig’s analysis of mythological structures in the novel.15 At the time of its publication in 1970, Van Rossum-Guyon’s monograph was at the ‘cutting edge’ of criticism, applying as it did concepts from the recently ‘rediscovered’ 11 Roudaut, ‘“Mais je reviendrai…”’, pp. 99–117; Fabre-Cols, ‘Le Langage comme demeure’, pp. 117–98; Assaad, ‘Michel Butor l’Egyptien’, pp. 27–40; Oppenheim, ‘Vu(es) d’Amérique’, pp. 41–57; Shimizu, ‘Salutation à Flottements d’Est en Ouest’, pp. 67–60; Gateau, ‘Butor au miroir australien’, pp. 61–76; Dällenbach, ‘Le Penseur à Pékin’, pp. 77–98. 12 Butor and Bénic, Le Château d’Oeil, 1988; Desjardins, Trois versions de ‘Mobile’, 1987– 1992. 13 Fitch, ‘Le Voyage comme paradigme herméneutique. Exotisme butorien et exotopie bakhtinienne’, pp. 13–28; Conacher, ‘Mobile ou l’aventure inexplorée dans la nature de la peur’, pp. 81–92; van Rossum-Guyon, ‘Mobile mode d’emploi. Notes sur la Clifton’s Cafeteria’, pp. 103–14; La Mothe, ‘American Holiday: Jeux de sociétés’, pp. 115–26. 14 Butor, ‘Où les Amériques commencent à faire histoire’, pp. 249–60. 15 Oppenheim, Intentionality and Intersubjectivity; Duffy, Butor, La Modification; Struebig, La Structure mythique de ‘La Modification’ de Michel Butor.

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and ‘rehabilitated’ Russian Formalists and from contemporary theorists such as Todorov, Greimas, Genette, Barthes, Benveniste, Ricardou, Goldmann, Booth and Lodge. Thirty years later Critique du roman has become a classic of Butor studies and, indeed, of close reading in general. Rossum-Guyon’s examination of textual detail and of the microstructure of the novel – the role and treatment of proper names, the mises en abyme, the recurrent motifs, the promotion of the banal, the mechanisms governing the temporal jumps and spatial displacements – is penetrating and instructive, while her analysis of the novel’s superposition of layers of time, its exploitation of the centripetal and centrifugal forces of the fictional journey and Butor’s unorthodox use of narratorial perspective and voice remain even now the main critical points of reference in studies on temporal structure and narrative voice in La Modification. Lois Oppenheim’s Intentionality and Subjectivity: A Phenomenological Study of Butor’s ‘La Modification’ offers a sophisticated and rigorous reading of the novel that is grounded in Butor’s own insistence on the status of the genre as ‘le domaine phénoménologique par excellence’.16 Oppenheim rejects psychological perspectives that would focus on questions of motivation and interpersonal dynamics in favour of an interpretation that highlights Butor’s fascination for questions relating to perceptual experience. Here, key phenomenological concepts such as intentionality, reduction, thetic/non-thetic experience and intersubjectivity provide very useful tools in the examination of some of the text’s central preoccupations, notably geographic displacement and the representation of space; the perception of the object and the temporal constitution of the ‘Ego’. My own study of the text (1990) adopts a more eclectic methodological approach and draws both on Merleau-Ponty’s thinking on the question of ‘reduction’ and structualist models relating to the role of the cultural code in our perception and assimilation of the world. Particular attention is devoted to the following issues: the role played by cultural baggage in the decisionmaking process and its effects on the freedom and autonomy of the individual; the prominence and functions of micro-narratives within the text (intertexts, daydreams, dreams); the tension between the exposition of Léon’s personality flaws and his status as an everyman. Finally, Patricia Struebig’s 1994 volume, La Structure mythique de ‘La Modification’ de Michel Butor, adopts a structuralist mythocritical 16 Butor, ‘Le Roman comme recherche’, Répertoire, p. 8.

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approach, which has been derived primarily from Lévi-Strauss, but which also draws on the theories of Barthes, Todorov and Mircea Eliade. Struebig shows that La Modification shares a number of features with the récit mythique as defined by Lévi-Strauss – the theme of the quest, the ‘prise de conscience’, the resolution of oppositions, the magic object or talisman and the admission of an inadmissable truth – and argues that, partly by virtue of these features, La Modification has a universal didactic dimension which confers on it the status of contemporary myth.17 The year 1995 saw the publication of three very useful studies on the theme of the city in L’Emploi du temps.18 Mireille Calle-Gruber’s monograph La Ville dans l’Emploi du temps de Michel Butor first situates the novel in relation to his other works and to the general preoccupations of the nouveau roman, before going on to analyse in detail the text’s metropolitan themes: Bleston’s status as a modern Babel; exile, marginality and the outsider; metropolitan mythology; the ‘architecture’ of the book; sin and the city; and the Livre-Cathédrale. MarieClaire Kerbrat’s study examines a number of important Butorian issues, including the themes of exile and égarement, the metropolis and the detective novel, enchantment and exorcism, the mythical dimension of the city, and the city as text. The collective volume published by Ellipses and entitled Analyses et réflexions sur Michel Butor, L’Emploi du temps: la ville provides a wide range of perspectives on the novel. Although the contributions are generally very brief, many of them offer stimulating commentaries on a number of issues, including the relationship between time and narrative structure, the theme of exile, the role of Horace Buck, the text’s mythological and classical references, the New Cathedral, Revel’s ‘écriture palimpseste’, and the alchemical motif that runs through the novel, which also figures in many of Butor’s aesthetic statements. Of the various volumes devoted to Butor’s second novel, Pierre Brunel’s study L’Emploi du temps: le texte et le labyrinthe is the most substantial. Brunel examines the status of the image of the labyrinth as intertextual borrowing and as metaphor for the novel’s general structure. His inquiry begins with the microstructure of the text (the generative word, the sentence, anagrammatic play) and gradually 17 See also the following useful student guides: Lalande, Butor: La Modification, Quéréel, La Modification de Butor and Valette, Butor: La Modification. 18 See also Marion A. Grant’s useful early study, Butor: ‘L’Emploi du temps’ and Lucien Giraudo’s excellent student guide, L’Emploi du temps, Michel Butor.

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broadens to take in the various sign-systems of the fictional world of Bleston, the novel’s intertextual sources and allusions, its similarities with other genres, its exploitation of archetypal structures and its exploration of questions relating to space and time. His analysis of the various interpretative tools used by Revel to penetrate the codes of Bleston – city-maps, guidebooks, small ads., detective fiction, travelogues – highlights the semantic complexity of this apparently dull and dreary Northern English town. Of particular interest is his examination of the thematic and formal functions of the Harrey tapestries and the stained-glass windows of the Old Cathedral: here he reviews the various versions of the myths and Old Testament stories on which Butor draws, evaluates their respective contributions to the text and analyses the ways in which the classical and religious strands interweave and interact with each other. Waelti-Walters’s Alchimie et littérature: à propos de ‘Portrait de l’artiste en jeune singe’ is the most comprehensive and most illuminating study to date of Butor’s highly unorthodox and densely allusive ‘autobiography’. Although Waelti-Walters focuses much of her attention on the esoteric alchemical themes of the text,19 she offers also a very enlightening analysis of the relationship between the alternating ‘reality’ and ‘dream’ sequences. Her identification of the text’s ‘real’ sources – geographical locations; historical figures; intertexts; visual, plastic and architectural works – is particularly helpful, and her examination of the functions of the intertextual and visual references is scrupulously researched. It is clear from the preceding select survey of Butor criticism that the role of references to the visual arts and architecture has been a recurrent topic in many of the more general studies. It has also figured prominently in the many articles and essays devoted to his work. In addition to the very substantial corpus of criticism devoted to the tapestries, stained-glass windows and cathedrals of L’Emploi du temps,20 considerable critical interest has been generated by the various volumes of the Illustrations and by his collaborative ventures. F. C. St-Aubyn, Barbara Mason and Angus Inglis have all explored the relationship 19 For a survey of the secondary material relating to the themes of alchemy and initiation in Butor, see Mason, ‘La Critique et l’alchemie’. 20 See Spitzer, ‘Quelques aspects de la technique des romans de Michel Butor’; Grant, Butor: ‘L’Emploi du temps’; Spencer, ‘The Unfinished Cathedral: Michel Butor’s “L’Emploi du temps”’; Giraudo, L’Emploi du temps, Michel Butor, Brunel, Butor: L’Emploi du temps; Jongeneel, Michel Butor et le pacte romanesque.

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between text and image in the Illustrations,21 while Alba PellegrinoCeccarelli and Jacques La Mothe have devoted articles to the artistic collaborations.22 Lois Oppenheim’s and Léon Roudiez’s articles on L’Embarquement de la Reine de Saba have offered subtle readings of an otherwise neglected text, which has its origins in Claude Lorrain’s painting of the same title.23 However, the fullest analysis of the relationship between Butor’s work and the visual arts is undoubtedly Jacques La Mothe’s 1999 volume L’Architecture du rêve: la littérature et les arts dans ‘Matières de rêves’. This study focuses on the cycle of texts, Matières de rêves, which resulted from Butor’s collaboration with various artists (Kolár“, Delvaux and Alechinsky) and composers (Koering, Pousseur). As La Mothe points out, these texts are to be viewed not as the accounts of real dreams, but rather as an ‘ensemble de récits de rêves qui sont des réflexions sur le rêve comme forme travaillée, construite, élaborée dans un contexte post-freudien’ (p. 34). Detailed analysis of the various aspects of the cycle – the presence of intertexts and ‘autocitations’, the generative and formal roles played by pictorial sources, the role of serialisation, the play between dream and nightmare – provides the substance of La Mothe’s examination of both the macroand micro-structures of the ‘ensemble’, while the final chapter, which focuses on Quadruple fond, offers a comparative analysis of the relationship between the aesthetic principles and practice of Butor and those of the composer Henri Pousseur, with whom he collaborated on Votre Faust. Notwithstanding these often highly instructive and subtle commentaries on Butor’s visual sources and on his interaction with painters and graphic artists, the issue of the role of visual reference in Butor is far from exhausted. To date there has been no full-length analysis of the role played by the references to the visual, plastic and architectural arts in his fiction. The main purpose of this book is to remedy this gap and to show that, although generally illuminating, most critical accounts of his fiction have underplayed the complexity and the 21 St.-Aubyn, ‘The Illustration of an Unillustrated Illustration’; Mason, ‘Illustration in Michel Butor’s Illustrations’; Inglis, ‘Art, Chaos and Celebration: An Analysis of Michel Butor’s Illustrations III’; Inglis, ‘The Application and Development of Michel Butor’s Collage Principle in Illustrations IV’. 22 Pellegrino-Ceccarelli, ‘Michel Butor et ses peintres’; La Mothe, ‘Echographies: Alechinsky et Butor’. 23 Oppenheim, ‘Michel Butor’s L’Embarquement de la Reine de Saba’; ‘Animation of the Work of Art: Michel Butor’s L’Embarquement de la Reine de Saba’; Roudiez, ‘Le Réel et la peinture: comment décrire ce qui se dit?’.

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importance of the references to art and architecture. If a good deal of critical attention has been devoted to the more obvious references to the visual arts in L’Emploi du temps and La Modification, the more discreet but equally important references to Gaudí (L’Emploi du temps), Cavallini, Pannini, Bernini and Claude Lorrain (La Modification) have simply been noted in passing, while the role of visual reference in Passage de Milan and Degrés has been, by and large, ignored. It is my contention here that sustained analysis of the relationships between the texts and the artworks to which they refer and which, in some cases, serve as narrative stimuli will offer new perspectives on the sources, themes and compositional practices of Butor’s fiction. The principal aim of this study is to carry out such an analysis. Its second aim is to demonstrate the decisive role which Butor’s preoccupation with art and architecture played in the subsequent development of his writing. The first of these issues is addressed in the first four chapters of the study. Each of these chapters is devoted to a single novel and examines the contribution of the references to art and architecture to the elaboration of the text’s dominant themes. Particular attention is paid to the following: the role of the artwork or edifice as narrative generator; its status as cultural point of reference in the personal, cultural and epistemological quests undertaken by Butor’s protagonists; the relationship between the visual and architectural references and the intertextual citations that punctuate Butor’s texts; the metafictional functions of the artwork or edifice and its status as mise en abyme. Thus, the first chapter examines the role played by Duchamp’s Grand Verre and the notes of his Boîte Verte as narrative stimuli in Passage de Milan and shows that the principal themes of the novel have their sources in Butor’s idiosyncratic interpretation of Duchamp’s enigmatic work and the cryptic notes that accompanied it. Chapter 2 revisits familiar territory – the artworks and edifices of Bleston; however, it not only offers revised readings of these symbolic landmarks of L’Emploi du temps, but also examines the dynamic relationships that are established in Revel’s diary between these instances of high culture and the various examples of British popular culture to which the protagonist is exposed during his year-long stage. Chapter 3 focuses on the selective history of European art which underpins Léon Delmont’s cultural and romantic pilgrimages in La Modification. It analyses the symbolic, psychological and reflexive functions of the various clusters of art-historical references that punctuate the text and constitute crucial cultural co-ordinates both in

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Léon’s conscious thought-processes and in the subsconcious workings of his dreams. The fourth chapter addresses a question that has hitherto been largely neglected in the extensive body of criticism devoted to Degrés – the role of the numerous, if discreet, references to various types of visual representation that appear in the novel. It also assesses the contribution that these visual references make to the development of some of the text’s principal themes – notably education, imperialism, exploration and exploitation – and analyses the metafictional functions performed by some of the pedagogic visual aids used by the teachers and pupils in Pierre Vernier’s school. The fifth chapter seeks to broaden the focus of the study and argues that Butor’s fascination for art and architecture not only acts as a force of continuity and cohesion within his vast and diverse oeuvre, but was a significant determinant in the evolution of the work that he has produced since Degrés. This chapter addresses three main issues: the effect that the visual arts have had on the formal composition and internal organisation of Butor’s romanesques; the increasing prominence of collaborative practices in his oeuvre; and the exploration of the relationship between text and image in Les Mots dans la peinture and Le Génie du lieu. The study concludes with a consideration of the demands made by Butor’s texts on his reader and examines, through an analysis of one of his most densely allusive texts, Butor’s own profound ambivalence towards the rich cultural legacy that he has inherited. It is shown that the tension between desire for knowledge and resistance to cultural saturation that underpins Portrait de l’artiste en jeune singe anticipates the tension that characterises much of Butor’s subsequent work between his fascination for non-European and ‘primitive’ artistic traditions and his continuing dialogue with the Western tradition into which he was born.

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1

Unfulfilled, Incomplete and Indefinitely Deferred: Desire and Art in Butor and Duchamp

In the half-century since it was published, Butor’s first novel, Passage de Milan, written following his one-year sojourn in Egypt1 and during the second year of his appointment as lecteur at the University of Manchester,2 has generated few sustained critical commentaries. While most of the early monographs on Butor’s fiction devote a chapter to Passage de Milan,3 more recent critical studies tend to focus on the later novels and on his other prose works. Moreover, although a few critics have noted the connection between Duchamp’s La Mariée mise à nu par ses célibataires, même (otherwise known as Le Grand Verre) and Passage de Milan, the analysis of the role of Duchamp’s work in the elaboration of the plot and characters, and of its contribution to the development of the text’s central themes, has been very limited. Georges Raillard highlights the rather tenuous link between the name of the painter, De Vere, and the alternative title of Duchamp’s enigmatic work, Le Grand Verre, and offers a suggestive but brief commentary on the similarities between the aesthetic views of the two artists.4 Claude-Marie Baldwin’s article on the generative roles played by the work of Mondrian and Duchamp in Passage de Milan notes the parallel between Angèle Vertigues and the virgins of Le Passage de la vierge à la mariée (1912) and Le Grand Verre;5 however, incisive though this article is, its comparative emphasis and its focus on the mythical 1 1950–51. 2 1951–53. 3 See, in particular, McWilliams, The Narratives of Michel Butor, pp. 12–21, Spencer, Michel Butor, pp. 33–46 and Lydon, Perpetuum Mobile, pp. 39–67. See also Baldwin, ‘Myths in Butor’s Passage de Milan’. 4 Raillard, Butor, 1968, pp. 66–70, 189. See also Raillard, ‘Référence plastique et discours littéraire chez Michel Butor’ where he argues, on the basis of rather tenuous evidence, that Duchamp’s work informs all of Butor’s fiction. 5 Baldwin, ‘Myths in Butor’s Passage de Milan’.

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and ritual themes of the text preclude sustained and systematic exploration of the relationship between the novel and Le Grand Verre. Given the interpretative difficulties posed by Duchamp’s work, it is not surprising that the novel that it inspired is, by Butor’s own admission, a ‘difficult read’,6 which has, consequently, generated rather less critical interest than his subsequent novels. The sheer quantity of its characters, the attribution of the same forenames to different characters, the mobility of its narrative point of view, the sudden scene changes and the interruption and interweaving of several distinct narrative series make orientation extremely difficult for the reader. In addition, the apparent arbitrariness of the conclusion and the absence of a clearly identifiable central character render the novel resistant to plot- and character-centred critical approaches. However, if traditional critical methods offer relatively little purchase on Le Passage de Milan, and if, as Butor acknowledges, the density of this ‘first novel’ testifies to insufficient authorial control,7 it is, nevertheless, the case that its ambitious thematic range and, in particular, the idiosyncratic, but ingenious exploitation of its visual model anticipates in many respects the work that was to follow. Given the complexity of Le Grand Verre and the plethora of often contradictory commentaries that it has stimulated, some preliminary, albeit tentative, exegesis of Butor’s ‘model’ is desirable. Consequently, the first section of this chapter is devoted to a description of the composition and a brief summary of its internal dynamics. This prefatory section is followed by an analysis of the role of Le Grand Verre as visual stimulus in the conception and elaboration of Butor’s fictional world and shows that many of the characters of the novel, the relationships among them, the fictional situation, the setting, and the novel’s outcome have been suggested by details of Le Grand Verre and/or by La Boîte Verte, the loose-leaf compendium of notes, diagrams and sketches in which Duchamp recorded his compositional deliberations, experiments and decisions and which he produced as the documentary counterpart of the visual work.8 The chapter also examines Passage de Milan’s thematic debt to Le Grand Verre and to La Boîte Verte and demonstrates that the dominant thematic strands of the text have their origins in Butor’s personal reading of Duchamp’s enigmatic 6 Butor, Improvisations sur Michel Butor, p. 71. 7 See Charbonnier, Entretiens avec Michel Butor, p. 48. 8 See Tomkins, Duchamp: A Biography, pp. 1–11; Ades, Cox and Hopkins, Marcel Duchamp, pp. 84–122.

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composition and in his reworking and extension of some of the concepts (delay, desire, non-communication) that underpin Le Grand Verre, to which Duchamp alludes in the notes. The chapter concludes with an analysis of the autobiographical and metafictional dimensions of the novel and shows that, although Passage de Milan has no clearly identifiable protagonist, some of the characters who have been ‘modelled’ on Duchamp or on the ‘figures’ of his assemblage do enjoy a privileged status by virtue of their contribution to the outcome of the narrative and, on the metafictional level, by their roles as authorial representatives within the text. Le Grand Verre Butor’s choice of Le Grand Verre as his point of departure or model for Passage de Milan was audacious. As one of the most arcane and radically subversive works of the twentieth century, Duchamp’s Grand Verre has generated a quite extraordinary number of critical commentaries and, although ultimately inimitable, is largely responsible for Duchamp’s reputation as a forerunner of several of the century’s most prominent artistic movements, including Surrealism, Conceptual Art, Kinetic Art and Multimedia Art. Begun in 1915 and left ‘definitively incomplete’ in 1923,9 Le Grand Verre consists of two panels of glass arranged vertically to form two distinct domains, the upper one devoted to the Bride, the lower to her aspiring suitors, the Bachelors. These ‘figures’, which bear no observable resemblance to human forms and which, like the various other elements of the work, are painted and outlined in lead wire on the glass, are caught in a neverending drama of frustrated passion, the Bride stripped by her nine Bachelors, but denying them consummation. If the basic concept of Le Grand Verre is relatively straightforward and if the dominant ‘figures’ are identifiable, the relationships between the other components of the composition can only be clarified, and then only partially, by the notes of La Boîte Verte, which name the other main components of Le Grand Verre and offer commentaries on the functioning of this ‘love machine’. While Duchamp’s attribution of multiple names to the same components makes matching of labels with the elements of the composition problematical, it is generally agreed that the top panel is 9 Tomkins, Duchamp: A Biography, p. 3.

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composed of a large female form, under which is a motor with a ‘reservoir of love fuel’, a ‘wasp’ or ‘sex cylinders’ and a ‘desire-magneto’. In the lower panel, the nine Bachelors, in the form of ‘malic moulds’, are arranged in a group on the left, while the rest of the panel is taken up with the glider and its runners, the chocolate grinder, the coneshaped sieves (which are connected to the Bachelors by capillary tubes), the scissors and three ‘oculist witnesses’.10 Although Duchamp’s notes on the working of this machine offer highly intricate and often obscure explanations about the contribution of the various parts to the operation, a more general summary of the envisaged process will suffice for our purposes. The Bride sets the stripping in motion by issuing a series of commands to the Bachelors through a kind of telegraphic system. The various elements of the Bachelor machine are activated by her commands and driven by falling water and natural gas, which pass through the capillary tubes and are transformed into solid ‘spangles’.11 These ‘spangles’ (clearly a reference to sperm) then pass into the sieves where they become dazed, lose their direction and are turned into liquid. Simultaneously, other elements of the Bachelor machine are being set in motion: the glider slides back and forth on its runners; the turning of the water mill12 repeatedly raises and drops a bottle of Benedictine;13 the chocolate grinder performs its operations independently (a reference to onanism). The stages that follow are fiendishly difficult to construct from the notes, but the ejaculations of the Bachelors would seem to be indicated by two separate operations. In the first, the gas, having been transformed into a ‘vapour of inertia’,14 would seem to pass through the sieve, then descend in a spiral motion only to be projected upwards again towards the upper section where it results in a ‘splash’.15 The nine ‘cannon shots’ of the Bachelors,16 indicated by the nine holes drilled in the glass, likewise fail to reach the Bride and to bring about consummation. Finally, the role of the oculist witnesses should 10 See Duchamp, Duchamp du signe: ‘réservoir à essence d’amour’ (p. 65); ‘guêpe’ (p. 67); ‘magnéto-désir’ (p. 65); nine ‘moules mâlic’ (p. 76); ‘la glissière’ (p. 81); ‘la broyeuse de chocolat’ (p. 96); ‘les tamis’ (p. 78); ‘les 24 tubes capillaires’ (p. 77); ‘des ciseaux’ (p. 91) and ‘les témoins oculaires’ (p. 92). 11 See Duchamp, Duchamp du signe: ‘paillettes de gaz givré’ (p. 77). 12 See Duchamp, Duchamp du signe: ‘moulin à eau’ (p. 89). 13 See Duchamp, Duchamp du signe, p. 88. 14 See Duchamp, Duchamp du signe: ‘vapeur d’inertie’ (p. 75). 15 See Duchamp, Duchamp du signe: ‘éclaboussure’ (p. 91). 16 See Tomkins, The Bride and the Bachelors, p. 48.

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Marcel Duchamp, The Bride Stripped Bere by Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass), 1915–23

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also be noted. Although their function is very obscure (at some point in the process they dazzle the Bachelors’ splash and redirect it upwards),17 the clear allusion to voyeurism in the naming of these elements suggests that they are observers of the various erotic activities ‘represented’ by the different elements of the composition. It is clear from the foregoing description that, at the most basic level of interpretation, Le Grand Verre is ‘about’ unfulfilled sexual desire. However, despite the prominence of this theme and the fact that so many of the elements lend themselves to erotic readings, it is, nevertheless, also possible to read the work as a more general symbolic meditation on such themes as non-fulfilment, failure, abortive communication, sterility and our capacity to imprison ourselves within a cycle of habitual reflex behaviour. Le Grand Verre is a machine that does not function, the components of which prove to be incompatible with one another and the mechanism of which repeatedly fails to complete its operation; yet it continues to grind on relentlessly. Viewed in this way, it can be read as an indictment of the mechanistic dimension of modern man caught in a routine of repetition, the passivity of the Bachelors testifying to their lack of autonomy, their repeated failures to consummate the relationship with the Bride suggesting a willed pursuit of unattainable goals and an inability to learn from past defeats. Similarly, the remoteness of the Bride and her rejection of the advances of the Bachelors can be interpreted as a commentary on the alienation, loneliness and non-communication that characterise the machine age. However, if there is considerable evidence to suggest that Le Grand Verre is to be interpreted as an allegory of non-fulfilment that offers a bleak, quasi-absurdist perspective on the modern world, there is also evidence of a genuine, if somewhat ironic, fascination for technology and science. As numerous critics have pointed out, Le Grand Verre may be viewed as a parodic modernist ‘contraption’;18 nevertheless, its elaboration is based, in part, on a fairly detailed knowledge not only of popular mechanics, but also of the basic principles and properties of electricity and telegraphy, which manifests itself both in the workings of Duchamp’s virtual machine and in the blueprint-like sketches and pseudo-scientific terminology of La Boîte Verte. The telegraphic dimension of Le Grand Verre is particularly important, because it is the Bride’s telegraphic messages to the Bachelors which set the whole process in 17 See Duchamp, Duchamp du signe, pp. 74, 92–93. 18 Hughes, The Shock of the New, p. 55.

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motion and which, one must suppose, constantly reactivate the process at every failure. The Bride’s messages may not bring fulfilment, but some form of communication clearly takes place and the will to renew that communication is dogged. In short, it would seem that, for Duchamp’s Bride and Bachelors, hope does ‘spring eternal’ and that the developing science of telegraphy provided their creator with a means by which to qualify the otherwise rather disheartening symbolism of the work. Le Grand Verre as Narrative Generator of Passage de Milan Despite the large cast of characters and the elaborate interweaving of narrative strands in Passage de Milan, the basic structure of the novel is relatively straightforward. The fiction takes place in a Paris apartment block during the 1950s and recounts the events of a twelve-hour period during which a party is held to celebrate the twentieth birthday of Angèle Vertigues, the daughter of the couple who live on the fourth floor of the building. The party at the Vertigues’ is only one of several social encounters taking place in the building on the same evening, but the commotion and excitement that it provokes makes the Vertigues’ flat the nerve centre of the building. The hostess and birthday girl is not only the centre of attention, but also the object of the amorous aspirations of several of the young male guests and the source of often quite vicious rivalry among them. However, the young men’s efforts to secure her interest turn out to have been pointless: her passage to womanhood cannot be completed, as the evening ends with a fatal accident (she falls downstairs), thus shattering the romantic and erotic fantasies of her would-be suitors. The basic narrative situation of Passage de Milan is clearly inspired by the subject of Le Grand Verre. Angèle Vertigues’s birthday party is seen by both the hosts and the guests as a kind of rite of passage by which the hostess is transformed into a prospective bride. Both Vincent Mogne and Philippe Sermaize note that her party-dress resembles a wedding-dress (pp. 80, 174), a similarity on which she also reflects in her romantic musings after the guests have left: ‘Ce serait presque la même robe, avec un voile, et des fleurs, dans les mains une superbe gerbe de fleurs’ (p. 239). Her father considers the party as an opportunity to cast an eye over her potential suitors (‘les partis possibles’, p. 85), rating Philippe Sermaize as a possible candidate (p. 82), but rejecting Henri Delétang because he considers him to be ‘un jeune

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vaurien, pourri de littérature idiote, et pas très intelligent’ (p. 85). Although Clara Grumeaux proves to be a lively party guest, her assessment of the occasion shows an understanding of the real motives behind the party and a recognition of Angèle’s status as a marriageable female: ‘une soirée donnée par je ne sais quelle pimbêche à dot’ (p. 83). Like the Bride of Duchamp’s composition, Angèle has her aspiring Bachelors (Louis Lécuyer, Vincent and Gérard Mogne, Henri Delétang, Philippe Sermaize, the German prince, Maxime), whom she, like her father, assesses as potential husbands. Appraisal of the eligibility and assets of the bachelors is not, however, restricted to the Vertigues family. As they chat and speculate about the party going on upstairs, Paul Mogne and Marie Mérédat review the attractions of their three grandsons (p. 123), while Virginie Ralon engages in earnest discussion with Charlotte Tenant about ways of making Virginie’s nephew Louis ‘comprendre […] comment un homme peut s’habiller et plaire’ (p. 28). Throughout the evening, the Bachelors themselves scrutinise each other and try to assess the competition and their own chances of success. The brothers Vincent and Gérard Mogne are Angèle’s most attentive suitors, monopolising her for much of the evening, competing fiercely to secure her attention and, in the series of interior monologues that make up most of chapter 6 (pp. 164–180), elaborating fantasy futures involving romance and marriage with Angèle. Even after her fatal fall, the image of Angèle as bride haunts Louis Lécuyer, in whose dream his role as bridegroom is usurped by Henri Delétang (pp. 263–64). Despite their ardour, however, and despite Angèle’s own fantasies about marriage, the bachelors of Passage de Milan, like those of Duchamp’s Grand Verre, fail to realise their aspirations. The most obvious reason for this on the level of the plot is, of course, Angèle’s fatal fall, an outcome which Butor probably derived from the ‘3 falls’ or crashes19 of the ‘Mobile’ described in Duchamp’s notes or from the breaking of Le Grand Verre in transit.20 If Angèle’s prospective suitors fail to secure her favour and if she dies a virgin, nevertheless, she, like the Bride, is subject to a form of virtual stripping by at least some of her Bachelors. Almost as soon as he sets eyes on her, Philippe’s gaze is drawn to her ‘bras nu jusqu’à l’épaule’ (p. 81). When Louis stops momentarily in the middle of his frenetic dance with her, he undresses her openly with his eyes: ‘Il 19 See Duchamp, Duchamp du signe, pp. 89, 91. 20 The glass of both panels were shattered in transit after its first public exhibition in Brooklyn in 1926. See Tomkins, Duchamp: A Biography, p. 12.

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s’arrête en sueur; il la dévêt des yeux; et la reprend avec une sorte de fureur’ (p. 189). To the cynical and predatory Henri Delétang, Angèle is ‘une petite grue sous sa robe d’enfant de Marie’ (p. 251). Vincent’s view is rather less crass, but he too senses a sensual dimension under Angèle’s prim exterior, an aspect which corresponds to the ‘désir ignorant, désir blanc’21 of Duchamp’s Bride: ‘On sent sous sa blancheur un autre corps plus sombre et obstiné qui aime les danses sauvages’ (p. 170). When Vincent takes his leave of Angèle, his effusive compliments are accompanied by a shamelessly candid examination of her physical attributes which begins with her face and descends as far as her waist and which suggests that, in different circumstances, his eyes might have strayed further: ‘et comme il l’examine avant de la quitter, comme il lui fouille le visage, du regard le plus indiscret, et sa poitrine, et sa ceinture; si nous n’étions pas si avant dans la nuit…’ (p. 217). Just as the virtual stripping of Duchamp’s Bride is observed by the ‘Oculist Witnesses’, so in Passage de Milan, the ‘stripping’ of Angèle is watched by numerous eyewitnesses. Thus, Louis’s mental undressing of Angèle during their dance is observed by all the other guests (‘tout le monde en est venu à garder les yeux fixés sur Louis réalisant ce qu’il cherchait sans se le dire’, p. 188), while Vincent’s indiscreet ogling as he takes his leave is observed with some embarrassment by his sisters and with jealousy by his brother Gérard (p. 217), whose subsequent spiteful sarcasm (‘Comment s’appelait-il, ce beau soupirant’) only increases the embarrassment of Viola and Martine: ‘Martine, Viola même en est gênée; si personne n’était là il l’embrasserait […] Viola rougit jusqu’aux oreilles, et Martine se trouble aussi’ (p. 217). The confused incidents that follow Angèle’s fall and death also originate, in part, in the Oculist Witnesses section of Le Grand Verre. Louis may be an involuntary agent in the accident that results in Angèle’s death, but his suspicious and compromising behaviour is seen or deduced by a number of ‘witnesses’ from among the inhabitants of the building who have been awakened either by the noise of the fall or by the commotion that follows it. Thus, Virginie and Alexis Ralon catch sight of him as he emerges from his hiding-place (p. 267), while Martin De Vere discovers the body and is alerted to Louis’s presence by the reactions of the latter’s aunt and cousin (p. 262). Of the various ‘oculist witnesses’, Samuel Léonard has the fullest knowledge of the incidents following Angèle’s death and is, consequently, more able to judge the veracity of Louis’s account. 21 Duchamp, Duchamp du signe, p. 62. See also page 59.

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Several of the incidental scenes and conversations of the novel also have their origin in the asides and passing thoughts recorded in the notes of Duchamp’s Boîte Verte. The ‘Cimetière de livrées’, so named because, when Duchamp drew the malic moulds, they seemed to him to resemble coffins,22 is the source of Virginie’s reflections about the funeral of her husband and her conversation with Charlotte Tenant (p. 10) about a prospective visit to her brother’s grave (p. 24). The elliptical note in which Duchamp outlines one of his ideas for a readymade – ‘se servir d’un Rembrandt comme planche à repasser’23 – is the most likely source for the scene in which Félix returns from the party to find his mother still hard at work, ironing her large family’s laundry (pp. 159–60), while the various references to neckties in Passage de Milan – Virginie’s thoughts about bequeathing her dead husband’s ties to her nephew Louis (p. 28), Julie Mogne’s disparaging remarks about the tie which Gérard has put on for the party (p. 36), Philippe Sermaize’s adjustment of the knot of his tie before he makes his entrance (p. 74) – have their origin in one of the most obscure ‘axioms’ of La Boîte Verte: ‘La cravate devra son élégance à son épaisseur’.24 Most prominent among these allusions to the notes of La Boîte Verte are the very numerous references to delays, which have clearly been inspired by Duchamp’s definition of the Bride as a ‘Retard en Verre’.25 Thus, in the course of the twelve hours which are covered by the narrative, the activities and plans of almost every character in the novel are subject to delay or deferral, and characters are either forced to wait for others or are plagued by anxieties about their own punctuality or that of other people. Dinner in the Mogne household is a logistical nightmare because of the children’s preparations for the party (pp. 51, 53), the late arrival of Jeanne and Henri (pp. 35, 41, 46) and the slowness of Marie Mérédet, whose punctiliousness and yearning for ‘civilised conversation’ holds up the progress of the dinner (pp. 49, 65). Dinner at the Ralons is delayed first because of Louis’s late arrival (p. 27) and is then further postponed to allow Alexis and Louis to listen to the radio (pp. 33, 43). Virginie Ralon is anxious that 22 23 24 25

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Tomkins, Duchamp: A Biography, pp. 137–38. Duchamp, Duchamp du signe, p. 49. Duchamp, Duchamp du signe, p. 98. Duchamp, Duchamp du signe, p. 41. Note the frequency of terms relating to waiting and lateness: ‘attendre’/ ‘attente’ (pp. 12, 33, 35, 38, 39, 46, 49, 56, 60, 65, 68, 75, 78, 79, 83, 90, 96, 105, 137, 138, 156, 162, 171, 182, 211, 244, 254, 182, 284); ‘retard’, ‘tard’, ‘tarder’, ‘s’attarder’ (pp. 27, 28, 29, 35, 37, 39, 43, 51, 53, 57, 61, 70, 101, 120, 128, 129, 135, 154, 156, 160, 223, 283).

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Charlotte should not be late for her duties at the party (p. 29); Ahmed arrives late at the Léonards’ (p. 37); although Phyllis daydreams in the kitchen and puts off serving coffee (p. 60), she advises Ahmed to rush his meal so that he will not be late to act as doorman for guests (p. 70); Léon Vertigues urges Gérard and Vincent not to arrive late (p. 39); Lydie Vertigues worries that Charlotte will not arrive on time (p. 61); the guests who live in the building wait until they hear sounds from the Vertigues’ flat before they make their way to the party (p. 62); Louis arrives late to pick up Henriette (p. 101); Angèle has waited impatiently for her big night (p. 105); Bénédicte and Gustave are detained in the De Veres’ flat (p. 120); Jacques Vimaud arrives at Samuel Léonard’s flat late because he has been visiting Jean Ralon (p. 129); in Félix’s dream, his grandfather urges him to hurry because they are already late (p. 223); Virgine Ralon keeps Martin and Lucie De Vere waiting at the door of her apartment (p. 255); Louis will have to wait at a hotel until Samuel makes the arrangements for his journey to Egypt (p. 282); Julie Mogne frets about Félix being late for school (p. 283). Although the physical setting of the narrative in a Parisian apartment block was determined by Butor’s desire to recreate a kind of small-scale ‘échantillon de Paris’ which would allow him to establish a strictly observed unity of place,26 the sheer number of references to various types of glass structures and glass objects testifies to his debt to Duchamp’s Grand Verre for his conception of the materials, fittings and props of his setting. The text is punctuated by references to various types of windows, glass roofs and partitions,27 bottles and glasses,28 glass casing and glazed display cabinets, eye-glasses and the glass balls of a chandelier.29 The clusters of references to various geometric shapes and patterns30 recall Duchamp’s note about the dominant forms of the 26 Butor, Curriculum vitae, p. 64. 27 See pages 7, 8, 10, 13, 18, 20, 22, 30, 39, 41, 53, 55, 84, 112, 121, 126, 139, 140, 180, 182, 214, 218, 227, 229, 237, 262, 268, 275, 281. 28 See pages 13, 44, 48, 54, 62, 76, 81, 82, 86, 88, 96, 105, 107, 108, 111, 157, 183, 185, 187, 188, 191, 192, 211, 228, 245, 250, 252, 256, 262, 271, 273, 274. 29 See pages 135, 256, 122, 77, 17. The words ‘verre’, ‘verrière’ or ‘verrerie’ appear on the following pages: 8, 11, 13, 30, 39, 44, 48, 55, 56, 62, 63, 76, 81, 82, 86, 87, 88, 96, 105, 107, 108, 111, 122, 135, 157, 158, 183, 185, 187, 188, 191, 192, 211, 214, 219, 222, 228, 237, 250, 252, 256, 262, 271, 273, 274, 275, 277. Note also the frequency of words relating to windows: ‘fenêtre’ (pp. 13, 18, 53, 121, 126, 139, 140, 229); ‘vitre’ (pp. 7, 10, 22, 37, 41, 53, 55, 112, 120, 121, 140, 141, 227, 245, 262, 268, 281); ‘carreau’ (pp. 20, 140, 180, 182, 245, 275). 30 See pages 33, 55, 70, 82, 85, 103, 105, 113, 119, 179, 196, 207, 231, 237, 242, 256, 264, 276.

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Bachelor machine: ‘Les formes principales de la machine-célibataire sont imparfaites; rectangle, cercle, parallélipède, anse symétrique, demisphère’,31 while the physics homework revision that Félix struggles with and fails to complete (pp. 16–17) has its origin in Duchamp’s concept of ‘playful physics’ and in his whimsical adaptation of contemporary scientific theories.32 Finally, the numerous references to mirrors and reflections in Passage de Milan33 originate in the analogies with mirrors and reflections that Duchamp uses in the notes to suggest the possibility of a ‘fourth dimension’.34 The various practical procedures and technical processes that Duchamp describes in the notes of La Boîte Verte also generate a number of the details and motifs of the text. Duchamp’s reference to the razor-blades that he used to scrape the silver off the oculist’s charts that represent the ‘oculist witnesses’35 is the source of several references to razor-blades in Butor’s text: Virginie Ralon has such a respect for her sons’ space that ‘elle n’aurait jamais dérangé une lame de rasoir’ (p. 10); Félix’s beard is so slight that ‘il ne se rase que deux fois par semaine’ (pp. 53–54); Vincent and Gérard have a brief argument about the latter’s habit of borrowing razor-blades (pp. 30–31). The references to radiators in the various apartments of the building36 recall the note in La Boîte Verte outlining Duchamp’s original plans regarding the method to be used in the design of the draught pistons. The shape of these elements was to be determined, in part, by chance and, although Duchamp’s intended procedure was to be slightly modified, his initial plan was to suspend a piece of paper above a radiator and to photograph the slight movements of the paper produced by the flow of heat. The numerous references to dust in Passage de Milan37 have their origin in Duchamp’s use of accumulated dust as a substitute for paint in the colouring of the ‘sieves’,38 while 31 32 33 34 35

Duchamp, Duchamp du signe, p. 66. See Henderson, Duchamp in Context and Ramírez, Duchamp: Love and Death, Even. See pages 7, 13, 26, 31, 33, 38, 53, 67, 73, 89, 90, 129. Duchamp, Duchamp du signe, p. 76. ‘Les lames de rasoir qui coupent bien et les lames de rasoir qui ne coupent plus’ (Duchamp du signe, p. 47). 36 See pages 118, 121, 180, 270, 272. 37 See pages 7, 39, 71, 111, 135, 211, 237, 250, 261, 265, 282, 285. 38 ‘For six months the Glass lay untouched in the studio, gathering a thick layer of dust which Duchamp then proceeded to use as a pigment, gluing the dust down with varnish to one part of the “Bachelor machine” and then wiping the rest away’ (Tomkins, The Bride and the Bachelors, pp. 77–78). See also Duchamp, Duchamp du signe, pp. 77–78.

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the matches that Alexis throws to Louis (p. 34) and De Vere throws to Maurice Gérard (p. 84), which both recipients fail to catch, recall Duchamp’s use of matches as projectiles to position the ineffectual ‘shots’ of the Bachelors.39 In other cases, the details of Butor’s text have been suggested not by Duchamp’s practical procedures but by the imaginary operations of his virtual machine. The references to the turning on and off of gas in the kitchens of Charlotte Tenant and Madame Phyllis40 are derived from the energy source, which, according to Duchamp, activates the malic moulds.41 The lift that connects the floors of the building and is in constant use during the evening of the party is the textual equivalent of the mechanism within the Bachelor machine that ‘raises’ the glider: ‘The Glider slides back and forth with a jerky motion. It is activated by the waterspout falling on the Water Mill, the turning of which raises a Bottle of Benedictine suspended from a Hook; after reaching a certain height, this bottle falls, and its fall exerts the pressure that pulls the Glider.’42 Although inspiration for the components of Le Grand Verre was drawn from a wide range of scientific sources, the developing technology of telegraphy was a particularly important stimulus in the conception of the virtual communication between the Bride and her Bachelors: ‘sources on wireless telegraphy […] offered the new vocabulary of mechanical devices and the physics of electromagnetism with which to augment the themes of Le Grand Verre and to create a vehicle for communication at a distance between the Bride and the Bachelors’.43 If, in Butor’s text, the vocabulary of electromagnetic technology is occasionally used to describe unspoken forms of communication between certain characters,44 the references to radio-telegraphy in Duchamp’s notes are reworked in a rather more obvious and banal fictional form in Butor’s novel in the references to the wireless radios that are the focus of attention and conversation in both the Ralon and the Mogne households (pp. 33, 43, 88–89, 96–97). 39 ‘The placement of the Bachelors’ nine “shots” which never do reach the waiting Bride was effected by dipping matches in wet paint and firing them from a toy cannon at the Glass’ (Tomkins, The Bride and the Bachelors, p. 48). 40 See pages 114, 115, 117, 130, 285. 41 Duchamp, Duchamp du signe, p. 43; Tomkins, Duchamp: A Biography, p. 8. 42 Tomkins, Duchamp: A Biography, pp. 8–9. 43 See Henderson, Duchamp in Context, p. 98. 44 The magnetic force of the Bride is the source of the text’s analogies with ‘aimants’ and ‘limaille’ used to describe Félix’s fascination with his father (p. 40) and the reconfigurations of the groups of guests at Angèle’s party (p. 109).

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As numerous commentators have pointed out, several of Duchamp’s notes, particularly those relating to the unrealised plans for the ‘Boxing Match’ section of Le Grand Verre and the Bride’s ‘rouages d’horlogerie’, show that these elements were modelled on clockwork and automaton technology.45 Henderson suggests that the Boxing Match was conceived as a traditional clockwork mechanism such as the systems used in nineteenth-century automaton manufacturing, while the ‘Boîte d’horlogerie’ corresponds more closely to virtual automatons found in contemporary science fiction. In Butor’s text, references to various types of timepieces and other clockwork mechanisms figure prominently as the characters calculate the time which they will need to dress for Angèle’s party, to prepare the evening meal, to get ready to go out to the cinema, to finish homework, to get up or down the stairs before the minuterie switches off as well as the time which they will have to endure before they can leave the party, serve dinner, go to bed, and, finally, tell Angèle’s parents of her death. Moreover, if, as several critics have suggested, Duchamp’s conception of Le Grand Verre as a kind of ‘anthropomorphic machine’ had its origin in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century science fiction,46 it would seem very likely that the debate about science fiction writing that takes place in Samuel Léonard’s flat has also been suggested by Duchamp’s work or at least by critical readings of it. Further evidence to support this is found in a lengthy commentary on his own Icare à Paris that Butor offered in the course of one of his interviews with Madeleine Santschi, which refers explicitly to Michel Carrouges’s analysis of the role of machines in the work of certain twentiethcentury writers and artists, including Duchamp: ‘Il a écrit un très beau livre qui s’appelle Les Machines célibatiares dans lequel il montre l’importance de la machine dans l’imagination de certains artistes modernes. Il fait des comparaisons très intelligentes entre des machines chez Marcel Duchamp, Raymond Roussel, Kafka, etc.’47 Butor’s commentary not 45 Henderson, Duchamp in Context (p. 94). See Duchamp, Duchamp du signe, pp. 63, 94–96. 46 Henderson, Duchamp in Context, pp. 47–57. 47 Butor in Santschi, Une schizophrénie active, p. 33. See also Santschi, Voyage avec Michel Butor, p. 113 and Skimao and Teulon-Nouailles, Michel Butor, Qui êtes-vous?, p. 307. Les Machines célibataires was published in the same year as Le Passage de Milan. While it seems reasonable to assume that Butor’s close contact with Carrouges during this period may have influenced his choice of Le Grand Verre as visual stimulus and while Carrouges’s choice of authors and texts coincide with some of Butor’s interests, there is no compelling evidence in Carrouges’s chapter on Kafka and Duchamp to suggest that it was a direct generative source for the novel.

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only testifies to his own active interest in a museum – the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers48– that was a direct stimulus for the works Duchamp produced after 1913,49 but also to the writer’s familiarity with the science fiction works that, it has been suggested, informed Duchamp’s conception of Le Grand Verre. Indeed, many of the intertextual quotations used by Butor in his Icare à Paris were drawn from the texts that, according to Henderson and others, were, in part at least, the stimuli for the automated elements of the work and possibly even some of the key ideas of the notes, including that of the fourth dimension: ‘Et j’ai là-dedans des textes d’ingénieurs anciens. Et puis des textes d’écrivains. Voilà une première liste. […] Jules Verne: Vingt Mille lieues ou bien Les Cinq Cents Millions de la Bégum ou le Château des Carpathes. Villiers de L’Isle Adam: L’Eve Future. Raymond Roussel: Impressions d’Afrique. […] Apollinaire: Le Roi Lune. […] Et puis Jarry: Le Sur-mâle. [...]’.50 Finally, some of the details that figure in the virtual worlds of the characters’ dreams also have their source in details of Duchamp’s Grand Verre or of the notes. The stone relief of the nine ‘sentinelles’ with tears on their faces, which Jean encounters in his oneiric descent into the underworld, are clearly allusions to Duchamp’s nine unsuccessful Bachelors, while the phosphorescent eyes of his ‘guardian’ (p. 208) originate, like the other references to ‘phosphorescence’ in Passage de Milan (pp. 219, 226), in the inner phosphorescent light that Duchamp attributes to his composition.51 The analogy used to describe the silhouetted forms of the ‘ville troglodyte’ to which the boatman takes Jean – ‘créneaux […] aiguisés comme une mâchoire de moissonneuse’ (p. 207) – recalls the comparisons that Duchamp draws between the Bride and agricultural machinery.52 The snow that falls in the darkness (p. 221) in Alexis’s dream recalls the ‘effet de neige ciel foncé nuit tombante’53 that Duchamp wanted to create in the ‘Voie lactée’ section of the Bride, while the wasps that cover Louis’s face at a later stage of the same dream (p. 240) are no doubt based on the ‘guêpe’ or sexual cylinder of the Bride. The figures in uniform whom Félix meets 48 Icare à Paris ou les entrailles de l’ingénieur. See Santschi, Une schizophrénie active, pp. 30–32. 49 See Santschi, Une schizophrénie active, p. 31; Henderson, Duchamp in Context, p. 17. 50 Butor in Santschi, Une schizophrénie active, pp. 33–34. These are also some of the texts discussed in Carrouges’s Machines célibataires. 51 Duchamp, Duchamp du signe, pp. 100–01. 52 Duchamp, Duchamp du signe, p. 66. 53 Duchamp, Duchamp du signe, p. 109.

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in the course of his dream journey – the ‘employé en uniforme de gardien de square’ (p. 222), ‘Gérard en uniforme d’aviateur’ (p. 224) – originate in the uniforms that, according to Duchamp’s notes, are worn by the Bachelors. Although Passage de Milan offers in many respects a ‘realistic’ representation of day-to-day life in an apartment block, it is evident from the foregoing analysis that the novel has also drawn very heavily on Le Grand Verre for its basic narrative situation, its characters and even elements of the characters’ dreams. Close comparison of the text and its visual source also reveals a quite remarkable number of correspondences between the concrete domestic detail of the building and the constituent parts of Le Grand Verre. Indeed, many of the details which initially would seem to act as indicators of authenticity reinforcing the ‘effet de réel’ of the setting have their origin in Le Grand Verre or the notes of La Boîte Verte. The choice of setting may have offered Butor the means of producing a ‘maquette de la réalité, un échantillon de Paris’, but Duchamp’s highly unrealistic assemblage is implicitly present on every page of the text, most obviously in the abortive courtship of Angèle by the novel’s bachelors, but also in the extensive network of recurring motifs that have been derived from the materials and processes that Duchamp employed in his execution of Le Grand Verre. Butor’s ‘Reading’ of Le Grand Verre If it is clear that Le Grand Verre has played a very significant role in the creation of the fictional world of Passage de Milan, there is also considerable textual evidence to suggest that Butor’s ‘reading’ and exploitation of Duchamp’s enigmatic work have been strongly coloured by his desire to explore a number of issues which, although closely related to some of the ideas underpinning Le Grand Verre, are based on biographical circumstance and on a distinctive personal repertoire of themes. As Mary Lydon argues, Passage de Milan can be considered as a kind of ‘ur-novel, where the sources of all Butor’s writing may be found’.54 Like all Butor’s fiction, his first novel revolves around the characters’ desire to achieve some understanding of themselves and their relationships with others, and around their attempt to position themselves in relation to the past and the future. In contrast, however, 54 Lydon, Perpetuum Mobile, p. 38.

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with L’Emploi du temps and La Modification, which focus on the experiences of a single character, in Passage de Milan there is no dominant narrative focaliser or narrator and, although certain characters are privileged, the multi-focal narrative highlights the universal nature of the issues explored. In Passage de Milan, each of the characters in the novel is engaged in one way or another in their own struggle with questions relating to personal identity, communication, the past and the future. In the normal routine of habit and everyday logistics, these questions are repressed. However, with the interruption in that pattern provoked by Angèle’s party, issues that are ordinarily hidden come to the fore and force a ‘prise de conscience’ that manifests itself in a variety of ways, but most notably in the characters’ thoughts about their relationships, their disappointments, their sense of loss, their anxieties about what the future has to hold, and their awareness of mortality. That Butor should have chosen Le Grand Verre as his point of departure for his first foray into fiction is, nevertheless, not surprising. As we shall see in the pages that follow, Butor’s encounter with Duchamp’s Grand Verre did not simply provide him with a generative source for the creation of his fictional world; it seems to have struck a personal chord in him and to have acted as a visual stimulus in the exploration of what were to become some of the dominant themes of his work. As we have seen, Le Grand Verre can be read as a highly oblique and conceptually abstruse deliberation on issues such as noncommunication, unfulfilled yearning and deferred pleasure. In Passage de Milan, Butor takes up and develops these themes through the creation of characters whose lives have been marked by loneliness, disappointment, loss and unfulfilled aspiration. The mechanistic analogies that Duchamp used to describe the various elements of his work and the repetition implied by the ineffectual action of the Bachelor machine also explain Le Grand Verre’s appeal to Butor, whose characters so often find themselves caught in a deadening and imprisoning routine and in behavioural patterns that limit their potential for the future. Finally, the occurrence in the notes of La Boîte Verte of imagery associated with death would seem to have suggested to Butor the possibility of reading Le Grand Verre as a modern memento mori, in which the Bride is stripped not only of her apparel but also of her flesh.

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By the author’s own admission, Passage de Milan was conceived as an attempt to understand his own childhood and adolescence and at the same time to distance himself from it: ‘un effort pour connaître mon enfance et mon adolescence … et en même temps pour m’en détacher’.55 In his relatively infrequent references to his adolescence, Butor offers an image of a family life that was secure, conventional and comfortable, but that, nevertheless, generated a strong feeling of isolation and both a need for and a fear of solitude: J’étais d’une famille nombreuse mais je me sentais très seul pendant mon adolescence. J’avais besoin de solitude mais aussi je la redoutais. Avec mes frères et mes soeurs – nous étions sept – nous vivions de façon serrée les uns contre les autres, ce qui n’empêchait pas chacun d’être seul. Le temps de conversation au repas était, pour chaque membre, limité.56

It is this combination of contradictory emotions that is explored through many of the characters of Passage de Milan, who spend much of their time trying to define themselves through their relationships with others, yet who remain isolated figures. The inhabitants of the building live in close proximity to each other, meet each other every day on the stairs or in the lift, and, by virtue of the sounds that are carried through the walls of the building, are aware of at least some of the activities of their neighbours. However, despite the physical intimacy of apartment living and the regularity of their encounters, those who live in the building rarely communicate with each other in a sincere and meaningful manner. Léon and Lydie Vertigues occupy the top rung of the social hierarchy that prevails within the building and define themselves in terms of their social and economic superiority. Consequently, their interest in the other tenants is minimal. She has no idea who Samuel Léonard is (p. 93), while Léon is unable to distinguish among the three Mogne brothers, despite the fact that they have all been invited to his daughter’s party. Jean Ralon and Samuel Léonard do not know each other, even though they are both keen Egyptologists (p. 129).57 Timidity and self-doubt prevent Jean Levallois from acknowledging Gérard Mogne when their paths cross on the stairs (p. 95): Gérard had been one of his 55 Butor in Charbonnier, Entretiens avec Michel Butor, p. 87. 56 Skimao and Teulon-Nouailles, Michel Butor, Qui êtes-vous?, p. 310. 57 For an analysis of the theme of Egyptology in the novel see Burton, ‘Michel Butor’s Dialogue of Fiction and Experience’ and McWilliams, The Narratives of Michel Butor, pp. 14–21.

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pupils and Levallois seems to be unable to accommodate the change in their respective roles. Louis’s slight unease in the presence of his cousin and his avoidance of the second-person pronoun springs from a similar confusion about roles: the fact that Alexis is the chaplain in his school complicates his relationship with him and interferes with his sense of family identity. Louis’s dissatisfaction following his failure to win Angèle, and his self-absorption, prevent him from understanding or responding to Ahmed’s gesture of friendship, and his own isolation inadvertently causes him to increase that of another (p. 199). Elizabeth Mercadier’s sense of purpose has evaporated with the accidental death of her employers and she lives in almost total isolation from the other tenants, separated from them by her age and deafness and retreating into harmless insanity, as she sets the table for her beloved dead and hopes that Jesus will one day come to dine (p. 83). This failure to communicate is, however, not restricted to the relationships between neighbours; it is also observable within the various families and households that make up the building’s population. Family secrets inhibit communication in the Léonard household. Samuel has hidden his true identity from his daughter Henriette and tries ineffectually to conceal his homosexuality from those who share his home. Mme Phyllis knows very little about the other members of the household and, although she has worked and lived with a Jewish employer for some time, her private thoughts show strong signs of anti-Semitism (pp. 58–59). The four members of the Ralon household live separate lives, coming together only for meals and retreating thereafter to his or her own territory: Jean to his study to pursue his Egyptology; Alexis to his comfortless room to listen to his radio; Virginie to her bedroom and her souvenirs; Charlotte to her kitchen, her cooking and her painting. As Louis points out, even the physical layout of the apartment reflects the lack of communication among those who live in it: Mais pourquoi le seul poste de la famille est-il ici, et non à la salle à manger où tout le monde pourrait en jouir? Car il n’y a pas de salon. Louis n’y avait jusqu’à présent jamais accordé d’importance, mais il lui suffit maintenant d’y penser pour s’apercevoir que ces quatre personnes si sages et si simples […] qui vivent en si bonne entente […] sont quatre solitaires qui se rendent parfois visite, et se retrouvent aux repas. (p. 44)

In the Mogne apartment, three generations of the same family live side by side, but communication among the individual family members is poor. Overcrowding, lack of personal space and lack of time prevent

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the characters from really looking at and getting to know each other: ‘Etroit, restreint, l’espace dans lequel il rentre – tant de personnes s’y coudoient – sans nouveauté – on n’a ni le temps ni la place de les regarder’ (p. 12). Frédéric Mogne is a man whose identity has been eroded by age, responsibility, a monotonous job and a family that pays him scant attention. Every evening after work, he returns wearily to a household in which, despite its confusion, nothing really changes and where ‘[o]n s’évite, on ne sait rien se dire’ (p. 12). His children give him monosyllabic answers and he replies in similar fashion to his father’s enquiry about his day at work (p. 17); Félix conceals from him the fact that he is reading crime stories instead of doing his homework; his son-in-law is a source of constant irritation to him (pp. 77– 78). By virtue of her domestic responsibilities, Julie Mogne’s verbal exchanges with other family members are more frequent, but they are, by and large, restricted to practical matters, and her household chores prevent her from listening to her youngest son’s account of the party (pp. 160–61) and from giving her mother the attention which she desires so much: ‘Je suis là, aussi loin de vous que si j’étais dans quelque ville de province, ou, comme ton frère, dans je ne sais quel désert d’Afrique’ (p. 49). Marie Mérédat is fighting a losing battle against the erosion of her own sense of identity which is based largely on class and her nostalgia for what she considers to be more gracious times, but this determination to cling to an elegant way of life, her class prejudices regarding her son-in-law and her bitter tongue make her very unpopular with the rest of the family, who respond evasively to her inquisitive questions and who resent her interference (pp. 65– 67). Despite some evidence of camaraderie among the younger generation, the elder Mogne sons are separated from each other by adolescent sexual rivalry and from Félix by the age-gap between him and them. Vincent refuses to give up the time to teach him a few dance-steps (pp. 146–47) and the older children close ranks and send him to bed early (pp. 154–55). In Butor, romance or even marriage is never a solution to the problems that his characters face as individuals and the emotional attachments that his protagonists establish almost invariably fail. In L’Emploi du temps, Jacques Revel’s efforts to survive his year in Bleston through the writing of a diary distract him from the relationship that he believes he is forming with Ann Bailey and, then, with her sister Rose, and blind him to the fact that other suitors – James Jenkins and Lucien Blaise – are winning their hearts. In Degrés, Pierre Vernier’s

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liaison with Micheline Pavin is eclipsed by his obsession with the writing project that he has undertaken, and the fatigue, illness and eventual death of Vernier foil the development of this romance. In La Modification, Léon Delmont decides against setting up home with his mistress and returns to his wife, but his decision is based largely on his realisation that the solution to his dissatisfaction is not to be found in a relationship, but in the writing of a book. In Passage de Milan, the perspective offered on personal relationships and marriage is even more grim. Although marriage seems to be on the minds of most of the characters and although many of the older generation are preoccupied with the marriageability of their offspring or younger relatives, all the evidence in Passage de Milan suggests that marriage is almost invariably a compromise and a source of friction within the extended family. The Mognes’ marriage seems harmonious enough, but the responsibilities which come with a large family have worn them out, and they are so taken up by the needs and demands of others that they scarcely address each other directly, even at mealtimes. Moreover, despite the fact that Frédéric and Julie have produced six children and have shouldered their family duties by giving both Julie’s mother and Frédéric’s father a home, Marie Mérédat continues to rehash her belief that her daughter Julie has married beneath her (p. 50). Frédéric Mogne seems set to continue this family tradition of tension between in-laws: although he recognises that Henri’s background, education and prospects made him a good ‘catch’ for his daughter, he dislikes his son-inlaw intensely and scrutinises his every word and gesture in search of faults with which to bolster his own class prejudices (pp. 77–78). The other households in the building offer an equally bleak picture of domestic dynamics. Although Virginie Ralon laments the celibacy of her sons that denies her the pleasure of grandchildren, her own marriage to Augustin has left her a lonely and bitter woman. Not only was she obliged to share her husband with their maid, Charlotte Tenant, but both women have spent most of their lives at home waiting for this inveterate wanderer and womaniser to return to them (pp. 18–23). Indeed, the wary friendship that the women now enjoy after his death is based, in large part, on this shared experience of waiting and disappointment. The case of Samuel Léonard is no happier and, despite its very evident warmth, his relationship with Henriette is based on deception. Although he claims that Henriette Ledu is the daughter of his dead sister and although Mme Phyllis speculates, on that basis, that this sister ‘avait peut-être fait comme une mésalliance

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aux yeux de monsieur Léonard’ (p. 59), Henriette would seem, in fact, to be the result of a failed relationship that the homosexual Samuel had with an unknown woman many years before. For Samuel, Henriette’s infatuation with Louis Lécuyer and his apparent lack of interest in her are a source of worry. He recognises that the strength of her attraction could force him to consent to a liaison between them (p. 234), but is anxious both about Louis’s apparent indifference to her and about the wisdom of a relationship between a Jewish girl and a young man whose cousins are both Catholic priests. Finally, Mme Phyllis may wonder occasionally whether or not she has done the right thing in remaining single. As a housekeeper, her role and identity are determined by the orders and requirements of others, but she has lost all her illusions about romance. Indeed, all the evidence suggests to her that marriage involves a very heavy personal investment that brings no tangible returns: ‘Bien sûr, l’amour; mais s’il y avait une illusion qu’elle avait bien perdue… On se dépense, on se dépense, et quand il est passé … Elle avait peut-être gaffé en restant fille, du moins elle n’avait pas causé d’histoires’ (p. 60). As Duchamp’s Grand Verre can be read as an allegory of unfulfilled desire in which the Bride and the Bachelors are suspended in a state of permanent separation, so Butor’s novel evokes a world in which the characters are, by and large, separated by apparently unbridgeable gulfs. Like the Bride and the Bachelors, the characters derive their sense of identity from their relationships with others, but many of them have difficulty in communicating with each other and live in a state of relative isolation and dissatisfaction. However, if non-communication is the norm in Passage de Milan, there are, nevertheless, moments when the characters do succeed in surmounting the barriers that separate them or at least in relaxing in each other’s company. These occasions are relatively rare and are short-lived, but they serve to qualify the generally grim picture of human interaction offered by the book. Interestingly, as in Le Grand Verre, radio technology plays an important role. In at least two cases, the presence of a radio helps break the ice, the intrusion of the outside world and of other voices reducing the tension or unease of the characters. Thus, although Frédéric’s communication with his son-in-law remains minimal, the radio programme provides an alternative focus that renders the visit tolerable, while in the Ralon apartment, the new radio gives Alexis and Louis something to talk about and dispels momentarily their discomfort: ‘Debout, souriants, libérés, reconnaissants l’un à l’autre de

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s’être donné le moyen de rompre le silence auquel ils se sentaient condamnés’ (p. 43). Paul Mogne and Marie Mérédat may be separated by class differences, but the marginality which age has imposed on them drives Marie to seek out Paul and to create a situation which will allow her to rehearse her memories of the past (pp. 122–24). Félix’s excitement about the party may fail to elicit much response from his over-worked mother, but he finds a ready listener in his grandfather (pp. 159–62), while Louis’s predicament provokes a candid exchange between him and Samuel Léonard which not only clears the air, but forces each of them to put his trust in the other (pp. 271–76). Finally, Angèle’s party generates all sorts of movement within the building and brings together people who, at best, are normally no more than nodding acquaintances or, at worst, uncharitable neighbours whose class prejudices, religious bigotry and personal rivalry make them regard each other with suspicion: J’ai pris cette nuit-là parce qu’un immeuble parisien c’est une structure relativement stable, et dont les éléments sont assez isolés les uns des autres […]. J’ai choisi un événement relativement simple, mais qui avait l’avantage de troubler la structure, de telle sorte que tous les individus habitant dans cet immeuble se trouveraient mis en relation ce jour-là. […] chacun a été obligé de prendre une conscience neuve de son environnement […]. Ils prennent conscience en même temps de ce qui les réunit et de ce qui les sépare […]. De ce qui les sépare dans la société et de ce qui les sépare dans leur conscience du monde, dans leur relation à l’histoire universelle.58

At the close of the novel there is no evidence to suggest that the other characters will not simply retreat into their habits, but the everyday relationships between the various households have been at least temporarily disrupted. If the last few paragraphs of the novel suggest that for most of the characters ‘life will go on’ and the daily routine will be quickly resumed, it is, nevertheless, true that Angèle’s ‘fête de passage’ has been a kind of rite of passage for them too, insofar as it has produced in them a ‘prise de conscience, pour chaque individu, des autres individus, mais aussi d’un certain nombre d’éléments communs qui traînent en quelque sorte dans leur conscience’.59 Moreover, the evening does bring irreversible change to some characters: the Vertigues lose their daughter, De Vere loses his meticulously planned painting, and Louis – the involuntary agent of change – is forced to flee. However, if this latter’s enforced flight means loss (estrangement 58 Butor in Charbonnier, Entretiens avec Michel Butor, pp. 52–54. 59 Butor in Charbonnier, Entretiens avec Michel Butor, p. 53.

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from his family, abandonment of his studies), it also signals the beginning of a new life which will not necessarily be better, but which will be different. His future is uncertain, but he is given the chance to go elsewhere to sample the culture that his cousin Jean can only study from afar and to experience the sights, sounds and smells for which Ahmed yearns. Nostalgia, Deferral and Non-fulfilment If the characters of Passage de Milan are trapped within the domestic prisons that they have created for themselves, they are also trapped between the past and the future, between the no longer accessible and the still inaccessible, and, in many cases, the lives of the characters are structured around nostalgia, anticipation or a combination of the two. Both Elizabeth Mercadier and the concierges look back regretfully to the more genteel time before the air crash in which the Mourivets were killed. Marie Mérédat is constantly harking back to an era in which people had better manners, when conversation was more refined and when living was more leisurely (pp. 124, 128), while Charlotte Tenant spends her free hours painting flowers on the furniture of the Ralon kitchen to remind herself of her childhood in Bavaria (p. 19). Frédéric’s life consists of work and home, a dead-end job and a cramped, overcrowded flat. He has come to expect nothing of his day, not even a greeting from his children, access to the newspaper or a letter from elsewhere. Like his mother-in-law he takes refuge in the past, losing himself momentarily in the contemplation of his childhood home in the country (pp. 39–40). Even Samuel Léonard’s young servant Ahmed has reached the point in his life where his happiest times would seem to be behind him and he lies awake thinking about his childhood in Egypt and the father he misses (pp. 239–45). When the characters are not reflecting on the past, they are projecting themselves into the future. On the night that constitutes the temporal framework of Passage de Milan, the party acts as a focus for most of the characters’ thoughts about the immediate future. The early evening is punctuated by time-checks, as the hosts and the young guests prepare for the party, while the adult inhabitants who are involved in the soirée reschedule their mealtime routines to avoid delays and to enable the younger guests to arrive on time. However, although the hostess and most of her guests look forward to the beginning of the party with eager anticipation, some of those involved are much less enthusiastic about the evening’s attractions and

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concentrate their thoughts on the end of what they consider to be an ordeal. As Philippe Sermaize arrives at the party, he is already looking forward to going home (p. 78). Suzanne Levallois is an equally reluctant party-guest and spends most of the evening wishing that she was downstairs with her father and longing for the moment when she can leave (p. 220). The concierge, who has been engaged as a cloakroom attendant for the evening, wearily waits until everyone leaves so that he can go to bed. Elsewhere in the building, the other inhabitants’ aspirations for the future are likewise limited to the most prosaic and modest objectives. The unease which Henri feels in the company of his in-laws translates into clock-watching (p. 77), while Frédéric Mogne has to wait for his son to fetch his tobacco and for his father to finish reading his newspaper. If Virginie Ralon has spent most of her life waiting in vain for Augustin to return to her (pp. 116–17), since his death she has had little to look forward to other than her nephew’s reluctant visits. In the course of the night in question, however, she, like Alexis and Louis, reaches a point when she would settle for sleep and oblivion (pp. 164, 185, 223). In Butor’s fiction, desire tends never to be immediately or completely fulfilled, but in Passage de Milan, the failure of many of the characters to achieve their very modest goals and their preoccupation with time and, in particular, with the ‘retards’ which seem constantly to interfere with their plans or desires can be seen as part of his highly personal interpretation of Duchamp’s description of his assemblage as a ‘Delay in Glass’. That this is the case is signalled by the debate on science fiction that takes place in Samuel Léonard’s flat. This debate, and, in particular, the contribution of Jean Levallois, is to be read as a mise en abyme reflecting and highlighting the prominence of the retard motif and of the theme of deferral that underpins both Butor’s text and the artwork that inspired and informed its elaboration. Indeed, Levallois sketches out an imaginary scenario for his fictional world that, in some respects, takes the situation in which the inhabitants of the building live to its logical conclusion. The inhabitants of his futuristic world are condemned to tailor their desires not to the possibilities of technological progress, but to the strict rhythm imposed artificially by a rigid regime (pp. 155–56). Like Levallois’ characters, the inhabitants of Butor’s apartment block are governed by the rigid routine of daily logistics and live suspended between the memories of better times and a future that offers little prospect of change and in which their very humble goals would seem to be unachievable. The events of

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the night have interrupted the routine of the building just long enough to suggest other possibilities and to make them aware of their own discontent. However, that interruption is short-lived and, within hours of Angèle’s death, the habitual rhythm of daily life is already beginning to reassert itself and the world is starting to resume its business as though nothing has happened. Death If the mental stripping of Angèle has its origins in Le Grand Verre and if it is motivated textually by the sexual desire of her ‘prétendants’, it gradually becomes clear in the course of the account of the party that this ‘stripping’ has a significance that goes beyond adolescent sexual fantasy. As the evening turns into night and inebriation and failure begin to affect the state of mind of some of the bachelors, this stripping takes on an apocalyptic dimension, removing not only clothes but also flesh. Initially, Angèle seems to be exempt from this more radical exposure. With the advance of the clock and the confirmation of his failure to win Angèle, Louis consoles himself with imaginary revenge in the form of a cruel and grotesque fantasy in which the flesh of the other guests disintegrates and falls away revealing the fragile, crumbling skulls and bones beneath: Tu la trimballes bien, Gérard, ta digne soeur, la démonstration est suffisante et je m’incline et je t’envie, et si l’on t’arrachais la lèvre supérieure, alors je voudrais voir la déchirure bien nette, les ailes qui s’écartent; eh oui, rien de tout cela n’est solide; et l’on ouvre la peau comme les deux rideaux d’une fenêtre. Cela vaut bien d’être arraché pour trouver deux yeux abasourdis dans leur auréole de mince viande où se précipitent les mouches. Piètre repas sous tes grands airs. Mais c’est Vincent surtout, sa prétention, qui hérisse mes cils et me brouille tout spectacle. Sa chair jaune ne doit pas tenir si ferme à son crâne gris, plus friable qu’on ne croirait, tous tendons détachés, muscles au vent, au milieu de ses vêtements lacérés qui tournoient à chacun de ses pas comme des algues dans des remous. (pp. 191–92)

As disappointment and jealousy infect and distort his perspective on the festivities, Louis’s apocalyptic perspective gradually extends to the rest of the assembly and he begins to see the revelry as a kind of modern ‘danse macabre’ in which the other guests are also divested of skin and flesh and stripped down to their skeletons (pp. 191–93, 214, 215). If, during the party, Angèle seems to be immune from the morbid imaginings of Louis’s waking mind, this privilege disappears in the dream that he has after her accident. This dream begins as a fantasy of

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wish-fulfilment in which he and Angèle are about to be married. However, as the fantasy unfolds, it begins to turn into a nightmare. The ceiling begins to rain black ink, Henri Delétang replaces Louis as bridegroom and, when Louis rips off Angèle’s veil, the face beneath is a mass of raw flesh: ‘Louis arrache le voile; la foule entière pousse un cri; c’est un visage d’écorchée; les lambeaux de peau s’écartent et palpitent comme la corolle d’une anémone de mer, les muscles se détachent à leur tour; les veines, les artères déploient leurs délicates arborisations’ (p. 264). However, these grotesque imaginings are much more than the drunken hallucinations of a traumatised young man who has drowned his sorrows in alcohol and misanthropy. They draw attention to one of the most important themes of the novel: the constant proximity of death. These passages constitute a variation on the Vanitas motif; they are the textual equivalent of the skull in the corner of the still life, reminding us of our limits and our mortality: ‘Il y a un crâne, si vous voulez, qui apparaît à l’intérieur des oeuvres véritablement inspirées’.60 In the course of this night, the inhabitants of this building are given a reminder, in the form of Angèle’s accident, of their fragility, of the tenuousness of their hold on life and the arbitrariness of death. They go about their daily activities; they make their modest plans; they devise strategies for the fulfilment of their goals. However, even as they bustle, plan and scheme, they are temporarily stopped in their tracks and forced to confront the ultimate and universal fate that is waiting for them: ‘Cette fête se termine par une mort, une mort due au hasard. C’est comme si quelque chose de l’extérieur traversait cet immeuble. Tous ces gens qui ont été mis en relation par une fête joyeuse, tous ces gens se trouvent brusquement confrontés devant l’intrusion de la mort.’61 Louis, Samuel, De Vere: ‘Improvisations sur Michel Butor’ While it might be argued that Passage de Milan has no protagonist, it is, nevertheless, the case that certain characters are privileged by the roles that they play in the dénouement of the narrative and, more importantly, by certain similarities between them and their creator. Louis Lécuyer, Martin De Vere and Samuel Léonard are the key figures in the resolution of the narrative. Coincidence and the quickness of 60 Butor in Charbonnier, Entretiens avec Michel Butor, p. 55. 61 Butor in Charbonnier, Entretiens avec Michel Butor, p. 54.

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his own reflexes make the principal ‘Bachelor’ Louis an innocent agent in Angèle’s accident. De Vere, one of the ‘oculist witnesses’ is the first to find the body, while Samuel Léonard, another ‘oculist witness’, gives Louis shelter and engineers his escape. If these characters are singled out for prominent roles in the conclusion of the novel, it is because they are each in different ways authorial proxies within the text and, as such, are distinguished from the other characters by the fact that, through their actions and words, they draw attention to some of the key themes of the novel. Louis Lécuyer That it is Louis who is given a premonitory apocalyptic vision of the universal fate that awaits all the inhabitants of this building is no accident. It is through his action that the inhabitants are reminded of the constant proximity of death.62 However, Louis is differentiated from the other residents and guests not simply by his function as a catalyst and harbinger of death, but also by his subsequent escape from the forces of law and order and, more importantly, from the confines of this building and the cheerless life that he had been leading in it. Angèle’s death may make him a fugitive, but it also offers him the possibility of a fresh start in an unfamiliar country and freedom from the claustrophobic dynamics of his family. Death dashes the very conventional life-plans of Angèle, her parents and her ‘prétendants’, but it also precipitates Louis’s exit from a world of stultifying routine and signals the beginning of an adventure. Although his departure may be determined by circumstances beyond his control, it is, nevertheless, a life-asserting act, which distinguishes him from the other inhabitants who are going through the motions of living but are, ultimately, simply waiting for death: ‘Il n’y a pas beaucoup de morts dans mes livres, je tue avec difficulté mes personnages et elle, je l’ai tuée sans grand regret. Pourquoi? Parce qu’elle incarnait en quelque sorte toute la festivité possible dans cet immeublelà et que pour moi, pour arriver à une festivité véritable il fallait sortir de cet immeuble-là.63 Louis is privileged in this way because he is, to some extent, Butor’s youthful alter ego. Although the journey on which Louis embarks is the product of unfortunate accidental circumstances, it repeats that undertaken by Butor in 1950 when he accepted a post as teacher in 62 See Charbonnier, Entretiens avec Michel Butor, p. 55. 63 Butor in Charbonnier, Entretiens avec Michel Butor, p. 86.

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Egypt. Moreover, the description that Butor has offered of his situation and state of mind prior to his departure is strongly reminiscent of that of Louis before the accident that was to change the course of his life: ‘J’étais à la recherche de moi-même, toujours aussi mal dans ma peau. Des tas de possibilités s’ouvraient devant moi mais quelque chose m’empêchait d’en profiter. […] J’avais besoin d’une rupture.’64 Like Butor, Louis is also ‘mal dans sa peau’, the unwilling object of competition between his mother and aunt, uncertain of the demeanour he should adopt with his cousin (p. 41), uncomfortable with his peers, the reluctant recipient of Henriette’s affection and apprehensive about the party because, unlike the Mogne brothers, he ‘[n’a] pas l’habitude de ce genre de soirée’ (p. 103). For Louis, as for Butor in 1950, a radical break both with family and with the past is necessary for him to be free enough to take advantage of the possibilities that lie before him. That Louis is inadvertently the agent through whom Angèle meets her death is also consistent with his role as a younger version of Butor. As Butor has acknowledged, the death of Angèle is to be read symbolically and autobiographically as a deliberate ‘killingoff’ of the world of his own childhood: ‘Angèle, je l’ai tuée sans aucun remords! […] Parce qu’elle incarne peut-être ma propre enfance. A partir du moment où elle meurt, c’est tout l’univers de cette enfance-là qui est rayé.’65 Alone among the characters of Passage de Milan, Louis breaks free of the cycle of nostalgia, routine and anticipation. His enforced departure breaks the links with his family and allows him to escape the unhealthy competition between his mother and aunt, while the death of Angèle liberates him from his vague, adolescent romantic aspirations. As the sounds of the resumption of everyday routine (the rumbling of the métro and suburban trains) begin to make themselves heard and as the inhabitants of the building begin their morning rituals, Louis sets off in new clothes and carrying no baggage for an unknown future in which his links with his personal past have been severed. Samuel Léonard The fact that it is Samuel Léonard who engineers Louis’s escape is equally significant. Like so many of the other characters, Samuel is also caught between the past and the future, but his perspective is very different from that of his neighbours. With his twin interests in 64 Butor, Curriculum vitae, pp. 53–54. 65 Butor, Curriculum vitae, p. 67.

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Egyptology and science fiction, his attitude to the past and the future is intellectual rather than sentimental and, although he has personal reasons for disliking Louis (Louis’s disdain for Henriette and the emotional threat posed by her attraction to him), he is nevertheless able to transcend his personal feelings in the interests of justice, and helps to arrange Louis’s departure for Alexandria, on a journey which, by its destination, resembles the journey of discovery that he himself embarked on as a younger man. Indeed, in many respects Samuel Léonard anticipates the protagonists of Butor’s later fiction, each of whom sets out on a quest for knowledge and understanding that all but eclipses their emotional attachments and romantic aspirations. That Samuel is represented as a somewhat dissatisfied and disappointed figure is also consistent with Butor’s characterisation of the researcher-protagonists of his subsequent fiction. In Butor, the quests undertaken by his characters are, from the outset, condemned to relative failure. The objectives that they set themselves are ultimately unrealisable because, if their initial project seems modest enough, its pursuit is constantly opening up new lines of enquiry and uncovering new data, and new connections among those data, that reveal reality to be inexhaustible and ultimately resistant to humanity’s desire to know and comprehend it. Moreover, their task is always impeded by their own lack of selfknowledge, by a solipsistic perspective that blinds them to their own faults and to the needs of others. Samuel Léonard is the principal ‘intellectual’ of Passage de Milan. He is erudite, well-travelled, a connoisseur of the arts and an authority on Egypt, but his concern for his privacy has isolated him not only from other specialists in his field, but also from the members of his own household. Moreover, his personal life would seem to be based on a double lie: his concealment of his homosexuality and his failure to acknowledge his daughter. It is significant that his most candid moment occurs in his conversation with Louis, where he recognises some of his misjudgements and acknowledges that he has inhibited Henriette’s disclosure of her own feelings. There is no evidence in this conversation that he intends to put the record straight on other more personal matters, but the help he offers Louis is based on a desire to protect the truth. He accepts that Louis is innocent, but recognises that he is likely to be falsely accused of murder. If it is too late for him to change the course of his own life and to right the wrongs that his concealment of the truth has caused, he is, nevertheless, able to

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ensure that someone else is given a second chance and, ironically, through further concealment, to ensure that the truth prevails. Despite his obvious failings, Samuel Léonard can also be considered to some extent as a more senior fictional alter ego of Butor, insofar as his interests (his fascination for the culture of ancient Egypt and the literary group that he has formed to discuss science fiction projects) mirror Butor’s own Egyptological interest and his promotion of and participation in collaborative ventures. Moreover, the discussion in which Samuel Léonard and his friends engage and in which they sketch out various scenarios for their virtual worlds strongly echoes a passage in the essay on science fiction that Butor wrote the year before Passage de Milan was published, in which he stressed the collaborative potential of the genre. If the discussions of Léonard’s friends remain inconclusive and leave him tired and disappointed, the spirit of collaboration on which those discussions are based corresponds closely to Butor’s recommended scenario for the development of the genre: Imaginons maintenant qu’un certain nombre d’auteurs, au lieu de décrire au hasard et très vite des villes plus ou moins interchangeables, se mettent à prendre pour décor de leurs histoires une seule ville, nommée, située avec précision dans l’espace et dans l’avenir; que chacun tienne compte des descriptions données par les autres pour introduire ses idées nouvelles. Cette ville deviendrait un bien commun au même titre qu’une ville ancienne disparue; peu à peu, tous les lecteurs donneraient son nom à la ville de leurs rêves et la modèleraient à son image.66

The rather motley cénacle which assembles in Léonard’s flat may be unable to reconcile its different ideas and formulate a workable and achievable joint plan of action, but Samuel’s initiative anticipates the numerous creative partnerships with writers, artists and musicians that Butor was to establish at later stages in his career, his enthusiasm for the potential of multi-media communication and, indeed, the personal thesis that he develops in many of his public statements that every work of art is to a greater or a lesser degree a collective enterprise.67 Martin De Vere Of the three characters in Passage de Milan who can be considered as authorial surrogates, Martin De Vere is, in many respects, the most 66 Butor, ‘La Crise de croissance de la science-fiction’, Répertoire, p. 193. 67 Butor, Improvisations sur Michel Butor, p. 129. See also the interview with Frédéric Appy which figures as introduction to the latter’s study of the livre-objet, Nixe: mise en question et exaltation du livre, pp. 26–27.

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complex and, although he is absent from the building for part of the evening and consequently appears less frequently in the text, the passages that are devoted to his painting and to his aesthetic ideas offer illuminating insights into Butor’s own compositional method and, more specifically, the relationship between Passage de Milan and Duchamp’s Grand Verre. Given the very strong parallels between Le Grand Verre and Passage de Milan and the punning allusion in De Vere’s name to the principal material used in Duchamp’s assemblage, it is scarcely surprising that a number of critics have suggested that Duchamp was a model for the text’s painter. Although Butor himself has acknowledged this link, he has been keen to qualify his confirmation: ‘On peut déceler une certaine référence à Duchamp à travers Martin De Vere, mais je n’ai pas essayé d’en faire un portrait de Marcel Duchamp’.68 Moreover, as Butor has pointed out, the personality of De Vere is ‘totalement différente’ from that of Duchamp.69 De Vere is a family man who seems to have achieved a balance between the demands of his art and his fairly onerous domestic responsibilities, whereas Duchamp’s first marriage failed largely because he found art and family life to be irreconcilable: ‘il ne fallait pas embarrasser la vie de trop de poids, de trop de choses à faire, de ce qu’on appelle une femme, des enfants, une maison de campagne, une automobile’.70 In addition to the differences between their personality and domestic situation, the painting on which De Vere is working at the time of Angèle’s party bears little resemblance to Le Grand Verre, while the earlier paintings that he unwraps to show Bénédicte and Gustave are reminiscent rather of the work of artists such as Alberto Burri, Méret Oppenheim or Jean Dubuffet: ‘Il déballe ses vieux tableaux; celui-ci, on dirait un tissu, ou une fourrure, cet autre, un granit rouge rongé de lichens…’ (p. 111).71 Although several 68 Skimao and Teulon-Nouailles, Michel Butor, Qui êtes-vous?, p. 307. Note that De Vere’s name refers not only to the principal material of Duchamp’s composition, but also to Edward Fairfax Vere, the captain of the Bellipotent in Herman Melville’s Billy Budd: ‘Sans doute le nom vient-il en partie du grand verre mais je me souviens vaguement que ce nom a aussi une tout autre origine, il provient d’un livre de Melville où un capitaine de navire est communément connu dans la marine sous l’appellation de radieux Vere…’ (Skimao and Teulon-Nouailles, Michel Butor, Qui êtes-vous?, pp. 307– 08). 69 Skimao and Teulon-Nouailles, Michel Butor, Qui êtes-vous?, p. 307. 70 Cabanne, Marcel Duchamp: Entretiens avec Pierre Cabanne, p. 20. 71 See, for example, Alberto Burri’s Sacchi, André Masson, Figure (1926–27, Museum of Modern Art, New York), Meret Oppenheim’s Déjeuner en fourrure (1936, Museum of Modern Art, New York) and Dubuffet’s Sols et terrains.

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critics have made intelligent and well-supported hypotheses regarding the real models for the painting on which De Vere is working at the time of the visit,72 Butor’s own very general commentaries on the topic simply identify the sources as modern, while deflecting attention away from the work of Duchamp: ‘Toutefois, le tableau fait par De Vere évoque plutôt un certain nombre d’autres recherches de l’art du XXe siècle et pas spécialement celles de Duchamp’.73 Furthermore, although there is some similarity between the accidental destruction of De Vere’s painting and the shattering of Le Grand Verre, there is, nevertheless, a crucial difference between the fates of the two works: De Vere’s painting is consumed by fire and is, it would seem, lost forever, whereas Duchamp was not only able to repair his assemblage, but took the view that the work had actually been improved by the accident: C’est beaucoup mieux avec les cassures, cent fois mieux.74 Plus je la regarde et plus je l’aime. J’en aime les fêlures, la manière dont elles se propagent…[…] j’aime ces fêlures parce qu’elles ne ressemblent pas à du verre cassé. Elles ont une forme, une architecture symétrique. Mieux, j’y vois une intention curieuse dont je ne suis pas responsable, une intention toute faite en quelque sorte que je respecte et que j’aime.75

However, if De Vere’s personality, life and work are very different from Duchamp’s, there are strong similarities between his deliberations about art and those of Duchamp. De Vere’s approach, like that of Duchamp, is conceptual rather than retinal, the ideas informing the work being much more important to him than its visual properties: Tout devenait conceptuel, c’est-à-dire que cela dépendait d’autres choses que de la rétine.76 72 See Mary Lydon’s stimulating comparative study of De Vere’s painting and Magritte’s Clef des songes and Bruegel’s Proverbes néerlandais (Perpetuum Mobile, pp. 50–55). However, De Vere’s compartmentalisation of space, undulating dividing lines and distribution of letters and simplified figures across the canvas recall rather the paintings of Paul Klee and Adoph Gottlieb. See, in particular, Gottlieb’s Hands of Oedipus (1943) and T (1950). Note too the correspondences between many of the themes and motifs of Passage de Milan and the titles of Gottlieb’s ‘pictographs’: Expectation of Evil (1945), Divisions of Darkness (c. 1945), The Prisoners (1946), Night Voyage (1946), Voyager’s Return (1946), Evil Omen (1946), Voyage (1946), Forgotten Dream (1946), Vigil (1948), Sounds at Night (1948), Dark Journey (1949), Night (1950), Night Flight (1951). Compare also Kandinsky’s Thirty, 1937. 73 Skimao and Teulon-Nouailles, Michel Butor, Qui êtes-vous?, p. 307. 74 Cabanne, Marcel Duchamp: Entretiens avec Pierre Cabanne, p. 93. 75 ‘Entretien: Marcel Duchamp – James Johnston Sweeney’, in Duchamp, Duchamp du signe, pp. 175–76. 76 Cabanne, Marcel Duchamp: Entretiens avec Pierre Cabanne, p. 48.

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Signs and Designs Jusqu’alors j’avais basé mes tableaux uniquement sur des rapports visuels; j’eus l’idée d’introduire un ensemble de signes, une dimension toute nouvelle se découvrirait. (p. 114)

This emphasis on the conceptual dimension of Le Grand Verre explains, in part, why Duchamp insisted that the notes and the diagrams relating to the construction of his assemblage were an integral part of the ‘work’. De Vere’s lengthy and detailed oral commentaries on the principles of his composition spring from a similar desire to stress the reasoning behind the formal and painterly decisions that he has taken and the conceptual problems that remain to be resolved. Moreover, the latter’s preoccupation with the internal coherence of his painting and with the establishment of links among its various elements recalls Duchamp’s painstaking plans for and revision of Le Grand Verre and, in particular, his concern about the placing of its various elements and his lengthy deliberations about the formal and conceptual connections among them. Like Le Grand Verre, De Vere’s painting is based on idiosyncratic ‘lois’ invented by the artist: nous déterminerons les conditions du Repos instantané […] d’une succession [d’un ensemble] de faits divers semblant se nécessiter l’un l’autre par des lois77 Je voulais qu’un ciment de plus en plus solide reliât tous ces éléments. Bientôt les lignes se croisèrent, je multipliai les formes de base, j’inventai des lois de rencontre… (p. 113)

De Vere’s account of the incident that, in part at least, inspired the painting that he shows to Bénédicte and Gustave is also strongly reminiscent of one of the notes of La Boîte Verte. As he tells his reluctant guests, the stimulus for the production of this particular painting was a lecture, which was illustrated by musical examples: ‘Pierre m’avait emmené à une conférence où l’on parlait de construction, de logique, et un jeune musicien donnait des exemples sur le piano. J’avoue, je suivais mieux sur les portées. Je me disais, ce sont des textes à regarder plutôt qu’à entendre’ (p. 112). There is a very clear parallel between this anecdotal account of the inception of De Vere’s painting and the Erratum Musical of La Boîte Verte,78 which consists of a sheet of staff paper on which musical notes have been distributed according to the law of chance and which plots the virtual musical accompaniment 77 Duchamp, Duchamp du signe, p. 43. See also the subheadings ‘Lois et notes générales’ (p. 46), ‘Lois, principes, phénomènes’ (p. 45). 78 Duchamp, Duchamp du signe, p. 52.

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to the Bride. Like Duchamp who considered that any attempt to perform the music of Le Grand Verre was ‘inutile’,79 De Vere’s interest in the music to which he is exposed at the lecture is confined to the patterns formed by the notes, which are reproduced in the ‘arrangement’ (p. 112) of his composition: ‘Martin de Vere désigne un panneau sur fond très pâle, nacré, où des petits carrés semblables à des notes grégoriennes s’organisent en quatre lignes sinueuses’ (p. 113). Finally, it should be noted that if De Vere’s insertion of letters of the alphabet in his composition has been determined, as Mary Lydon argues,80 by Butor’s interest in the use of words in painting, it also has a more specific source in the experiment that Duchamp, a keen dictionary browser, outlines in La Boîte Verte for the devising of a new alphabet. For De Vere as for Duchamp, this ‘new alphabet’ will transcend the particularities of national languages and the grouping of letters will be governed by principles that have nothing in common with traditional grammatical training: Quel plaisir j’éprouvais à dessiner ces majuscules […] je réapprenais l’A, le B; c’étaient comme des personnages qui allaient habiter des maisons que je leur avais preparées. Bientôt j’eus à ma disposition plusieurs races que je mariais. Mais les syllabes qui se liaient sur les murs de cet atelier, cherchant un sens, s’attachaient à toutes les bribes de langues anciennes ou modernes qui me restaient de mes études, pour brûler en pensers bizarres. (p. 115)81

If the tracking of similarities between Duchamp and De Vere is a simple enough task, it nevertheless sheds relatively little light on the role of the sections devoted to De Vere in Passage de Milan. The key to the interpretation of these passages lies, I would argue, not in their allusions to a real model and to verifiable visual and textual sources, but rather in the status of De Vere’s composition and commentaries as internal mirrors reflecting and drawing attention to the compositional principles underlying the structure of the novel. In short, it is my contention that De Vere is Butor’s principal aesthetic spokesman within the text and that the passages devoted to his work are to be read as an extended mise en abyme, which, if it goes some way to explaining the attraction which Le Grand Verre held for Butor, is primarily important for the light it sheds on Butor’s own highly conceptual view of the artistic process. It is to an analysis of De Vere as authorial proxy that the remainder of this section is devoted. 79 Duchamp, Duchamp du signe, p. 53. 80 Lydon, Perpetuum Mobile, pp. 50–55. 81 Compare Duchamp, Duchamp du signe, p. 48.

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Of particular note are the ways in which De Vere’s artistic practice and aesthetic commentaries reflect and shed light on the spatial and temporal organisation of Butor’s text. On the most obvious level of fictional content, the analogy that De Vere uses to describe the placing of the alphabetical characters within his painting (‘des personnages qui allaient habiter des maisons que je leur avais preparées’, p. 115) offers in miniature a visual equivalent of the narrative situation of the novel, the compartments of De Vere’s composition mirroring the distribution of apartments and rooms within the building. Moreover, just as De Vere effects, through his various combinations of figures, his own ‘mariage’ of ‘plusieurs races’ (p. 115), so, in the writing of Passage de Milan, Butor has devised various ways of bringing characters of different classes, races and religions into contact with one another. As we saw earlier, Angèle’s birthday party, by virtue of its involvement of people from every social class (from the servants and concierges to the German prince) and from several different ethnic and religious groups, results in a weakening of the barriers that normally separate the inhabitants of the building and acts as a link between the various compartments of the apartment block structure. The various other social and sexual encounters that take place on the night of the party – the meeting of intellectuals in Samuel Léonard’s apartment, the Ralon and Mogne family gatherings, Bénédicte and Gustave’s unscheduled visit to De Vere’s studio, Vincent’s clandestine visit to Ahmed’s room – all contribute to the internal dynamics of displacement, combination, dispersal and recombination which underpins Butor’s text. In addition to the various journeys made within the building, several of the characters think, talk or dream about journeys to other far-flung places and their reflections, conversations and dreams make the apartment block a kind of fulcrum around which revolves a host of references to other places far beyond its walls: L’espace vécu n’est nullement l’espace euclidien dont les parties sont exclusives les unes des autres. Tout lieu est le foyer d’un horizon d’autres lieux, le point d’origine d’une série de parcours possibles passant par d’autres régions plus ou moins déterminées.82

Beyond the physical contact engendered by the various social encounters, many of the inhabitants are linked by their thoughts of elsewhere. Jean Ralon reminisces about a park in which he and Alexis lost their way when they were children, which turned, at nightfall, 82 Butor, ‘L’Espace du roman’, Répertoire II, p. 49.

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into a strange and frightening place (p. 71). Virginie Ralon thinks about the places to which her husband’s wanderlust took him, and the place that finally claimed his life (p. 116). Marie Mérédat thinks about the gracious homes of her youth (‘Nous avions une maison de campagne, une villa au bord de la mer’, p. 128), while Frédéric gazes longingly at an image of the house of his forebears and the church where he was baptised: ‘Cette image est tout ce qui nous reste de ce passé’ (p. 40). Ahmed longs for the sights, sounds and smells of Egypt, for its climate and for his family (pp. 239–45). Jean Ralon projects himself back into the culture and beliefs of ancient Egypt, while the animated debate about science fiction that takes place in Samuel Léonard’s apartment takes its participants to locations that lie light years away from the Earth. Even in the uneasy dreams that, during this night of confusion, disturb the sleep of the characters, they are drawn into journeys that defy the physical laws of the real world, but offer telling insights into their psyches. Finally, the radios that occupy pride of place in the Ralon and Mogne households offer an opening on to the outside world, giving the characters at least temporary access to other people and other places.83 The very strict temporal framework of Butor’s novel is also reflected in the description of the geometric arrangement of elements within De Vere’s painting: ‘Il s’est assis sous le tableau inachevé semblable à un emploi du temps, douze carrés sur fond gris, dont on distingue mal les couleurs, avec cet éclairage insuffisant’ (p. 111). The analogy drawn here between De Vere’s distribution of elements and an ‘emploi du temps’ not only offers a key to the structure of Passage de Milan, but highlights one of the most distinctive features of Butor’s fiction: its discipline. In all Butor’s novels, the temporal scope of the narrative is delimited with remarkable precision. Indeed, each novel constitutes a new variation on the ‘emploi du temps’. Passage de Milan recounts in twelve chapters the events that take place during a twelve-hour period in a typical Parisian apartment block. L’Emploi du temps covers a calendar year in the life of Jacques Revel. La Modification recounts Léon Delmont’s overnight train journey from Paris to Rome. Degrés focuses on Pierre Vernier’s attempt to describe a single hour in the 83 Compare ‘Aujourd’hui, nous ne vivons jamais dans un lieu unique; nous avons toujours une localisation compliquée, c’est-à-dire que lorsque nous sommes quelque part, nous pensons toujours aussi à ce qui se passe dans un autre endroit, nous avons des renseignements sur l’extérieur’ (‘Philosophie de l’ameublement’, Répertoire II, p. 60).

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school curriculum.84 However, if the structure of each of Butor’s novels is underpinned by the strictly demarcated timescale of the narrative, the fragility of that underpinning is simultaneously exposed by the fact that the experiential data of the characters and the multiple internal narratives are constantly breaking the boundaries of the dominant narrative framework. Just as De Vere finds that the geometric scheme he has devised will not accommodate all his figures, so the narrators of L’Emploi du temps and Degrés find that they cannot accommodate within their narratives the mass of data that would have to be incorporated into a comprehensive and exhaustive account. In Passage de Milan, the characters’ lives are strictly regulated by clocks, watches, the chimes of the nearby church and the timetable of the métro, and they are constantly monitoring the passing of time as they struggle to meet their personal deadlines (cooking of meals, washing and dressing for the party, completion of homework, arriving at the cinema in time for the start of the film, etc.). However, if their outward demeanour and behaviour show conformity to chronometric time, their thought-processes testify to an inner life that resists the inexorable advance of time. As we have seen, even as they go about their routine chores and activities, their attention is constantly being diverted from the present to the past by thoughts relating to their personal histories and, in the case of Samuel Léonard and Jean Ralon, relating to the history of civilisation. Moreover, the outcome of the party forces them to acknowledge a temporal dimension that defies chronometric measurement and relativises the linear, chronological and progressive conception of time that governs our daily lives. Angèle’s rite of passage may have been precisely planned and prepared, but that ‘passage’ never takes place. Her fatal fall prevents her from ever making the normal progression from child to adult, girl to woman, virgin to wife. In short, death mocks one of the rituals that humans have devised to mark the stages of their lifespan and, as Angèle’s future is turned into the eternal night of death, the other inhabitants of the building are reminded of the frailty of the routines that give structure to their lives and of their own inexorable progress towards death. If the compartmentalised format of De Vere’s composition offers a pictorial equivalent of the basic spatial and temporal framework of Passage de Milan, the analogies with Egyptian tomb-painting and with 84 Mobile has 50 chapters each devoted to one of the 50 states of the United States and evokes a 48-hour period; the 12 sections of 6 810 000 litre d’eau par seconde record the months of a representative year at Niagara Falls.

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music that he uses to explain his combinatory and contrapuntal procedures draw attention to the rationale underlying the segmentation of Butor’s text and the periodic orchestration of its various narrative series. Thus, the book illustrations of the friezes of the tombs of Saqqara and Beni Hassan85 which De Vere uses to explain his compositional methods draw attention to some of the ways in which Butor has distributed his narrative data across the text. In the tomb-paintings devoted to dancers and warriors, the temporal continuity of the sequences is suggested by the corresponding and linking gestures and movements of the figures. By contrast, in the paintings devoted to wrestling, different moments of the same action are juxtaposed and interwoven to create what De Vere calls an ‘immense contrepoint’ (p. 112). De Vere’s isolation of these formal patterns in the tomb-paintings draws attention to several aspects of Passage de Milan and acts as an indirect commentary on Butor’s own compositional methods. On the level of the fictional content, the continuous treatment of movement in the paintings of dancers clearly mirrors the permutations of the dancers at Angèle’s party, while the ‘porteuses d’offrandes’ who punctuate the fishing and fowling paintings of Saqqara and who resemble ‘des barres de mesure’, recall the role played by the various housekeepers and servants whose activities (preparation, replenishment and clearing up) serve to ‘mark time’ and indicate temporal continuity in the text. However, it is the passage devoted to the wrestling scenes that sheds most light on the formal organisation of the text, highlighting as it does the manner in which Butor has arranged and coordinated the scenes of his narrative. Passage de Milan is composed of brief segments of text each of which belongs to a particular narrative series and focuses on particular characters or groups of characters who appear, disappear and reappear in the text at regular intervals. Like the frieze of the wrestlers, the various narrative series of the text have been presented as ‘instantanés successifs’, rather than as continuous sequences, the abandonment and reprise of these series permitting the establishment of an intricate network of correspondences and contrasts, which establish a formal coherence within the text that is independent of its strict chronological progression. In short, the various visual techniques used by the tomb-painters have textual equivalents in the various narrative means that Butor uses in Passage de Milan to mark the passage of fictional time and to organise the fictional data. 85 See Butor, Le Génie du lieu, p. 121.

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The association between painting and music that is established in De Vere’s account of the inception of his work is strongly reminiscent of the numerous analogies that Butor draws between literature and music. In particular, the comparison made between the distribution of elements on the canvas and the notation of a Gregorian chant is echoed in the comparison that Butor uses in ‘L’Espace du roman’ to describe the manner in which the novelist projects his fictional space: Le musicien projette sa composition dans l’espace de son papier réglé, l’horizontale devenant le cours du temps, la verticale la détermination des différents instrumentalistes; de même le romancier peut disposer différentes histoires individuelles dans un solide divisé en étages, par example un immeuble parisien, les relations verticales entre les différents objets ou événements pouvant être aussi expressives que celles entre la flûte et le violon.86

As Mary Lydon points out, given its reference to ‘un immeuble parisien’, the foregoing commentary might be read as a set of instructions on how to read Passage de Milan.87 Equally revealing is the commentary that follows, which draws attention to the dynamic potential inherent in such a space: ‘Mais lorsqu’on traite ces lieux dans leur dynamique, lorsqu’on fait intervenir les trajets, les suites, les vitesses qui les relient, quel accroissement!’88 In Passage de Milan, this dynamism is indicated by a number of means, but, in particular, by the various types of noises that circulate in the building and serve not only to indicate the movements of characters within the space, but also to mark the passing of time. The apartment block of Passage de Milan has its own particular music. It is a type of music that is strongly reminiscent of the ‘musique concrète’ developed by Pierre Schaeffer and others in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and the percussive experiments of composers such as Karlheinz Stockhausen,89 Henri Pousseur,90 Edgar Varèse and John Cage. 91 This consists of the various sounds of 86 87 88 89

Butor, ‘L’Espace du roman’, Répertoire II, p. 48. Lydon, Perpetuum Mobile, p. 41. Butor, ‘L’Espace du roman’, Répertoire II, p. 48. Compare ‘Quoiqu’ils [nos systèmes musicaux nouveaux] fassent ils nous ont appris à percevoir la réalité musicale de la vie quotidienne […]. Stockhausen est l’un des musiciens qui a aujourd’hui la plus grande capacité descriptive que je connaisse. Ce sont des musiciens comme lui qui nous ont appris à mieux percevoir le milieu sonore dans lequel nous évoluons constamment’ (Desoubeaux (ed.), Douze ans de vie littéraire parisienne, p. 107). 90 Butor collaborated with Pousseur on Votre Faust (1962). 91 Both Varèse and Cage were friends of Duchamp.

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the building (radio programmes and interference, doorbells, the lift mechanism, the hourly chimes of the local church bell, traffic in the street, the métro running under the building) and the various noises resulting from the evening’s events (the various types of music from the party, the hubbub of conversation, the increased traffic within the building, the noise of Angèle’s fall). These sounds act both as indicators of specific moments and as markers of continuity, the noises produced by the arrival and departures of characters, their conversations and their circulation within the building recording particular moments of the evening’s activities, the sounds that penetrate from the city and the métro (the hourly chimes of the church bell, the resumption of services in the métro and of traffic in the streets, the sound of metallic shop shutters being raised) acting as reminders of the cyclical time of daily routine.92 For the inhabitants of the building, that routine may have been temporarily disrupted, but beyond the walls of the building, everyday life is continuing at its customary rhythm and providing its own more regular and more familiar sonorous accompaniment to the random dissonance produced by the various incidents and social events of the night in question.93 As Butor admitted to Georges Charbonnier, Passage de Milan is a typical first novel insofar as he had ‘essayé d’y mettre tout’.94 This chapter has not attempted to analyse all the characteristically Butorian issues that appear in it, largely because many of them have already been examined in some detail by other critics.95 The purpose of the present study was rather to analyse the role played by Le Grand Verre in the generation of the narrative, in the orchestration of the text’s themes and in 92 Passage de Milan anticipates the ‘musique concrète’ of 6 810 000 litres d’eau par seconde: Qu’entend-on dans 6 810 000 litres d’eau par seconde, en dehors de l’eau qui coule? De la musique concrète, un paysage de bruits très travaillé, des sons musicaux, airs de danse, chants de Noël, des bruits de voiture, celui des chutes, tout cela étalé, analysé, arrivant à constituer un monde sonore ayant sa vie propre. (Desoubeaux (ed.), Entretiens: quarante ans de vie littéraire, vol. I, p. 345). See also Santschi, Voyage avec Michel Butor: ‘La réalité n’est pas simplement quelque chose de visible, c’est quelque chose d’audible. C’est très important d’entendre les choses. […] Et dans mes livres j’essaie de transcrire entre autres choses du son’ (p. 56). 93 For a brief analysis of the relationship between Passage de Milan and serial music, see Knee, ‘Michel Butor’s Passage de Milan: The Numbers Game’, pp. 146–49 and Spencer, Michel Butor, pp. 39–40. 94 Butor in Charbonnier, Entretiens avec Michel Butor, p. 48. 95 See, in particular, Spencer, Michel Butor, pp. 33–46; McWilliams, The Narratives of Michel Butor, pp. 12–21; and Lydon, Perpetuum Mobile, pp. 38–67.

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the creation of internal mirroring devices and authorial representatives that draw attention to the compositional principles of the text and articulate, albeit indirectly, some of Butor’s own aesthetic views. It is my contention here that the formal and thematic coherence of this very dense and difficult text derives in large part from Butor’s exploitation of and variation on his visual model. In addition to the basic narrative situations suggested by the relationship between the Bride and Bachelors sections of Le Grand Verre, Butor would also seem to have found in Duchamp’s assemblage and notes a number of concepts that corresponded to his own interests and that encouraged him to develop some of the themes that were to figure prominently in his later work. However, perhaps the feature of Duchamp’s work that attracted Butor most was the former’s claim that the commentaries of La Boîte Verte were an integral part of the work, a claim that not only raises issues about the relationship between word and image, but has a parallel in Butor’s own emphasis on the reflexive nature of his fiction and in his incorporation into his texts of mises en abyme, authorial proxies and commentaries that throw into relief the aesthetic principles that govern his work. Thus, as we saw in the final section of this chapter, although the paintings that De Vere produces are very different from Duchamp’s, the painting that he shows Bénédicte and Gustave offers very clear parallels with the spatial and temporal organisation of Passage de Milan, while his lengthy account of the conception and execution of the work is strongly reminiscent not only of Duchamp’s working methods, but also of Butor’s own painstaking planning and revision of his own writing and of his highly conceptual approach to his work. It could also be argued that Duchamp’s devotion of eight years of his life to a project that was to remain unfinished marked him as the ideal prototype for the Butorian protagonist who invariably embarks on a project or quest that is condemned from the outset never to be completed. In the characters of Samuel, De Vere and Louis, Butor has offered us three variations on that model. Samuel is a weary and broken man who has recognised the limits of his achievements, but who is prepared to pass the baton to a younger man; De Vere is still battling with the obstacles that litter the particular path he has chosen; Louis has yet to determine his life’s project, but his path has been chosen for him and, although there is nothing to suggest that he will fare any better than the others, his departure is, nevertheless, a sign of hope and an indicator of potential.

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High and Low Culture in L’Emploi du temps

As the numerous monographs and chapters on Butor’s second novel have acknowledged, the references to art and architecture in L’Emploi du temps enjoy a particularly privileged status. The public buildings that Jacques Revel visits and the artworks that he scrutinises act as topographic, cultural and personal points of reference in his déchiffrement of the northern English city in which he finds himself stranded during his year-long stay.1 As the young French stageaire writes the unorthodox diary which he begins five months after his arrival and in which he tries at one and the same time to record recent events and the events of the previous months, he begins to appreciate the crucial roles that Bleston’s cathedrals and museums have played and continue to play in his quest to understand the virulence of his reactions to the city and in his attempt to regain some sense of personal identity.2 Revel’s various excursions and strolls through Bleston also provide Butor with an opportunity to explore and elaborate his conception of the city as a dynamic and ever-changing record of human history and civilisation.3 For Butor, who describes himself as ‘un collectionneur de villes’,4 the city is a space to be read, its art and architecture offering a résumé of its history and, to some extent, the history of the broader civilisation that produced it: 1 For an analysis of the links between Bleston and Manchester, see Arkell, ‘M. Butor’s Landlady’, pp. 6–7. 2 For a discussion of the theme of the quest in L’Emploi du temps, see Gloyne, ‘The Integrated Quest: Its Structure and Role in L’Emploi du temps’. 3 See Butor, ‘Recherches sur la technique du roman’, in Répertoire II, pp. 95–96 and Improvisations sur Michel Butor, p. 128. See also, Michel Butor, ‘La Ville comme texte’. As Kolbert notes, he ‘perceives the city as a series of visual layers, as a concentrated panorama of architectural history, and as an evolving, rather than as a static phenomenon’ (‘The Image of the City in Michel Butor’s Texts’, p. 21). 4 Butor, Curriculum vitae, p. 74.

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Revel’s multi-layered narrative and the revisions, additions and corrections to which he subjects his own history are a fitting personal response to the living history of the urban space that he inhabits. However, despite the prominence of the references to art and architecture in the novel and in the many illuminating critical commentaries devoted to it, most critics have tended to dwell on the personal symbolism of Revel’s readings of the public buildings and artworks. Although they have expanded on his own critical exegesis, they have, in my view, been rather too ready to accept his generally negative judgements on the city, and have consequently overlooked the underlying optimism of the text. The purpose of this chapter is to redress the balance, by offering a sustained analysis of the various roles and meanings of the novel’s most prominent buildings and artworks – the Old Cathedral, the New Cathedral, the Museum of Fine Arts, the Museum of Natural History, the Cain window and the Harrey tapestries – and by examining the rather unorthodox relationships that Butor establishes between these cultural landmarks and the various fairground sites and cinemas that are scattered around the city, which seem, initially at least, to epitomise the vulgarity of popular culture and the philistinism fostered by modern consumerism. This analysis will be conducted in four stages. The first section examines the sources and significance of the Old Cathedral, paying particular attention to its debt to the English Gothic tradition, its status as an embodiment of the troubled but culturally fertile history of the city, and its role as symbol of an old order that is confronting extinction. The Old Cathedral can also be interpreted as a kind of architectural palimpseste, the chequered history of which testifies both to humanity’s creative energy and its capacity for destruction and indeed selfdestruction. It is shown that the history of the relationship between the Old Cathedral and Bleston mirrors in many respects that of Revel’s own relationship with the city, while the various processes by which the building has been shaped over the centuries (additions, alterations, acts of destruction) offer strong similarities with the manner in which he composes his diary. The second section offers a detailed 5 Butor, Improvisations sur Michel Butor, p. 132.

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analysis of the structural and formal parallels between Gaudí’s Sagrada Familia and the New Cathedral, and an examination of the thematic significance of these parallels.6 Comparative analysis of the similarities between the real and fictional cathedrals reveals clear similarities based on Butor’s close scrutiny of the detail of Gaudí’s unfinished masterpiece and a profound understanding of the aesthetic principles underlying its construction. Analysis of the thematic function of the New Cathedral in the text shows that the choice of the Sagrada Familia as model was determined by its structural and decorative coherence, its incompleteness and its status as a collaborative work. The third section examines the role played by the two museums in the novel and shows how the placing of key scenes within the museum has the effect of broadening the themes of the text, the density and range of the cultural references of the museum environment raising issues that transcend the specifics of the particular protagonist’s situation. Finally, analysis of the relationship between the museums and the cinemas and fairgrounds of Bleston reveals a dynamics that challenges received distinctions between high art and popular culture and contests the museum’s traditional ‘civilising’ function. The museum, the cinema, and the fairground are shown to be complementary: in L’Emploi du temps they each figure as places of cultural interaction, the museum recording in its collections the city’s past connections with other countries and civilisations, the films shown at the Théâtre des Nouvelles offering a twentieth-century equivalent of the Harrey tapestries, while the fairground provides a space for the forging of new cultural exchanges, the continuation of the tradition of oral history and the opportunity for exposure to the customs, lifestyles and cultures of different ethnic and social groups. The Old Cathedral and the Cain Window Of all the buildings described in L’Emploi du temps, the Old Cathedral offers the most dense résumé of the city’s religious and architectural history. Although predominantly Gothic in style, its site, the archaeological finds that it has yielded, its decorative detail and the scars that it bears testify to the multiple strata of which Bleston’s history is composed. Built on the site of a Roman or pre-Roman temple (p. 102), 6 Some of the material in this section appeared in Jean H. Duffy, ‘Butor and Gaudí: the New Cathedral in L’Emploi du temps’ in Margaret-Anne Hutton (ed.), Texte(e) Image, Durham, University of Durham, Durham French Colloquies, no. 7, 1999, pp. 157–75.

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its situation bears witness to the importance of the city in the preChristian period. The motifs that figure on its side doorway (p. 39) are vestiges of its Celtic heritage, while the Romanesque columns of its west-facing door (p. 67) are reminders of the immense impact made by the Norman conquest on English church architecture. The fact that the towers of this west facade are Late Perpendicular, a style that was devised by the English and is generally only found in England, draws attention both to the accretive process by which the Cathedral evolved and to the development in England of a distinctive architectural idiom, the relative sobriety of which contrasts with the Decorative and Flamboyant styles favoured on the Continent. The final phase in the evolution of the building is attested in the Cain window, which was one of a series of stained-glass windows begun, but never completed, by a French Renaissance artist. With the advent of the Reformation, the creative phase of the Cathedral’s story comes to an end. From the end of the Renaissance onwards until the second half of the nineteenth century, the Old Cathedral’s history is characterised not by the addition of new elements, by the development of indigenous artistic styles or by the importation of creative expertise from the Continent, but rather by destruction and decay. Thus, the blank window that replaced the stained-glass window devoted to Abel is a reminder of the fanaticism of the Reformation iconoclasts; the walledup entrance to the former site of the Bishop’s palace recalls the fire that destroyed this adjoining building during the eighteenth century, while the damaged tower and blank windows that replace the stained glass of the ambulatory offer evidence of the effects of neglect and natural decay (pp. 101–02). If the Catholic Revival would seem to have made little impact on Bleston, the close of the nineteenth century heralded a new phase in the Old Cathedral’s history. The establishment of the city’s industrial base and the concomitant growth of its wealth permitted the building of a new cathedral and the return of the Old Cathedral to the Catholic Church. However, this last stage in the Cathedral’s history brings no new aesthetic developments. Although the priest is proud of the painstaking restoration, the work that has been undertaken has been reparative rather than creative and the one addition that has been made – the installation of ‘un carillon électrique des plus perfectionnés’ – is simply an inferior substitute for the famous Bleston bells, which had been transferred to the New Cathedral. Moreover, despite the careful restoration, all the evidence suggests that the Old Cathedral is fast

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losing its function as a place of worship and becoming little more than a monument to be visited on the circuit touristique: ‘Nous avons une grande, superbe et célèbre église qu’en d’autres saisons viennent admirer les habitants de régions lointaines, mais à Bleston même, non seulement il n’y a que peu de catholiques romains, mais eux-mêmes n’entrent ici que rarement, comme si ces voûtes et ces vitres leur faisaient peur’ (p. 97). If the Old Cathedral has seen its status as primary repository of Christian values eroded first by the Reformation, then by neglect and decay, and finally by the apathy or apprehension of its congregation, it nevertheless retains enormous documentary interest as an embodiment both of the city’s history and of the wider history of the country and, indeed, of the European continent. Although it has lost its power to attract believers, its synthesis of elements from the Celtic, Romanesque, Gothic and Renaissance traditions draws attention to the diverse cultural heritage of the city which has been overshadowed, though not obliterated by its industrial and mercantile development. Its incorporation of elements from the Continental tradition offers concrete evidence of the migration of styles, skills and craftsmen within Europe from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance and demonstrates that, although the modern city shows little tolerance towards other races and cultures, Bleston was once a flourishing centre of cultural exchange. Finally, it offers also a synopsis of the history of the Catholic Church, its artistic treasures and the scars that disfigure it charting the rise and decline of the influence of the Vatican. That the first significant step that Revel makes in his déchiffrement of Bleston coincides with his visit to the Old Cathedral is not surprising. Like the Harrey tapestries, which he viewed on the day before this visit, the Old Cathedral offers evidence of past cultural links between England and France. However, whereas it takes him much of the year to penetrate the representational codes of the tapestries, his comprehension of the symbolism of the Cain window is much more immediate, thanks to his own familiarity with religious iconography and to the very full explanations of the clergyman who acts as his guide. If his initial visit to the Cathedral is the stabilising ‘îlot de certitude’ in his hazy chronology of his first weeks in Bleston, it is in part because it offered, even to this lapsed Catholic, a relatively familiar sanctuary in a city that was otherwise completely alien to him. The Old Cathedral represents a synthesis of French inspiration and English innovation. It has its sources in Norman Romanesque and

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French Gothic but, with its Late Perpendicular west towers (p. 89), it testifies to the artistic inventiveness of the culture that surrounds him, which he finds so rebarbative. The stained-glass windows bring together elements from the two cultures. The craftsman who produced them was, as the priest informs him, one of Revel’s fellow countrymen. However, although this craftsman belonged to a long artistic tradition that was dominated by French artisans – from medieval times, France was the centre for stained glass – he nevertheless drew heavily on the cityscape of sixteenth-century Bleston for the representation of the city founded by Cain: cette cité que vous voyez se déployer en bas dans toute la largeur de la fenêtre, et que l’artiste a représentée en s’inspirant de celle qu’il avait alors sous ses yeux, de la Bleston de ce temps-là, ce qui donne à toute cette partie une très grande valeur de document, puisque l’on y voit représentés assez fidèlement des édifices aujourd’hui disparus. (p. 93)

Indeed, the fidelity of the French glazier to his immediate physical environment is such that this section of the window offers a basic and outdated, but nonetheless accurate, visual guide to the area around the Cathedral: Remarquez ces maisons à pignons; il en existe encore quelques-unes dont vous pouvez apercevoir les faîtes au travers de la verrière blanche de l’autre bras du transept, et le beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’alors. Vous reconnaissez le pont sur la Slee, Old Bridge […] et la Cathédrale où nous sommes, dont les trois tours carrées sont surmontées de croissants jaunes. (pp. 93–94)

Like the tourist guide and maps that he uses to find his way about and the novel, The Murder of Bleston, which he buys and reads shortly after his arrival, the glazed cityscape that Revel contemplates on this first visit to the Cathedral offers yet another mapping of the city that helps him to assimilate its topography and its culture. Moreover, if the Cain window and the priest’s commentaries on it provide Revel with a number of crucial physical co-ordinates in as yet unexplored parts of the city, Revel’s own very rudimentary religious education allows him for the first time since his arrival to take an active part in the decoding of the city. Until this point, his penetration of the codes of Bleston has been by and large restricted to his rather piece-meal assimilation of the bus-routes and their numbers. Here, his basic knowledge of the Old Testament and of Christian iconography allows him to make intelligent hypotheses about secondary scenes and to avoid making foolish remarks (p. 92). Here, for the first time

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since his arrival, he is able to draw on his own cultural knowledge in order to make sense of the world around him. Moreover, as he looks back on this encounter months later, he realises that, despite his feelings of inadequacy and confusion, he had, in fact, made considerable linguistic progress during the first month that he had spent in Bleston: ‘Le seul fait que j’aie pu soutenir cette longue conversation me montre à quel point déjà ma pratique de l’anglais s’était améliorée en un mois de séjour; les quelques mots dont je ne comprenais pas le sens gênaient à peine mes réponses’ (p. 90). His visit to the Old Cathedral may not constitute a turning-point, but it does mark a very important stage in his attempt to come to terms with the city. If in the rest of the text the Old Cathedral becomes his principal architectural point of reference in his physical peregrinations across the city, it is not simply because of the visibility of its towers, its scale or the centrality of its site, but also because of the familiarity of certain of its features, which gave him a limited but precious purchase on the local culture. It is significant that it is George Burton’s description of the Cain window that draws Revel to the Old Cathedral. Both the artisan who produced the window and the author of The Murder of Bleston use their art to tell a story and to reveal a truth. The literary genre within which Burton is working is based on the elaboration of an ultimately intelligible story and the revelation of a truth, i.e. the identification of the criminal. The stained-glass window had an analogous function. Its prime purpose was to tell the biblical stories and to reveal divine truth. Burton’s architectural tastes, as they are articulated in The Murder of Bleston, reveal a great deal about his own artistic principles. His admiration for the Old Cathedral and for the Cain window testifies to his subscription to an artistic tradition that has lost its rationale, while his hatred for the New Cathedral shows an aggressive resistance to innovation. For all his analytical sophistication and his self-conscious deliberations about detective fiction,7 Burton hangs on to a belief in the god-like omnipotence of the author-creator who controls the distribution of mystery and revelation within the narrative and who confers on his protagonist the capacity to separate the innocent from the guilty and to reveal truths that will bring comfort to some and terror to others. Indeed, Burton’s commentary on the final revelation that traditionally marks the end of the detective novel reads like a 7 For fuller analysis of the role of the discussion about the detective novel, see Spitzer, ‘Quelques aspects de la technique des romans de Michel Butor’. See also Jean, ‘Entretien avec Michel Butor: La Mithridatisation par le roman policier’.

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variation on the Last Judgement. Here, the detective who, like Christ, has come ‘not to bring peace but a sword’, assumes the dual role of deliverer and punisher: Mais oui, c’est lui le véritable exécuteur […] et le bourreau, le procureur, tout l’appareil légal […] ne sont que les instruments de son oeuvre, qui toujours […] lui en veulent de se mêler de leurs affaires, et de se servir d’eux dans un dessein si différent du leur (car ils sont les gardiens de l’ordre ancien mis en danger, tandis que lui veut agiter, troubler, fouiller, mettre à nu, et changer) pour en fin de compte parfois les berner, s’érigeant en seul juge, leur soustraire leur proie. Toute sa vie est tendue vers ce prodigieux moment où l’efficacité de ses explications, de sa révélation, de ces mots par lesquels il dévoile et démasque, prononcés le plus souvent sur un ton solennellement triste comme pour en atténuer le terrible éclat, la lumière dont ils sont chargés, si douce pour ceux qu’elle délivre, mais si cruelle, si consternante, si aveuglante aussi, où l’efficacité de sa parole va jusqu’à l’anéantissement du coupable […]. (pp. 191–92)

That the Old Cathedral and the Cain window occupy such an important place in Burton’s novel is, however, highly ironic. In his desire to confer on his detective a Messianic role, Burton has failed to notice or chosen to ignore the fact that the Christian model that informs his conception of his art has become obsolete. The Old Cathedral no longer tells a coherent story; the series of windows of which the Cain window was to be but one element was never completed and, of those windows that were completed, it is the only one to have survived. As a result, the original meanings of the series have been lost. Revel’s misreading of the Cain window and his error about its status within the Cathedral draw attention to the obsolescence of the belief system that the Cathedral represents and, by implication, the literary tradition represented by Burton. To the modern viewer, the Cathedral would seem to honour the murderer Cain, a misreading rendered inevitable by the destruction of the window that was devoted to Abel, which served as a pendant to the Cain window, and by the fact that the Last Judgement was never completed. The original function of the vitrail – it was intended to expose the illiterate to the stories and teachings of the Bible – has also been lost. Revel’s understanding of the Cain window is dependent on words: the iconographical explanations of the priest, his verbal reconstruction of the series and of the history of the church, his translation of the Latin mottoes and the documentary evidence supplied by an anonymous ‘chroniqueur’ (p. 95). In short, the

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windows of the Old Cathedral have lost their rationale: not only are they no longer able to serve as visual substitutes for writing, but their intelligibility is to a very large extent dependent on verbal exegesis. Burton’s admiration for the Old Cathedral is rooted in his personal and professional investment in the concept of truth. There is no evidence to suggest that he is himself a practising Christian, but his fiction is based on a notion of retribution that is formulated in terms that have strong biblical overtones. Moreover, this association is reinforced by the fact that the revelation of the truth concerning the crime of The Murder of Bleston and the punishment of the criminal takes place in the Old Cathedral in front of the Cain window. However, in his own scrutiny of the Old Cathedral, Burton has failed to acknowledge that the ‘truth’ that it supposedly served had long since been undermined by the events of history and by the passage of time. The fact that the stained-glass windows of the Old Cathedral were produced towards the end of the Renaissance and at the beginning of the Reformation is highly significant. By this time the traditional art of stained glass was already in decline and the Reformation, with its virulent hostility towards the visual representation of religious subjects, struck the final blow. In according the Cain window such an important role in his novel, Burton is, in effect, paying homage to a work that represents the end of a tradition, which, by virtue of its isolation as the sole survivor of a series, has been separated from the context that conferred meaning on it. Moreover, the fact that the window representing the Last Judgement was never executed acts as an indicator to the reader of L’Emploi du temps of the obsolescence of the literary principles expounded by Burton during his conversations with Revel. In conferring on his fictional protagonist the role of purveyor of truth and judgement, Burton is simply trying to complete the unfinished story of the windows series and secularising its message. His fictional world and his characters may belong to the twentieth century, but his narrative procedures are founded on concepts – truth, revelation, definitive resolution – which have little to do with the reality around him. Burton’s exposure to that reality turns out to be brutal. The ‘accident’ that befalls him may or may not be an attempted murder, but, unlike in the novels that he writes in which the truth is always disclosed and the culprit apprehended, the mystery surrounding the incident in which he was almost killed is never elucidated, despite police enquiries, Revel’s investigation and his own meditation on the circumstances leading up to it.

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The concept of ‘truth’ is shown in L’Emploi du temps to be a highly dangerous and potentially destructive idea. In their quest to impose their version of ‘truth’, the Reformers unleashed a wave of violence that set brother against brother and resulted in the destruction of many of the artistic treasures that the Catholic Church had produced to express its version of the ‘truth’. In Burton’s fiction, those who seek the truth about violent crimes end up by resorting to violence themselves: Burton’s retributive theory of the detective novel turns the search for truth into a quest for vengeance and transforms the detective into a killer. Jacques Revel also discovers the perils of the truth. Having uncovered the ‘true identity’ of the author of The Murder of Bleston, he uses this discovery to impress his friends and, in so doing, may have endangered the novelist’s life. When he subsequently takes on the role of amateur detective, he compounds his betrayal by imputing murderous intentions to the inhabitant of Bleston who has perhaps shown him the greatest kindness: James Jenkins. His attempt to solve the mystery of Burton’s ‘accident’ leads him to devise versions of the incident that, in casting suspicion on Jenkins, produce tensions in his relationship with him and almost destroy their friendship. Finally, Revel’s attempt to reconstruct the history of his year in Bleston and to write a truthful account blinds him to what is going on around him; oblivious to the development of the relationships between Lucien and Rose and between James and Ann, he fails to take advantage of the opportunities for personal happiness that life puts in his path. Moreover, in addition to the damage that he does to his friend, to his friendship with James and to his own chances of romance, his attempts to discover the truth founder. Although he may succeed in uncovering the civil identity of the author of The Murder of Bleston, as he contemplates the photograph on the jacket of the newly reprinted version of the novel, he is forced to acknowledge his inability to penetrate the masks that conceal the latter’s personality: ‘cette photographie pour laquelle Georges Burton a posé en tant que Georges Burton, où il est évidemment moins masqué, mais où il est encore masqué, d’un masque particulièrement trompeur pusqu’il ne se présente pas comme un masque’ (p. 364). Similarly, his attempt to offer an accurate account of his year in the city fails, partly because of his failure to provide an account of 29 February, but more importantly because the rereading and revisions that he has undertaken as he has proceeded have highlighted the distortions inherent in all forms of representation, making it clear that the account that Revel arbitrarily stops

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writing as his train pulls out of Bleston is infinitely revisable. However, if Revel fails to realise his self-imposed task and inadvertently relinquishes his chances of romance, he does succeed in creating a work that, for all its deficiencies, testifies to the human desire to ‘make’. If the troubled history of the Old Cathedral and his initial reading of the Cain window serve to confirm his perception of Bleston as a city founded on internecine conflict and fratricidal violence, the commentary of the priest on the Renaissance glazier’s interpretation of the biblical story can be seen retrospectively as an intimation of the creative solution that Revel will adopt in order to assuage his own violent anger towards the city, an anger that comes to a crisis in his quasi-ritualistic burning of his map. As the priest explains to Revel, Cain is honoured in the window as ‘le père de tous les arts’, the lateral and secondary panels of the Cain window showing the creative and productive heritage of Cain and his progeny. It is at this point that Revel shows a faint inkling of the implicit secular message of the window. As the priest continues his guided tour, Revel becomes aware of a certain ambiguity in the glaziers’ treatment of their subject: Les explications qu’il me donnait, loin de dissiper l’étrangeté, ne faisaient que la préciser et l’approfondir. Quelle ambiguïté dans la disposition que ces verriers d’antan avaient donnée à leurs sujets, comme s’ils avaient voulu montrer, à travers l’illustration même de la lecture officielle de la Bible, qu’eux y découvraient autre chose! (p. 99)

Thus, in spite of the priest’s insistence on the glaziers’ fidelity to the scriptures (p. 93), their treatment of their subject-matter betrays an unorthodoxy that, although discreet, is radically subversive in its celebration of man’s (as opposed to God’s) creations. In the months that follow his discovery of the Cain window, Revel tends to see the window as a negative omen anticipating the ill-effects of industrialisation and the transformation of the city into a soulless centre of production and commerce. Later in the novel, during the crisis of conscience provoked by Burton’s accident that leads Revel back to the cathedral, the window seems to him to be a symbol of his own guilt. As he contemplates the biblical scene, it seems momentarily to animate, the blood of Abel streaming down the glass to engulf him and mark him with the sign of Cain (p. 258). However, as his diary proceeds and as he begins to exorcise his own feelings of violence towards the city, the imagery that he uses to describe his writing offers evidence of a deeper understanding of the implicit message left by the Renaissance glaziers: that salvation is to be achieved not through

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subscription to any one unverifiable ‘truth’ or to belief in an allpowerful godhead, but rather through human striving and labour. That he has understood this message is signalled by his thoughts as he turns away from the window and by his recognition that the priest whom he glimpses in the sacristy can offer him no help or comfort: ‘Alors, je me suis levé, je suis allé regarder par la porte de la sacristie où il n’y avait qu’un autre ecclésiastique lisant son bréviaire, qui ne pouvait m’être d’aucun secours’ (p. 259). In L’Emploi du temps, Revel succeeds in saving himself from the hatred that was devouring him, not through a return to the Catholic faith of his youth, but through the writing of a journal in which he is able to exorcise that hatred and to gain some understanding and appreciation of the city. Revel compares his writing to the various trades that Cain’s sons gave to the world: having started, like Cain, as a stranger wandering in an inhospitable desert (‘la gigantesque sorcellerie insidieuse de Bleston […] m’a égaré loin de moi-même dans un désert de fumées’ (p. 37)), he learns to ‘make’, becoming a builder, a blacksmith, a weaver, and, ultimately, a musician. Revel’s diary is, in many respects, the account and the product of an apprenticeship, during which he masters the crafts of Cain and his progeny. However, if the skills of Cain, Tubulcain and Yabal offer pertinent metaphors to describe Revel’s adoption of the diary as a means of survival, these metaphors also illustrate the dangers of his enterprise. Thus, the ‘rempart de lignes’ that Revel constructs to protect himself against Bleston turns out to be a fragile refuge, collapsing around him like the ‘cités maudites’ of the ambulatory windows (p. 333); the sentences that he forges become a chain (‘cette chaîne de phrases, en partie cause de ma perte’, p. 344); the cloth that he weaves and the métier he has taken up threaten to draw him in and trap him (p. 288). It is only when he begins to learn the skills of Yubal, the father of music, that Revel is able to understand fully his pact with the city. The diary that he writes is not only a means of survival; it is also the instrument by which he restores Bleston’s music. The text that he produces turns out to be the answer to the plaintive question that he posed on page 94 during his account of his first visit to the Cathedral: ‘Bleston, ville de tisserands et de forgerons, qu’as-tu fait de tes musiciens?’8 In giving voice to his anger and his guilt,9 Revel has broken the repressive 8 See Jongeneel, Michel Butor et le pacte romanesque, p. 36. 9 On the creative role of anger, see Waelti-Walters, ‘Suppressed Rage as a Creative Force in Michel Butor’s Work’.

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silence that has imprisoned so many of Bleston’s inhabitants10 and, in doing so, has created a work in which the evocation of one moment sets off a multitude of resonances that call to mind other distant and apparently unrelated moments of his own past and that of Bleston (pp. 384–87). It is also through the elaboration of this diary that this grim and inhospitable northern English city is reintegrated into the history of Western civilisation. If at the outset of his writing project Bleston figured as the worst example of the modern, intensely industrialised conurbation (p. 47), by the end of his year Revel has recognised that, for all its blemishes, it has identifiable links and affinities with the great cities of the ancient world. Its contemporary peers may be the urban sprawls of Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield, Liverpool, Detroit and Pittsburgh, but it also has its place in a rather more salubrious subset of cities that includes Athens, Rome, Cnossos, Timgad and Baalbek. Finally, it is also through the writing of his diary that Revel very gradually comes to appreciate the muted beauty of the changes that the different seasons bring to Bleston’s parks, gardens and skies (pp. 148, 166, 181–82, 297, 244). These historical and rememorative resonances, geographical links and seasonal variations are the basis of Bleston’s distinctive music, which, until Revel begins writing, reveals itself either in the form of a dull and apparently sourceless ‘murmure’ or in the form of the strident cacophony of urban noises.11 If Revel is able to give form and expression to this music, it is because of the revisionary nature of his diary, its superposition of temporal layers, and its reprise and correction of scenes and details creating a polyphonic structure that, by Butor’s own admission, is based on the overlapping parts of the canon: C’est […] la musique qui m’a servi de modèle. Le canon est une des structures fondamentales de la polyphonie: une seconde voix imite la première et, parfois, une troisième voix remonte de la dernière à la première note.12 Une des structures fondamentales de la polyphonie, c’est le canon, avec des renversements, des miroirs. Des musiciens ont fait des pièces dans lesquelles une seconde voix imite la première, et où parfois une troisième 10 For instance, the archbishop who is struck dumb (p. 101), James Jenkins (pp. 117– 18) and Mrs Jenkins (pp. 121, 243). 11 For example, the clanking sound made by the escalator in Philibert’s store (p. 67), the fireworks on Guy Fawkes Night (p. 120), the singing of drunk men in pubs (p. 124), the howling of the animals in the zoo (p. 150), the thudding of the workmen demolishing the Scenic Railway (p. 150), the din of shoppers in the department stores in the weeks before Christmas (p. 197). 12 Butor, Curriculum vitae, p. 74.

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Signs and Designs remonte de la dernière à la première note. Ce sont des structures fondamentales de notre perception du temps et de l’Histoire. Ainsi la musique peut nous donner des modèles narratifs. Les musiciens ont beaucoup travaillé sur des textes, en les disposant sur différentes voix, ils ont fait ressortir de textes bien connus, les textes liturgiques par exemple, des significations et des émotions toutes neuves.13

Like the canonic reinterpretation of the liturgical texts, Revel’s polyphonic account of his year in Bleston not only allows him to express his own emotions, but also to detect and record the various tones of Bleston’s plural voices: la voix tonnante et dure avec laquelle tu me proclamais ce discours impitoyable […] une toute autre voix bien plus profonde, une voix de lamentation réveillée par mes flammes […] la voix de ta guerre intime […] la voix de ton désir de mort et de délivrance, que je m’efforce d’amener au jour, à la parole, en accomplissement de ce pacte qui est intervenu entre nous. (pp. 368–69)

It is also through the creation of this polyphonic music that Revel is able to release himself from the destructive and terrifying silences of suspicion and guilt: the silence of suspicion that precludes frank communication with his friend James Jenkins during their meal at the Oriental Rose on 25 June (p. 160), the silence of guilt that makes him hyper-conscious of Burton’s breathing during his visit to him on 14 August (p. 290). It is no accident that the phantasmagoric animation and bleeding of the Cain window was accompanied by an eerie suspension of all sound, and the silence was finally broken by a noise – the screeching of the brakes of a police car and the sound of its siren – that seemed to confirm his culpability. It is only after Revel has written out his feelings for the city and expressed his remorse for his betrayal of Burton that he is able to assuage his guilt and to declare to the city that ‘Nous sommes quittes’ (pp. 340, 356). Finally, it should be noted that the signal of Revel’s ultimate liberation from the hold that the city has on him takes the form of a brief description of another window. However, on this occasion the window is not the vitrail of the Old Cathedral, but a banal domestic window: that of the room where he has written his diary. As Revel writes his antepenultimate entry in his diary, he pauses to consider his own reflection in the glass and the raindrops suspended on it: Tout d’un coup la fatigue accumulée depuis des mois, tout d’un coup ta fatigue, Bleston, s’est abattue sur moi, enveloppant mes os comme les replis 13 Butor, Improvisations sur Michel Butor, p. 83.

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d’un linceul humide, et je suis resté longuement immobile à considérer, au travers de mon propre reflet dans la pupille de la fenêtre, les innombrables gouttes d’eau, minuscules miroirs sphériques, tomber inlassablement dans Dew Street, alors qu’il ne me reste plus que quelques instants pour terminer les pages de cette semaine. (p. 391)

This brief description records the final stage of Revel’s release from the ‘sorcellerie’ of Bleston – the final entry will record his physical release as he sits in the train compartment – and heralds his re-entry into the life that he knew before his arrival in the city. Of course, it is significant that this moment occurs in front of yet another window; this ordinary plain glass window reveals to him what he has achieved: his contemplation of his own reflection offers a symbolic visual confirmation that he has managed, against the odds, to preserve his sense of identity, which seemed in earlier months to be under severe threat from his environment.14 However, this passage has symbolic implications that extend beyond Revel’s recovery of his sense of personal identity. It is the final variation on and fusion of two recurrent motifs that have punctuated the text – windows and mirrors – and have served as indicators of his states of mind. Thus, his feelings of imprisonment were expressed by the repeated references to the view of a brick wall seen from the window of the hotel in which he spent the first few weeks (p. 23), while his impressionistic record of the variations in the view from his room in Dew Street reflected the shifts of mood to which he was subject during his stay (pp. 131, 133, 141, 152, 159, 200, 220, 246–47, 294–95, 340, 377). The metaphor that he uses on page 297 to describe the raindrops dispersed across the surface of his window – ‘minuscules miroirs sphériques’ – not only acts as a pendant to the image used to describe the rain that greeted him on his arrival in Bleston, but is one of a series of references to real and metaphorical mirrors and reflections15 and, most notably, to the spherical mirrors that hang in the Baileys’ and the Burtons’ sitting rooms. This last mirror serves to highlight the end of Revel’s abortive ‘romance’ with Ann Bailey, the final reference to this mirror recording, in a description strongly 14 Compare ‘La vitre est en effet une image qui m’est chère. Elle peut ou non être transparente; elle peut ou non me faire voir au-delà d’elle. Vitre ou miroir, c’est le symbole du roman lui-même; il a sa propre dureté et à travers lui, je plonge, je découvre autre chose. Et en découvrant cette autre chose, il me renvoie mon reflet et je me découvre moi-même’ (Desoubeaux (ed.), Entretiens: quarante ans de vie littéraire, vol. I, p. 39) 15 See pages 9, 149, 122, 129, 155, 301–01, 359–60, 363, 367, 379.

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Jan van Eyck, The Arnolfini Portrait, 1434

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reminiscent of Van Eyck’s Arnolfini Portrait,16 the moment when Ann Bailey and James Jenkins announce their engagement to George and Harriot Burton. Here, Revel assumes the role occupied by Van Eyck in his painting, that of a witness to the proceedings whose presence is recorded in the tiny reflection of the spherical mirror: ‘dans le miroir sphérique […] se sont inscrites les deux images des fiancés entre les deux visages des époux qui nous recevaient, les images d’Ann et de James et la mienne aussi, tout près du bord, minuscule dans l’embrasure d’une minuscule porte courbée’ (p. 379). Although Jongeneel notes in passing the reference to the Arnolfini Portrait, she does not explore its implications.17 This oblique allusion to one of the most important works of the Northern Renaissance provides the link between the Cain window and the description of the banal domestic window of Revel’s lodgings in Dew Street. If, at the end of the novel, Revel is able to turn away from the narrative that is recounted in the stained glass of the Cathedral window to confront without anxiety his reflection in the clear glass of the window in front of his desk, it is because he has completed his own ‘artistic’ apprenticeship and is ready to record his reflected image in his work. His unfortunate romantic history may transform the passage in which Ann and James’s engagement is recorded into a bitterly ironic variation on the Arnolfini Portrait; however, although in this variation the aspiring lover is relegated to the role of witness, the allusion to Van Eyck’s work refers indirectly to the alternative artistic role that is offered to Revel. By the end of his stay in England, Revel has achieved what might be considered to be a twentieth-century variation on the Arnolfini Portrait: that is, a work that, even as it painstakingly represents the surfaces, textures and detail of the immediate environment, also records the artistic process by which it was created. However, there is one crucial difference between Van Eyck’s painting and the work produced by Revel. Whereas in the Arnofini Portrait, the single convex mirror served, in part at least, to complete the picture and thereby enhance the illusionism of the work, the innumerable ‘miroirs sphériques’ which Revel contemplates on his window pane act as reminders that the perspectives on any one object, person, or event are potentially infinite in number and that, consequently, even the most scrupulous representation is by its very nature a distortion of reality. 16 In his response to a questionnaire that appeared in Livres de France in 1963, Butor names Van Eyck as his favourite painter (Desoubeaux (ed.), Entretiens: quarante ans de vie littéraire, vol. I, p. 222). 17 Jongeneel, Michel Butor et le pacte romanesque, p. 83.

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That Gaudí’s Sagrada Familia was the model for the New Cathedral in L’Emploi du temps is well documented. Early evidence of Butor’s admiration for Gaudí is to be found in his 1961 review of a Paris exhibition entitled ‘Les Sources du XXe siècle’, a substantial section of which is devoted to an impassioned defence of the Spanish architect’s audacious constructions, in particular the Casa Milà and the Sagrada Familia.18 Georges Raillard’s afterword to the 10/18 edition of the novel and his critical study of Butor’s fiction19 report that Butor had visited Barcelona and Gaudí’s church while he was working on the novel. More recently, in one of a series of interviews published in 1996, Butor acknowledged that Bleston’s two cathedrals are fictional variations on English Gothic cathedrals, Liverpool’s Anglican Cathedral and the Sagrada Familia: Pour ce roman, c’est évidemment Manchester qui m’a servi de modèle […] mais j’ai ajouté deux cathédrales fictives, qui sont un mélange des églises gothiques anglaises, de la basilique de Liverpool et de la Sagrada Familia de Gaudí, à Barcelone.20

Despite these very clear signals, relatively little critical work has been done on the links between the New Cathedral and Gaudí’s cathedral. Those critics who have noted the connection have limited themselves to brief footnote acknowledgements or the occasional comparative commentary. Thus, Marie-Claire Kerbrat’s 1995 monograph on the novel simply notes the connection in passing,21 while in his otherwise very subtle reading Pierre Brunel dismisses the Sagrada Familia as a ‘pseudo-référent’.22 Dean McWilliams and Else Jongeneel23 do draw attention to the way in which Gaudí and E. C. Douglas draw on the natural sciences for the decorative elements of the two cathedrals, but do not explore in any depth the implications of this parallel. Even Mireille Calle-Gruber’s excellent book-length analysis of the role of the city in L’Emploi du temps remains remarkably tentative in its formula18 ‘L’Art contemporain jugé par ses sources’. 19 ‘L’Exemple’, in L’Emploi du temps (Paris, Union Générale d’Editions, 1966), 443–502 (p. 501); Raillard, Michel Butor, 1968 (p. 118). 20 Butor, Curriculum vitae, p. 74. While there are a number of similarities between the New Cathedral and Liverpool’s Anglican Cathedral, the textual evidence suggests that the latter’s contribution as source is very limited. However, where relevant, parallels between the two structures will be highlighted in the footnotes. 21 Kerbrat, Leçon littéraire sur ‘L’Emploi du temps’ de Michel Butor, p. 84. 22 Brunel, Butor: L’Emploi du temps, p. 165. 23 McWilliams, The Narratives of Michel Butor, pp. 27–28; Jongeneel, Michel Butor et le pacte romanesque, p. 79.

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Antoni Gaudí, The Expiatory Church of the Sagrada Familia, Barcelona, 1883– 1926

tion of the link between the real and fictional buildings – ‘La Nouvelle Cathédrale, qui a peut-être été inspirée par celle de Gaudí, la Sagrada Familia’24 – the footnote that accompanies this speculative aside offering only a factual, descriptive commentary on Gaudí’s cathedral. This neglect is particularly surprising given the extensive body of critical commentary on the functions of the New Cathedral in the text, especially its status as a mise en abyme.25 It is not the intention here either to challenge or to revise earlier commentaries on the novel, but rather to provide ‘a missing link’, first, by a detailed analysis of the structural and formal parallels between the Sagrada Familia and the New Cathedral and, second, by an examination of the thematic significance of these parallels. The most obvious similarity between the two constructions is, of course, that already noted by McWilliams and Jongeneel: the role of nature as inspiration in the conception of the external and internal 24 Calle-Gruber, La Ville dans ‘L’Emploi du temps’ de Michel Butor, p. 111. 25 Jongeneel, Michel Butor et le pacte romanesque, p. 79; Calle-Gruber, La Ville dans ‘L’Emploi du temps’ de Michel Butor, pp. 112–13; Spencer, ‘The Unfinished Cathedral: Michel Butor’s L’Emploi du temps’.

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decoration. Like Gaudí’s cathedral, the New Cathedral is characterised by lavish ornamentation based on and testifying to the profusion and variety of forms in the natural world: ‘quelle stupéfaction […] devant la profusion de la décoration naturaliste d’animaux et de plantes!’ (p. 146). Both churches show the concern of their creators to incorporate not only broadly representative examples of the world’s flora and fauna, but also representative examples of animal and plant classes and even species and sub-species. Thus, Gaudí’s church incorporates sculptures and decorative features representing mammals, birds, reptiles, molluscs, amphibians, crustaceans, echinoderms, polyps, plus various types of plants, grasses and fruits. Bleston’s cathedral offers samples of a broadly similar range of species and sub-species. The nave is decorated with invertebrates (p. 164). The aisles are ornamented with representations of plant life (p. 164) and the capitals of the pillars represent a variety of organisms, including various types of marine life (p. 163). The corners of the transept have been reserved for the insect world (p. 164), while its transverse arms show a profusion of forms that are strongly reminiscent of Gaudí’s dense natural decoration: ‘Dans ce bras, les poissons, les grenouilles avec la salamandre aussi, les lézards, les serpents, les tortues, les oiseaux, dans l’autre, les mammifères; au milieu, les singes’ (p. 164). Even the enormous leatherback turtle that Revel picks out for special attention during his visit to the cathedral in early December (pp. 198–99) has been suggested by the massive sculptures of tortoises that form the bases of the pillars framing the Sagrada Familia’s Portal of Love, while the comparison that Revel draws as he enters the church is strongly reminiscent of the impression intended by the forest-like branching of the columns in Gaudí’s cathedral: c’est l’effroi qui m’a pénétré comme dans une grande forêt l’hiver à la tombée de la nuit. (p. 198) The branching-out form of the columns and their great number should give the impression of a forest.26

In addition to the multiple references to and representations of plant and animal life,27 both Gaudí’s Sagrada Familia and Bleston’s cathedral 26 Descharnes and Prévost, Gaudí: The Visionary, p. 58. 27 Jennifer Waelti-Walters points out that the Anglican Cathedral in Liverpool is decorated with a number of carvings based on animal and plant life (Michel Butor: A Study of his View of the World and a Panorama of his Work 1954–1974, p. 143). However, these decorative elements are sparsely distributed in the otherwise very stark interior of the cathedral.

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also reserve an important place for man and his works. The porch of the New Cathedral is decorated with allegorical figures representing the arts and the sciences, while the Sagrada Familia incorporates not only a number of figures depicting various trades and crafts (a ragman, an organ-builder, a carter, a sculptor, a stone cutter),28 but also sculptures of craftsmen’s tools and musical instruments.29 The working methods of E. C. Douglas also resemble Gaudí’s in that, like the Spanish master, he drew on living models for his allegorical and religious sculpture. Thus, as Descharnes and Prévost report, the tradesmen and visitors to the building site of the Sagrada Familia provided Gaudí with the models for his figures: the site caretaker provided the model for Judas; a tavern waiter was the model for a Roman soldier; the figure of Joseph was based on a stonecutter.30 Revel’s amateur architectural analysis unearths an even closer connection between Bleston’s sculptor and his work, the resemblance of Mrs Jenkins to the sculptures representing Botany, Astronomy and Geology alerting him to the fact that Mrs Jenkins’s mother must have been the model for the allegorical figures (pp. 200, 220, 308). The resemblances between Bleston’s New Cathedral and the Sagrada Familia are not, however, limited to the decorative detail of the churches. Revel’s description of his initial impression of the interior of the church during his first visit in November conjures up a structure that, by its emphasis on the integration of elements is strongly reminiscent of Gaudí’s cathedral: Ah, quand j’y suis entré […] quelle stupéfaction devant ces arcs épais, à mihauteur, ces ponts bordés de fines balustrades qui relient deux à deux les colonnes de la nef, avec ces plates-formes circulaires en leurs milieux, devant tous ces balcons courant le long des parois, qui les relient et les prolongent, devant la croisée à la rencontre du transept de deux de ces extravagants jubés inondés par les fenêtres de la flèche qui les surmonte, de lumière verticale verdâtre, quasi sous-marine, pâle et très froide. (p. 146)

The stress that Revel’s description places on the linking elements of the structure – the arcs, bridges, balustrades, platforms and balconies – echoes many of the commentaries on the Sagrada Familia. In Gaudí’s 28 See Descharnes and Prévost, Gaudí: The Visionary, p. 144. It should be noted, however, that the Laymen’s window and the Musicians’ window of Liverpool’s Anglican Cathedral may well have been secondary sources for the sculpted figures of the New Cathedral porch. 29 See Descharnes and Prévost, Gaudí: The Visionary, p. 144. 30 See Descharnes and Prévost, Gaudí: The Visionary, pp. 136–37.

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church the vault and piers were conceived as integrated elements, the inclined and ramifying columns that we have already noted creating organic, dynamic links between the vault and the supporting elements, while the use of parabolic arches allowed him to avoid what he saw as the discontinuity of the Gothic: ‘Continuous forms are perfect forms. The formal elements of a work must be welded together, integrated, and fused into an ensemble: they must also lose their individuality and thus contribute more to the unity of the whole.’31 Finally, there is also a parallel between the history of the construction of Gaudí’s bell towers and that of the construction of the towers of the New Cathedral. The clergyman whom Revel encounters in the Old Cathedral, who tells him the story of the Cain window, also informs him that the central tower of the New Cathedral was completed before the rest of the building, so that the bells could be moved from the fissured tower of the Old Cathedral (p. 102). This unorthodox order of construction mirrors the chronology of the building of the Sagrada Familia, insofar as only one of the four towers of the Nativity was completed by the time Gaudí died in 1926.32 Moreover, the importance attached to the bells housed in the Bleston cathedral is highlighted by Revel’s ecclesiastical guide, whose approving commentary on the variety and resonance of the bells of Douglas’s cathedral is remarkably close to Gaudí’s own account of the projected effects of the bells of the Sagrada Familia: Depuis, elles sonnent tous les jours (vous avez pu apprécier l’ampleur, la richesse de leurs timbres, la variété des combinaisons qu’elles permettent). (p. 102) The bell towers will contain a great many chimes, tuned by tones and halftones.33

Initially Revel reserves judgement about the New Cathedral’s aesthetic merit, though he admits that the scorn expressed by Hamilton/ Burton in The Murder of Bleston had inclined him at first towards a negative reaction and had, at the very least, prevented him from appreciating the originality of the building on his first visit: ‘j’aurais été incapable de me dégager du mépris à son égard que m’avait enseigné Le Meurtre de Bleston, de l’apprécier, cette Nouvelle Cathédrale’ (p. 146). However, even on the occasion of this first visit, he cannot help but 31 Descharnes and Prévost, Gaudí: The Visionary, p. 56. 32 See Descharnes and Prévost, Gaudí: The Visionary, p. 145. 33 Descharnes and Prévost, Gaudí: The Visionary, p. 61.

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acknowledge his astonishment at the originality of the interior decoration. On his second visit, he is the eager pupil of James Jenkins who takes him on a guided tour and who patiently answers his numerous iconographical queries. On his third and, apparently, final visit, his initial surprise and curiosity give way to a feeling of terror (p. 198), an emotion that is further developed in the nightmare he suffers shortly before he leaves the city for good. The evolution of Revel’s reaction to the New Cathedral offers an important interpretative key to the reader. The New Cathedral acts as a foil to the other examples of nineteenth-century architecture, which, as Nathalie Griton-Rotterdam points out, are simply poor attempts to imitate the architecture of the past.34 In contrast with the secular buildings of the same period, the New Cathedral, like the Sagrada Familia, is a pioneering work that, if it remains difficult to like, has to be admired for the boldness of its conception and the extravagance of its design. Whereas much of the municipal architecture is characterised by inept imitation of the ancients and the incorporation of anomalous Greek and Roman elements, the New Cathedral, like its model, is an imaginative reworking of the native Gothic tradition from which it springs: ‘Il y a aussi deux cathédrales: une vieille cathédrale […] vraiment gothique, une nouvelle […] néo-gothique, pas méprisable du tout car l’architecte qui l’a construite est extraordinairement imaginatif, une espèce de Gaudí britannique. Elle a donc toutes sortes de vertus et de mystères.’35 Furthermore, whereas most of the other nineteenth-century buildings testify to the industrial and commercial development of the city, which has led, in the twentieth century, to the construction of tasteless edifices such as the new store, the New Cathedral stands as a challenge to the commercialism of the 34 Griton-Rotterdam, ‘Antiquité et modernité’, in Analyses et réflexions sur Michel Butor, ‘L’Emploi du temps’: la ville, pp. 67–68. It is the nineteenth century that has made the greatest mark on the city. A very high proportion of the municipal, commercial and domestic buildings were constructed during the second half of the nineteenth century. These include Hamilton Station, the Town Hall, the Museum of Fine Arts, the University and Natural History Museum, the ubiquitous terraced houses and, of course, the New Cathedral. By and large, the city’s nineteenth-century architectural legacy is viewed in a very negative light. The Town Hall is framed by its preposterously crenellated towers, which remind Revel of the toy forts of his childhood (p. 66); the architrave of Hamilton Station is supported by four soot-encrusted, squat Doric columns (p. 19); the terraced houses are ‘serrés et sordides’ (p. 59); the houses in the quarter where Horace lives are like ‘des falaises de charbon suintant, sommés de pinnacles de rouille’ (p. 38). 35 Butor, Improvisations sur Michel Butor, p. 92.

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city. In the nightmare that Revel experiences shortly before his departure, the New Cathedral is transformed into an enormous organic and living structure, which expands to swallow up not only the newly built department store, but all the other buildings of the square. Revel’s dream can be seen as a kind of realisation of Gaudí’s ambition for a ‘living’ church, the expansion and animation of the New Cathedral corresponding closely to the Spanish architect’s aspiration to build a church that would hold thousands of people and would counteract the materialism of his times: This was Gaudí’s aim: to make the newly ‘living’ church inhabited […] destined to be the largest church in the world, the church of universal faith, built after the sacred model of the mythical Jerusalem of the Apocalypse […].36 The new Temple was to reassert family values which the Devotees regarded as having been eroded by the rampant materialism which was the corollary of nineteenth-century industrial expansion.37

Given Gaudí’s renowned devoutness and the religious allusions that punctuate L’Emploi du temps, it is tempting to regard Butor’s New Cathedral as an invocation to spirituality or as a premonition of a renewal of faith. Such an interpretation would, however, be misleading for two reasons. First, Butor is a lapsed Catholic who renounced his faith during his student days38 and who, in his recent essay L’Utilité poétique, goes so far as to suggest that one of the primary functions of poetry is to counteract the imperialistic tendencies of monotheistic religions: ‘Les religions monothéistes sont fatalement impérialistes. Elles tendent à la destruction des autres cultures. La poésie, dès son origine, lutte là-contre; elle représente un danger pour certains aspects de la religion. Elle est suspecte à tout clergé.’39 Second, in his analysis of Gaudí’s art in ‘L’Art contemporain jugé par ses sources’, Butor adopts a rather unorthodox standpoint, playing down the religious fervour that, it is often assumed, was the source of the architect’s creative energy, and stressing instead the subversive qualities of his 36 Descharnes and Prévost, Gaudí: The Visionary, p. 65. It should also be noted that the Anglican Cathedral in Liverpool is the largest cathedral in the UK and among the largest in the world. 37 Burry, Expiatory Church of the Sagrada Familia, unpaginated. 38 Butor, Curriculum vitae, p. 17. Compare Revel’s remarks to the cleric he meets in the Old Cathedral: ‘Je suis d’éducation catholique romaine, mais il y a longtemps que j’ai laissé s’effacer en moi la plupart des rudiments d’“Histoire Sainte” que l’on m’avait inculqués’ (p. 92). 39 Butor, L’Utilité poétique, p. 22.

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work. In Butor’s view, Gaudí’s cathedral constituted a challenge not only to architectural tradition, but also to the tradition of the church and, in particular, to the traditional relationships between the ecclesiastical building, the religious service and the congregation: ‘en ce qui concerne le catholicisme, la profondeur avec laquelle il a repensé la question des relations entre le temple, le culte et les fidèles, aboutit à une mise en question radicale des opinions reçues dans son milieu à ce sujet’.40 Butor does not define the new relationships that Gaudí sought to establish between church, worship and the faithful, but it is clear elsewhere in the commentary that his own admiration was based particularly on Gaudí’s creation of a dynamic, aesthetically coherent whole and on the links that he established between his own work and the culture in which he produced it: Pensant les formes de son temps dans ce que je pourrais appeler un ‘espace architectural complet’, c’est-à-dire reliant ses constructions à tous les aspects de la civilisation à l’intérieur de laquelle il les réalisait, Gaudí a pu les délivrer de leurs contradictions internes, et leur donner, par rapport à ces contradictions, une extraordinaire valeur novatrice dont nous recueillons aujourd’hui les fruits.41

Gaudí’s architecture is based on a synthesis of many different elements, both cultural and natural: Catalan Gothic, medieval fortresses, Roman temples, Moorish architecture and decorative arts, art nouveau, the flora, fauna and rock formations of the region, the inhabitants of Barcelona.42 It is the challenge posed by this combination of innovation and rejuvenation that, according to Butor, the lay intellectuals of Barcelona have failed to recognise: ‘le cléricalisme de l’architecte a longtemps masqué cet aspect, et empêche encore aujourd’hui bien des intellectuels de Barcelone d’apprécier à leur véritable valeur les chefsd’oeuvre qui transfigurent leur ville’.43 It is the same prejudice that prevents Georges Burton, the analytical mind behind The Murder of Bleston, from appreciating the New Cathedral. As Revel points out, Burton could not be more wrong (p. 157). Contrary to Burton’s harsh appraisal of the New Cathedral as an ‘imitation vide d’un modèle 40 Butor, ‘L’Art contemporain jugé par ses sources’, p. 136. 41 Butor, ‘L’Art contemporain jugé par ses sources’, pp. 135–36. 42 See Sweeney and Sert, Antoni Gaudí, pp. 55–56, 59, 133–55; Hughes, Barcelona, pp. 469–70, 479, 510–11, 516–17; Zerbst, Antoni Gaudí, pp. 22–26, 61, 128, 135, 143, 192, 222–23; Descharnes and Prévost, Gaudí: The Visionary, pp. 153–61. 43 Butor, ‘L’Art contemporain jugé par ses sources’, p. 136.

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incompris’, as ‘l’oeuvre d’un singe radotant’, it is, for Revel, a rich and bold construction, the greatness of which lies in its subversive variations on traditional motifs and in its forewarning of new beginnings: ‘j’avais été bien obligé de sentir qu’un esprit d’une étonnante audace y dénaturait violemment les thèmes, les ornements, et les détails traditionnels, aboutissant ainsi à une oeuvre certes imparfaite, je dirais presque infirme, riche pourtant d’un profond rêve irréfutable, d’un sourd pouvoir germinateur’ (p. 157). Like the Sagrada Familia, the New Cathedral blends apparently disparate elements of contemporary and past culture. Broadly neoGothic in design, it refers back to the history of the Church and to the city’s Old Cathedral.44 However, it is also a church of its time, that is to say a post-Darwinian place of worship, the decorative extravagance of which testifies to the challenge that natural history was posing to religious faith.45 It is no coincidence, surely, that the other buildings in the city that are identified as neo-Gothic are the University with its natural history museum, whose extensive geological, botanical and zoological displays illustrate the evolution of the local landscape, flora and fauna. Nor does it seem coincidental that the sculpture on which Revel focuses on his second visit is the turtle, which, as one of the oldest living species of our planet, testifies perhaps more than any other to the evolutionary process and which, indeed, was an important prompt in Darwin’s elaboration of his theory of selectivity. Viewed in this way – that is, as evidence of Douglas’s openness to the scientific discoveries of his time – the sculpted turtle of the New Cathedral can be seen to take its place in a network of references that binds the cultural and the scientific.46 The link that Revel makes between Douglas’s sculpture and the giant devouring turtle of the Harrey tapestries 44 Butor, Curriculum vitae, p. 92. 45 This dimension of the New Cathedral has been noted in passing by both Mary Lydon and Dean McWilliams (Perpetuum Mobile, p. 95; The Narratives of Michel Butor, p. 27). Lydon makes an explicit connection between the decorative elements of the Cathedral and Darwin, while McWilliams proposes a more general argument: ‘The goal is a synthesizing vision of man and his evolutionary past’. However, neither critic develops this promising line of argument further. 46 Note, in particular, the passage describing the nightmare that afflicts Revel after he has learned of Ann’s engagement. The laugh that the delirious Revel hears seems to come from the fossilised forms lying deep in the ground around Bleston (p. 339). Note, too, Revel’s visits to the ‘grand chêne minéralisé’ (pp. 60, 376), the name of the street where James Jenkins lives (Geology Street), Revel’s description of his task as an excavation (pp. 173, 294), the exhibits in the Natural History Museum (pp. 294, 308–09, 323) and the fossil that the allegorical statue of Geology holds in her hand and contemplates (p. 308).

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highlights the status of the creature in the city’s cultural history and its place in the myths, stories and belief systems of the ancients. However, the references to the living turtles viewed by Revel in the zoo combine with the various allusions to the geological history of the area, and in particular, to the fossilised animal and plant forms to be found in and around Bleston to draw attention to its very important role in natural history and, in particular, in the formulation of the story of evolution. In short, even as it draws on and reworks ecclesiastical and architectural tradition, the New Cathedral heralds a new age, and it is its success in blending the old and the new, its fusion of the cultural history of the city and the scientific spirit of its time, which make it stand out against the drab architectural backcloth of Bleston. However, striking though the New Cathedral is, it is not to be read as the final aesthetic statement or Grande Oeuvre. For Butor there is no such thing as a definitive work. There will always be an ‘Oeuvre future’ which will replace it. The New Cathedral is, like Gaudí’s Sagrada Familia, at once an ‘édifice déjà ancien’ (p. 305), and a herald of the art of the future: ‘Si l’on me demande de quelle façon je me représente l’art de demain, c’est en général dans l’oeuvre de Gaudí que je vais chercher mes signes avant-coureurs’.47 The status of the New Cathedral as forerunner of ‘l’art de demain’ is signalled by Revel’s dream. As in La Modification, it is the central character’s dream rather than his conscious thought that provides the ultimate interpretative key to the text. In that dream, the animated and pulsating New Cathedral devours all in its path, leaving behind on its own former site a new building of which Revel is able to glimpse only ‘une porte, et encore seulement la poignée et la fente, au travers de la brume qui s’épaississait’ (p. 366).48 Despite the terrifying nature of the dream, this vaguely perceived door or crack of light not only intimates Revel’s exit from the situation in which he finds himself, but also offers him and his readers some – albeit nebulous – assurance of an entry into a new future. Like the journey undertaken by Léon in La Modification and the creative journey on which he embarks at the end of that novel, the account of Revel’s exposure to the harsh world of Bleston with its pollution, violence and arson attacks has a universal dimension. 47 Butor, ‘L’Art contemporain jugé par ses sources’, p. 136. 48 Note that both the turtle of the third Harrey tapestry (p. 202) and the animated Cathedral of Revel’s dream inspire terror because of their monstrous and savage energy and their capacity to devour all in their path. This parallelism draws attention to the savage dimension of the evolutionary process and of natural selection.

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Revel, like Léon, is an everyman struggling to make sense of his situation, while Bleston can be interpreted as a microcosm reflecting the ills of the modern world.49 Butor regards the twentieth century as a blighted and ignominious period of human history and has expressed his own impatience to turn a new page: Tout va tellement mal sur cette pauvre planète, qu’on espère vraiment que quelque chose va finir, et qu’on va pouvoir passer au chapitre suivant. Donc, je me sens à la fin d’une histoire. Et au début d’une autre. Ou disons plus exactement, dans l’attente d’une autre. Cette autre histoire, elle a à peine commencé. Il y a simplement des signes avant-coureurs depuis très longtemps… Mais on est toujours dans les signes avant-coureurs… La page n’a pas vraiment été tournée. Et j’ai de l’impatience qu’elle se tourne.50

Butor has no firm message or moral to offer, but he remains an optimist. He has no religious faith, but is confident that, even in the absence of religious belief, we can fabricate our own version of paradise from the hell in which we live: Je suis un écrivain optimiste. Toute littérature est forcément optimiste. Le mot ‘évangile’ signifie ‘la bonne nouvelle’: je n’ai pas moi-même de bonne nouvelle à apporter, certes, mais je travaille dans cette espèce de certitude qu’il y a de la bonne nouvelle. Au coeur de notre enfer, il existe des poussières de paradis, ce que Blake appelle le mariage du ciel et de l’enfer. Voilà un thème sur lequel je reviens perpétuellement, sous toutes sortes de formes. Avec l’enfer, nous devrons savoir fabriquer le paradis. 51

In L’Emploi du temps the evidence and results of man’s aspirations to ‘fabriquer’ are everywhere to be seen: in the Harrey tapestries, the images of the Cain window and, most notably, in the New Cathedral. The cathedral constitutes a particularly fitting ‘signe avant-coureur’. Like Gaudí and Douglas, who both drew extensively on their culture and their immediate natural and human environment for the sources of their work, Revel draws on his experience in Bleston to produce his own modest creation. He comes to realise that the composition of a work, in his case the writing of his diary, is a way of dealing with and transcending his imprisonment in Bleston. As he recognises towards the end of the novel, the ‘poussière de paradis’ is to be found in the

49 ‘Une ville industrielle anglaise devait m’apprendre quelque chose de très important sur ce que sont les villes industrielles en général et par conséquent sur la civilisation occidentale actuelle’ (Butor in Charbonnier, Entretiens avec Michel Butor, p. 97). 50 Butor in Santschi, Une schizophrénie active, pp. 147–48. 51 Butor, Curriculum vitae, p. 258.

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streets and inhabitants of the city that threatened to destroy him (p. 357). The alchemist’s imagery that he uses in this passage sheds important light on an earlier description of the New Cathedral. Not only is it an ‘édifice déjà ancien’, but, like Gaudí’s cathedral, it is incomplete.52 Amidst the profusion of references to the natural world, the minerals are conspicuous by their absence. Viewed in retrospect, Revel’s discovery of this omission can be seen as one of the first signals of the direction he is to take. As Jongeneel points out, Revel’s destiny is to make good this gap: ‘Lacune comblée par le texte de Revel qui est censé extraire l’or de la ville, ce minerai précieux pris dans la gangue des briques’.53 However, even as he remedies this particular omission in Douglas’s scheme, the work that he produces, like the Sagrada Familia and the New Cathedral, is also destined to be incomplete: ‘toutes ces pages empilées rayées de lignes d’écriture, sur cette table cet amoncellement de phrases semblable aux ruines d’un édifice inachevé’ (p. 341). Revel fails to complete his diary; time runs out and he is forced to leave Bleston without giving his account of the incidents of 29 February. As always in Butor’s fiction, the protagonist has to acknowledge at least partial defeat, but that defeat is inevitable, and even, as Mary Lydon argues,54 the condition of survival. Revel survives both his year in Bleston and the self that needed to write the diary: ‘je suis le survivant de moi-même dans cette année’ (p. 357). He is free to advance towards the future, because he has outlived the self or selves that the harsh environment of Bleston had generated. However, as a result of his personal tribulations and in the course of his reflection, writing, and relentless reappraisal, Revel has produced a rich and complex composition, which constitutes – by its establishment of an intricate network of internal correspondences, by its disruption of traditional chronology in favour of a structure based on revision, variation and the multiplication of temporal and narrative perspectives, and by its elaboration of countless links between Revel’s story and the history of Western culture – a small-scale, but fitting response to the artistic agenda set by Gaudí’s architecture. 52 It is worth noting that in the early 1950s – the period covering Butor’s appointment as lecteur at the University of Manchester and the subsequent composition of L’Emploi du temps – Liverpool’s Anglican Cathedral, like Gaudí’s Sagrada Familia, was still far from completion. 53 Jongeneel, Michel Butor et le pacte romanesque, p. 79. 54 Lydon, Perpetuum Mobile, pp. 87–88, 95–96.

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Finally, it should be noted that, if the New Cathedral acts as a mise en abyme reflecting the internal organisation of the text in which it figures, it can be read also as a prototype for the work of the future. In his interviews, essays and even in his first novel Passage de Milan,55 Butor has repeatedly outlined what he considers to be a likely scenario for the development of literature. For him, the future of literature lies in collaborative or even collective projects involving not only other writers, but also musicians and painters.56 His own extensive use of intertextual citation, notably in Degrés, and his numerous and varied collaborative ventures can all be seen as decisive steps in this direction: ‘Travailler sur les citations, c’est mettre un évidence le fait qu’on n’est jamais seul auteur d’un texte, que la culture est un tissu’.57 Furthermore, as his interview responses show, the rise and development of multi-media communication are welcomed by him because of the opportunities they offer for publishing co-operatives.58 Butor’s enthusiasm for technological development does not, however, blind him to the collaborative and collective achievements of the past. The expansion of the computer culture can, in many ways, be seen as the latest link in a long chain of collaborative and collective activities, stretching back to the beginnings of civilisation and to the founding of the ancient city-states. Indeed, for Butor, the most notable example of the collective oeuvre is the city, a thesis that he elaborates elsewhere in his fiction and, in particular, in the five volumes of the Génie du lieu: ‘A partir du moment où l’on comprend qu’une oeuvre d’art est fondamentalement collective, avec un maître d’oeuvre qui va se détacher plus ou moins, alors certaines autres oeuvres se présentent à la critique, en particulier les villes’.59 Within every city there are also, of course, numerous examples of collective works. Of these, the ecclesiastical buildings are perhaps the most telling, insofar as they testify to the values, beliefs and cultural baggage of a given community at a given time. Furthermore, not only are they the result of collective decision55 See, in particular, Butor’s essay on science fiction, ‘La Crise de croissance de la science-fiction’ in Répertoire, pp. 186–94, and the discussion among the writers who meet in Samuel Léonard’s flat (Passage de Milan, pp. 205–06). 56 See Butor, ‘Propos sur le livre aujourd’hui’, Répertoire IV, p. 442; Santschi, Voyage avec Michel Butor, p. 78. 57 Butor in Helbo, Michel Butor vers une littérature du signe, p. 12. 58 Butor, Frontières. Entretiens avec Christian Jacomino, accompagnés de quelques exemples, p. 68. See also Butor, Curriculum vitae, pp. 201–02, and Improvisations sur Michel Butor, pp. 208–09. 59 Butor, Improvisations sur Michel Butor, p. 129. See also, ‘Entretiens avec Madeleine Chapsal’ in Les Ecrivains en personne, p. 64, and Butor, Curriculum vitae, p. 107.

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making (pp. 102–03), but their construction involves the combined labour and skills of a wide range of artists, artisans and tradesmen.60 Thus, the confidence that Butor expresses in technology and its likely consequences for the arts is complemented in his novels and his travel writings by his admiration for the grand collective enterprises and achievements of the past, in particular the great cathedrals, mosques and temples of the world – the Basilica of San Marco (Description de San Marco), Saint Peter’s (La Modification), Cordoba’s mosquecathedral, the church of Osios David in Thessaloniki, the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, and the remnants of the many temples of Delphi (Le Génie du lieu). The age of faith may have passed, the churches that our ancestors built may have lost their primary function and become historic sites, but they, nevertheless, offer guidance for the future, demonstrating, as they do, how much can be achieved through collective endeavour and the pooling of contemporary talents. Bleston’s Museums Revel’s first impressions of the city’s two museums – the Museum of Fine Arts and the Natural History Museum – are scarcely more positive than his initial appraisal of the rest of the city. The buildings that house the city’s artistic and scientific collections offer no visual relief in a cityscape that is dominated by the grimy, functional architecture of the industrial age. The Natural History Museum is located in the ‘grand catafalque néo-gothique’ (p. 66) of the University, which Revel first visits on a bleak Saturday afternoon in January. Although his diary offers only a very brief summary of this visit, it is clear that it was not a particularly inspiring outing. Even the presence of Rose who acts as his guide fails to lighten his spirits or to engage his interest in the museum’s tired-looking botanical exhibits and its stuffed animals (p. 294). The return visit that he makes in August prompts a more detailed description, but also makes him aware of some of the other shortcomings of the exhibits. In addition to its jaded plant specimens and its grisly display of ‘animaux empaillés, épinglées, séchés ou plongés dans l’alcool’ (p. 308), the collection includes a geological department that consists primarily of rather shoddy dioramas and charts mapping the geological history of the site. The Museum of Fine Arts is also, on 60 As Rainer Zerbst points out, Butor’s mentor was himself a committed champion of collaboration: ‘Gaudí […] was an ardent proponent of collective projects. Work, he once said, was the fruit of cooperation’ (Antoni Gaudí, p. 150).

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first appearances, a rather dismal and neglected exhibition space. Its facade is badly discoloured by pollution, while the tasteless mockantique frieze of its stairwell has been badly restored (pp. 86–88).61 If individual exhibits, such as the much-analysed Harrey tapestries, offer Revel a crucial point of entry into the city’s past, the rest of the collection is typically provincial, its heterogeneous display offering at most a highly selective overview of the city’s cultural history, the stages of which are represented by its assortment of archaeological remains, a display of seventeenth-century clothes and furniture, the series of eighteenth-century tapestries, a few minor nineteenth-century works and a sample of works by local artists (pp. 87–88). Although Revel makes his visits in the 1950s, the manner in which the two collections have been organised and exhibited is based on a crude application of the historico-deterministic principles that characterised nineteenthcentury museology. In the Museum of Natural History, the shortcomings of the geological sections and dioramas – the crude colouring of the former and the unskilful representation of plants and animals in the latter – are obvious even to the layman (p. 323). In the Museum of Fine Arts, the curator has adopted a straightforward chronological approach, conveniently ignoring the fact that the heterogeneity of the displays, the huge gaps in the collection and the incomplete information about the dates and origins of some of the exhibits preclude the establishment of a meaningful historicising framework. Despite these very evident deficiencies, the city’s two museums are, by virtue of the dynamics of their relationship with the New Cathedral, very important symbols of the way in which man can transcend his apparent limitations and fabricate something new out of the old. If the two museums are in themselves typical examples of outdated and unimaginative provincial curatorship, they offer, nevertheless, an important insight into the factors that combined to produce Bleston’s most notable and most original building: the association that Revel makes between the sculpted turtle of the New Cathedral and the monstrous turtle of the tapestries in the Museum of Fine Arts draws attention to the prominence of the species in the city’s cultural history, while the fossil held by the Allegory of Geology acts as a reminder of the region’s rich fossil deposits (pp. 60, 323, 339, 376) and of the various petrified organisms exhibited in the Natural History Museum. The city’s two museums may look rather reactionary by comparison with 61 See also Griton-Rotterdam, ‘Antiquité et modernité’, in Analyses et réflexions sur Michel Butor ‘L’Emploi du temps’: la ville, pp. 67–68.

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the New Cathedral, but they are representative of the cultural and natural environment out of which that remarkable building was generated. Their earnest, if rather derisory, attempts to organise their collections according to evolutionary principles point to the enormous ideological shift that, on a global level, transformed our understanding of our own origins and, within the microcosm that is Bleston, allowed E. C. Douglas to make his audacious contribution to the history of the city’s art. However, it is, of course, the Harrey tapestries, the centrepiece of the Museum of Fine Arts, that give the municipal collection a degree of cultural credibility. Although the description of the tapestries suggests that they are fairly unremarkable products of the Beauvais ateliers, by dint of the fact that they constitute a complete ensemble illustrating the exploits of Theseus, they contrast sharply with the rather motley assortment of artefacts, costumes, furniture and paintings that make up the rest of the collection. Moreover, on the level of Revel’s cultural and intellectual evolution, they occupy a particularly privileged status, insofar as they offer him crucial ‘termes de référence’ in his reading of the city. The woven landscapes that form the backdrop to the story of Theseus make him aware of the muted beauty of Bleston’s parks and gardens (p. 389), while the representation of the trials and tribulations of Theseus offers him an archetypal structure that allows him to make sense of his own ordeal. It is this latter issue that has attracted most critical attention. McWilliams, Calle-Gruber, Kerbrat, Jongeneel and Brunel have all offered very useful and illuminating analyses of the symbolic status of the Theseus myth in Revel’s diary.62 However, although the extensive body of often very erudite commentaries on the Harrey tapestries has elucidated some of the more oblique parallels between Revel’s account and the Theseus myth, critics have tended by and large to focus on the personal symbolism of Revel’s reading and have consequently neglected or underplayed the metafictional aspects of his idiosyncratic exegesis. I would argue that the parallels that Revel draws between his own situation and the episodes represented on the tapestries are, in fact, less important than his account of the gradual process by which he deciphers their symbolism and penetrates the representational conventions on which the 62 See McWilliams, The Narratives of Michel Butor, pp. 23–24; Calle-Gruber, La Ville dans ‘L’Emploi du temps’ de Michel Butor, pp. 71–77; Kerbrat, Leçon littéraire sur ‘L’Emploi du temps’ de Michel Butor, pp. 75–79; Jongeneel, Michel Butor et le pacte romanesque, pp. 49–63; Brunel, Butor: L’Emploi du temps, pp. 87–102.

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narrative series is founded. It takes Revel the best part of the year to identify the episodes represented on each of the eighteen tapestries and to understand the compositional strategies used by the weavers. On his first visit to the museum (pp. 86–89), the absence of étiquettes prevents identification of all but one of the episodes depicted, his basic knowledge of classical myth allowing him to recognise the eleventh tapestry in the series as a representation of the slaying of the Minotaur by Theseus. On his second visit on 9 December, he has rather more time and his closer scrutiny of the series not only allows him to identify most of the episodes represented, but also to appreciate the coherence of the ensemble (pp. 205–07). By the time he takes Lucien on a guided tour of the museum (second Sunday in May), Revel has acquired and read the Guide to Bleston and is able to offer an authoritative running commentary on all eighteen tapestries (pp. 226–29). However, Revel’s authority in this scene is purely relative – Lucien is ‘bien plus ignorant en mythologie classique que je ne l’étais moi-même lors de ma première rencontre avec ces grandes illustrations de laine, de soie, d’argent et d’or’ (p. 228) – and, although his commentary is accurate on the level of content, he shows only a very limited understanding of the formal principles of composition. It is during his visit with James Jenkins in June, and thanks to this latter’s illuminating commentaries, that he finally understands the compositional code adopted by the artist who designed the ensemble: il m’a surpris encore une fois par sa pénétration, me faisant remarquer un aspect essentiel des tapisseries auquel je n’avais pas pris garde, à savoir qu’elles ne sont pas des instantanés mais qu’elles représentent presque toutes des actions qui durent un certain temps, ce qui s’exprime par le fait que l’on peut voir, réunies dans la composition d’un seul panneau, plusieurs scènes en succession, le même personnage apparaissant ainsi deux fois, trois fois dans le numéro 15. (p. 278)

If, as Else Jongeneel has suggested, it is possible to read James Jenkins’s explanation as a commentary on Revel’s juxtaposition of different scenes within the sub-sections of his narrative,63 I would argue that the delay of this explanation until page 213 is at least as important as its substance. Viewed together, the passages devoted to Revel’s four visits to the Museum of Fine Art can be read as a serial mise en abyme drawing attention to the dynamics of the relationship between reading, writing and interpretation. James Jenkins’s elucidation 63 Jongeneel, Michel Butor et le pacte romanesque, pp. 58–63.

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of the compositional principles employed by the eighteenth-century artist is a very important stage in Revel’s déchiffrement of the city and its art. However, the fact that Revel is only given access to this information and to the commentary in the Guide to Bleston once he has carried out his own close analysis and reading of the tapestries is highly significant. Initially denied the verbal props of critical exegesis (the étiquette, the guidebook, the guided tour), Revel is forced to rely on his limited cultural knowledge and his own critical competence. As he recognises on page 204, this absence of interpretative apparatus promotes rather than hinders critical and interpretative interaction with the tapestries: Car si ce travail d’approche m’avait été épargné, si j’avais eu d’emblée à ma disposition un catalogue semblable à celui-ci par lequel je sais maintenant les noms de tous ces criminels exécutés, de toutes ces femmes, de tous ces lieux, les tapisseries n’auraient pas pris dans ma vie tant d’importance. Que m’auraient dit alors ces quelques lignes imprimées? Bien loin de m’aider à pénétrer dans le domaine circonscrit par les dix-huit portes de laine, je crois qu’elles m’en eussent à tout jamais interdit l’accès, car, sans même en apprécier la valeur, je les aurais sans doute jugées suffisantes, je n’aurais pas cherché plus loin, je ne serais peut-être jamais revenu dans ces salles, tandis que, déjà engagé dans l’exploration de cette contrée d’énigmes, lorsque j’ai eu entre les mains ces renseignements, j’ai pu les estimer aussi précieux que maigres, en extraire toute l’information. (p. 204)

Moreover, the lack of critical commentaries gives him an interpretative freedom that, if it increases the likelihood of errors, also offers scope for his own creative reworking of the subjects and motifs of the panels. Thus, his early scrutiny of the panels produces results that are very similar to Butor’s account in his interviews with Charbonnier of his own reading practices and of the role that the work of other writers plays both in his interpretation of the world and the people around him and in the generation of new narratives: Si je lis un roman de Dostoïevski, par exemple, il y a un certain nombre de personnages qui me frappent, et je vais immédiatement essayer ces personnages sur mon entourage. Je vais m’apercevoir qu’il y a quelqu’un qui ressemble un peu à Yvan Karamazov, ou qu’il y a quelqu’un qui ressemble un peu au Prince Muichkine. J’ai ce qu’on appelle des ‘caractères’. C’est un très beau mot. Les caractères qu’il y a dans un roman, je vais les utiliser, je vais voir comment ils s’appliquent aux personnages de mon entourage, et très souvent ce roman va me donner une solidité considérable. […] Ainsi, quand il lit un livre, non seulement l’écrivain, mais n’importe quel lecteur, détache de ce livre un certain nombre de formes, qui vont pouvoir

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Signs and Designs lui servir. L’écrivain va pousser cette conscience plus loin. La lecture d’un livre va lui donner, comme on dit, des idées. En lisant un roman de Dostoïevski il va se dire qu’on pourrait employer ce genre de façon de raconter, pour raconter autre chose.64

Like Butor, Revel uses the tapestries as a kind of interpretative grid that he imposes on the situation in which he finds himself and on the people whom he encounters. This grid allows him to gain some (albeit limited) interpretative purchase on his situation and on his relationships with others. As the year advances, he is, of course, forced to revise and update his distribution of roles. Blinded by his own obsessions to the development of romances between Rose and Lucien and between Ann and James, he finds that he has to reassign roles to accommodate unforeseen circumstances: on her engagement to Lucien, Rose sheds her role as Phaedra to take on that of Persephone; Lucien occupies successively the roles of Pirithoüs, Dionysius and Theseus; Revel begins, of course, by casting himself in the role of Theseus, but in the course of the narrative, he comes to realise that he has in fact more affinities with Oedipus. Revel’s initial choice of mythical ‘model’ is a form of wish-fulfilment, whereby the stageaire transforms his life into a heroic enterprise demanding phenomenal physical courage, in which he is turned into a fickle, but highly attractive seducer and adventurer; by contrast, his recognition of his kinship with Oedipus highlights the psychological and intellectual nature of his quest, which is, in part, an attempt to recover his identity and, in part, an attempt to solve the various enigmas that Bleston puts in his way. However, Revel’s heroic selfdramatisation as Theseus serves a very important purpose: it allows him to confer a provisional but meaningful structure on his trials and tribulations, while his visualisation of his writing as a ‘thread’ linking him to Ann/ Ariadne gives him the will to continue his unorthodox diary. If the variations on the Theseus myths that Revel initially devises are flimsy structures that are effectively written and unwritten in the course of the novel, they do draw attention to the role of archetypes in the creation of stories, to the permutational possibilities of narrative and to the status of artistic production as a means of survival. The passages devoted to Revel’s scrutiny of the tapestries and the account of the process by which he comes to understand them offer a kind of ideal interpretative model that, even as it acknowledges 64 Butor in Charbonnier, Entretiens avec Michel Butor, p. 70.

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the role of critical exegesis, highlights the importance of direct engagement with the artwork and the creative possibilities opened up by such engagement.65 Popular Culture: the Fairs and Cinemas If Revel’s initially critical appraisal of the city’s two museums is qualified by his discovery of the Harrey tapestries and his realisation of the links between the museum collections and the New Cathedral, his exposure to the popular culture of the city would seem to be an almost unremittingly disheartening experience. Bleston’s fairs and cinemas seem to offer a measure of the philistinism of its inhabitants, who rarely visit its museums or the Old Cathedral, but who willingly spend their leisure hours strolling around the shabby fairground sideshows or soaking up the third-rate films projected in the city’s various cinemas. However, as I shall demonstrate in this final section, analysis of the relationship between the city’s museums and its fairgrounds and cinemas will reveal a dynamics that not only forces Revel to moderate his trenchant judgements of the latter, but also challenges the distinction between high and low art and undermines the long-standing opposition between museum culture and popular entertainment. Traditionally, as Tony Bennett points out, the ‘museum was conceived as distinct from and opposed to the fair’,66 the former viewed as ‘the instrument through which the populace would be weaned from boisterous pursuits and habits and tutored into new forms of civility’,67 the latter ‘as the very emblem for the rude, rough and raucous manners of the populace’ and symbolising ‘precisely those attributes of places 65 ‘Le livre […] apparaît à travers l’épaisseur des lectures qui en ont déjà été faites. […] Et chaque fois il faut que je trouve le moyen d’écarter, de déchirer ce voile des lectures précédentes. Dans la plupart des cas, je vais accepter la lecture habituelle, m’y maintenir, elle ne va pas me gêner car moi-même je suis un être ‘habituel’; mais sans doute qu’à un certain moment je percevrai la possibilité de faire bouger ce voile et donc de découvrir quelque chose de nouveau. Je pressens la possibilité de montrer en quoi ces anciennes lectures faisaient un voile. Il y avait quelque chose que l’on ne voyait pas, qui jusqu’alors est resté caché, et je pressens la possibilité d’une mise en évidence, d’une libération du texte lui-même. Et ce qui est vrai pour la lecture est vrai pour l’écriture aussi… Ceci, dit, il y a dans ce voile des lectures faites par d’autres avant moi, des choses tout à fait intéressantes; et c’est, bien sûr, en partant d’elles que je pourrai interroger le texte pour y découvrir quelque chose de nouveau. J’ai besoin de cette épaisseur produite par l’Histoire, mais j’ai besoin aussi d’y percer des fenêtres pour pouvoir respirer’ (Frontières, pp. 50–51). 66 Bennett, The Birth of the Museum, p. 6. 67 Bennett, The Birth of the Museum, p. 225.

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of popular assembly to which the museum was conceived as an antidote’.68 Initially, in L’Emploi du temps, it would seem that this opposition is maintained. The warning inscribed on the back of Revel’s entry ticket for Plaisance Gardens suggests strongly that the respectable and law-abiding members of the community share the traditional assumptions about such places of popular entertainment: ‘REMEMBER’, souvenez-vous, suivi en très fines minuscules de l’équivalent anglais de ces mots: ‘que ce jardin est un lieu de délassement, non de débauche; en toutes circonstances, conservez votre dignité’. (p. 186)

Although only rarely full of a raucous populace, Bleston’s fairs are certainly shabby and dismal places of entertainment, whose amusements either disappoint or are only intermittently in operation, which exploit animals, and which are the principal target in a spate of arson attacks in the city. The fairgrounds are associated with some of the lowest points in Revel’s difficult year, in particular with his loss of the two young women with whom he falls in love. They are also closely associated with Horace Buck, whose status as an immigrant combines with his wild talk, crazed laughter and the fact that he may be an arsonist to make him a marginal and an undesirable. However, Horace Buck is also one of Revel’s principal means of access both to British customs and to the cultures of other ethnic groups. It is Horace who clarifies the bus system and matches for him numbers and routes (p. 38), who introduces him to the English pub and stout (p. 31), who explains British opening hours and public holidays (pp. 37, 241), and who offers comparative evaluations of life in Bleston and Cardiff (p. 36). It is also Horace who enlightens him on the different ethnic groups that make up Bleston’s black community and who explains the cultural differences between himself and the immigrants from Sierra Leone (p. 32). Even more surprising than Horace’s status as cultural guide is James Jenkins’s familiarity with the world of the travelling fair and his friendships with some of the fairground people. James is the link between the worlds of high art and popular culture. It is James, the grandson of E. C. Douglas, who explains to Revel the iconography both of the New Cathedral (pp. 162–64) and the Harrey tapestries (pp. 278–81), but it is also James who introduces him to the fairground community and gives him access to their private domain (pp. 174–78, 180–81, 185–87). Here, within this mobile community, Revel discovers 68 Bennett, The Birth of the Museum, p. 225.

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an expansiveness and openness that contrasts sharply with the xenophobia and formality that he has so frequently encountered in his dealings with the more conventional residents of Bleston: ‘“Frenchie? Hé…” Il en sifflait d’aise et d’amusement. “Oh, Jane sera si contente de voir un Frenchie. Vous accepterez bien un verre de bière, monsieur? Vous comprenez, nous n’avons pas de vin”’ (p. 175). The fact that the contact between the Dylans and the Jenkinses has been maintained over several generations of the two families also draws attention to the history of the show-people and their long-standing connections with the city. Although James offers a purely factual summary of his family’s association with the fair, it is clear, both from what he says and from his demeanour, that it has an important symbolic function in his life. As the cultural legacy that has been passed down to James through the paternal line of his family, this fascination with the fairground complements the equally unorthodox legacy that has come to him via his mother from E. C. Douglas. James does not articulate here the reasons for this fascination, but his earlier confession to Revel that he has never travelled beyond the city’s limits (p. 116), combined with the mixture of sentiments that Revel can read on his face as they stroll around the stalls – ‘James […] avait l’air à la fois heureux et dépaysé’ (p. 187) – suggests that the appeal of the fair lies in the fact that it offers him contact with a world whose mobility and diversity contrast sharply with his own sedentary and predictable routine. Revel’s discovery that this highly conventional young man has interests that straddle the traditional divide between high art and popular culture brings about at least a partial rehabilitation of the fairground. Its stalls and sideshows may be seedy and its amusements may simply be rather tired variations on well-worn themes, but the warm welcome that it extends to strangers testifies to an openness and receptiveness that seems to have been lost by many of the more permanently established residents of the city. Furthermore, it is clear that, for at least some of Bleston’s inhabitants, the fair plays a symbolic role, serving both as a reminder of time-honoured family traditions and as a modest vestige of a nomadic lifestyle long since abandoned by Western man. Viewed in this way, that is as a symbolic space, the fairground is seen to complement the city’s permanent cultural landmarks by offering Revel access to aspects of its recent popular history that are not documented in its official municipal collections and by bringing him into contact with sectors of society and lifestyles to which he would otherwise never be exposed.

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The relationship between the city’s various cinemas and the Museum of Fine Arts is equally complex. Initially, both the cinemas and the films that they show are presented in a very negative light. The entrances to both the Gaiety and the Théâtre de Nouvelles, with their mirror-encrusted columns and pillars (pp. 122, 129), are the twentieth century’s crass response to the architectural orders of ancient Greece, which are represented with such care on the seventh panel of the Harrey series (p. 206), while the narrow screen on which the films are projected (‘le petit écran à grosse trame, mal tendu, mal lavé, tremblant!’, p. 130) can be seen as the modern, shoddy and massproduced substitute for the tapestries. The cramped, comfortless auditoriums (p. 129), the shoddy ersatz sets of the feature films (pp. 300– 01) and the technical deficiencies of the low-budget travelogues (pp. 318, 321) betray the cynicism of the providers of mass, popular entertainment and their exploitation of the mindless philistinism of the urban proletariat: ‘produit d’une spéculation criminelle sur l’abrutissement de tous ceux empêtrés comme nous dans les lacets de géantes villes sournoises’ (p. 301). The films that they show – American epics and Westerns and a recycled menu of Mack Sennett comedies, cartoons and travelogues – offer a measure of the limited cultural aspirations of the city and the passivity of the audiences who subject themselves to the discomfort of queues, creaky and cramped seating and foul air in order to find a few hours of distraction from the miseries of their lives. However, despite the generally rather grim perspective on the cinematographic menu offered by Bleston, there are a number of indications in the novel that the cinemas and the films that they show are not to be considered in a wholly negative light. The travelogues and feature films that constitute the mainstay of the city’s entertainment may be technically outmoded and rather amateurish; however, they do offer the citizens of Bleston a glimpse of the world beyond the city limits and a limited perspective on the history and culture of other countries. For James Jenkins, the Théâtre des Nouvelles is ‘la seule fenêtre par laquelle il entrevoie, de quels yeux avides, le reste du monde et les autres villes’ (p. 128). For Revel, the films that he sees in the various cinemas act as catalysts, provoking in him a sustained, if intermittent meditation on the relationships between the various cities in which they are set or which they document. This meditation has its origins in the thoughts generated by The Red Nights of Roma, which, despite its obvious truquage, succeeds in calling to mind the still magnificent vestiges of Imperial Rome:

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comme j’ai commencé à le comprendre hier au Théâtre des Nouvelles quand leur reflet rouge a imprégné un instant ma vision, mauvais miroirs, grossiers miroirs, troubles miroirs ternis, confus, dépolis, par lesquels cependant réussissait à nous atteindre toute une suite de rougeoiements, tout le long, fumeux, crépitant, hurleur, ancien rougoiement intermittent, séparant la ville dont les ruines du palatin restent la trace, de celle des palais romains encore debout. (pp. 301–02)

Even as Revel complains that the images projected by these tarnished mirrors are distorted and blurred, he acknowledges their capacity to conjure up by association the turbulent histories of the sites and cities visited by the ‘voyageurs immobiles’ sitting passively in the cinema stalls. Moreover, the image that Revel uses here not only establishes a link between the films and the numerous other references to mirrors and reflections that were discussed earlier in the chapter, but also invites a rereading of the descriptions of the buildings in which the films are projected. The cinema entrances may exemplify the tawdriness of modern commercial architecture, but they can also be read as mises en abyme, their countless minuscule mirrors highlighting the status of the cinema as purveyor of (albeit fragmentary) images of other times and other places. The image of the mirror reappears in the long passage devoted to the travelogue on Athens (pp. 318–22) that constitutes one of the novel’s most sustained deliberations on the themes of cultural exchange and heritage. Here, as Revel considers the links between the twin capitals of the ancient world, he realises that the Greek-inspired monuments of ancient Rome not only illustrated Roman debt to Athens, but also offered the possibility of new, retrospective readings of the monuments and sites of the Greek capital. Viewed in this way, the great cities of the ancient world that have appeared on the travelogue programme (Athens, Petra, Baalbeck, Timgad, Cnossus) and that figured among the greatest prizes of the Greek and Roman Empires can be seen as a series of interacting mirrors, each of which constitutes ‘comme le foyer d’une gigantesque résonance, telle une flamme qui se multiplie dans une enceinte de miroirs en quantité d’images d’ellemême’ (p. 319). The force of the associations engendered by this realisation is such that in his journal entry of the following day (27 August), he continues his deliberation. Here, however, he adds a further city to the list: Bleston, which by virtue of its history, its archaeological remains, its topographical layout and its representations of ancient myth, merits a modest place in this illustrious series.

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Until this point in Revel’s diary, Bleston has been associated primarily with the ‘cités maudites’ depicted in the shattered fragments of the windows of the Old Cathedral. As he contemplates the badly framed moving images projected on the cinema screens of the city and as his mind wanders to the maquette of second-century Bleston exhibited in the Museum of Natural History, he realises that Bleston belongs as much to the Greco-Roman tradition as to the JudeoChristian tradition illustrated in the windows of the Cathedral. If industrialisation and commerce have turned the city into a modern variation on the ‘cités maudites’ of the Old Testament, the ground on which it stands has yielded evidence not only of ancient wars, but also of the presence of a highly civilised Roman community whose impact on the site is still visible in the layout of its streets. It is, of course, no accident that the Museum of Fine Arts is situated on the corner of Greek Street and Roman Street, while the Théâtre des Nouvelles is situated a few yards away from the main crossroads of the original Roman settlement (pp. 323–24). If, over the years, the museum’s piecemeal collection strategy has simply turned it into an incoherent assortment of heterogeneous exhibits, by virtue of its origins – it was built to house the Harrey tapestries – it is inextricably linked to the classical tradition. We learn little about the Harrey family, but the scanty information that can be culled from the notice fixed to the entrance to Room 3 (pp. 87–88) shows that, even as Bleston was feverishly constructing its factories and terraced houses, there were among its most affluent residents a few who tried to ensure that it would not forget its Greco-Roman legacy. That this legacy is still being honoured, if in a rather degraded form, in the travelogue films shown at the Théâtre des Nouvelles is suggested not only by the associations with the Harrey tapestries that the film settings call to mind (pp. 322–24), but also by the symbolic status of the cinema’s location, standing as it does on a site that has served as a cultural crossroads since the second century. Finally, the passage devoted to the travelogue on Bombay (pp. 352– 53) offers another variation on the theme of cultural appropriation that was explored through the various references to imported architectural and artistic forms and skills. As Revel reflects on the film he has just seen and on the link between the city that it presented and the tea leaves that Mme Grosvenor has just read for him, England’s ‘national drink’ becomes a symbol of the long history of commerce, assimilation and appropriation which he has observed in his visits to

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the museums and cathedrals of the city. As he conjures up the journey travelled by these humble tea leaves, he realises that they do indeed have a message: that Bleston, for all its dreariness, shabbiness and parochialism is connected to the outside world by a highly complex network of commercial, historical, cultural and religious ties that are evident not only in the city’s monuments and museums, but also in the most mundane everyday customs (the British tea ritual) and in the superstitions of folk history. Ultimately, it seems that Bleston is not as insular as it first appears. Its immigrant population may be reviled and mistreated, but the ethnic minorities have learned to negotiate British customs and have also succeeded in importing and preserving elements of their own culture. Moreover, some of the ostensibly most conservative native Blestonians reveal unexpected dimensions that force a reassessment of them and their city. On the surface, James Jenkins may be the epitome of lower middle-class respectability and conventionality, but, as Revel discovers, the diversity of his cultural interests allows him to bridge the apparent gulf between the art gallery and the shooting gallery, and to provide a perspective into an unfamiliar way of life. In short, the relationship between the museums and the fairgrounds of Bleston is rather more complex and more positive than would first appear. They are both places of cultural interaction, the museum recording in its collections the city’s past connections with other countries and civilisations, the fairground providing a space for the forging of new cultural exchanges, the continuation of the tradition of oral history, and the opportunity for exposure to the customs, lifestyles and cultures of different ethnic and social groups. Similarly, although the films that Revel watches to while away much of his free time fail to provide the escapism he seeks, they do provoke in him a meditation on the nature of the city that allows him not only to situate Bleston within the Greco-Roman tradition, but also to recognise its status as a potential ‘foyer [de] résonance’. Bleston may not be the centre of the world, but it is the central pivot around which revolves the particular set of ‘harmoniques’, ‘résonances’ and ‘échos’ that Revel reveals in the course of the elaboration of his journal. This pivotal status explains in part at least the significance of the recycling of films in the Théâtre des Nouvelles and the rotation of the city’s mobile fair. In the first case, the shabby auditorium of the Théâtre des Nouvelles is the stable co-ordinate in the endlessly repeated tour of the Mediterranean offered by the revolving programme of travelogues;

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in the second, the city serves as the pivot around which revolves the ‘exotic’ life of the fairground people. In both cases, the city or a defined locale within it acts as the axis for the orbit of a world that may seem to be culturally, historically and geographically remote, but that is, in fact, much closer than most of its inhabitants realise. The art, architecture and popular culture of L’Emploi du temps offer several quite different but complementary perspectives on the history of Western civilisation. The city’s two museums offer pendant views of the history of the world and of humankind: the Museum of Fine Arts providing through its rather disparate collection an overview of the various means and media by which humans have sought to encode their world and impose meaning on it, the Natural History Museum serving to relativise this cultural history by placing it within a much broader prehistorical and geological timescale. Although ostensibly very different cultural products, the Harrey tapestries and the various travelogues shown at the Théâtre des Nouvelles bear witness to the profound and enduring impact made by classical civilisation on the Western psyche, an impact that is discernible in a multitude of different ways, from the architectural style of cities and buildings to the various myths and symbols that we use to process and make sense of our personal experience.69 Initially, the fairground culture to which Revel is exposed through his associations with Horace Buck and James Jenkins seems to epitomise the tawdriness of modern popular culture. However, contact with the show-people brings to light an alternative culture and lifestyle that, by virtue of its albeit limited nomadic dimension, is a reminder of a way of life that predates the founding of the first cities and that, in certain parts of the world at least (for example, in Horace’s native Africa), has carried on into the twentieth century.70 If the museums, cinemas and fairgrounds provide a history of secular tradition and customs and a résumé of natural history that situate Bleston within a much broader history of the world and the human race, the city’s two cathedrals offer a synopsis of Christian heritage that has implications extending far beyond its specific sectarian divisions. The Old Cathedral stands as a kind of summary of the 69 For an analysis of the role of myth and classical names, see Davis, ‘Mythological Allusions and Classical Names in Michel Butor’s L’Emploi du temps’. 70 Note Horace’s reference to his race’s history of migration in his exchange with Revel on page 26: ‘“D’où venez-vous?” […] “D’Afrique, naturellement, comme eux tous”’.

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history of Christianity in the West, its site testifying to the imported Classical culture that was ousted by Christianity; the Cain window drawing attention both to the Judaic tradition from which it sprang and to the Renaissance revival of Classical aesthetic and humanist principles; and the damage and decay of the fabric of the building acting as visible reminders of the Reformers’ challenge to the authority of Rome and to the irreparable rift within the Christian Church wrought by the Reformation. With its highly unorthodox ‘organic’ design and natural imagery, the New Cathedral acts as testimony to another period of controversy and upheaval, its fusion of natural history and Christian culture epitomising the duality of its age and the competing claims of religion and science at the end of the nineteenth century. Even as it carries on a religious tradition, the New Cathedral acknowledges in its imagery the evolutionary forces and law of natural selection that have produced the multitude of natural forms represented in its sculptures and have ensured the survival of the most adaptable species. Survival through adaptation is precisely what Revel has achieved in the course of his year in Bleston. By the time he steps on the train, this rather stiff and naive young Frenchman has learned to endure many things (grim weather, unappealing food, boredom, loneliness, romantic disappointment) and to acknowledge his own misunderstandings, blunders and preconceptions, but he has also learned to appreciate the nuances of the seasonal changes in the city’s parks and gardens (pp. 159, 285, 295), to penetrate the complex symbolism of the Harrey tapestries and the Cain window, and most pointedly, to understand and admire the boldly innovative New Cathedral. In the course of his year in Bleston, Revel has failed to win the love of either Ann or Rose, has failed to respect the confidences of a friend and has failed to complete his diary, but he has evolved. Despite the grimness of its mood, its relentless cataloguing of the cultural shortcomings of the northern English metropolis and its denunciation of modern consumerism, L’Emploi du temps is, I would argue, a fundamentally optimistic novel. Jacques Revel’s account of his miserable year in Bleston is a testimony to man’s ultimate adaptability, to his capacity to accommodate and assimilate unfamiliar cultures and customs, and to his readiness to fabricate something new from the vestiges of what has been created by previous generations. Revel’s diary is a case in point: it may be a modest and idiosyncratic record of an unremarkable stageaire, but his effort to understand and transcend the prosaic incidents of his everyday experience offers an

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inkling of the fundamental human impulse to make sense of the world that has produced the various cultural phenomena on which he draws so heavily in his account.

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3

Art, Architecture and Catholicism in La Modification

Like L’Emploi du temps, Butor’s third novel, La Modification, is a quest novel. It starts out as a search for freedom and authenticity conducted by its principal character Léon Delmont, as he sets off on a train journey from Paris to Rome to tell his mistress Cécile that he is going to leave his wife Henriette to live with her. However, as he travels through the night, he gradually comes to realise that this quest is illconceived, that, far from giving him the freedom that he seeks and allowing him to achieve a state of ‘authenticité’ (p. 146), the hedonistic affair that he has been conducting with Cécile has been founded on the denial and repression of an essential feature of his own psychological make-up – his Catholic education – that he may be loath to acknowledge, but that nevertheless informs much of his thinking and his behaviour. The resolution that Léon makes at the close of the novel to break off his relationship with Cécile and to return to Henriette and his family is not, however, the decision of a lapsed Catholic returning to the fold. La Modification is not a Catholic novel and Léon’s change of heart is not a reconversion resulting from a crisis of conscience. The ‘modification’ that he undergoes is based rather on the discoveries that he makes in the course of his journey. He realises that the freedom he was seeking at the start of his trip was hopelessly ambitious and that such freedom as he will ever achieve cannot be attained simply through a change of partner or a change of lifestyle: ‘Une conversion n’est pas suffisante: il ne s’agit pas seulement de prendre la décision d’orienter son avenir dans une direction différente de celle qu’il semblait devoir suivre’.1 For Butor, freedom can only ever be a relative state, achieved through an understanding of the various factors, including education and cultural heritage, that determine and 1 Butor, ‘Une autobiographie dialectique’, Répertoire, p. 262.

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limit one’s actions. As Léon’s physical journey between Paris and Rome and his ‘aventure’ with Cécile draw to a close, it is clear that liberation from the constraints that have limited his life hitherto will depend on his ability to embark on another, much more ambitious adventure: an intellectual journey of exploration which will be conducted through the writing of a book in which he will try to gain some understanding of the place that he occupies in the history of Western civilisation and culture. Whether Léon is capable of such an enterprise is far from evident and, indeed, Butor’s interview commentaries suggest otherwise.2 However, the issues that preoccupy Léon concern us all and the programme that he outlines in the final pages of the novel serves as an ‘invitation au voyage’ issued by Butor to his readers who, like Léon, may well need to take stock of their own situations and their aspirations for the future. Perhaps the most important discovery that Léon makes in the course of his review of his memories of the past and of his plans for the future is that in the twentieth century, there is no single moral or cultural centre to the world, no single set of precepts by which to live, no single, universally acknowledged repository of values. The specific details of Léon’s situation may be particular to him, but his fundamental situation is that of the modern man who ‘ne saura plus exactement quels sont les moments importants, hésitera entre deux ou trois ensembles de fêtes, de temples, de prêtres; il ne saura plus comment il convient de consacrer les noeuds de sa propre vie, à quel dieu s’adresser, se vouer’.3 The question that Léon asks himself on page 191, ‘à quel saint, quelle sainte me vouerai-je?’, echoes Butor’s words in ‘Le Roman et la poésie’ and sums up this dilemma, but it is one that has no definitive solution. However, if Léon’s quest for a spiritual and cultural home is simply a form of nostalgic but unrealisable wish-fulfilment, the process of the search and the processing of memories, aspirations and knowledge that accompanies it bring about a much greater understanding of the complex factors that have governed the course of his life so far and have informed the decisions and choices he has made. If the decison he makes in the final section of the novel is largely the result of his conscious and subconscious rehashing of his own past, it also originates, in large part, in his reassessement of the 2 See Elaho, ‘Michel Butor’, Entretiens avec le Nouveau Roman, p. 22. 3 Butor, ‘Le Roman et la poésie’, Répertoire II, p. 17. Compare Jean Ralon’s loss of faith in Passage de Milan. Jacques Revel’s conversation with the priest in the Old Cathedral also identifies him as a lapsed Catholic.

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culture into which he was born and in his acceptance of the fact that it is an ineluctable part of his psyche which cannot simply be repressed at will. Léon’s job as a typewriter salesman may offer him few intellectual rewards, but he has a wide-ranging cultural baggage that includes The Letters of Julian the Apostate, The Aeneid, the poetry of Cavalcanti, French folklore and the art and architecture of Rome and Paris from the medieval period to the eighteenth century. If the role of the novel’s intertextual sources and the references to the legend of the Grand Veneur have already been studied in some detail,4 analysis of the functions of the references to art and architecture in La Modification has been confined, by and large, to relatively short, but incisive commentaries in general critical studies of Butor’s fiction.5 Lucien Dällenbach’s book-length study of mise en abyme in Butor6 provides a very useful overview of the reflexive role of the work of art in the novel, while Jennifer Waelti-Walters’s panoramic study of Butor’s work between 1954 and 1974 identifies numerous illuminating correspondences between the ‘sites’ and museums of La Modification and those of Butor’s other fiction.7 Of the monographs devoted entirely to La Modification, Françoise van Rossum-Guyon’s seminal study, Critique du roman,8 also examines the status of Pannini’s paintings as mises en abyme, while the pertinent section of my own monograph focuses primarily on the functions of the numerous references to Michelangelo’s work in the text.9 This chapter has two main aims: first, to resume and develop further some of the ideas established in my earlier study; second, by extending the range of my analysis, to demonstrate that the references to Michelangelo, although undeniably dominant among the artistic references, are part of a more general network of references spanning the history of Western art and architecture and contributing to the development and reinforcement of the novel’s central themes. It is my contention here that the references to the visual arts in La Modification, like the novel’s various intertexts, not only reflect the preoccupations 4 See Lydon, Perpetuum Mobile, pp. 109–11, Spencer, Michel Butor, pp. 68–69 and Duffy, Butor: La Modification, pp. 30–43. 5 McWilliams, The Narratives of Michel Butor, pp. 34–37; Lydon, Perpetuum Mobile, pp. 110–17. 6 Dällenbach, Le Livre et ses miroirs dans l’oeuvre romanesque de Michel Butor. 7 Waelti-Walters, Michel Butor: A Study of his View of the World and a Panorama of his Work, 1954–1974, pp. 42–79. 8 Van Rossum-Guyon, Critique du roman, pp. 76–80. 9 Butor: La Modification, pp. 38–43.

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and situation of the central character, but also, by their range, serve to ‘universalise’ those preoccupations and that situation. Léon Delmont may be a somewhat unlikely and unlikeable protagonist, but, like all Butor’s protagonists, he is an everyman. Moreover, as Mary Beth Pringle suggests, the train compartment in which he travels can be read as a kind of microcosm.10 His initial dilemma is trite and rather sordid, but the realisation that he makes in the course of the novel is relevant to all. It is to an examination of the principal points of reference in Léon’s wide-ranging, if selective, history of art that the chapter is devoted. My analysis focuses on the six main clusters of references that, taken together, make up this somewhat idiosyncratic and thematically loaded survey of Western art: Pietro Cavallini’s Last Judgement, Michelangelo’s Sistine chapel ceiling and Last Judgement, the classicising paintings of Pannini, Piranesi’s engravings, the architecture and sculpture of the Baroque and the disparate body of references to French art and architecture. As we shall see, each of these clusters of references plays a role in the ‘modification’ that Léon undergoes in the course of his journey and, in particular, in his eventual realisation of the extent to which his Catholic education has informed his personality, his behaviour and his patterns of thinking.11 Cavallini The history of the romance between Léon and Cécile is indissociable from their artistic pilgrimages across Rome. Whether in Rome or at home in Paris, Léon spends his leisure time on cultural pursuits. The establishment of an affair with Cécile provides him with a companion who knows the city well, a pupil with whom he can share his superior art-historical knowledge and a pretext for a systematic exploration of Rome’s art treasures. The weekends which the lovers have spent together have, by and large, been organised as journeys of exploration devoted to the work of a given artist or architect or to the monuments of a given period (pp. 166–67) and the novel is peppered with references to the Classical, Renaissance and Baroque legacy of the city. In the course of their relationship, the lovers have tracked down the works of Bernini, Borromini, Caravaggio and Guido Reni, and conducted 10 Pringle, ‘Butor’s Room without a View’. 11 Part of the argument which follows was first developed in Duffy, ‘Art, Architecture and Catholicism in Butor’s La Modification’, Modern Languages Review, vol. 94, no. 1, 1999, pp. 46–60.

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Pietro Cavallini, Apostles, detail from The Last Judgement, Santa Cecilia in Trastevere, Rome, c. 1295,

systematic tours of the city’s paleochristian mosaics, and the remnants of the different phases of Classical art: Il y avait eu un week-end consacré à Borromini, un autre sous le signe du Bernin, un pour le Caravage, Guido Reni, les fresques du haut Moyen Age, les mosaïques paléochrétiennes; il y en avait eu surtout pendant lesquels vous vous efforciez d’explorer diverses phases de l’Empire, celui de Constantin […] celui des Antonins, celui des Flaviens, celui des Césars. (p. 166)

The Gothic period is represented in La Modification by the references to the work of Pietro Cavallini. His fresco of the Last Judgement in Santa Cecilia was ‘ce premier secret romain’(p. 84) that Cécile revealed to Léon on their weekend tours of the art and monuments of the city. The attraction of Cavallini’s work for Butor is twofold. First, Cavallini’s fresco acts as a pendant and counterpoint to Michelangelo’s Last Judgement, the hieratic poses and traditional frieze-like distribution of the surviving figures in the upper half of the Gothic work contrasting sharply with the energy and convulsive movements of the figures in the Renaissance painting. Second, Cavallini’s work testifies to early

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artistic links between France and Rome. The evidence for these links is to be found in the apostles who sit on either side of the enthroned Christ. If the grouping of these figures in symmetrically disposed rows of six is traditional, the detail of their representation offers evidence of innovation inspired by outside influences, in particular that of contemporary Northern French sculpture. As Paul Hetherington points out,12 the apostles deviate from traditional Mediterranean iconography by the fact that they hold the symbols of their martyrdom and not the conventional books or scrolls. The most likely models for this iconographical departure were sculpted figures from the Gothic cathedrals of the Ile de France: It is clear that a decision was taken, either by the artist or his patron that, instead of maintaining this long and hallowed native tradition, each apostle should be depicted with a symbol denoting the form of his martyrdom. From where could this concept have derived? The answer must surely lie in the series of sculptured figures of the apostles that still adorn cathedrals of the Ile de France. One need to refer only to the West front of Amiens, the North porch of Rheims and the South door of Chartres to find sequences of the apostles, all but one of whom hold the attributes that are to be found – in most cases for the first time on Italian soil – in the Last Judgement of Cavallini. […] In general, therefore, it would seem that the iconography of Cavallini’s apostles was intentionally based in the tradition that had developed in the sculptured programmes of the cathedrals of the Ile de France.13

Viewed in this light, the relative prominence given to the Cavallini fresco in La Modification can be readily explained. Like the references to the paintings of Pannini and to the Cluny baths, the Panthéon and the Letters of Julian the Apostate, the references to Cavallini’s fresco are elements in a network of references to the visual arts and literature which testify to the long history of cross-fertilisation and rivalry between the two national traditions. It is, of course, to an understanding of this history and his own place in it that Léon’s ultimate enquiry will, in part, be directed: Vous dites: il faudrait montrer dans ce livre le rôle que peut jouer Rome dans la vie d’un homme à Paris; on pourrait imaginer ces deux villes superposées l’une à l’autre, l’une souterraine par rapport à l’autre, avec des 12 Hetherington, Pietro Cavallini, p. 43. 13 Hetherington, Pietro Cavallini, p. 43. This synthesis of the old and the new, of native tradition and foreign influence, may be due, in part, to patronage, Cavallini probably having as patron the French deacon of Santa Cecilia, Jean Cholet.

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trappes de communication que certains seulement connaîtraient sans qu’aucun sans doute parvînt à les connaître toutes, de telle sorte que pour aller d’un lieu à un autre il pourrait y avoir certains raccourcis ou détours inattendus, de telle sorte que la distance d’un point à un autre, le trajet d’un point à un autre, serait modifié selon la connaissance, la familiarité que l’on aurait de cette autre ville, de telle sorte que toute localisation serait double, l’espace romain déformant plus ou moins pour chacun l’espace parisien, autorisant rencontres ou induisant en pièges. (p. 280)

However, the references to Cavallini’s Last Judgement raise a somewhat perplexing question about Cécile’s motivation. Her eagerness to share this particular ‘secret romain’ with Léon would seem to conflict with her subsequent refusal to accompany him to the Sistine chapel to see Michelangelo’s version of the same subject. There are two possible reasons for this apparent inconsistency. First, given that the work is located in the church bearing the name of her patron saint, the visit may be a coy attempt, at the outset of their affair, to create in Léon’s mind a linguistic association between her and the artistic legacy of Rome. However, the physical condition of the fresco may also partly explain her capacity to transcend her distaste for the Catholic Church in favour of an appreciation of some of its artistic treasures. Cavallini’s Last Judgement is not only much more restrained and stylised than Michelangelo’s; it is also fragmentary, the lower part of the work having been severely damaged. Thus, whereas Michelangelo’s work would have reminded her forcefully of the punishments promised to those who break the laws of the Church, the section of the Cavallini fresco that originally depicted the fate of the damned being herded off to Hell has been largely obliterated and is, consequently, less discomfiting to the lapsed Catholic. This hypothesis is reinforced by a brief gloss on Cécile’s attitude to the Vatican, which she perceives as the principal obstruction to the development of her relationship with Léon: cette cité représentait pour elle depuis votre rencontre et avec quelque apparence de raison, si sincères que fussent vos protestations de liberté d’esprit, tout ce qui vous empêcherait de vous séparer d’Henriette, tout ce qui vous interdisait de recommencer votre vie, de vous débarrasser de ce vieil homme que vous étiez en train de devenir. (p. 96)

It is evident here and elsewhere in the text that she does not trust Léon’s professed disaffection with the church and that she is unable to shake off her scepticism regarding his willingness to make a final commitment to her. Viewed in this light, her refusal to visit the Vatican can be read as an unwillingness to ‘test’ Léon’s allegiance and to risk

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confronting the judgement of the Church for which she claims to feel only contempt. The Sistine chapel offers the unrepentant sinner no escape and is, therefore, out of bounds. The Cavallini Last Judgement, on the other hand, does not constitute a threat to the adulterous relationship. The truncation of its lower section has undermined its power to intimidate. With the subversion of its ideological force, its interest becomes primarily aesthetic and it can be visited without risk to the illicit affair.14 Michelangelo If the evolution of the relationship between Léon and Cécile is inextricable from their exploration of the city’s museums, monuments and churches, the flaws in that relationship are also revealed through the apparently innocuous, but fundamentally serious disagreement provoked by their discussion about Michelangelo. If, in the initial stages, art serves to reinforce their interest in each other and to sustain their burgeoning romance, it also exposes the difference between them as the affair develops. Their cultural and artistic pilgrimages work very well until Léon suggests Michelangelo as their next subject. Cécile’s response is immediate and dismissive: Je vois bien où tu veux en venir: la Sixtine, naturellement; tu veux me forcer par cette ruse à mettre les pieds dans ce Vatican que j’abhorre, dans cette cité cancer qui s’accroche au côté de la splendeur et de la liberté romaines, cette poche de pus stupidement dorée. Tu es pourri de christianisme jusqu’aux moelles, malgré toutes tes protestations, de dévotion la plus sotte: la moindre cuisinière romaine a l’esprit plus libre que toi. (p. 167–68)

Although Cécile adopts a bantering tone, this disagreement is one of the first signs in the novel of a fundamental incompatibility between the lovers and it casts a shadow over the rest of their day. Cécile does offer some compensation suggesting that they go to see Michelangelo’s Moses (p. 168) or that they visit the collection of copies of his statues at Sant’Andrea della Valle. However, their first visit to San Pietro in Vincoli to see the Moses is thwarted – the church is closed for a service – and although Léon manages to catch a glimpse of the statue, the analogy that he uses to describe it not only emphasises its links with Classical tradition, but stresses the rather unpleasant effects produced 14 See also McWilliams’s explanation, The Narratives of Michel Butor, p. 37.

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Michelangelo Buonarroti, Moses, sculpture from the tomb of Pope Julius II, 1513–16, San Pietro in Vincoli, Rome

by the lighting: ‘le Moïse dont le marbre semblait couvert d’huile ou de graisse jaune fondante comme la statue d’un dieu romain d’autrefois’ (p. 172). Their second visit is equally disappointing. Léon fails to repeat the experience of an earlier trip with his wife Henriette. On this

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first trip, the horns of the statue had seemed to glow in the dark interior of the church (p. 171); in short, Léon and Henriette had been receptive to the optical illusion created by the artist: Michelangelo consciously kept the traditional horns found in medieval representations. They derive – as was then known – from a mistranslation of the Hebrew word for ‘rays of light’, which is how the ancient texts describe his head: surrounded by a halo.15

By contrast, his visit with Cécile is disheartening: the church is empty and chilly; the statue resembles ‘un fantôme dans un grenier’ (pp. 171– 73). This disappointment is partly due, no doubt, to the fact that the conditions in which the Moses is viewed are very different from those intended by the artist – the statue is only one element of an originally colossal project – the tomb of Julius II – that, for various reasons, had to be compromised and was never completed according to Michelangelo’s original ambitious plan.16 Ultimately, however, the fundamental cause of this disappointment is not so much the statue itself but the awareness shared by both Léon and Cécile of the gap that is opening up between them. Both recognise the absurdity of scouring the city for works by Michelangelo if, at the same time, they ignore the Sistine chapel: Vous sentiez en allant d’un lieu à l’autre, d’une oeuvre à une autre, que quelque chose d’essentiel vous manquait, quelque chose qui était à votre disposition mais qu’il vous était interdit de voir à cause de Cécile, dont vous ne vouliez pas lui parler, mais dont vous saviez bien qu’elle y pensait aussi, hantés tous les deux par ces prophètes et ces sibylles, par ce Jugement absent, conscients tous deux de l’absurdité de vos promenades cette fois […]. (p. 173)

Perhaps even more telling than this unhappy excursion is the fact that, even as Léon sets out on his journey and plans what he anticipates as a life-changing visit to Rome, he decides that he will visit the Vatican in his spare time while Cécile is at work. At this stage in his journey, his perspective is coloured by the anticipated reunion with his mistress and he is able to dismiss the planned visit as a time-filling activity. As he sketches out his itinerary, he adopts Cécile’s disparaging tone and hostile stance towards the Vatican and its treasures, convincing himself that the Sistine chapel is worth no more than a short visit, after which he will be able to wander ‘tranquillement’ through the Borgia apartments: 15 Hibbard, Michelangelo, p. 158. 16 See Hibbard, Michelangelo, pp. 159–60.

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Vous traverserez rapidement ces interminables corridors où sont alignées si stupidement des statues antiques razziées un peu partout, sans la moindre considération de qualité et d’époque, cet entassement de médiocrités où brille parfois un chef-d’oeuvre auquel on a rajouté une tête parfaitement sotte, un bras, des pieds imbéciles qui lui enlèvent toute dignité (ne se trouvera-t-il donc pas à l’intérieur de cette cité depuis si longtemps pourrissante quelqu’un pour protester contre le scandale de ce désordre et de ce mensonge?); vous irez jeter un coup d’oeil aux Stances, vous vous arrêterez un certain temps à la Sixtine, puis vous reviendrez tranquillement par les appartements Borgia. (pp. 58–59)

Viewed retrospectively, this plan testifies not only the extent to which Léon’s perspective has been tainted by Cécile’s intolerance of Catholicism, but also his capacity for doublethink and self-delusion. His dismissive summary of the exhibits of the Vatican museum is blatantly unfair, failing to mention as it does that the collection includes some of the most important surviving artworks of Classical Greece and Rome, including the Laocoön group, the Belvedere torso, the Apoxyomenos, the Apollo Belvedere and the frescoes of the Raphael Stanze. Moreover, the terms in which he introduces his itinerary are self-contradictory. He claims first that he has not visited the Vatican because of its inconvenient opening hours, then admits that Cécile had adamantly refused to visit it with him. He maintains that he has no desire to ‘retourner à l’intérieur de ce gigantesque échec architectural’; yet he retains a clear enough memory of it to be able to plot his visit precisely. Most significantly, he remarks that Cécile’s unavailability on the following morning will allow him to ‘[profiter] de cette liberté, de cette vacance pour aller revoir un musée où vous n’êtes plus entré depuis des années’ (p. 58). This remark surely clashes with his earlier equation of Cécile with freedom: ‘votre liberté qui s’appelle Cécile’ (p. 52). If Cécile represents freedom, it is curious that he should relish the prospect of a freedom that can only be enjoyed because of her absence. As he comes to recognise at the end of the novel, whatever limited freedom that he will be able to achieve in the future will come not through the pursuit of extra-marital affairs and defiance of the rules of the Church, but rather through the attempt to understand better his own relationship with and his place in a culture that produced the Sistine chapel ceiling and the Last Judgement, an attempt that will consist of the production of his own modest creative work: ‘Donc préparer, permettre, par exemple au moyen d’un livre, à cette liberté future hors de notre portée, lui permettre, dans une mesure si infime soit-elle de se constituer, de s’établir’ (p. 276).

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Michelangelo Buonarroti, The Last Judgement, 1536–41, Sistine Chapel

The various contradictions that characterise Léon’s plans to visit the Vatican can be seen both as a forewarning to the reader of serious cracks in this romantic idyll and as an indication that, as far as Léon is concerned, the Michelangelo trail remains unfinished business. That this is the case is confirmed on pages 85 and 96 where he revises somewhat his earlier highly critical commentary on the Vatican collection. In the first of these passages, he tries to imagine what his visits to Rome will be like after Cécile’s removal to Paris and, as he sketches out

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ways of passing his free time, he realises that he will be free to make return visits not only to the Museo delle Terme, but also to the Vatican. Indeed, he even casts himself in the role of cultural messenger with a mission to sensitise Cécile to the artistic treasures of the Papal Palace: si bien que lorsque vous retournerez à Rome et que vous les visiterez à nouveau, cela sera comme des cérémonies célébrant et commémorant les débuts de votre amour, le musée des Thermes par exemple en face de la gare avec la salle à manger de Livie […] ou même le Vatican, si vous n’avez pas vu tout ce que vous vouliez y voir, visite dans laquelle Cécile ne vous a jamais accompagné, mais justement ce sera pour elle, à son intention, que vous irez examiner avec plus d’attention ces salles qu’elle n’a jamais vues à la fois par nécessité d’horaire et par décision, afin de pouvour être le messager à son endroit de ce que les images qui les décorent transmettent, les dégageant de la gangue déplaisante, falsifiante qui les recouvre. (p. 85)

The fact that he envisages these visits as pilgrimages commemorating the start of his relationship with Cécile only increases the irony. In imagining that he can pay tribute to Cécile by visiting the one ‘monument romain’ that she loathes, Léon is exposing both his capacity for self-delusion and the deep unease that Cécile’s hostility to the Vatican causes him. In the second passage, he devises an even more audacious strategy and tries to convince himself that he will be able to persuade Cécile to accompany him to the Vatican before she leaves Rome to join him in Paris: ‘ce que vous voulez, c’est qu’elle […] utilise les derniers temps de son séjour […] afin de prendre connaissance de ce que vous aimez et qu’elle n’a pas encore vu, et d’abord de ce qu’il y a d’interéssant malgré tout dans ce musée du Vatican’ (p. 96). Given the strength of Cécile’s hatred for the Catholic Church, this line of reasoning is ludicrously naïve, springing as it does from desperate wishfulfilment and the desire to make a quite radical ‘adjustment’ to Cécile’s attitudes and personality. The importance of Michelangelo’s work for Léon lies in the fact that it mirrors his preoccupation with the relationship between Classical and Christian Rome. The former’s art is founded on the synthesis of Classical form and Christian ideology, a synthesis perhaps best exemplified by the Sistine chapel frescos. The ceiling and the Last Judgement are filled with figures whose athletic bodies and facial types are inspired by antique statuary. The biblical characters and the prophets and sibyls of the ceiling and the saints, angels and mortals of the Last Judgement all have the powerful muscular bodies more usually associated with Greek and Roman gods, heroes and athletes than with

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figures from Christian history. The ignudi are all, as Howard Hibbard points out, variations on the Belvedere Torso (c.50 BC), while the two spandrels showing respectively Esther and Haman and Moses and the Serpent of Brass were both based on the Laocoön. The newly created Adam of the ceiling is, as Hibbard has noted,17 more like an awakening river god than Christianity’s first man, while the naked and beardless Christ of the Last Judgement shows Hellenic rather than Christian influences.18 Finally, the Renaissance desire to harness and exploit for its own purposes the culture and art of the ancients is seen in the juxtaposition, in both the Last Judgement and the Sistine ceiling, of Classical sibyls alongside Old Testament prophets and patriarchs of the Church.19 In the Last Judgement, patriarchs, sibyls and virgins huddle behind Adam, while on the ceiling the narrative scenes are framed by the massive alternating forms of sibyls and prophets. Of all the figures on the ceiling and wall of the Sistine chapel, the prophets and sibyls are the only ones that are referred to directly. Most of these references occur in the context of the descriptions of Léon’s fellow passengers: an Italian who reminds him of the Cumaean sibyl (p. 171), an old couple who look like Zechariah and the Persian sibyl (p. 192) and a bearded old man who is compared to Ezekiel (p. 183). These analogies testify to Léon’s careful scrutiny of the ways in which the prophetic figures of the ceiling are represented: it is the gauntness and hunched posture of the Italian woman that remind him of the Cumaean sibyl, while the violent head movements of the old man described on page 183 recall the force and energy of Ezekiel, who, as Wind argues, represents ‘impulsive Might’.20 The comparison drawn between the old couple who join the train at Turin and Zecheriah and Persica offers the opportunity for a discreet verbal/visual joke. The joke is in three parts and has a sting in its tail. First, the fact that Léon’s ‘baptism’ of the couple with their new mythological and sacred names coincides with the old man’s appearance in the doorway of the compartment marks the passage as a playful allusion to the placing of Zechariah over the doorway of the Sistine chapel. The whimsicality of the passage is maintained in the pages which follow. Thus, on page 199, Butor’s Zecheriah consults his watch, apparently impatient for the realisation of his predictions. Even more amusing is Léon’s reaction to 17 18 19 20

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Hibbard, Michelangelo, p. 136. See Hibbard, Michelangelo, p. 246. See Wind, Michelangelo’s Prophets and Sibyls. Wind, Michelangelo’s Prophets and Sibyls, pp. 58–60.

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Michelangelo Buonarroti, Sistine Chapel ceiling: The Prophet Ezekiel, 1510,

the arrival of the couple. As they settle in their seats, his first thought and primary anxiety is that they are going to start to talk: ‘Ah non, ils ne vont pas commencer à parler! Qu’ils me laissent en paix’ (p. 193). Having just conferred on them the names of noteworthy communicators from myth and religion, it is both ironic and amusing that Léon’s first

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instinct is to will them to silence. However, this verbal/visual joke may also have a more serious undercurrent. His hope that his modern-day prophets will hold their tongues can be read as a reluctance on his part to pay attention to the message that the Sistine chapel holds for him. Traditionally, the sibyls were seen as representatives of non-Jewish prophecy in whose cryptic messages could be read the coming of Christ.21 By their juxtaposition alongside the Old Testament prophets, the sibyls were effectively assimilated into Christian prehistory. It is no doubt for this reason that the prophets and sibyls are singled out for particular attention in La Modification. Perhaps more than any of the other figures of the Sistine chapel, they epitomise the Renaissance synthesis of Classical and Christian sources and draw attention to the bonds that connect the ancient and Christian worlds. The inclusion of the sibyls in the Sistine ceiling was both a tribute to the ancients and a statement about the superiority of Christianity: It is plain why sibyls interested Michelangelo’s culture. It was fascinated with non-Christian religions and naturally found those of the classical world ready for exploration. Usually, however, the goal was to show that only Christianity was valid, the indications to that effect by pagans serving to reinforce the point.22

The message that Léon derives from these figures is, of course, rather different from that intended by their painter. Léon does not recover his faith in the course of this journey, but he does come to realise the role that its myths and art have played in his life, a realisation that, in turn, prompts a recognition of his need to find a means of reconciling the pagan and Christian dimensions of Rome. This reconciliation is also prefigured by the prophets and sibyls of the Sistine ceiling, the immense books that they carry foreshadowing the solution that he is to find in the final stage of his journey. If the prophecies that these ‘immenses personnages’ (p. 262, 266) read or inscribe in their ‘énormes livres’ (p. 266) anticipate the coming of a redeemer, Léon discovers that salvation – from the self-delusion that has marked so much of his behaviour hitherto – lies not in religious belief or practice, but in the discipline of writing a book that would examine his relationship with a culture that produced the sibyls, the prophets and the Sistine chapel. 21 See Wind, Michelangelo’s Prophets and Sibyls, pp. 58–60. Wind also cites Mantegna’s Sibyl and Prophet (Cincinnati Art Museum) as a forerunner (p. 60). 22 Gilbert, Michelangelo on and off the Sistine Chapel, pp. 64–65.

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The final stage of the process by which Léon comes to recognise his own needs and to change his mind takes the form not of conscious deliberation, but rather of a journey into his subconscious. Thus, a substantial part of the third section of the book is devoted to the account of Léon’s dreams and to the muddled thought processes of his half-waking moments.23 It is when he lets his guard down and surrenders to sleep that repressed images derived from his Christian culture resurface. The details of his dreams are, as I have pointed out elsewhere,24 generated from a wide variety of sources including details of his immediate surroundings, sensory impressions, recollections of other journeys, and remembered passages and images from literature and art. Most prominent among the latter are details from the Sistine chapel frescos. Thus, the old woman with the large book whom he encounters in the ‘grande salle suintante et embrunée’ (p. 214) is the Cumaean sibyl from the Sistine ceiling,25 while the drunken Noah of the ceiling’s first narrative scene is the most likely source for the dream sequence in which the wine that Léon drinks burns his throat so badly that he howls in pain (pp. 237–38). The various sensations of falling or floating that Léon experiences as he drifts in and out of sleep and his impression that some of his fellow passengers are also floating (pp. 206, 218, 257–58) are inspired by the figures of the damned and the saved in Michelangelo’s Last Judgement. The guard who, as he enters the carriage, shields his face (p. 254) is strongly reminiscent of a reproduction of one of the damned that decorated the wall of his train compartment during his previous journey from Rome (p. 99), while the figure of Charon waiting for the damned at the foot of the fresco and beating them with his paddle is the source of the terrifying old boatman waiting for Léon after his fall: Puis vous vous êtes installé dans votre compartiment en face d’une photographie en couleurs représentant un des détails de la Sixtine, un des damnés cherchant à se cacher les yeux […]. (p. 99) Alors vient sur le fleuve boueux tourbillonnant une barque sans voile avec un vieillard debout armé d’une rame qu’il tient levée sur son épaule, comme prêt à frapper. (p. 220)

Similarly, the scene in which Léon seems to sink into the damp earth as hostile faces crowd around him (p. 272) is a variation on the scene 23 For analysis of the dreams, see Strand, ‘The Role of Dreams in Michel Butor’s La Modification’. 24 Duffy, Butor: La Modification , pp. 66–71. 25 And, of course, from Virgil’s Aeneid, Book VI.

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Michelangelo Buonarroti, Sistine Chapel ceiling: Cumaean Sibyl, 1510

in the bottom left corner of the Last Judgement, where the angels floating between heaven and earth propel back to the ground the sinners who have, shortly before, risen from their graves to be judged. Moreover, the very strong parallel between this description and the account in the Book of Zechariah of the ultimate fate of unrepentant sinners

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establishes a further link between this dream sequence and the prophets of the Sistine Ceiling: C’est une foule de visages qui s’approchent, énormes et haineux comme si vous étiez un insecte retourné, des éclairs zébrant leurs faces et la peau en tombant par plaques. (p. 272) their flesh shall consume away while they stand on their feet, and their eyes shall consume away in their holes, and their tongue shall consume away in their mouth. (Zecheriah, 14, 12)

Finally, the serpent that winds itself around his legs is derived from the spandrel of the ceiling that represents Moses and the Brazen Serpent. In this passage, the physical discomfort resulting from Léon’s cramped travelling conditions combines with his mental anguish and his memories of the Sistine chapel ceiling to produce this fearsome phantasmagoric creature, which immobilises him and engenders such terror in him that he is afraid to turn around to look at it: ‘Vous ne voulez pas vous retourner: vous avez peur de sentir l’haleine de cette gueule, de voir ce regard impitoyable et vitreux, les écailles de ce serpent épineux dont la queue froide s’enroule autour de vos jambes qui n’arrivent plus à se séparer’ (p. 218). The reference to the Brazen Serpent spandrel is particularly interesting because of the parallel that the biblical episode offers with Léon’s situation. Numbers 21:4–8 relates that, as punishment for speaking against God and against Moses, a plague of fiery serpents was visited on the Israelites, who could save themselves only by gazing at the serpent of brass, the symbol of eternal life promised to the faithful. Michelangelo’s scene shows the fate of both the saved and the damned, the former gazing at the symbol that will save them, the latter trapped in the coils of the writhing punishing serpent. As Léon enters the dream state, he has not yet acknowledged the role that the Church has played and will play in his life. As the dream proceeds, however, and as he moves in and out of consciousness, twisting and turning in his seat like one of Michelangelo’s awkwardly positioned ignudi, he is gradually made to acknowledge the extent to which Catholicism and its imagery inform his thought-processes and his subconscious. Like the Israelites in the Brazen Serpent spandrel, his salvation will lie in facing up to the truth, even if that truth is much more humble and relativistic than theirs and even if the salvation that he finds is no more than a tenuous literary lifeline.

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Léon’s exploration of Roman art and of Rome is not, however, confined to his trips to the city and his visits of its monuments. He also visits the Louvre alone and with Cécile, though on both occasions these visits are much more selective than his Roman excursions. The first of these visits to the Louvre is not recounted until relatively late in the novel, towards the end of the second section (pp. 185–86). At this stage in his journey, Léon still intends to leave his wife for his mistress. However, in the course of this second section, his memories have started to reveal cracks in his relationship with Cécile and the account of the couple’s trip to the Louvre during Cécile’s visit to Paris offers a new perspective on the artistic pilgrimages that shaped the development of their relationship, which Léon described in such glowing terms in earlier pages. Shortly before the visit that he makes with Cécile, the couple quarrel about how they should spend their day in the capital. The outing starts reasonably well. Léon is keen to act as Cécile’s guide; she is more than willing to follow. However, very quickly the discussion about the day’s itinerary turns into an argument. First, the fact that Cécile has coped so well in the days when he has been unable to see her seems to cause him some disappointment, which unsettles him to the extent that, despite his offer to show her the sights and her flexibility (‘où que tu me mènes, je découvrirai quelque chose que j’ai aimé’ (p. 184)), he seems incapable of deciding where to start. When he does make a suggestion, he withdraws it almost immediately: ‘Il y a les nouvelles salles du Louvre que tu ne connais sûrement pas, mais nous n’allons tout de même pas passer cet aprèsmidi dans un musée’ (p. 184). If Léon’s indecision suggests his discomfort in adjusting to his mistress’s presence on his home ground, the discrepancy between his past enthusiasm for museum trips and his current reluctance to take Cécile to the Louvre suggests that part of her attraction for him has been her knowledge of Rome. Moreover, as she points out, this inconsistency also reveals a rather patronising attitude towards her and her cultural pursuits: je ne suis pourtant pas si fermée à la peinture; qu’est-ce que cette crainte soudaine, ce scrupule, comme si tout d’un coup je te paraissais une inconnue? N’avons-nous pas des goûts bien proches? Lorsque tu es à Rome, tu me dis avec une voix qui se gonfle d’enthousiasme, avec des yeux qui brillent comme à l’annonce d’un proche délice, avec un sérieux qui se refuserait à considérer la moindre futile objection: il faut absolument aller voir telle église, telle ruine, telle pierre au milieu des champs ou encastrée

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dans les maisons; ne t’ai-je point toujours suivi, non seulement docile, mais passionnée. (p. 185)

This quarrel offers the reader a measure of Léon’s solipsism, his apparent consideration for Cécile concealing a disregard for her own passionate interest in the visual arts, while Cécile’s outburst exposes a repressed anger that does not tally with the amorous idyll fabricated by Léon in his own mind and augurs badly for his romantic plans for the future. Even his veiled hint about their future – his proposal that they explore the art treasures of Paris in the same systematic way that they have explored those of Rome – rings hollow in the context, his reluctance to pursue the matter further indicating a lack of real belief in that scenario. The actual tour of the collection proceeds under the shadow of this tiff, the couple rallying from their separate miseries only when they find themselves in front of works associated with Rome: ‘C’est ainsi qu’après le repas vous avez traversé ces salles sans presque rien vous dire, sauf devant les statues romaines, les paysages de Claude Lorrain, les deux toiles de Pannini que vous avez amoureusement détaillées’ (pp. 185–86). However, if the Classical sculpture and the paintings of Claude and Pannini succeed in dispelling the gloom temporarily, the fact that communication can only be re-established through works that remind them of their beloved Rome is in itself an ominous sign which anticipates Léon’s own realisation that his attraction to Cécile is inextricable from his love of the city in which she lives, that outside Rome she becomes just another woman and that his relationship with her would not survive relocation to Paris. The second visit is a much more recent event, but it is recounted in the first section of the novel, that is, at the point when Léon is still eagerly planning his new life with Cécile. On the Monday before the particular journey that provides the structure of La Modification, he made a detour to visit the Louvre in order to delay his return to the family home and to ‘prolonger cette impression de ne pas être encore tout à fait rentré’ (p. 62). Bathed in the afterglow of his weekend with Cécile, he once again pauses only in front of those works that remind him of Rome: the Winged Victory of Samothrace, the mosaics of Antioch, the portraits of Roman ladies, the statue of Nero as a child, the paintings of Claude and Poussin (‘ces Français de Rome’) and the two large pendant paintings of ancient and modern Rome by Pannini, Galerie de vues de la Rome antique (1759) and Galerie de vues de la Rome moderne (1759).

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Of all the artistic and architectural references in La Modification, the passages relating to Pannini’s works are the fullest and most detailed, providing not only a fairly full description of the paintings, but also a critical commentary on their place in the history of art and their technical and compositional properties (pp. 64–65, 69–71). There are three main reasons for this prominence. If Claude and Poussin can be described as ‘ces Français de Rome’, then Pannini could with equal justification be dubbed ‘cet Italien de Paris’. In the course of his career, Pannini established many contacts with France and French artists. He is known to have had contact with Boucher and Oudry, was a close friend of Nicolas Vleughels, the director of the Académie de France between 1724 and 1737, and, in 1724, he married a French national living in Rome. The commissioning, by French cardinals, of numerous major works, including Galerie de vues de la Rome antique and Galerie de vues de la Rome moderne, more or less made him official painter of the French clerical embassy in Rome. The Mercure de France includes a reference to ‘Paul Pannini, célèbre peintre de l’Académie de Saint-Luc’ and in 1732 he was admitted to ‘l’Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture de Paris’, a distinction rarely awarded to foreign artists. Even the signature on certain works – ‘JPP’ or ‘Jean Paul’ – shows a desire to gallicise his name.26 Pannini’s life and work make him, like Cavallini, a representative of the long-standing links and interaction between the cities that had, in turn, been the capitals of Western art and culture. It is this representative status rather than the aesthetic merit of his work that draws Léon to ‘ce peintre de troisième ordre’ (p. 55) as opposed to the more celebrated canvases of Guardi, Watteau, Chardin, Fragonard, Goya and David exhibited in the adjoining rooms. The second and more important reason for the prominence accorded to this rather unfashionable artist is given by Léon himself. For Léon, Pannini’s work exemplifies the challenge made by Classical culture to the art and ideology of the Catholic Church: ‘Et c’est bien cette mise en balance, cet effort pour relever ce qui depuis le seizième siècle était ressenti comme un constant défi jeté par l’ancien Empire à l’actuelle Eglise, que soulignent les deux tableaux symétriques […]’ (p. 65). What he fails to recognise is that Pannini’s art, like that of Michelangelo and Bernini before him, drew on the culture and art of Classical Rome in order to celebrate the superiority of Catholic Rome. Léon’s reading effectively reverses and revises history. For Pannini, 26 Kiene, Pannini, pp. 19–20.

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Giovanni Paulo Pannini, Galerie de vues de la Rome antique, 1759

Christian Rome was a continuation of and an advance on Ancient Rome: la Rome moderne et chrétienne s’inscrit dans le prolongment de la Rome antique et païenne.27 Les Anciens servent de fondement au progressisme des Modernes, qui leur sont supérieurs en particulier en matière de religion.28

The message of Pannini’s work is in part corroborated by that delivered by the pope of Léon’s dream: ‘Ne suis-je pas le fantôme des empereurs, hantant depuis des siècles la capitale de leur monde aboli, regretté?’ (p. 261). It is a message that Léon had overlooked in the course of his scrutiny of the works in the Louvre. On that visit, he had seen only one dimension of the paintings – the ‘défi’ posed by the Ancients to the Church – and failed to acknowledge the continuity between the Ancient and Christian eras, epitomised in the juxtaposition of ancient monuments and modern religious architecture in the Galerie de vues de 27 Kiene, Pannini, pp. 81–82. 28 Kiene, Pannini, p. 81.

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Giovanni Paulo Pannini, Galerie de vues de la Rome moderne, 1759

la Rome moderne. As we have seen, one of the lessons that he will learn in the course of this journey is that the Classical and Christian civilisations are ultimately inextricable and that to deny one or other aspect of Rome is to misunderstand it. This is the point of the challenge that the pope of Léon’s dream makes to him – Léon’s exclusive allegiance to Classical Rome casts doubt on the sincerity of his attachment to the city: ‘pourquoi prétends-tu aimer Rome?’ (p. 261). Moreover, if Léon’s initial reading of Pannini gives a measure of his willingness to revise art history to fit his own preconceptions and inclinations, the description of the two Galeries can also be read as early clues regarding the (albeit partial) solution that he will find in the course of his journey. As Léon stands in one gallery scrutinising works of art that represent other galleries in which other viewers scrutinise other works of art, he is, in a sense, although he does not realise it at the time, looking at his own future. The Pannini Galeries present in miniature Léon’s own situation. Léon, whether he is in Rome or in Paris, finds himself in an environment that is chock-full of cultural reference points and that testifies to the immense wealth of the Western artistic tradition. Until now, Léon has used his heritage either as a

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means of furthering his romantic relationships – to impress his young wife Henriette (p. 270) and later his mistress Cécile – or as a buffer to protect himself from the demands of marriage and fatherhood, surrounding himself with musical, visual and literary reminders of Rome (p. 82). Henceforth, art will become a means of understanding himself and his historical situation. Like Pannini’s diminutive viewers who are surrounded by a compendium of the artistic achievements that have marked their world since Classical times and whose gestures translate the eighteenth-century’s attempts to assimilate and understand its artistic heritage, Léon must strive to situate himself in relation to the even more complex cultural legacy that he has inherited in the twentieth century. Finally, it is both ironic and premonitory that Léon’s decisive train journey was so recently preceded by a solitary reconstruction of the visit that he and Cécile had made to the Louvre. The much greater pleasure derived from the return visit was not only a signal of the problems in his relationship with Cécile but also a forewarning of the conclusion that he will ultimately reach: that he cannot look to others for a ready solution to his problems and that, even if he returns to Henriette, he will have to embark on a solitary quest for understanding of his own position in the history of the Western world. Piranesi At home in Paris, Léon’s ability to pursue his cultural interests is limited by the demands of professional and domestic routine and responsibility. However, within the claustrophobic environment of his family apartment, he has managed to create a Roman sanctuary in a corner of his salon, where he can listen to Monteverdi’s Orfeo, read The Aeneid and contemplate either the frieze of the Panthéon outside his window or the two Piranesi engravings that Cécile had bought him for his ‘fête’ (pp. 82, 120). On the most obvious level, the brief references to the Piranesi engravings can be read as indicators of Léon’s adulterous duplicity and his insensitivity. Not only has he brought a reminder of his mistress into the family home, but his sentimental attachment to this gift contrasts sharply with his suspicious reaction to the birthday breakfast organised by his family and the gifts from his children (p. 35). However, here as elsewhere in the text, the references to the visual arts have a broader thematic function that extends beyond the moral

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implications of Léon’s adulterous intrigue. Piranesi offers another example of the cultural interaction between Rome and Paris. Like Pannini, he was closely associated with the French Academy in Rome, in particular in the years following his arrival in Rome in 1740. The productiveness of his early contact with the Academy is very evident in the group of views of Rome, Varie Vedute di Roma Antica et Moderna,29 published in 1745, which consisted of 47 engravings by Piranesi, plus views by a number of the French pensionnaires at the Academy, including Jean Barbault, Laurent Le Geay and François Duflos. He is also known to have had a number of friends within the expatriate French artistic community, including Claude-Joseph Vernet, Charles MichelAnge Challe, Ennemond Alexandre Petitot, Joseph Marie Vien, Hubert Robert and Charles-Louis Clérisseau. Moreover, if contact with the French Academy initially offered the young provincial the opportunity to collaborate with the French pensionnaires and, thereby, refine his draughtsmanship, within a relatively short time his distinctive and highly dramatic approach to topographical art was beginning to influence both the graphic technique and the architectural and decorative designs of his French contemporaries, who, in turn, on their return to Paris acted as vehicles of his ideas and style.30 The references to Piranesi also serve to reinforce the themes of freedom and exploration that underpin Butor’s text. Cécile’s gift to Léon of a print of one of Piranesi’s Carceri is more than a token of affection. Her choice of print not only suggests her frustration at Léon’s inability to break the bonds that tie him to his family, to Catholicism and even to bourgeois mores, but also provides a vivid visual image of the feelings of confinement and claustrophobia that his domestic and professional situation induces in him (pp. 37–39). However, like Piranesi’s Carceri, the prison that Léon inhabits has little relationship with observable reality. Léon is limited by much more than the ties of marriage and family; like everyone else, he is bound by the culture that he has inherited and by the historical situation in which he finds himself. For Butor, freedom is, by definition, a relative condition and is to be achieved not through the dramatic defiant gesture or an irreversible act of rupture with the past, but on the contrary through a painstaking re-examination of that past and of the factors that, in determining one’s identity, have limited one’s freedom. Ultimately, Cécile’s gift is even more relevant to Léon’s situation 29 See Wilton-Ely, Piranesi, p. 12. 30 Wilton-Ely, Piranesi, pp. 21–23.

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Giovanni Battista Piranesi, An Imaginary Prison, from the Carceri d’Invenzione series, 1745 and 1760

than she could have imagined. The restless, fantastic and labyrinthine structures of Piranesi’s Carceri may bear little resemblance to Léon’s mundane domestic environment, but they do offer a graphic equivalent of his troubled subconscious that he will explore in dreams, the dark tunnels and cavernous vaulted structures of which bear more than a passing similarity with Pirnaesi’s eerie prisons. The complementary engraving that formed the other half of her gift to him – the vaguely named ‘Construction’ – draws attention to another very different aspect of Piranesi’s work: his imaginary reconstructions of the landmarks and principal sites of ancient Rome. Here, too, the reference to Cécile’s gift is double-edged. For a substantial part of La Modification, Léon is elaborating his own ‘constructions’, that is the various hypothetical scenarios he concocts relating to his planned union with Cécile and his separation from Henriette and his family. There is, of course, a pointed irony in the fact that the term ‘constructions’ reappears at the end of the text, at the point where he acknowledges the flimsiness of the plans that he had so carefully devised: ‘cette faille où s’engloutissaient peu à peu toutes les constructions que

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vous aviez faites’ (p. 284). However, if Léon’s final acknowledgement of the insubstantiality of his own ‘constructions’ tinges the earlier reference to Cécile’s gift with a cruel irony, the reference to Piranesi’s ‘Constructions’ can, nevertheless, also be seen as a positive premonitory indicator of the course of action that he should take. In Piranesi, construction and reconstruction are inseparable, and much of his art is founded on a combination of deductions derived from the close analyis of archeological evidence and carefully calculated leaps of the imagination. The ‘artistic’ task that Léon outlines at the close of the novel is based on similar principles. Like many of Piranesi’s vedute, caprici and antichità, the book that Léon envisages would be founded on an excavation of his own personal history and the history of his culture. Just as Piranesi remapped the ancient city for his Antichità Romane,31 Léon’s anticipated journey of exploration would result in a reconfiguration of his memories, which would take him into hidden and obscure regions of his own psyche. Roman Architecture and Sculpture If the references in La Modification to the visual arts tend to be more extensive, the references to the architecture, monuments and sculpture of Rome are more frequent. Indeed, the novel mentions most periods of Roman architecture from the Classical to the Fascist. As one would expect, references to the vestiges of the ancient world pepper the text.32 San Pietro in Vincoli (p. 171), the church that houses Michelangelo’s Moses, which is mentioned on a number of occasions in the text, dates back to the early Christian period, while the medieval period is represented by the references to Cavallini, to Santa Maria sopra Minerva ‘la seule église gothique de Rome’ (p. 173) and to the ‘tour médiévale’ of the Largo Argentina (p. 45). Reminders of Renaissance Rome’s fusion of Classical form and Christian belief and, in particular, of Michelangelo’s prolific and varied talents litter Léon’s path as he 31 Scott, Piranesi, pp. 117–48. 32 For example, the Coliseum (pp. 86, 267); the Largo Argentina Sacred Precinct (pp. 44, 57, 105); the Circus Maximus (p. 87); the Arch of Septimus Severus (p. 86); the Temple of Venus and Rome (p. 270); the Temple of Vesta (pp. 87, 266); the Arch of Constantine (pp. 86, 270); the Arch of Janus (pp. 87, 266); the Basilica of Maxentius and Constantine (p. 110); the Porta Maggiore (pp. 110, 219, 262); the Pyramid of Caius Cestius (pp. 110, 280); the Tomb of Cecilia Metella (p. 120); the Temple of Minerva Medica (pp. 110, 221); the Baths of Diocletian (p. 110); the Forum (p. 270); the Tomb of Marcus Vergilius Eurysaces (p. 219); the Aurelian Wall (p. 283).

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explores the city. The Palazzo Farnese, the piazza and palaces of the Capitoline Hill, Santa Maria Maggiore, Santa Maria degli Angeli (p. 172) and, of course, the Vatican and St Peter’s Basilica all bear witness to Michelangelo’s contribution to the architecture of the city. However, if La Modification includes references to most periods of architectural history, one particular period occupies a privileged position: the Baroque. A high proportion of the churches, public buildings and monuments referred to in the text are either Baroque or have Baroque sections or decorative features. The Gesù (p. 44), Sant’Andrea della Valle, the Palazzo Doria Pamphili (p. 58), Sant’Agnese in Agone and the Palazzzo Barberini (p. 184) all incorporate typical Baroque elements. Of the Baroque constructions alluded to in the text, Bernini’s Fountain of the Four Rivers is the most frequently mentioned (pp. 59, 95, 97, 117–18, 131, 155, 242). Thematically, this body of references serves two important functions. First, the iconography of the statue representing the Nile33 and the postures of two of the other statues could be read as offering visual parallels with Léon’s situation. The face of the statue that represents the Nile is hidden by a veil, reminding us that the source of the river was unknown. Viewed in the light of the novel’s conclusion and of Léon’s new resolve, the reference to this symbolic feature can be read as a forewarning of the quest that he has yet to undertake in order to discover the pyschological and cultural sources of his own behaviour. The postures of the figures representing the Danube and the Plate, who seem to raise their arms defensively against an invisible foe, are explained by local legend as a symptom of the rivalry between Bernini and Borromini, the architect of the facade of Sant’Agnese which faces the fountain.34 The statues, it is argued, are trying to protect themselves from the facade which seems to be toppling towards them. Like the statues, Léon tries to fend off the Church. The preservation of his relationship with Cécile depends on his ability to repress the hold that Catholicism has on him. Indeed, this relationship is, in large part, founded on a reaction to the excessive piety of his wife and he is only too ready to mimic Cécile’s rabid anticlericalism. However, just as the Roman legend is based on an historical inaccuracy – Borromini’s church post-dates Bernini’s fountain – so Léon’s rejection of Catholicism is based on his misreading of his own history and his failure to recognise the effects of his Catholic culture on his mode of thinking. 33 Butor wrongly identifies this statue as the Plate (pp. 50–51). 34 Michelin Tourist Guide: Rome, Clermont-Ferrand, Michelin, 1995, p. 141.

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Gianlorenzo Bernini, The Fountain of the Four Rivers, 1648–51, Piazza Novona, Rome

However, it is the broader symbolism of the fountain that offers the more important parallel with Léon’s situation. Bernini’s fountain effectively draws an ideologically loaded map of the world that places Rome at its centre. The four colossi of the fountain represent the Nile, the Ganges, the Danube and the Plate, which were, in turn, metonyms for the continents of Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas. This

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Gianlorenzo Bernini, symbolic figure of the River Nile, from The Fountain of the Four Rivers, 1648–51, Piazza Novona, Rome

elevation of Rome to the status of pivot of the world fits well with Léon’s own view of the city. As he sets out on his journey, Rome is identified as the centre of his personal world. His life in Paris seems to him to be a sham. His marriage is sterile; his children are strangers to him. Rome and his affair with Cécile seem to allow him to be authentic: ‘Rome était pour vous le lieu de l’authenticité’ (p. 146). Furthermore, when he is in Rome, Bernini’s fountain is the pivot of his exploration of the city.35 The decor he imagines for the scene in which he intends 35 Bernini also offers a further instance of the rivalry between Rome and Paris that constitutes one of the text’s dominant themes and figures so prominently in Léon’s thinking about his own situation. Although Bernini’s contact with France and with

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to reveal to Cécile his plan to leave Henriette is the Tre Scalini Café overlooking the fountain (pp. 59, 95, 97, 118). Initially, this would seem to be an apt setting for the start of his new life, recalling as it does the first days of their relationship. One of his earliest memories of their romance juxtaposes the image of Cécile crossing the Piazza Navona to meet him and that of a group of little boys playing in the fountain (p. 117). On that occasion the conversation of the couple had focused on their admiration for the square, the fountains and Sant’Agnese, a shared admiration that had prompted animated discussion about Rome’s Baroque heritage and a tour of Borromini’s churches (p. 118). His most recent memory of Cécile relates to their last lunch together at the Tre Scalini and the sparkling waters of Bernini’s fountain as they left it (p. 97). In short, all roads seem to lead to the Fountain of the Four Rivers. The irony is that Bernini’s fountain was, in fact, a symbol of the ‘Church Triumphant ever expanding on the Four continents’36 and an opportunity for Innocent X to make his own lasting mark on the city: A re-awakened Rome again dominates the earth not through arms, but by faith. And so the fountain symbolizes the triumph of the papacy and of the reigning papal family.37

French art was much more limited than that of Pannini, the invitation he received from Colbert in 1664 to submit plans for the completion of the Louvre resulted in a brief period of interaction, the records of which offer fascinating insights into the relationship between the two cities. This invitation and the account of the trip made by Bernini to Paris in 1665 illustrate the intense political and artistic rivalry that prevailed between the two cities. As Hibbard points out ‘the “invitation” was really a command – Louis XIV was determined to humiliate Alexandre VII and by taking Bernini away he robbed the Pope of his most valuable asset’ (Bernini, p. 168). Contemporary accounts of Bernini’s reactions to French art and architecture further highlight this competitiveness: Bernini seems to have considered virtually everything he encountered in Paris to be inferior to its Roman equivalent, the one exception being the work of Poussin with which he became acquainted during his visits to the collection of Paul Fréart, Sieur de Chantelou. Bernini’s harsh judgements of Paris and his praise of all things Roman are, of course, echoed in Léon’s carping about his native city and his glorification of Rome. Moreover, the two men are further linked by the journeys that they make between the two cities and by the meticulous records of these trips that are kept. Bernini’s journey was documented by contemporary biographers and in the diary kept by Chantelou, which scrupulously records Bernini’s stay in the capital; every stage of Léon’s journey is documented by the unidentified narratorial voice of La Modification, which is Léon’s constant companion. 36 Hibbard, Bernini, p. 120. Compare Wittkower, Art and Architecture in Italy, 1600– 1750, pp. 169–70. 37 Hibbard, Bernini, p. 120.

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Innocent needed, then, a setting that would be simultaneously imperial and papal. […] Borromini’s projected Church of San’Agnese […] as well as the construction of a great fountain, would complete this marriage between a princely Baroque cour d’honneur and a sacred open-air theater. So the ensemble of basilica–obelisk–fountain–palace would, in effect, constitute the site of a new papal cathedra, St. Peter’s removed to the Piazza Navona.38

Given this, there is a cruel aptness in the fact that Bernini’s fountain is also associated with the anticipated break with Cécile. As he reconsiders his future, Léon chooses the same decor for his anticipated revelation of his decision to end the relationship (p. 242) as that which he had earlier selected for his revelation of his plan to leave Henriette. The choice of the Tre Scalini with its view of the fountain is not just a symptom of Léon’s tactlessness and obtuseness. The setting he picks for what he anticipates as being his last encounter with Cécile is much more than a poignant reminder of happier times; it is also a reminder of the role Catholicism has played in his life and in his change of heart. Moreover, the association of the Fountain of the Four Rivers with rupture has an aptness that extends beyond Léon’s personal case history and which makes him a representative of modern man. For all its flamboyance and ambition, the Baroque age was, as Butor points out, an age of rupture and turbulence, during which old certainties were challenged, and Baroque art has its origins in an ultimately doomed attempt to reinstate Rome as the centre of the Christian world. Herein lies its appeal for Butor. The Baroque age mirrors his own age and, just as monuments such as Bernini’s fountain were Rome’s response to those who would challenge its authority, so La Modification is Butor’s response to the decline of Europe’s influence and the disintegration of the various European empires: Il y a de grandes affinités entre toute une partie de l’art contemporain et celui de cette période. Mais comme l’art baroque est encore contrôlé par l’Eglise catholique romaine […] et donc organise tout en vue d’un recentrement autour de cette ville et de cette religion, il ne fait qu’esquisser un certain nombre de traits de l’art moderne dans lequel certains Occidentaux au moins commencent à se rendre compte du fait que la Terre n’a pas de centre et que l’Europe n’est pas plus centrale qu’aucun autre des continents.39

Whereas Baroque art reasserted old values, Butor’s art offers a response that, although ambitious in its scope, anticipates no more than modest results. In contrast with the age of the Baroque, the modern world has 38 Schama, Landscape and Memory, p. 298. 39 Butor, Improvisations sur Michel Butor, p. 98.

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no single moral or cultural centre and modern man will never again, Butor argues, be able to commit himself to any one culture or set of beliefs. Thus, as Léon contemplates the book he would like to write, he recognises that, ultimately, his project is doomed to failure because his subject is, by its very nature, inexhaustible.40 However, if he is to acquire some limited measure of understanding of himself and his place in human civilisation, if he is to achieve some measure of freedom from the culture that has determined his behaviour hitherto, and if he is to establish some personal coherence in an incoherent world, the production of a work of art, albeit flawed and incomplete, is the only option: Donc préparer, permettre, par exemple au moyen d’un livre, à cette liberté future hors de notre portée, lui permettre, dans une mesure si infime soitelle, de se constituer, de s’établir. (p. 276) C’est la seule solution qui lui permettra de continuer à vivre d’une façon aussi raisonnable que possible. Destiné a disparaître, Léon se sauve par le biais de l’oeuvre d’art […]. Il va mettre sa vie entière au service d’une transformation de la réalité que lui-même ne verra pas; mais il peut en profiter – par l’intermédiaire de sa certitude que ce qu’il fait va dans un certain sens.41

French Art, Architecture and Monuments Given the fact that so much of La Modification revolves around Léon’s anticipated visit to Rome and memories relating to past trips to the city, it is perhaps not surprising that French art and architecture is only rarely mentioned in the text. On those occasions when reference is made to it, it tends to be viewed in a rather negative light. Léon’s jaundiced view of his life in Paris colours his perspective on the city and on French culture. As he goes about his daily business in Paris, his discontentment makes him hyper-alert to the city’s faults: the traffic jams in the place du Théâtre-Français (p. 38, 63) and on the rue de Rivoli, the grey weather and rain that limits visibility of the city’s monuments (p. 71), the crowded boulevards (p. 76), the early morning screech of brakes on the place du Panthéon (p. 41), the busloads of American tourists at 40 See Silk, ‘When the Writer Comes Home’. 41 Butor in Chapsal, Les Ecrivains en personne, p. 85. Compare ‘Un livre pour moi n’est jamais “achevé” au sens traditionnel du terme. Quand je m’arrête de travailler sur un livre, c’est que j’ai achevé de l’inachevé, c’est qu’il faut que je passe la main, c’est que je ne puis désormais plus rien pour lui’ (Le Sidaner, Michel Butor, Voyageur à la roue, pp. 50–51).

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the Louvre (p. 64), the malfunctioning lift in his apartment block (p. 39). His assessment of the city’s monuments, its ornamental statues and its decorative arts is also rather scathing. His eye is caught by the ‘trois mauvaises statues représentant les fils de Caïn’ in the Tuileries (p. 63); he considers the Arc de Triomphe to be a ‘médiocre monument napoléonien’ (p. 131); the ‘Belle Epoque’ was characterised by a ‘libertinage étriqué’ which constrasts sharply with the candid and grandiose ‘dévergondage’ of nineteenth-century Rome (pp. 74–75). Finally, the fact that he has forgotten to renew his subscription to ‘la société des Amis du Louvre’ (p. 53), but remains affiliated to the ‘société Dante Alighieri’ highlights the bias of his cultural allegiance. However, if La Modification offers a somewhat dismissive view of French art and architecture, there are moments when Léon would seem to acknowledge, albeit rather guardedly, some of its merits. When he is in Rome, distance does seem to alter, if only slightly, his attitude to French art. In the course of the rather tense conversation with Cécile following their abortive trip to see Michelangelo’s Moses, Léon ventures the suggestion that they visit Santa Maria degli Angeli (p. 172).42 Cécile’s irritation manifests itself in the quickness of her reaction and in her carping reference to Houdon: ‘Avec cette horrible statue de saint Bruno par je ne sais quel sculpteur français’. Léon’s initial response suggests that his first instinct is to defend the French sculptor, though his ready acknowledgement of his reservations about a visit to Santa Maria degli Angeli also indicates his concern to pacify Cécile: Houdon; il vaut mieux le voir à Paris. Il faut dire que ce Bruno est un des plus navrants de tous les saints en ce qui concerne les arts. – Et le reste? Je n’en sais rien; il ne m’inspire pas confiance. (p. 172)

Although this discussion of Houdon’s merits and faults is not pursued further, the exchange is, nevertheless, highly telling, Léon’s rather inconclusive and evasive final remark showing a tendency to defer to Cécile’s will at least when they are in Rome, in order to preserve the harmony of their relationship and his own illusions about it. However, his initial reaction (‘il vaut mieux le voir à Paris’) suggests that his loyalty to Rome and to Roman art is not as exclusive as it often seems and that his attitude to his native Paris is rather more complex and ambivalent than he is prepared to admit. 42 At the age of 86, Michelangelo was entrusted with the task of converting the Baths of Diocletian into a church and charterhouse.

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Moreover, the quartier in which Léon lives in Paris offers this romanophile some cultural compensation for the city’s faults. His flat overlooks the Panthéon and the adjoining streets are also rich with Roman connotations. On his way home from the Louvre, Léon further delays his return to family life, by lingering ‘comme un touriste’ (p. 77) in the area around the Hôtel de Cluny. As the site of a thirdcentury Gallo-Roman bath-house and of the residence of the Abbots of Cluny, the Hôtel de Cluny, with its ancient ruins and its rich collection of religious artworks, shows the impact of both Ancient Rome and Roman Catholicism on French culture. Furthermore, the ruins are also associated with one of Léon’s historical and literary heroes, Julian the Apostate, whose conversion from Christianity to paganism mirrors his own rejection of the Catholic Church.43 However, as McWilliams points out, Léon is blind to the irony of the fact that the Roman baths have served as the foundation for the building of the residence of the abbots of Cluny: ‘Even Julian has been absorbed, physically if not spiritually into the Christian world’.44 It is, of course, only as his journey nears completion and after his dream encounter with the processions of Roman Emperors and Popes that he will begin to understand the relationship between Classical and Catholic Rome and to recognise the vestiges of the Roman Empire that are discernible in the art, architecture and even the beliefs of Christianity. Léon’s affection for the Panthéon is based on a number of factors. It is, of course, a reminder of his beloved Rome and of Cécile. Of all the buildings in Paris, it is the one ‘qui le plus régulièrement ramène votre esprit vers Cécile’ (p. 80) and the view of it from the windows of his apartment offers him some aesthetic pleasure in ‘cette horrible caricature d’existence’ of family life. Thus, when he entered the diningroom on the morning of his birthday, it was the sight of the sunlight playing on the sculpted foliage of the Panthéon’s frieze that caught his attention, rather than the gifts that his family had arranged on his plate (p. 35). The fact that he has such a view from his window is also a reassuring sign of his own success and is a source not only of some considerable self-satisfaction, but a salve to his conscience when he is thinking about leaving Henriette. Place du Panthéon is a ‘good address’ and he prides himself on having provided his family with a ‘bel appartement’ (p. 146). Notwithstanding the dubious nature of some of the reasons underlying his affection for the Panthéon, he is also sensitive 43 See Duffy, Butor: La Modification, pp. 34–36. 44 McWilliams, The Narratives of Michel Butor, p. 37.

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Claude Gellée (known as Le Lorrain), Vue du Campo Vaccino, 1630s

to the aesthetic qualities of the building and is willing to concede that ‘la frise de guirlandes, juste à la hauteur de votre appartement, est parmi tous les efforts de décoration classique une des imitations les plus réussies des plus beaux ornements romains’ (p. 80).45 However, it is during Léon’s account of the visit he made to the Louvre a few days before his journey that his appreciation of French art becomes most apparent. Initially, it would seem that the rather mediocre paintings by Pannini had monopolised his attention to the exclusion of the rest of the collection. As he hurried purposefully round the collection, his eye had not even paused on the work of David, Chardin, Watteau or Fragonard. However, he had lingered in front of the paintings of Claude and Poussin long enough to be able to recall the positioning of many of the paintings in the room and to reconstruct 45 The chequered history of the building – it has been, successively, a church, a necropolis, a church again, the headquarters of the Commune and, finally, a lay temple housing the tombs of many of the great writers of the past – offers a parallel with Léon’s own history. Educated as a Catholic, he rejects the Church, only to be forced to recognise its place in his life, but ultimately looks for a personal form of salvation in the writing of a book. See also McWilliams, The Narratives of Michel Butor, p. 37.

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Nicholas Poussin, L’Eté ou Ruth et Booz, 1660–64

fairly precisely the order of his visit. There is, of course, one very obvious reason for his interest. These ‘deux Français de Rome’ not only spent most of their careers in Rome, but also represent the highpoint of the long tradition of artistic interaction between France and Rome. Their oeuvre also includes numerous images of Roman sites that have become very familiar to him during visits to the city. Thus, his reconstruction starts with his perusal of Claude’s painting of the Forum,46 the site that, he decides, will be the starting point of his planned nostalgic tour of Ancient Rome on the last afternoon of his life-changing trip to the capital (p. 86). However, during his visit to the Louvre, he had in fact been very quickly distracted from his Roman obsession by other paintings, including Poussin’s version of the Old Testament story of Ruth and Boaz (1660–64), by his scrutiny of details of the canvases (the discolouration of the field of wheat in the painting of Ruth and Boaz) and by his conjectures regarding Poussin’s influences. Léon’s highly laudatory commentary on Poussin’s exploitation of his Classical heritage is particularly illuminating. What had impressed and surprised him most was the French master’s quite 46 Vue du Campo Vaccino, 1630s.

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remarkable ability to capture the spirit of the original Classical work, even though in the case in point – his copy of Bellini’s Feast of the Gods – he had used as his model a much later, inferior work commissioned by the powerful Aldobrandini family: un des ces tableaux dont la parenté est telle avec la peinture de Pompéi que l’on a du mal à se rendre à cette evidence que leur auteur n’en a pu rien connaître, qu’il a su simplement, avec un prodigieux pouvoir de divination, en retrouver l’esprit à travers ces médiocres noces aldobrandines dont il a exécuté la curieuse copie qui se trouve au palais Doria. (p. 70)47

Here, Léon seems momentarily to let down the guard he normally maintains between himself and the French tradition. Reneging temporarily on his dogged allegiance to Rome, he acknowledges the genius of one of his compatriots and, indeed, his superiority over one of his Roman predecessors. It is clear from the detail of his retrospective reconstruction of the visit that Léon spent a considerable amount of time examining the compositions and that, totally absorbed by Poussin’s and Claude’s paintings, he had even been distracted for a time from the sharp hunger pains that he had been feeling shortly before (p. 69). Moreover, as he scrutinised the painted scenes, his imagination was engaged by the figures and he found himself inventing stories, conjuring up in his mind’s eye the scenes preceding and following the episodes depicted. Moreover, Léon’s musings are expressed in an expansive, lyrical style that contrasts sharply with the frequently rather scathing remarks about French art that he voices elsewhere in the text, which testifies to a genuine, if rarely acknowledged emotional investment in his own culture: Vous en contempliez les personnages si naïvement peints qu’ils invitent l’esprit à leur insuffler la vie, de sorte que vous en êtes arrivé à imaginer pour chacun d’eux une histoire, les suivant avant et après la scène représentée, leur geste isolé et fixé au milieu de leurs voyages sur les eaux, dans leurs aventures parmi les rues de ces magnifiques villes marines, parmi les colonnades et les salles, parmi les jardins de grands arbres de ces fastueuses demeures tellement plus justement antiques dans leur fantaisie baignée de la voix de Virgile que les sottes reconstitutions de monuments que continueront à nous imposer, jusqu’à quand? tant de générations de pions. (pp. 70–71)

This imaginary animation of the paintings of Poussin and Claude anticipates the stories that Léon will fabricate about his fellow passengers 47 See Clark, Landscape into Art, p. 79.

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in the second section of the novel. On his long journey from Paris to Rome, Léon passes the time inventing narratives about the other people in his compartment, attributing names, nationalities, occupations and a past to them almost as soon as they board the train. For instance, on page 193, he gives a summary of what he imagines to be the main coordinates in the lives of the old couple: ‘il a peut-être été professeur ou employé dans une banque. Ils ont dû avoir des enfants. Ils ont perdu un fils à la guerre. Ils vont au baptême d’une petite-fille. Ils n’ont pas l’habitude de voyager.’ Elsewhere, his narratives are more complex and fanciful. On the basis of very flimsy evidence, he elaborates relatively detailed accounts of the personal situations of several of his fellow-passengers. Thus, he recounts in some detail the inner turmoil of the priest (pp. 87–88), the adolescence of ‘Madame Polliat’ (pp. 125–26), the dramatic domestic background of two youths (pp. 156– 57) and the romance of ‘Pierre’ and ‘Agnès’. The last ‘story’, which consists of reconstructions of the early stages of the couple’s romance and of predictions about their future, reinforces the implicit link between Léon’s response to the figures in Claude and Poussin’s compositions and the narratives that he composes about his travelling companions. As he elaborates a romantic fantasy in which they are honeymooners heading for Sicily, he draws on his familiarity with seventeenth-century painting to transform them into quasi-heroic figures who arrive exhausted, but triumphant after their long seavoyage, but who are quickly restored by the contemplation of a scene that is strongly reminiscent of Claude’s idyllic seaports: pour arriver épuisés après vingt-quatre heures encore d’un roulement plus bruyant et moins rapide que celui-ci, d’un balancement plus brutal, de secousses plus fréquentes et plus violentes, à Palerme ou à Syracuse, où dès qu’ils auront mis les pieds, que ce soit le soir ou le matin, ils verront la mer splendide et dorée comme un tableau de Claude. (p. 123)48

If Butor’s attribution to Léon of a tendency to project elements of his own situation on to his fellow passengers testifies to his solipsism, it is also a means of drawing attention to the process by which stories are constructed. For Butor writing is one of the means by which the author works through the issues that preoccupy him.49 Similarly, Léon, 48 Compare the description, on page 267, of the Roman campagna and the painterly image that Léon uses to describe the sunrise on the morning of his arrival in Rome with Henriette for their honeymoon. See also page 251. 49 In the case of La Modification, the novel had been Butor’s means of clarifying his own problematic relationship with Paris and with the bourgeois environment into

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Claude Gellée (known as Le Lorrain), Port de Mer, soleil couchant, 1639

the aspiring writer, uses the people around him as pegs on which to hang his personal concerns, and the numerous imaginary biographies are, in fact, so many autobiographies. Like the figures in Claude and Poussin, the secondary characters of La Modification are ‘si naïvement peints qu’ils invitent l’esprit à leur insuffler la vie’ (p. 70). The adventures that Léon invents for them may be much less dramatic than those he imagines for Claude’s and Poussin’s figures, but the stories that he recounts and the narrative episodes that they ‘represent’ in their paintings are based on the same fundamental tactics: close observation of human body language and imaginary recontruction. Viewed in this way, the passage devoted to Claude and Poussin becomes a mise en abyme complementing the description of Pannini’s pendant Galeries. However, whereas Pannini’s paintings drew attention to the

which he had been born: ‘Je voulais d’abord essayer d’y voir plus clair dans ma relation si ambivalente avec Paris: amour et haine à la fois… Il me fallait liquider ce probleme. Et aussi mettre à distance […] cette bourgeoisie où j’avais grandi’ (Butor, Curriculum vitae, p. 95).

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cultural legacy that informs man’s perception of his world, Léon’s creative reading of the work of Claude and Poussin highlights rather the capacity of the human imagination to transcend the immediate situation, to conjure up other times and places and, indeed, to create new, reworked versions of the stories of history, myth and religion. Finally, in addition to the parallelism between Léon’s animation of Claude’s and Poussin’s miniature figures and his invention of stories about his fellow passengers, there are also a number of striking correspondences between Léon’s situation and the subjects of some of the paintings that he viewed in the Louvre. Thus, two of the exhibited works – an unidentified bacchanalia by Poussin and his Ruth and Boaz – reflect the choice that, initially at least, Léon seems to be facing: on the one hand, hedonistic gratification and the ‘cure de jouvence’ that Cécile seems to offer; on the other, marriage, family and the church. Of the other paintings mentioned in passing, several are linked by their association with the theme of the voyage.50 The reference to Claude’s seaports and to his representations of illustrious travellers from history and mythology combine with the much-discussed allusions to The Aeneid,51 the references to the places that line the route of his journey and the references to train-timetables, passports and guidebooks to highlight the theme of travel. As I have argued elsewhere, La Modification is part of a long literary and artistic tradition of imaginary journeys.52 As Léon sets out on this trip to Rome, he would seem to be embarking on a restorative quest, a journey to an oracular shrine where he will find answers to his questions and where he will undergo a physical and spiritual cure: ‘le voyage au […] site oraculaire; on y apporte sa question, on en attend une réponse, guérison du corps et de l’âme. Le lieu saint se détache au milieu de régions profanes; il est la lucarne sur le paradis.’53 However, as the distance between him and 50 Compare Butor’s own ‘animation’ of Claude’s L’Embarquement de la Reine de Saba. 51 Although there is no explicit mention of the connection in the text, the references to Claude are linked to the references to The Aeneid by the fact that, over the last decade of his life, Claude executed six paintings of episodes from Aeneas’s adventures, including the scene where Aeneas, led by the Cumaean sibyl begins his descent into the underworld. The painting is missing, but there is a pen and ink wash entitled Coast Scene with Aeneas and the Cumaean Sybil (1673) in the British Museum. See also the pen and ink wash in the Chatsworth collection, Landscape with the Sibyl Receiving Aeneas. For further discussion of Claude’s Virgilian paintings, see Langdon, Claude Lorrain, pp. 145–56. For fuller discussion of the references to the Aeneid, see Morcos, ‘La Descente aux Enfers dans La Modification de Butor et L’Eneide de Virgile’. 52 Duffy, Butor: La Modification, pp. 19–23. 53 Butor, ‘Le Voyage et l’écriture’, Répertoire IV, p. 19.

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the familiar routine of his life in Paris grows, it becomes clear that he has embarked on a rather different type of imaginary journey, which also has a highly respectable literary pedigree: the voyage of selfdiscovery that provokes a critical reassessment of one’s assumptions, values and habits. Léon’s unscheduled trip to Rome gives him ‘time out’ in which the routine of family life and the professional responsibilities of his job are temporarily suspended and in which he can reflect on his personal circumstances and the direction his life has taken. The attempt to escape the familiar domestic environment turns paradoxically into a re-examination of the familiar and an attempt to fathom the bonds that link him to it. At the end of his comfortless and disturbed night in the closed space of the train compartment, the physical journey that he has made is revealed as having been pointless, since Cécile will not even learn that he has made the trip; what is important is the intellectual and psychological journey that he has made during that same period. Finally, Léon’s fictional journey may also be read as a metaphor for the ‘voyage immobile’ undertaken by the reader every time he or she opens a novel. As the reader is drawn out of his or her immediate world and projected into the time and space of the fiction, he or she is afforded a new perspective of the world and of his/ her own place within it: Toute fiction s’inscrit […] en notre espace comme voyage, et l’on peut dire à cet égard que c’est là le thème fondamental de toute littérature romanesque: tout roman qui nous raconte un voyage est donc plus clair, plus explicite que celui qui n’est pas capable d’exprimer métaphoriquement cette distance entre le lieu de la lecture et celui où nous emmène le récit.54

The readers of La Modification may not move from their chairs, but they undergo an imaginary displacement and, freed from their own routine and daily concerns, they are invited to examine their own relationship to their culture and the bearing that it has on their identity, assumptions and desires: ‘Le seul véritable voyage […] ce ne serait pas d’aller vers de nouveaux paysages, mais d’avoir d’autres yeux, de voir l’univers avec les yeux d’un autre’.55 The visual, plastic and architectural references scattered throughout La Modification serve three main functions. On the personal level of 54 Butor, ‘L’Espace du roman’, Répertoire II, p. 44. 55 Butor, ‘Les Moments de Marcel Proust’, Répertoire, p. 169. Compare Butor’s commentary on the ‘récit de voyage’: ‘Ce lieu qui se déplace fournit le retrait demandé par rapport aux enchaînements quotidiens’ (‘Le Voyage et l’écriture’, Répertoire IV, p. 12).

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Léon’s affair with Cécile, the exploration of the art of Rome helps to consolidate the relationship by providing a focus to their illicit outings. The visit to Santa Cecilia to see Cavallini’s fresco establishes a romantic association between Cécile and one of Rome’s finest Gothic treasures. Bernini’s fountain provides a picturesque backdrop for their assignations in the Tre Scalini. Even the gloom that shrouds their day’s sightseeing in Paris is momentarily lifted by their viewing of Pannini’s paintings of Rome. However, the selectiveness of their artistic pilgrimages also highlights what is missing in that relationship. In refusing to visit the Sistine chapel, Cécile is not only overlooking one of the major developments in the history of art, but also refusing to accept a fundamental element of Léon’s psychological and cultural make-up. On the level of the psychological ‘modification’ that takes place, the artworks testify to the continuity of the Classical and Christian traditions and call into question the facile opposition that Léon had established between them. The most celebrated works of the Vatican are steeped in antique culture, while, on closer examination, apparently secular works such as Pannini’s views of Rome and Bernini’s Fountain of the Four Rivers are found to reflect the glory of the Roman Catholic Church. Finally, the idiosyncratic history of art offered by La Modification contributes to the generalisation of the central themes of the text. Léon’s situation may seem initially to be both psychologically particular and culturally specific. Léon is a lapsed French Catholic who works for an Italian typewriter firm and who is engaged in a banal adulterous intrigue. However, the discontent that caused him to seek comfort in adultery is a symptom of the malaise of the West in the second half of the twentieth century. His attempt to recapture his youth and to recentre his life around a younger woman is founded on a doomed nostalgia for a time when the world seemed to have a centre. In the past, Rome and then Paris had acted as the pivot of human civilisation. Rome’s Classical legacy haunted Europe right up until the rise of Fascism and the Second World War. During his honeymoon with Henriette, Léon had witnessed, but not heeded, the last throes of Roman Imperialism, a willed blindness that can be seen as an early symptom of his capacity for self-deceit: C’était une Italie policière en ce temps-là, intoxiquée du rêve de l’Empire, avec des uniformes dans toutes les gares, mais cet air que vous respiriez, cet air que vous aviez ignoré jusqu’alors, ce printemps véritable enfin que vous sentiez, dont ceux de la France ne vous avaient donné qu’une faible idée, il aurait fallu plus que cette effroyable sottise armée pour vous empêcher de le

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ressentir, et vous avez dit à Henriette qui vous avouait sa gêne, vous lui avez dit: ‘Ils n’existent pas’, ce qu’elle s’est efforcée de croire, en vain. (p. 231)

One of the last architectural ‘feats’ of that bankrupt imperialistic ideology even figures in Léon’s dream. The legacy of the Roman tradition turned out to be Mussolini’s brownshirts and the ‘Colisée tout neuf’ which appears in his dream (p. 244), the remnants of the EUR, the huge exhibition complex designed during the Fascist period by the reactionary classicist architect Marcello Piacentini. The spiritual alternative offered by the Catholic Church turned out to be equally deficient. At the height of its influence, it offered the world the art of Michelangelo; by the seventeenth century, its art, by its very flamboyance, testified to the crisis it was facing; by the eighteenth century, it was reduced to providing patronage for minor classicising artists such as Pannini. In the nineteenth century, Paris tried to take up where Rome had left off and attempted to rival the latter’s imperialistic success, but its days of cultural supremacy were also numbered, its status as the centre of Western culture ultimately undermined, first by the Second World War, then by the challenge posed to Europe by the American art trade, and, finally, by the post-imperialist recognition of the commercial and cultural achievements of non-Western traditions.56 Léon may still derive some satisfaction from the art and architecture of Paris and, in particular, from the paintings and buildings that resulted from past artistic interaction between the French and the Italian capitals. Nevertheless, by the time he makes his life-changing journey, it is no longer the cultural capital of Europe, and in the modern commercial city centre, the links between France and Italy manifest themselves not in the architectural heritage, but rather in the debased form of travel industry publicity (pp. 63, 73–74) and the pretentious decor of fashionable cafés such as the ‘bar romain’ (p. 75). However, as Léon comes to recognise, the discrediting of the imperialistic ideologies of the past – whether they be Classical, Christian, Napoleonic or Fascist – does not obliterate them from history nor from European consciousness. Europe has to face up to the decline of its influence and the individual has to come to terms with the culture that, if it has failed him, has also formed him and that, even in its failure, has given him an intimation of the possibilities of progress: Si puissant pendant tant de siècles sur tous les rêves européens, le souvenir de l’Empire est maintenant une figure insuffisante pour désigner l’avenir de 56 See Butor, Improvisations sur Michel Butor, pp. 155–58.

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ce monde, devenu pour chacun de nous beaucoup plus vaste et tout autrement distribué. (p. 279) Là nous sommes à la fin d’une histoire et on commence à voir à peu près quelle histoire se termine. Certes on ne sait pas très bien quelle histoire commence, mais on sent bien qu’il y a quelque chose qui doit commencer, que des possibilités sont là. Mais c’est très difficile d’aller plus loin. […] On peut espérer passer à un autre stade, à un autre étage, espérer qu’il y aura quelque chose qui sera fondamentalement gagné. Car toute cette civilisation de la ville et de l’empire, avec tous ses défauts, ses déchirements, le caractère inévitable de la guerre dans ce contexte, on peut dire qu’elle avait pourtant gagné par rapport à ce qu’il y avait auparavant.57

As Léon sets out on a course that is very different from the new life he had anticipated, the competing claims of his mistress and his wife and family become secondary issues. The concept of liberty, which he had so readily equated with hedonism, has taken on much wider connotations, and it has become clear that, if Léon is to achieve some degree of liberty from his culture and his past, he must first attempt to understand them. In his particular case and in that of most of Butor’s readers, that culture and past are synonymous with the civilisation and history of Western Europe. The prospect faced by Léon and, by implication, his reader is daunting, but the task is aided by the literature, mythology and artworks that have been bequeathed to him and to us by previous generations: Au point de vue historique chaque monument développe peu à peu un spectre, comme on parle de celui d’un corps simple, un spectre de résonances de siècle en siècle plus ou moins complémentaires de celui d’autres monuments. En étudiant leur ensemble, on aboutit à une maquette de l’histoire générale, certes lacunaire et donc trompeuse, mais déterminante.58

Our own specific cultural points of reference may differ from Léon’s but they have, it is suggested, informed our perspective in the same way and, if we are to be able to project ourselves into the future, we too must address our own ‘spectres’.

57 Butor in Santschi, Une schizophrénie active, pp. 155–56. 58 Improvisations sur Michel Butor, p. 92. For a fuller analysis of the role of myth in La Modification, see Struebig, La Structure mythique de ‘La Modification’ de Michel Butor.

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4

Illustration, Edification and Delusion in Degrés

Degrés is in many respects Butor’s bleakest work. As Mary Lydon has pointed out,1 it offers, on one level at least, a severe indictment of the French educational system and, more generally, of the consequences of European imperialism on the rest of the world. The detailed account of the daily routine of a Paris lycée during the 1950s and of the lives of its teachers and pupils paints an uncompromisingly grim picture of a rigidly centralised system that proposes a curriculum at once unrealistically ambitious and bewilderingly fragmented, is obsessed with formal examination success, rewards rote-learning rather than understanding, and gradually grinds down the morale of all involved. The pivotal lesson on which Pierre Vernier’s narrative turns – an account of the discovery and conquest of America – provides Butor with the opportunity to relay through his protagonist some of his own views on Europe’s shameful imperialist past. Butor’s preoccupation with the history of European imperialism was, of course, already seen in La Modification. However, whereas in the earlier novel, he was primarily concerned with the fading of Europe’s ‘glory’ and the diminution of its cultural influence in the world, in Degrés, his agenda is dominated by moral issues – the brutality of conquest, the greed engendered by the prospect of the mineral riches of the newly discovered territories, the enslavement and exploitation of the indigenous populations, the plundering of the latters’ artistic heritage and the dismantling of their cultures and belief systems. Whereas L’Emploi du temps and La Modification acknowledged the illustriousness of the old continent’s cultural and artistic history, in Degrés Europe cuts a very poor figure as a discoverer-turneddespoiler whose achievements are overshadowed by the atrocities that it has committed and by the damage it has inflicted on other civilisations. 1 Lydon, Perpetuum Mobile, pp. 126–135.

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However, if Butor’s personal views are more clearly articulated here than in his earlier novels, Degrés is much more than a damning evaluation of his country’s educational system and his continent’s impact on the nations that it subjugated. No less than in his other fiction, Butor is concerned with much more general, if by now familiar, themes, such as our ability to know and understand the planet on which we find ourselves, our ability to represent both ourselves and our world, and our ability to project ourselves imaginatively into other unknown worlds. As in L’Emploi du temps and La Modification, the central character of Degrés is an unremarkable individual – a single, middleaged secondary schoolteacher – who is driven by his obsession with a highly unorthodox writing project that, although ostensibly a modest enough enterprise, is from the outset doomed to fail, largely because he has drastically underestimated the amount of material that he will have to accommodate within his text. As his obsession grows and his material becomes increasingly unmanageable, his project takes over his life, causing him to neglect his professional duties and his budding relationship with a female colleague, imposing unbearable pressures on his nephew whom he has enlisted as an informer/ collaborator and to whom his text is addressed, and finally damaging his own health and bringing about his premature death. In many respects Degrés can be read as a retrospective caveat to L’Emploi du temps. Pierre Vernier’s project is to some extent the logical extension of Revel’s diary. Like the diary, Vernier’s book is conceived as a means of survival; however, in Vernier’s case, self-preservation turns into self-destruction largely because, unlike Revel, he does not have an externally imposed time-limit and because, debilitated and disoriented by the demands of his task, he has neither the willpower nor the sense to recognise that he should cut his losses while he still can. In short, he commits the fatal, if heroic, mistake of refusing to accept that failure is unavoidable and that it ‘comes with the patch’. In addition to its reprise and development of a number of familiar Butorian themes, Degrés also testifies to the formal continuity of Butor’s oeuvre and, in particular, to his abiding concern with technical experimentation. If the openly didactic dimension of Degrés and, in particular, its explicit condemnation of Europe’s imperial past marks a clear break with one of the fundamental principles of the nouveau roman, the audaciousness of the novel’s form testifies to the common ground that made him, if only temporarily and somewhat reluctantly, align himself with the group that assembled around Jérôme Lindon

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and Jean Ricardou in the 1960s and 1970s. Indeed, it could be argued that in Degrés Butor is trying to push both the novel form and the reader’s tolerance to its limits.2 The proliferation and interweaving of narrative strands, the constant shifts in focus and the superposition of temporal levels render orientation within the text’s temporal and spatial framework extremely difficult even on a second or third reading. The density and range of intertextual reference presuppose not only that the reader will have an extensive cultural baggage, but that he or she will have the patience and ingenuity to decode the more elliptical allusions, and a highly developed textual memory capable of retaining and correlating the extracts from the various intertextual sources.3 However, it is perhaps the novel’s treatment of narrative voice and perspective that poses the greatest interpretative challenge. Degrés is a novel with two narrators and one pseudo-narrator. In the first section of the novel, the protagonist, Pierre Vernier, offers his own account of the inception and pursuit of his project; in the third section, Henri Jouret offers his version of the same period, but extends the coverage of events to include Vernier’s illness and abandonment of his project. In the second section, however, things are rather more complicated. Here, Vernier’s nephew Pierre Eller is the nominal narrator offering his perspective on his uncle’s activities; however, in this section, Vernier is, in fact, performing a kind of literary ventriloquism, recounting the period as if from Eller’s perspective and speaking in the latter’s voice. This complex polyphonic approach to narration demands a reading 2 Waite, ‘Butor’s Degrés: Making the Reader Work’. 3 Note the following references: Jean Bodin (p. 181), Boileau (pp. 118, 243, 303), Coleridge (pp. 88, 154, 187, 267, 283, 363), Cicero (pp. 215, 231, 356, 372), Dante (pp. 41, 51, 111, 143, 145, 179, 184, 327), Homer (pp. 25, 27, 148, 166, 174, 185, 200, 204, 206, 220, 226, 268, 273, 328, 330, 331, 346, 355, 356, 362, 387), Keats (pp. 12, 129, 187, 267), Kipling (pp. 17, 272, 273), Livy (pp. 146, 174, 177, 204, 220, 322, 332, 340), Molière (p. 22), Montaigne (pp. 261, 278, 291, 385), Montesquieu (pp. 241, 251, 276, 301), Marco Polo (pp. 67, 133, 140, 158, 175, 291, 295, 304, 311, 313, 318, 320, 385), Rabelais (pp. 10, 18, 33, 37, 49–50, 109–111, 112, 152, 215, 227, 235, 240, 263, 264–65, 266), Racine (pp. 19, 22, 38, 116, 176, 177, 178, 184, 203, 235, 250, 251, 270, 276, 302, 358, 387), Saint-Simon (pp. 9, 254, 277, 389), Shakespeare (pp. 29, 30, 47, 65, 72, 129, 132, 152, 182, 209, 227, 250, 268, 342–43, 344, 345, 346, 360), Sophocles (pp. 206, 227), Verne (p. 157), Virgil (pp. 146, 148–49, 268, 288, 322, 332, 356, 378), Voltaire (pp. 302, 383). For a very useful analysis of the parallels between Butor’s fictional world and the intertextual material, see WaeltiWalters, Michel Butor: A Study of his View of the World and a Panorama of his Work, 1954–1974, pp. 96–108 and ‘Butor’s Use of Literary Texts in Degrés’. See also Bougy’s very full catalogue of the intertexts that appear in Degrés (‘De Verrès à Vernier’) and Van Rossum-Guyon’s wide-ranging contribution to the Butor Colloque de Cerisy (‘Aventures de la citation chez Michel Butor’).

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that is alert not only to the discrepancies between the three versions, but also to the fact that Eller’s account, as a fabrication on Vernier’s part, is in fact likely to reveal much more about the uncle than about the nephew.4 Consequently, the variations in detail and emphasis in the three sections are much more than indicators of perspectival divergence and relativity; given the potential that the second section offers for indirect confession, they also allow the reader to gauge the extent of Vernier’s own awareness of the consequences of his behaviour and the effect that his obsession is having on those closest to him. So far in this expository overview of the principal themes and dominant formal features of the novel, I have more or less followed the standard pattern of interpretation. Indeed, most of the points summarised in the foregoing paragraphs have already been examined in rather more detail by other critics. The object of this chapter is not to challenge Lydon’s extremely well-argued and perceptive analysis. Rather the intention here is to address an issue that I believe has been, if not overlooked, at least underplayed in Butor criticism: the thematic and formal roles of the references to various types of visual representation that figure in the text. The vast majority of these references take the form of summary mentions or short descriptions of the illustrations in the school manuals used by the teachers and pupils in Vernier’s school. In addition to these textbook references, the novel also incorporates a more limited range of references to visual material: other types of pedagogic visual aids (maps, globes, blackboard illustrations), the drawings produced by the boys during their art-classes and the doodlings in the margins of their exercise books and manuals, the garishly illustrated covers of their science fiction magazines, the images on the stamps that they collect and exchange and the various films they see at the cinema. Despite the range and number of these references, it is perhaps not wholly surprising that their role has been neglected in much of the criticism. First, they are generally very brief and, unlike the intertextual extracts, are not signalled typographically; second, by virtue of their predictability – they are the standard visual reference points of the average secondary schoolchild – their inclusion enhances rather than impedes the establishment of a verisimilitudinous fictional world; third, the immensely rich potential that the 4 See also Roudiez, ‘Problems of Point of View in the Early Fiction of Michel Butor’; Sullivan, ‘Qui parle dans Degrés?’; Jongeneel, ‘Trois fenêtres sur l’Amérique: la triple focalisation dans Degrés de Michel Butor’; Mrozowicki, ‘Degrés ou les dégradations de la structure mensongère’.

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intertextual material offers for critical exegesis5 has almost certainly diverted attention from the rather less conspicuous, though I would argue no less important, body of visual references. Of the few critical studies to examine the role of the visual references, Else Jongeneel’s chapter on the novel offers the most stimulating analysis. Her brief survey of the ‘dialogue’ between the intertextual extracts and the references to various types of graphic and photographic material identifies a number of important thematic and formal patterns within the text: notably, the thematic coordination of intertext and image, the status of certain images as narrative generators stimulating and feeding the imaginations of the schoolboys, the role of the image as mise en abyme.6 While Jongeneel’s observations are incisive, her commentary is summative rather than demonstrative and the body of examples that she chooses, although indicative of more generalised patterns, is highly selective. It is my intention here to take up where Jongeneel has left off and to propose a rather more sustained and searching analysis of the interpretative issues posed by the visual references. This analysis will be conducted in three stages. The first section examines the role played by the various descriptions of textbook illustrations in Butor’s trenchant critique of the French educational system. The second section focuses on the text’s forthright and deeply dispiriting appraisal of the consequences of European imperialism and analyses the contribution made by the visual references to Butor’s examination of the highly problematic relationship between exploration and exploitation. The chapter concludes with an analysis of the metafictional functions of the graphic and photographic material and shows that, despite their heterogeneity and the apparent randomness of their distribution in the text, the visual references are, in fact, organised into series or ‘clusters’, each of which serves to foreground the dominant structural features of the novel or to draw attention to more general aesthetic principles or problems. Education As Lydon has pointed out, the experience of Pierre Vernier, teacher of history and geography, draws on Butor’s own teaching experience to 5 See Waite’s excellent article ‘Butor’s Degrés: Making the Reader Work’. See also Waelti-Walters, ‘Butor’s Use of Literary Texts in Degrés’ and Van Rossum-Guyon, ‘Aventures de la citation chez Butor’. 6 Jongeneel, Michel Butor et le pacte romanesque, pp. 141–43.

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highlight the deficiencies of the secondary school system and of the national curriculum. The regime to which both teachers and pupils are subjected is rigid and stifling. They are the slaves of a programme that is both over-demanding and unstimulating, and where the emphasis on the acquisition of factual knowledge and ‘coverage’ encourages rote-learning and inhibits personal initiative. The pupils find it impossible to keep up with their homework, fall quickly behind if they are absent or even if they lose concentration in class, and are forced to resort to various illegitimate strategies such as collusion, plagiarism and recourse to published translations in order to meet their deadlines.7 Much of the instruction they receive induces boredom and distraction, though the threat of interrogation, detention and, ultimately, examinations maintains a level of fear that ensures piecemeal preparation and short-term recall, but militates against understanding, long-term assimilation and the ability to articulate informed opinions based on the analysis of evidence.8 The teachers find themselves in a very similar situation, struggling to keep up with the demands of the syllabus, spending much of their free time on preparation and marking, juggling the competing needs of different groups, and cramming material that they have themselves not mastered.9 Moreover, the power they have over their pupils makes them the object of distrust, while the maintenance of authority and the lack of professional satisfaction and intellectual stimulation engender behavioural patterns – sarcasm, irritation, sternness – that alienate them from their pupils and conflict with their pedagogical function.10 If Butor’s clinical dissection of the secondary school regime is effected in large part through Vernier’s account of classroom behaviour and the description of the Herculean feats demanded of both pupil and teacher, it is nevertheless the case that the references to and descriptions of the images that illustrate the various manuals used at different levels of the school programme also play an important complementary part in his critique, offering as they do a convenient résumé of some of the system’s most serious faults. The curriculum’s failure to stimulate intellectually is reflected in the manner in which some of the illustrations are integrated into the text. In particular, the 7 8 9 10

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See pages 80, 111, 149, 175, 200, 204, 213, 230, 231. See pages 14, 22, 35, 64, 97. See pages 58, 100–01, 227. See pages 16–17, 23, 109, 129, 208.

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relationship between commentary and image shows a complete lack of pedagogical ingenuity, the writer or compiler confining him or herself to a perfunctory commentary that leaves the reader frustrated and fails to add anything to his or her knowledge or understanding of the topic concerned. If, on page 36, a tired and bored Alain Mouron wonders why his teacher seems to be stating the obvious, he can hope for no better stimulation from his textbook, which offers a purely descriptive and banal commentary on the relevant illustration in the chapter – ‘“l’athlète fournit un effort musculaire”, / ces deux derniers mots soulignés’ – the underlining of the last two words indicating the stress laid on memorisation rather than understanding. Vernier’s own dissatisfaction with the relationship between text and image is registered on page 267. Here, he draws attention to the inadequacy of the information supplied in the captions accompanying the pointedly juxtaposed photographs of New Caledonia and Arcachon. This juxtaposition was intended to illustrate the extreme climatic variations that are possible even when the latitude of the countries concerned is the same. However, as Vernier points out, the absence of an explicit indication of the season in which these photographs were taken renders their juxtaposition meaningless. On other occasions, the illustration is sufficient in itself to engage the interest of the pupil, but the restrictions imposed by teacher-led instruction combine with the poor print quality of the reproductions to thwart the pursuit of personal lines of enquiry. Thus, Michel Daval is unable to scrutinise the reproduction of Rochegrosse’s Death of Caesar during class for fear of revealing his inattention to his teacher’s commentary and, when he does have the opportunity to examine it in his free time, he struggles to decipher the action depicted (pp. 47–48). That the system impedes rather than encourages personal research and initiative is corroborated by the passage devoted to Alain Mouron’s scrutiny of and reflections on the illustrations that figure in his history manual: Louis XIII et Richelieu, illustrations: les portraits du prince et de son ministre, la digue de la Rochelle d’après une gravure de Callot (tous ces bateaux minuscules, tous ces petits soldats comme des fourmis sur les rives), une page de la Gazette de Théophraste Renaudot: “le Roy de Perse avec quinze mille chevaux…” cela pourrait aller…, a feuilleté le chapitre suivant, qui correspondait en gros à la leçon que tu allais nous faire ce jour-là: la paix de Westphalie (qu’est-ce que c’était que Westphalie?), sur une

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page: les portraits de Condé et Turenne, ratification du traité de Munster par G. Terborch, sur une autre page: la fête de saint Nicolas par Jan Steen, intérieur hollandais par Pieter de Hoogh, la maison des Indes Occidentales à Amsterdam. Cela devait être intéressant, mais la légende disait seulement: “décrire cette gravure” Tiens, pourquoi? C’était donc une devinette? On verrait bien comment M. Vernier la décrirait, s’il la décrivait. Pour l’instant, il était plus prudent d’en revenir à Richelieu. (p. 252)

Mouron, although the most assiduous pupil in the class, has not had time to complete his homework and quickly tries to refresh his memory before the lesson. He has sufficient intelligence and basic knowledge to be able not only to scan the relevant pages and acquire enough information to survive, but also to detect the flaws in the pedagogical material with which he is working. Mouron has an enquiring mind and is genuinely intrigued by the reproductions of paintings and engravings that illustrate the chapters that have been set. His disappointment at the banality and vagueness of the question that forms the légende exposes the failure of the curriculum to stretch the able pupil, while the fact that he resorts to ‘safe’ revision tactics and more familiar territory demonstrates the way didactic material actually discourages initiative and exploration. This last passage, evoking Mouron’s attempt to find a quick short cut to replace the homework that he should have done, has a pendant on page 313 in the description of Vernier’s own efforts to prepare his lessons. By this stage in the narrative, the daily grind of preparation, teaching and marking, combined with the ever-increasing demands of his own project, has taken its toll and Vernier, like his pupils, finds that he has to resort to the same survival strategies as them, skimming the textbooks the night before and scanning the illustrations for points of reference. Moreover, as the academic year progresses and the material to be assimilated increases, the panic experienced by all involved in the process is reflected in the rhythms of the narrative and, in particular, in the various lists that punctuate the text: lists of topics to be covered, of rules to be memorised, of books to be read and of figures and illustrations to be examined: la société européenne se transforme le climat, les températures, la révolution de 92: chute de la monarchie, convention girondine, gouvernement révolutionnaire, victoires révolutionnaires. (p. 329) la fin du Moyen Age, la Renaissance et la Réforme, la découverte et la

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conquête de l’Amérique, l’Europe vers 1600… (p. 336) 11

These lists highlight several of the faults of the curriculum: the largely counter-productive pressure that it puts on the pupils, the inevitable superficiality of both the teaching and learning and the absence of an overview that would allow the children to see the connections among their subjects.12 The compartmentalisation of subjects means that knowledge is passed on and acquired in a piecemeal fashion and this lack of continuity in the teacher’s preparation and the children’s homework is reflected in the heterogeneity of the various series of illustrations: Rapidement la Renaissance (Vinci: projet d’un char de combat…), la circulation atmosphérique (…différents stades de l’évolution d’un cyclone…), l’ascension de Bonaparte (… l’empereur Napoléon 1er, fragment d’un tableau de Girodet-Trioson). (p. 332)13

Thus, the history of art and thought in the nineteenth century is reduced to a list of names of philosophers and painters (p. 170); the golden age of Dutch painting is illustrated by a motley set of reproductions of religious art, landscapes and genre painting: la peinture au xviie siècle: … deux descentes de croix, une leçon d’anatomie, Jésus guérissant les malades (c’est la célèbre pièce aux cent florins), le moulin de Wyck, la sorcière, le fumeur, la dentellière… (p. 362)

while the Spanish tradition figures in the curriculum simply as a series of reproductions of well-known works by famous painters: Greco: l’Enterrement du comte d’Orgaz; Vélasquez: la Reddition de Bréda, les Ménines; Zurbaran: Saint Bonaventure présidant un chapitre de Frères mineurs. (p. 304) 11 See also pages 261, 326, 327, 331, 335, 372. Compare ‘L’enseignement tel que nous l’avons, produit une entropie énorme de la connaissance. La transmission se passe mal. Il y a des tas de choses que nous devrions savoir, dont nous considérons qu’il serait indispensable de les savoir pour qu’on puisse vivre convenablement, et que nous ne réussissons pas à transmettre. Nous devrions savoir des tas de choses, et en réalité nous ne les savons pas. Lorsque nous voyons le programme auquel les enfants sont soumis nous sommes pris de vertige à cause de l’effort que nous leur demandons, et à cause de notre ignorance, c’est-à-dire de la vanité de cet effort. Le mode de narration va aider à l’apparition de ce vertige.’ (Butor, Improvisations sur Michel Butor, p. 123). 12 Compare the lists of capitals that the children have to compile and learn (p. 97). 13 See also pages 359–60.

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Vernier may resolve to go to the Louvre, the Jeu de Paume and the Opera in order to equip himself better for his lesson on the nineteenth century (p. 170), but by and large exposure to the history of culture is confined to rote-learning of names, dates and facts rather than analysis and the development of understanding: “Alors, Hutter, que pouvez-vous nous dire sur cette peinture italienne? Vous devez bien savoir quelques noms.” […] “Léonard de Vinci. – Bien, parlez-moi de Léonard de Vinci… Vous ne savez rien? Vous ne savez pas où il est né, où il est mort, comment il a vécu, le nom de quelques-uns de ses tableaux, s’il n’a pas fait autre chose que des tableaux? Non? Parlezmoi d’autres artistes, alors. (p. 35)

However, if the references to textbook illustrations tend, on the whole, to corroborate the generally negative evaluation of the French secondary school curriculum, in a significant number of cases they also serve as signals of (albeit unrealised) potential. Although the pupils find their lessons dreary and difficult, they do frequently find relief from their boredom in the perusal of the illustrations. The photographs that figure in their books, like the stamps that constitute such a valuable currency within their adolescent sub-culture and the science fiction that they so avidly read, not only offer them momentary escape from the tedium of a particular lesson, but give them imaginary access to other places and other times. As Butor points out in Improvisations sur Michel Butor, the modern illustrated book has revolutionised our conception of the world and has offered the reader possibilities for the acquisition of knowledge about far-flung places and cultures that were not available to previous generations: Nous sommes capables, grâce au livre illustré, de connaître toutes sortes de choses qui nous étaient pratiquement cachées auparavant. Nous avons maintenant la possibilité de voir des pays lointains grâce à des photographies en couleurs de bonne qualité. Donc nous nous constituons une représentation de la réalité qui est d’une autre nature que celle de nos ancêtres.14

Thus, it is thanks to the photographs of the geography manual that Vernier’s pupils are able to familiarise themselves with the landscape, customs, history and culture of countries on the other side of the world. Unlike the great explorers whose feats Vernier describes to them, these sedentary travellers are given access to remote parts of the globe without 14 Improvisations sur Michel Butor, p. 210.

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risking life and limb: ‘vue aérienne de la forêt-galerie (Oubangui), savane à acacias aux environs de Nairobi (Kenya), végétation steppique dans le sud du Kalahari, aspects du désert Dankali sur la côte de la mer Rouge, vallée de l’oued Ziz (sud-Maroc)’ (p. 301). The attraction of these ‘voyages immobiles’ is attested at numerous points in the text: in Eller’s prolonged scrutiny of the photograph of the Grand Canyon (pp. 10, 168) and his more cursory survey of photographs of the New Hebrides (p. 185), in Francis Hutter’s imaginary animation of the image of the colonial plantation (p. 152), in Jean-Pierre Cormier’s absorption in the image of the ‘foire Saint-Germain’ (p. 183), in Philippe Guillaume’s nostalgic contemplation of photographs of Brittany (p. 262) and, in particular, in Alain Mouron’s careful and diligent examination of the various illustrations that he encounters in his textbooks (pp. 274, 296). Finally, it should be noted that, if Vernier’s pupils are often reluctant, distracted and indolent learners, the ‘rentrée’ is marked by the ceremonial purchase and covering of textbooks that engage their interest, if only briefly. Even Michel Daval, whose assiduity leaves much to be desired, is momentarily intrigued by the frontispiece illustrations of his various new manuals (p. 290). Pierre Eller is curious enough about later stages of the programme to rifle through his older brother’s drawers to inspect the latter’s new books and, a few days later, as he waits for Denis to hand over the dictionary he needs, he passes the time flicking through his own English manual, stopping briefly at each set of illustrations to scan reproductions of scenes from Shakespeare and Marlowe (pp. 342–43). However, it is perhaps Alain Mouron’s inspection of his new books that offers the most significant example of the boys’ sensitivity to the appeal of the illustrated book. As he covers his books in preparation for the new school year, his eye is caught by a series of images illustrating the history of printing and writing: ‘une imprimerie au XVIe siècle, Marot présente son epître au roi, François Ier entouré de sa cour reçoit un écrivain, page d’un psautier de Lyon reprodusiant un psaume mis en vers par Marot’ (p. 296). That it is Alain Mouron who is allowed to make this particular discovery is significant: of all the boys who figure in Vernier’s account, he is the one who shows the greatest appreciation of books and the keenest desire to improve his knowledge and understanding of the subjects he is studying. Of Eller’s classmates, he is the most assiduous and, in contrast with both Michel Daval and Pierre Eller, regularly achieves good results (pp. 263, 275,

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336). As early as page 18, Vernier acknowledges his ability and his motivation: ‘il est intelligent et, en réalité, le texte de Rabelais l’intéressait beaucoup’. Mouron is also most susceptible to the appeal of the illustrations: his daydreams are prompted by images in his book (pp. 335, 336); his dreams draw on his memory of a photograph of the Amazon jungle (pp. 274, 346); a drawing illustrating the persecution of the Huguenots provokes reflections about his Protestant neighbour Francis Hutter. Moreover, in contrast with most of Vernier’s other pupils who find it difficult to concentrate on their lessons and who use the illustrations as a diversion, he listens and observes simultaneously, that is, his approach to his studies shows a precocious interest in the dynamics of the relationship between word and image: ‘Alain Mouron, en t’écoutant, regardait sur notre manuel une photographie de la forêt amazonienne, avec des lianes descendant jusqu’à un fleuve boueux, couvert de feuilles et de bulles’ (p. 274). Even as he waits his turn at the barber’s, his choice of reading material is serious and complements his classwork, while his absorption in the photographs illustrating the ‘reportage sur les USA’ mirrors Vernier’s own fascination with America: ‘Alain Mouron s’est replongé dans ses images, un reportage sur les U.S.A, croisement de routes aux portes de New York, le pont de Brooklyn, des cireurs noirs, les balcons de fer de La NouvelleOrléans, les costumes multicolores sur le campus d’une université, un tramway de San Francisco’ (p. 78). In many respects, Mouron is much more like Vernier than the latter’s nephew. Moreover, he would almost certainly have made a much better aide than Eller – he accepts without complaint his own uncle’s exploitation of him15 – and would have been more likely to have understood what his teacher was trying to achieve. That Vernier did, at least on a subconscious level, have some inkling of certain affinities between himself and Mouron is hinted at in a comment made by Jouret, which figures on the antepenultimate page of the book and discreetly draws attention to the relative prominence of Mouron in Vernier’s narrative: ‘Après avoir lu ton devoir sur les idées de Rabelais sur l’éducation, j’ai pris celui d’Alain Mouron, puis celui de Michel Daval, de Denis Régnier […] selon l’ordre de l’intérêt que ton oncle Pierre vous portait’ (p. 388). Further evidence that Mouron would have made a more appropriate collaborator than Eller is found in an earlier reference to a rather stilted and inconclusive scene invol15 During the vacation that Alain Mouron spends with René Bailly and his wife, his aunt and uncle treat him as though he were a live-in servant. See pages 159–61.

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ving the schoolboy and Henri Jouret (p. 272). This passage, which also occupies a strategically significant position – this time towards the end of the second section – records Henri Jouret’s thoughts, or rather, since the second section is recounted from Eller’s point of view, but is imagined by Vernier, the thoughts that Vernier attributes to Jouret after a chance meeting with Mouron in the street. Although, according to Eller’s/ Vernier’s account of the meeting, Jouret cannot recall his name – a symptom of the pressures and impersonality of the educational system – he has noticed the boy’s ability and, in particular, his talent for composition, a talent that would have certainly given him the edge over Eller, whose regular reports to Vernier were often less than satisfactory: ‘Comment s’appelle-t-il, se demandait mon oncle; c’est un bon élève, il est au premier rang; mais, n’est-ce pas lui qui m’a fait cette composition française où il est question de Saint-Cornély et de son hôtel […]’ (p. 272). Even more significant, perhaps, than this acknowledgment of Mouron’s ability is the fact that this encounter is followed by a conversation between Jouret and his wife in which Vernier attributes to the teacher a desire to take this motherless boy under his wing, that is, Jouret momentarily contemplates the initiation of a more familiar, paternalisic relationship with his pupil. The parallel between Jouret’s kindly impulse to invite his young neighbour to his home and Vernier’s extra-curricular contact with Eller is obvious and suggests, I would argue, that in this scene, Vernier is working out an imaginary variant on the story he is writing, in which Mouron rather than Eller would figure as the ‘privileged’ collaborator. Here, perhaps, lies one of the greatest ironies of the text: it is only after he has caused an irreparable rift within his own family and has brought his nephew to the brink of a nervous breakdown that Vernier seems to realise – even if he does not explicitly acknowledge it – that the self-effacing Mouron was, by virtue of his diligence, determination and enquiring mind, a true kindred spirit. Indeed, I would go so far as to argue that the real tragedy of Vernier’s story is not that he ruins his health, foregoes the opportunity to establish a long-term relationship with a woman and causes a breach within his family, but that he does all this and also addresses his narrative to the wrong reader.

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If, as we have seen, Degrés can be read as a critique of the French educational system as it was during the 1950s, the novel is much more than a period-specific social commentary and its preoccupations extend far beyond the local problems of secondary education in France and, indeed, the more general issues relating to pedagogical method. The central thematic issue of Degrés is the problematic relationship between, on the one hand, exploration and the acquisition of knowledge and, on the other, exploitation. This theme is at the heart of the lesson on the discovery of the Americas that Vernier delivers to Eller’s class on 12 October 1954, which he chooses as the subject of his project. Exploration is, in Butor, both a fundamental human impulse and one of our most laudable activities. Human civilisation is founded on the quest for knowledge and the impulse to explore the world is everywhere apparent both in the grand voyages of discovery which humanity has undertaken throughout its history and in the routine expeditions of everyday life. If Vernier’s lesson to Eller’s class focuses on the travels of Marco Polo, Columbus, Viaz, Vasco da Gama and Magellan, his teaching and his text are peppered with references to other discoveries – Champollion’s breaking of the hieroglyphic code (p. 12), Keat’s sonnet on his discovery of Chapman’s translation of Homer (p. 12), the rediscovery by Renaissance man of the texts and art of the ancient Greeks and Romans (p. 34) – and to the real and imaginary journeys of history and literature (Homer’s Odyssey, Virgil’s Aeneid, Dante’s Inferno, Coleridge’s ‘Rime of the Ancient Mariner’, Livy’s account of Hannibal’s crossing of the Alps). In addition to these momentous journeys, the text also records numerous minor variations on the theme. All around him, as he writes, Vernier’s colleagues and pupils are conducting their own miniexpeditions. Alain Mouron, who has recently come to live in Paris, spends much of his free time exploring the streets around his new home and the banks of the Seine (p. 167). Bailly finds diversions from his failing marriage and his family responsibilities by exploring the bistros in the village where he and his family are taking their annual vacation (p. 188). The typical family outing in Paris takes the form of a visit to one or other of the various museums recording man’s discoveries or exhibiting the trophies that the explorers of earlier centuries brought back from their travels, while the films that the children see and the comics they read most frequently centre on journeys, quests

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and exploration (The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Chaplin’s Goldrush, Tintin in America, North by North-West, the science fiction stories of Verne16 and of the magazines Fiction and Galaxie). Finally, the boy scout trail in which Eller participates and the various games played by the children during their summer holidays testify to the presence of the urge to explore, which is present from an early age. Vernier’s sensitivity to the romance of exploration and his admiration for the achievements of the great explorers of the past is evident in many of the intertextual extracts with which he peppers his book. However, Vernier’s text also has a very clear moral. His admiration for the initiative, courage and achievements of the explorers who transformed man’s conception and understanding of his world is coupled with a severe condemnation of the consequences of their discoveries: conquest and subjugation, colonialism, exploitation, slavery and the destruction of the indigenous cultures of the territories that they discovered. While the extracts from Marco Polo and Voltaire that figure on pages 158, 383 and 388 celebrate the marvels of the Far East, many of the other intertexts highlight the irreparable damage done to other civilisations and peoples by Western man. In his exposition of the catalogue of outrages and atrocities committed by Europe against the inhabitants of the countries that it discovered only to conquer, enslave and exploit, Vernier enlists the support of a prestigious band of literary forebears, including Cicero, Montaigne, Saint-Simon, Jean Bodin and Théophraste Renaudot, each of whom had denounced man’s readiness to colonise and subjugate.17 If history has a lesson to offer, according to Vernier, it is that there is only a short step from exploration to exploitation and that the planet as a whole and the peoples of 16 Dard offers a convincing explanation for the references to Verne in Degrés: ‘The similarity between Verne’s name and Vernier’s can hardly be a coincidence, and the reasons are not hard to find. Verne, like Vernier, regarded himself primarily as a teacher, but he saw his brief as an exceptionally wide one. According to his publisher, Hetzel, his aim was to “résumer toutes les connaissances géographiques, géologiques, physiques, astronomiques, amassées par la science moderne et de refaire, sous la forme attrayante qui lui (était) propre, l’histoire de l’Univers” […]. Vernier’s scope is no less ambitious; indeed, one could say that he is a modern equivalent of Verne but on the Arts side’ (‘Science Fiction in the Novels of Michel Butor’, p. 53). 17 See Jongeneel, Michel Butor et le pacte romanesque, pp. 128–34, for a fuller analysis of the role of the intertextual extracts in Butor’s condemnation of colonialism. See also Waite’s analysis of the ways in which Butor uses the intertextual material to develop the theme of the relationship between exploration and exploitation (‘Butor’s Degrés: Making the Reader Work’). Bloch offers a very useful analysis of the theme of imperialism in Degrés and Mobile and Lévi-Strauss’s Tristes Tropiques (‘Michel Butor and the Myth of Racial Supremacy’).

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the world have paid an unacceptably high price for the admirable exploits of its adventurers and explorers. This point is perhaps most economically and eloquently expressed in the juxtaposed images that illustrate chapter three of the quatrième’s history manual: “art aztèque: le dieu Quetzalcoatl (musée d’ethnographie, Paris), il a la forme d’un serpent emplumé à tête humaine, en lave basaltique, art inca: vase anthropoïde (musée d’ethnographie, Göteborg), en poterie, forme d’un homme accroupi, la figure est d’un réalisme saisissant, art maya: le temple des guerriers à Chichen-Itza (Yucatan, Mexique), les mines du Potosi, le changeur et sa femme, par Quentin Matsys, 1466–1530 (musée du Louvre, Paris), l’homme pèse une pièce d’or, sa femme regarde, interrompant sa lecture”. (p. 298)

Taken as a group, these images constitute a telling, if selective summary of the history of European imperialism. The opening paragraph draws attention to what was lost through Western man’s expansion of his territory: the immeasurably rich and highly sophisticated culture of the Aztecs, which has been reduced to the status of a few museum exhibits distributed across the globe, the complex meanings of their religious iconography lost with the violent dismantling of their culture and the removal of their artefacts from the context in which they were found. The second paragraph identifies in four words one of the prime causes of this destruction: the mineral wealth of the Americas, the prospect of which whetted the acquisitional instinct of European man. Finally, the image described in the third paragraph – Quentin Massys’s Money-Lender and his Wife – shows one of the principal endproducts of the extracted minerals and highlights its importance to the Western economy. However, the reference to Massys is not simply illustrative in function. The Money-Lender and his Wife is not a straightforward genre painting; it is a work that is saturated with symbolism and that offers a clear moral message: In Massys’s picture the banker’s wife is turning the page of a devotional book to lay it open at an illumination representing the Virgin and Child; but she does so absentmindedly, distracted as she is by the glittering gold pieces being counted and weighed by her husband. […] The moral of the picture might be summed up in the biblical text, ‘Where your heart is, there will your treasure be also’.18 18 Smart, The Renaissance and Mannerism Outside Italy, p. 134.

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Quentin Metsys or Massys, The Money-Lender and His Wife, 1514

Of course, the reader who is familiar with L’Emploi du temps and La Modification will be alert to the dangers of attributing Butor’s fascination with Christian art and iconography to a spiritual nostalgia or religious proselytism. Indeed, I would argue that, for Butor, the appeal of The Money-Lender and his Wife lies less in its promotion of Christian values than in its inclusion of a reader and in the opposition set up within the painting between two types of books: the wife’s devotional book and the various professional books and ledgers of the banker. As Alastair Smart points out, ‘The bookshelves sparsely lined with ledgers, account-books and perhaps one of the new manuals on banking and trade bring to mind Renaissance representations of St Jerome in his study, where the books on the shelves have a very different significance: Massys may well have intended an implicit contrast, of an ironic

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nature, between earthly and heavenly treasure’.19 In this household, there is little place for either religion or culture: financial gain is the banker’s main concern; the few books that he possesses relate exclusively to the making and managing of money and his wife is easily distracted from her exquisitely illustrated book of hours by the glitter of gold.20 The belief system that inspired the creation of works such as this may carry little weight in the modern world and the Christian message that the painting conveys may seem naïve to the modern viewer, but, for Butor, the work has a relevance that extends beyond its particular historical context. As the third ‘panel’ in the ‘triptych’ formed by the illustrations in the school manual, it provides the link between and acts as a gloss on the other two illustrations, suggesting as it does the fundamental incompatibility of culture and greed, and drawing attention to the god – Mammon – that drove the West on its relentlessly destructive trail across the New World. The illustration of the mines of Potosi, which is referred to briefly in the description on page 298, has already been described on two other occasions in the text (pp. 88, 111) and has been juxtaposed with the description of another plate illustrating the life of the colonial planter (p. 88). The two images are connected not simply by their conjunction in the school manual, but also by the fact that they prompt daydreams in two of Eller’s classmates, who, as they scrutinise the image before them, animate it in their mind’s eye. Denis Régnier imagines that he can feel the sweat running down the limbs of the miners, while Francis Hutter projects himself into the home of the planter. In the first of these two descriptions, the emphasis is on the human, as opposed to the cultural, cost of imperialism and colonialism. In the image of the mine, the illustrator has exposed the infernal conditions in which the miners are forced to work, their destitution, degradation and dependence on those who exploit them: des hommes entièrement nus […] entièrement démunis donc, sauf des signes de leur dépendance, de leur avilissement […] 19 Smart, The Renaissance and Mannerism Outside Italy, pp. 134–35. 20 Note too the numerous references to readers in the intertextual extracts: ‘A leur tour, les textes font aussi mention de lecteurs: Gargantua étudiant sous la direction des professeurs sophistes (cf. p. 227), Pantagruel lisant la lettre de son père (cf. p. 11), Lady Macbeth lisant la lettre de son mari (cf. p. 279) […] Keats lisant la traduction d’Homère par Chapman (cf. p. 187), Champollion déchiffrent les hiéroglyphes (cf. p. 12) et finalement les “Seigneurs, Empereurs et Rois, Ducs et Marquis, Comtes, Chevaliers et Bourgeois” à qui s’adresse Marco Polo (cf. p. 305)’ (Jongeneel, Michel Butor et le pacte romanesque, p. 118).

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dont le travail haineux […] faisait vomir par le cratère un peu d’argent transporté à grand mal, à grandes pertes, à grande cruauté, jusqu’aux ports, puis, à travers la mer, jusqu’à l’Espagne. (p. 112)

However, the description concludes with a commentary by Vernier that suggests that the colonisers’ treatment of the colonised will not go unpunished: ‘avant de fendiller tout ce nouvel empire, mûrissant et cuisant peu à peu une énorme vengeance sournoise, dont les fumées ne se développeraient que beaucoup plus tard, n’avaient pas terminé sans doute même aujourd’hui leur expansion’ (p. 112). This commentary sheds light on the various references to the strange and rather sinister black man who hangs around the streets near the school (pp. 36, 78, 265, 270, 271, 376) and who seems to be stalking several of the characters. Whether or not this man is a stalker is never established; whether the suspicions aroused by his behaviour are simply fancy is never clarified. He never engages either verbally or physically with any of the characters, but his ability to intimidate by his presence alone is evidence of white paranoia and a reminder of Europe’s shameful past.21 In contrast with the description of the mines, the description of the illustration of the plantation and the account of Francis Hutter’s response to it would initially seem to suggest the idyllic nature of colonial life – the clemency of the climate, the creature comforts of the planter’s home, the beauty of the landscape and the lushness of the vegetation: rêvait qu’il entrait par la petite porte de la demeure […] et à l’intérieur de cette maison, il y avait des meubles […] tout en argent; les murs étaient recouverts de carreaux de faïence à dessins bleus représentant des épisodes de la Bible dont les titres étaient écrits en allemand dans un alphabet ancien, les fenêtres donnaient sur d’immenses plantations de tabac dont les feuilles et les fleurs ondulaient au vent chaud; avec des nuées de perroquets et de perruches qui s’envolaient de temps en temps. (pp. 152–53)

However, here, as in the earlier pendant description, the passage concludes with a reference to the human cost of this lifestyle, which, despite his fantasies of wish-fulfilment, Hutter knows and acknowledges was dependent on slave labour: ‘au loin le port avec les grands voiliers, chargés de lingots d’argent, qui allaient partir pour l’Espagne; et de quelques trous dans les montagnes montaient les plaintes des 21 McWilliams suggests that this character may also be a topical allusion to contemporary colonial problems: ‘published in 1960, the novel is set in 1954, the year in which the Algerian War began’ (The Narratives of Michel Butor, p. 50).

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esclaves et le bourdonnement produit par leurs coups de pioche’ (p. 153). Moreover, the mini-narrative that Hutter distractedly elaborates in his notebook, fusing elements of his own life with details from the illustration, offers further evidence of the underlying fear and ‘bad conscience’ of the West with regard to its colonial past: ‘“Le planteur est assis près de sa fenêtre. Le planteur fume sa pipe. Le planteur a enterré son grand-père la semaine précédente. Le planteur sait que l’esclavage est interdit. Le planteur sait qu’il est damné”’ (p. 153). The relevance of the illustrations depicting colonial life is not, however, restricted to Vernier’s lesson; these descriptions also have a bearing on the writing project that he undertakes. If his teaching and his political conscience place him on the moral high ground as far as the issue of Western imperialism is concerned, his own project brings him into much more dangerous moral territory. The motive behind Vernier’s decision to undertake his task bears clear similarities with that behind the enterprises of Jacques Revel and Léon Delmont. In all three cases, the goal is liberation through the acquisition of knowledge and understanding. In L’Emploi du temps, Revel’s diary was, in part, a means of exorcising the malevolent forces that, it seemed to him, were emanating from Bleston and contaminating his own thinking and his personality. In La Modification, Delmont renounced the easy modification of a change of partner in favour of the liberating change of perspective that the examination of his own place in history and culture would afford him. In Degrés, Vernier’s prime motive would seem, initially at least, to be more altruistic. The text he is writing has one very specific reader in mind – his nephew Pierre Eller – and it is intended to provide him with a co-ordinate and a new perspective that will help him in later years to understand and gain meaningful purchase on the mass of information with which Vernier and his colleagues are bombarding him and his class-mates: ces notes […] que je destine à celui que tu seras devenu dans quelques années […] à qui tout cela […] reviendra en mémoire […] dans un certain ordre et selon certaines formes et organisations qui te permettront de le saisir et de le fixer, de le situer et apprécier, ce dont pour l’instant tu est incapable, manquant de ce système de référence que l’on cherche à te faire acquérir. (p. 82)

Vernier seems to be trying to do for Eller what Léon Delmont is hoping to do for himself at the end of La Modification: to provide the means to combat the deterministic forces of family, environment,

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education and culture that limit the individual’s freedom and potential. In positioning Eller very precisely at a given point in his life, in highlighting the multitude of factors informing the development of his personality and in identifying the direction his life was taking, Vernier hopes that he will give him the means by which to free himself from the stultifying and bewildering effects of the education to which he has been subjected, and to take possession of the cultural heritage that his teachers have tried with such little apparent success to pass on to him and his contemporaries: Pour t’aider à te représenter ce que tu as été toi-même, donc d’où tu viens, donc dans quelle direction tu vas, quel est le vecteur de ton présent. (p. 118) de telle sorte qu’en toi pourra naître une nouvelle conscience, et que tu deviendras apte à ressaisir justement cette énorme masse d’informations qui circule, à l’intérieur de laquelle, comme dans un fleuve boueux et tourbillonnant, tu te meus ignorant, emporté. (p. 82)

The parameters of the task that Vernier sets himself are clearly defined and would, initially, seem to establish a very rigorous unity of time and place: the hour of the lesson on America, the classroom in which he conducts it. However, very quickly it becomes clear that if Vernier is to realise his ambition, he must try to accommodate a vast and ever-increasing quantity of data relating to the other subjects followed by his pupils, their pastimes, their relationships with one another and with their families, even their memories, daydreams and dreams. By the end of the first section, the hour that he is ostensibly describing has changed status: initially conceived as the framework of his narrative, it has become the principal but precarious co-ordinate in a vast network of references to other periods of history, to the literature, art and music of earlier ages and to the archaeological and geological evidence of human and physical history and prehistory (p. 117). Similarly, the confined space of the classroom in which Vernier conducts his pivotal lesson has expanded to encompass the other classrooms of the school, the apartments of his colleagues and pupils, the metropolis beyond the school walls, the various regions of France with which his pupils and colleagues have family or vacation connections, the continents of the world, and, through the references to the boys’ fascination with science fiction, the Universe. As Vernier gradually begins to take cognisance of the magnitude of the task that he has set himself, he realises that he will be unable to assemble all the information he needs and that he will need to draw

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on other sources. The first step that he takes – he acquires the textbooks used by Eller and his classmates and tries to master the entire curriculum of the seconde – is in itself a laudably brave enterprise, which, if it interferes with his own class preparation, is nevertheless an enlightening experience: he realises that the goals he and his colleagues are setting for their pupils are totally unrealistic. The acquisition of data about his pupils, their family background and their extracurricular pursuits is clearly a trickier issue and requires some kind of insider access. The ‘solution’ he devises to deal with this problem – he decides to enlist the help of Eller – is what turns him from a wellmeaning explorer into an exploiter. Vernier takes advantage of his professional situation and his nephew’s respect and affection for him to turn the latter into an informant, who does much of Vernier’s work for him, asking his friends leading questions and reporting back to his uncle. Vernier’s obsession with his project blinds him both to the very dubious moral position in which he is placing his nephew and the emotional and psychological dangers of the situation. In his attempt to satisfy his uncle’s apparently insatiable desire for knowledge, Eller finds himself spying on his friends, lying to his family and neglecting his studies.22 Eventually, the psychological pressure becomes too much, and the relationship between Vernier and the Eller family deteriorates to the point where he has to move out of the room that he has been renting from them. That Vernier’s motives were perhaps not as selfless as they seemed was indicated, albeit discreetly, at an early stage in the text. Even in the initial outline of his objectives on page 82, Vernier’s words betray a degree of self-interest. If his project was born of a desire to deliver his nephew from the ‘fleuve boueux et tourbillonnant’ in which he finds himself, Vernier’s acknowledgement that he and his colleagues are in the same predicament as the pupils suggests that this project has a vicarious dimension to it that makes it less than altruistic. un fleuve boueux […] qui glisse sur nous tous, sur tous tes camerades et tous tes maîtres qui s’ignorent mutuellement qui glisse entre nous et autour de nous. (p. 82)

22 See Kline’s very persuasive analysis of the relationship between Eller’s situation and that of the protagonist of Kipling’s Kim. As Kline points out, Kipling is the most frequently mentioned author in the text who is not actually quoted (‘Degrees of Play in Butor’s Degrés’).

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That Vernier is attempting through writing and through his nephew to save himself is confirmed by remarks made in the second and third sections of the text. On page 162, another version of the inception of his project is offered that reveals Vernier’s deep dissatisfaction with his life and also exposes the exploitative basis of his relationship with Micheline Pavin. The text he is writing, like his rather half-hearted romance, is a means of escape from the sterile life that he has been leading: ‘Le mardi, surveillant toujours ces examens, tu t’es mis à penser à cette année qui allait recommencer, à cette vie de solitude et de stérilité qui t’attendait. Il y avait pour toi deux moyens d’en sortir: la littérature et le mariage’ (p. 162). Vernier is a desperate man whose obsession blinds him to his exploitation of those closest to him. Micheline Pavin has, it would seem, the maturity and understanding to recognise what is at stake; Eller, however, is a child and Vernier’s enlistment of his help turns into a form of enslavement that threatens Eller’s autonomy and his relationships with family and friends, and imposes on him an ultimately unbearable burden. Vernier may offer a model lesson on colonial repression, but his treatment of his nephew bears certain similarities with the conduct of the prospectors and planters who figure in the textbook illustrations.23 The Illustration as Mise en Abyme In addition to their contribution to the text’s examination of pedagogical and colonial issues, the descriptions of the illustrations also serve an important metafictional function. As mises en abyme, they reflect and throw into relief the dominant formal features of the text and present succinct, if oblique, digests of Butor’s aesthetic preoccupations and principles. Analysis and correlation of the passages devoted to the illustrations reveal that they tend to form relatively homogeneous clusters, each of which highlights a particular aspect of the text’s structure or a particular representational or aesthetic issue. Four principal clusters of metafictional illustrations can be identified: representations in triplicate or of ‘threesomes’, which mirror the tripartite structure of the novel and highlight both the physical and moral limitations of 23 Vernier is not the only character to exploit those around him: Denis Régnier plays on his estranged father’s guilt to obtain money to buy the stamps he wants (p. 103); Denis Eller has extracted numerous favours from Pierre by promising him his stamp collection (p. 168); Michel Daval takes advantage of Alain Mouron’s assiduity in their ‘collaboration’ on homework (p. 204).

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any given viewpoint; the thumbnail sketches with which the boys ‘illustrate’ their exercise books, which draw attention indirectly to the accretive nature of cultural tradition; the drawings produced by the boys during their art lessons, which highlight the relativitity of all forms of representation and reveal the compromise on which all artistic activity is founded; and the postage stamps that are collected and exchanged by the boys, which both reinforce the theme of exploitation and draw attention to the intertextual dynamics of the novel. It is to an examination of these groups of cognate passages that this section will be devoted. Triptychs, Threesomes and the Tripartite text The polyphonic structure of Degrés is reflected in several of the descriptions of textbook illustrations. As Else Jongeneel notes, the three variously scaled maps of the Le Mans region are strongly reminiscent of Vernier’s text, which is not only divided into three parts, but offers three different perspectives on the same material.24 Unfortunately, Jongeneel does not pursue the parallel further and her brief commentary does not address fully the implications of the description. The importance of the passages relates not just to their number, but also to Henri Fage’s scrutiny of them and his identification of differences between them. Fage’s interest in the passages is aroused initially because they have a personal relevance to him – he had spent his summer holidays in the region. However, as he examines and compares the three figures and detects discrepancies between them, he begins to understand the importance and effects of scale in representation and the necessarily selective, and therefore incomplete, nature of all representations: Herni Fage, juste derrière moi, considérait dans notre manuel les trois figures de la région du Mans à différentes échelles, qui l’intéressait particulièrement parce qu’il avait passé ses vacances à Saint-Mars-la-Brière, dont le nom n’était pas mentionné sur le plan du bas de la page, mais entier dans celui du milieu, tronqué par le cadre dans celui d’en haut. (pp. 177–78)

The references to the maps scrutinised by Fage are, of course, among many references to maps (maps from different periods of history; maps illustrating the political boundaries at different points in history; political, physical and nautical cartography; the globes that serve as visual aids in the classroom; even the rough map used by the scouts on the treasure trail) that serve not only to highlight the themes of travel, 24 Jongeneel, Michel Butor et le pacte romanesque, p. 142.

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exploration and discovery, but also to draw attention to the challenges posed by representation.25 The metafictional function of this particular series of references to visual representation is readily recognisable. As Vernier himself points out on pages 40 and 56, the diversity of these visual projections of space testifies to the purely relative status of any given representation and to the distortion inherent in the representational process: il est impossble de faire coïncider le moindre fragment d’une surface plane et d’une sphérique, il y a nécessairement transposition, projection, selon des systèmes divers qui ont tous leurs inconvénients, déforment toujours certains aspects. (p. 40) il est impossible de représenter la terre avec précision sans la déformer, de même qu’il est impossible de faire passer la réalité dans le discours sans employer un certain type de projection, un certain réseau de repères dont la forme et l’organisation dépendent de ce que l’on cherche à mettre en evidence, et, corollairement, de ce qu’on a besoin de savoir. (p. 56)

As the novel proceeds and as the distortions in Vernier’s account begin to emerge, the extracts from his geography lesson are revealed to be early warnings to the unwary reader that the account that follows, although ‘realistic’ in its attention to detail and thoroughly researched, is no more than a ‘projection’ that will inevitably privilege certain data at the expense of others, that should not be confused with ‘truth’ or ‘reality’ and that requires a perceptive reader who will be alert to its inconsistencies, elisions, embellishments and deceits: ‘il faudra […] toujours beaucoup se méfier, surtout des cartes qui prétendent représenter l’ensemble de la terre, essayer toujours de garder présent à l’esprit le genre de corrections que l’on doit leur apporter…’ (p. 40).26 Henri Fage’s scrutiny of the three illustrations of his geography manual highlights the sort of approach required of the reader of Degrés, who, if he or she is prepared to correlate and compare the three versions of events offered by the text’s three narrative voices, will detect telling variations that expose Vernier’s wilful exclusion of certain data relating to his personal life and to his relationship with Eller.27 Fage may not be 25 See pages 15, 19, 26, 39, 40, 130, 169, 177, 219, 224. 26 As Kline has pointed out, the variation on the game of Kim played by the scout troop serves a similar function as an ‘avis au lecteur’: the latter must not only memorise the details of the text, but also be alert to discrepancies between the various accounts of the same incidents which it proposes (‘Degrees of Play in Butor’s Degrés’). 27 With the changes in perspective that are effected between the novel’s three sections, certain aspects of Vernier’s life come under much closer focus. Thus, whereas the

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the most assiduous student of geography, but his attention to the discrepancies between the three figures in his manual suggests that he has the makings of a competent reader. The three images that illustrate the chapter on ‘La représentation de la Terre’ in Phillipe Guillaume’s geography manual also draw attention to the discrepancies resulting from the adoption of a different perspective or a different representational medium. Thus, the first illustration offers an obliquely angled aerial photograph of the pointe du Raz that permits easy recognition of the various features of the landscape, i.e. it is a perspective that promotes lisibilité: ‘une photographie aérienne oblique de la pointe du Raz, avec ses champs, ses chemins, ses falaises first section presents his relationship with Micheline Pavin as a rather inhibited romance in which Vernier conducts a hesitant and genteel courtship consisting mainly of decorous meetings in restaurants and cafes, the second and third sections give access to scenes that offer a rather different perspective on the relationship, which, in some cases, reveal aspects of Vernier’s behaviour that he would prefer to conceal. In the second part, the descriptions of his encounters with her suggest a much more calculating approach on his part, his clinical scrutiny of her during their lunch-date exposing a coldness that augured badly for the development of a love affair, his blow-by-blow account of his progress on his project suggesting that he was, above all, looking for a listener. By contrast, Henri Jouret’s version of events suggests a rather more intense courtship that involved much more physical intimacy than Vernier has admitted and that has developed to the point of formal introductions to colleagues and family (p. 360). Moreover, Jouret’s account also includes a scene elided in the previous two versions – Vernier’s drunken and inarticulate late-night telephone call to Micheline – that revealed a level of emotional dependence on her that he was apparently reluctant to acknowledge (pp. 348–49). Similar discrepancies are to be found in the various accounts of his relationship with Eller. Thus, in the first section, Vernier makes no mention of the ill-effects of his relentless inquisition of his nephew and, indeed, does not even refer to the pact that he makes with the boy on the latter’s fifteenth birthday. In the second section he does show some limited awareness of the pressure he has put on the boy. This awareness manifests itself obliquely in the references to the boy’s difficulties in meeting his homework deadlines (pp. 175, 177, 228), in the selection of pointed intertextual extracts – notably, the passages from Julius Caesar (p. 182), ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ (p. 129), Homer’s Odyssey (p. 210) and the Fiction magazine short story ‘Hors la tanière’ – and in ‘Eller’s’ retrospective and elliptical allusion to the period of his ‘collaboration’ with his uncle: ‘Cela est loin et je l’abhorre’ (p. 254). It is, however, only after Henri Jouret takes up the narrative that we are apprised of the seriousness of the damage he has done both to the boy and to family relations. Jouret’s account offers us access to information about both Eller and Vernier that has been elided in the earlier sections: Eller’s sleeping difficulties (p. 325), the suspicions that his curiosity arouses in his friends (p. 333), the subterfuge to which Eller resorts and the arguments that it provokes between him and his family (p. 354), Denis Eller’s warning to his brother about Vernier’s exploitation (p. 373), the ‘atroce conversation’ between Vernier and Eller (p. 364), the rift between Vernier and the Ellers and his removal to new lodgings (p. 336).

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et la frange d’écume’ (p. 262). By contrast, the second image, although once again a photograph, offers a vertical perspective that stresses the dominant patterns of the landscape and reduces its elements to quasiabstract shapes and configurations: ‘une photographie aérienne verticale du meme lieu, avec le treillis des vagues et le village semblable à une poignée de gros sel’ (p. 262). The third illustration, which is a schematic ‘relevé cartographique’ rather than a photograph, offers an ‘interpretation’ of the second photograph, identifying and naming the various forms and clusters of shapes that figure on it: ‘Lescoff, comme le nommait la troisième image sous les deux autres, le relevé cartographique grossier interprétant cette photographie’ (p. 262). In addition to its foregrounding of the perspectival issues raised by the text, this passage, like that describing the maps of Le Mans, also draws attention to the reading process and offers an oblique commentary on the stages of the reader’s interpretation of a text such as Degrés. Thus, the first photograph corresponds to the initial literal reading in which the various elements of the fictional world will be recognisable and accepted as faithful representations of reality. As we have already noted, the fictional world of Degrés and, indeed, of L’Emploi du temps and La Modification are based on close observation of particular environments and each of these novels lends itself to ready naturalisation. However, the second photograph in Guillaume’s manual should alert us to the importance of moving to the next stage of the interpretative process. Here, it is suggested that the adoption of a perspective that offers a more direct overview – i.e. the perspective afforded by a second reading – will allow us to isolate the text’s dominant patterns: its recurring motifs, its cross-textual echoes, the parallels between different narrative strands, etc. Once this phase has been completed, the reader is able to move on to the third and most illuminating stage of the process: the interpretation of those patterns and the identification (or naming) of its central themes. The third example I should like to consider concerns not a series of images of a single phenomenon, but a single image of a famous threesome – the engraving after Henry Fuseli’s painting of the three witches of Macbeth – that figures in a cluster of references to Shakespeare’s play.28 Taken in conjunction with the various extracts from the play that appear in the course of Butor’s text, this image serves to foreground 28 Butor is probably referring to The Three Witches, c. 1784, The Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Picture Gallery and Museum, Stratford-upon-Avon. See also Macbeth and the Three Witches, 1793–94, Petworth House.

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several important formal and thematic aspects of Degrés. The reference to Shakespeare’s grim trio is, of course, part of a pattern of ternary groupings that spans the text and includes the three narrators, the triptychal series of images that we have analysed above and the triadic groups that Vernier uses to classify his colleagues and pupils.29 More important, however, than its contribution to the ternary patterns of the novel, the body of references to Fuseli’s painting and to the intertextual extracts from Macbeth acts as commentary on Vernier’s project and as a forewarning of the risks of his venture. It is Bailly’s classroom gloss on Act I, Scene III of the play that alerts us to the thematic pertinence of Fuseli’s painting and to the similarity between Macbeth and Vernier. Here, Macbeth, having received his first confirmation of the witches’ prediction is ‘tellement absorbé par ses nouveaux sentiments qu’il ne fait plus attention à ceux qui l’entourent, et Banquo est obligé de le rappeler au présent’ (p. 152). By this point in Butor’s narrative, we are already beginning to see some of the effects of Vernier’s obsession on his personality, his sense of responsibility and his relationships with others. Like the other protagonists of Butor’s fiction and, indeed, like Macbeth, Vernier is a deeply flawed hero whose solipsism and obsessive pursuit of his goal produces serious blindspots that prevent him from confronting the moral implications of his actions. The extract from Macbeth that figures on page 209, which is taken from the scene depicted by Fuseli, also offers a pointed and rather poignant gloss on Vernier’s situation, anticipating as it does the turmoil that lies ahead and the course that the relationships between Vernier, Eller and Jouret will take: ‘When shall we three meet again In thunder, lightning, or in rain?’ (p. 209)

Vernier’s relentless pursuit of his goal will, indeed, provoke an almighty storm that will cleave his family and cause pyschological and emotional harm to those closest to him. Tragically, the next and final occasion when Vernier, Eller and Jouret will meet again will be on the pages of Degrés, on the completion of Jouret’s account and after Vernier’s death. Finally, a second reading of the text and a retrospective reading of the very first Shakespearean extract on page 29 – ‘What, can the devil speak true?’ – reveals the latter to be a premonitory gloss on the text 29 See pages 62, 67, 115–16 and Jongeneel, Michel Butor et le pacte romanesque, pp. 100–03.

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that follows. Vernier, like Macbeth,30 is about to undertake a formidably ambitious enterprise that will cause him to suspend his conscience and his moral judgement and that ultimately bears certain similarities with the devilish pact. Marginal Annotation and Cultural Appropriation Of the various visual representations that act as mises en abyme, the doodles of the schoolboys in the margins of their exercise books and textbooks are among the most interesting and illuminating. The thumbnail images that the boys idly sketch during their classes might easily be dismissed as well-observed detail, testifying to the failure of their teachers to engage their interest and providing some light relief in an otherwise rather stern text. However, these doodles are not simply the diversionary strategies of bored adolescents. Though rather crude and amateurish, they exemplify what would seem to be a fundamental feature of civilisation: our desire to add to the legacy that has been passed on to us by previous generations, through annotation, commentary, tributes, parody, pastiche, and so forth. The rough sketches of the pupils may show little evidence of serious artistic talent, but they are part of a much more general cultural phenomenon and, although they conflict with the classroom regime, some of them at least constitute a tribute (albeit unorthodox) to the teaching they receive. Thus, although Francis Hutter finds physics ‘bien ennuyeuse’, the examples given in his textbook interest him enough to prompt the elaboration in the margin of his exercise book of a complex fantasy landscape that incorporates representations of the various objects mentioned in the manual: a man, a wagon, a locomotive, the Eiffel tower, an ocean liner and a large cargo plane (p. 69). Moreover, although this sort of annotation is not appreciated by their teachers, some of the exercises that the latter set do encourage the production of work based on broadly similar principles. For instance, Vernier expects his sixième to illustrate their cahiers with images drawn from other sources: ‘ils auraient des notes pour ces cahiers, aussi importantes que pour leurs réponses, ils devraient les présenter proprement et les illustrer intelligemment d’images découpées dans de vieux livres ou de cartes postales qu’ils s’ingénieraient à dénicher’ (p. 24). Indeed, cut and paste, plagiarism, collaboration and 30 Note too the references to Faust (p. 343), to the Ancient Mariner who is ‘plagued’ by ‘fiends’ to continue his tale, and to the various tragically flawed protagonists of Racine.

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verbal and visual annotation are common practice among pupils, teachers and the writers of school manuals. The pupils borrow and copy each others’ notes (pp. 70, 111, 149, 153, 204–205, 213, 230), collaborate on homework with varying degrees of success (pp. 200, 204, 231–32) and resort to published translations when their own efforts fail (pp. 80, 170, 177).31 The teachers annotate their textual sources (pp. 205), plunder the classics for quotations to illustrate their lessons (passim) and, although they forbid their pupils to use them (p. 80), avail themselves of published translations when it suits them (pp. 185–86, 205, 328, 330). The manuals they use are, for the most part, compendia of textual extracts and illustrations drawn from a wide range of sources, while the curriculum for each year-group is based, in part, on a recycling of materials that is designed to reinforce and develop topics covered in previous academic sessions. If the methods that the pupils and teachers use to acquire and transmit culture seem at best makeshift and at worst morally questionable, they are not dissimilar to the processes by which that civilisation was created and by which knowledge was acquired. The products of the teachers’ and pupils’ efforts – their verbal and visual annotations, their assemblages of plundered and copied materials, their collaborative solutions – may be ephemeral, but they illustrate the inherently accretive nature of the culture that Vernier hopes to pass on to his nephew. In contrast with the image of culture as social and professional asset that is projected by the advertisement placed by the ‘institut culturel français’ in the magazine read by Eller,32 Vernier’s account reveals it to be a highly complex assemblage of inter-related elements that have their origin, in part, in our tendency to appropriate, adapt, supplement and interpret. It is this tendency that ensures the continuity and the development of a tradition. It is also the impulse behind several of the works that provide Butor’s intertextual extracts.33 31 Note Butor’s conception of translation as a collaborative and critical activity: ‘La traduction implique naturellement une collaboration; le bon traducteur développe une affinité avec l’écrivain originel de nature quasi familiale. […] Le bon traducteur est […] un critique en profondeur. Il doit apporter au texte quelque chose de profondément neuf; c’est sa langue, et d’autant plus que cette langue est plus lointaine. Il doit ainsi interroger le texte depuis sa langue, explorant toutes sortes d’aspects qui restent inconnus à l’auteur même’ (Butor, Improvisations sur Michel Butor, p. 193). 32 ‘On vous jugera sur votre Culture… passionnante brochure illustrée gratuite no 1428 sur simple demande à l’Institut culturel français’ (p. 371). 33 Like Degrés, Montaigne’s essays are densely intertextual: in Des Coches, Montaigne supports and illustrates his own argument with a wide range of quotations from the classics. Dante’s Divine Comedy draws heavily on The Aeneid for both its structure

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Corroboration for this interpretation of the pupils’ unauthorised artwork is found on page 91 in a continuation of the account of the lesson described on pages 69–70. This passage resumes the account at the point where Francis Hutter, frustrated and enraged by his inability to draw a horse, scores out the elaborate imaginary landscape that he has just devised. However, his surreptitious activities have been closely observed by Hubert Jourdan who, apparently ‘inspired’ by Hutter’s drawings, decides to add his own graphic illustrations to the textbook. Jourdan is the next link in this cultural chain and, although he does not realise it, he is immediate living proof of the thesis that underlies Vernier’s project and, indeed, Butor’s novel. The fact that Hutter abandons his illustrations without completing the set is also significant. It is, of course, only one of several unfinished projects in Degrés: Bailly has failed to complete his thesis on Wordsworth (pp. 72, 205), Vernier and Denis Régnier fail to complete the letters that they were writing respectively to Micheline Pavin (p. 295) and Régnier’s father (p. 103); most of the pupils, at one point or another, fail to complete their homework. Most importantly, Vernier fails to complete his account of his lesson on the discovery of America. Like De Vere’s unfinished painting, Revel’s unfinished diary and Delmont’s unfinishable book, Vernier’s text is an instance of the ‘oeuvre ouverte’ which is intended to arouse in its reader/viewer the desire to continue it. Thus, just as Butor takes up where his literary predecessors left off, so Jourdan relays Hutter, and Jouret tries to salvage and continue Vernier’s account after the latter’s death. But the

and its style and gives Virgil a key dramatic role as Dante’s guide, while the drama of Racine derives its plots and its characters from the myths and history of Ancient Greece and Rome. Moreover, in several of the intertextual extracts the activity of reading is foregrounded. Thus, Keat’s sonnet ‘On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer’ not only celebrates both the work of Homer and of his translator, but also draws attention to the catalytic role of reading in the creative process, while the extract from Voltaire’s Essais sur les moeurs on page 388 testifies not only to his own appreciative reading of Marco Polo, but also to the fact that the history of the world was in part determined by one particular act of reading, i.e. Columbus’s reading of the manuscript of La Description du monde: mais ses contemporains […] ne crurent point les vérités que Marc Paul annonçait. Son manuscrit resta longtemps ignoré; il tomba entre les mains de Christophe Colomb et ne servit pas peu à le confirmer dans son espérance de trouver un monde nouveau qui pouvait rejoindre l’Orient et l’Occident … Finally, the references to the commentaries of De Quincey on Coleridge and of Coleridge on Macbeth and Julius Caesar highlight the importance of critical reading in the maintenance of the cultural ‘chain’ (pp. 140 and 208).

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‘oeuvre ouverte’, as it is defined by Butor, is not simply an open-ended narrative or incomplete representation; for a work to merit the designation, it must meet certain very stringent formal criteria. In particular, it is characterised by two conflicting features: a rigorous internal structure; and a breach or ‘interruption’ in that structure which, if it destabilises the original structure, is itself part of a meticulously developed overall plan. Pour qu’une oeuvre […] nous invite à la continnuer, il faut qu’à certains égards elle soit particulièrement soignée […] la composition très puissante une fois brisée va me contraindre à la rétablir. […] L’oeuvre ‘ouverte’, le fragment dans sa maturité, implique d’une part une architecture interne en développement d’une grande rigueur, d’autre part son interruption, laquelle, pour avoir toute sa force, doit être elle aussi rigoureusement dessinée.34

Hutter’s and Jourdan’s marginal drawings fall far short of such conditions, but they do offer immature and amateurish variations on the theme. Hutter’s illustrations are schematic and hastily executed, but he does organise them into an ensemble that, if it defies verisimilitude, nevertheless shows attention to formal coherence. Jourdan’s artistic efforts are rather more sophisticated than his neighbour’s. He shows himself to be more aware both of the difficulties of representation and of his own limitations – he acknowledges from the outset that drawing a horse is beyond his skills – and he devotes more attention to detail. The fantasy machines that he devises draw on a basic knowledge of maths and science and their design is much more intricate than the various components of Hutter’s landscape. Moreover, when they encounter problems, the two boys react in a very different manner, Hutter angrily destroying his own work, Jourdan pausing to reflect on the obstacle he has encountered, revising his plan and starting over again: il a commencé à dessiner une machine, avec ses bielles et ses cheminées; puis, comme son regard s’était porté vers le plafond, et qu’il avait rencontré les lampes, il s’est dit qu’au fond, il ne savait pas si ce dont il était question c’était une motrice à vapeur ou à l’électricité; aussi, de l’autre côté du chiffre 3, il a dessiné un long rectangle avec des fenêtres, qu’il a monté sur deux boggies et qu’il a muni d’un pantographe, glissant quelques petits traits parallèles indiquant non seulement le mouvement mais la vitesse, le long d’un fil soutenu par des pylônes à croisillons. (p. 92)

Like Vernier’s approach to his work and, indeed, like that of Butor, 34 Butor, ‘La Critique et l’invention’, Répertoire III, p. 19.

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Jourdan’s is painstaking, considered and approximate and his drawing, though naïve, presents in miniature some of the most fundamental tenets of Butor’s aesthetic: openness to the suggestions of the work of others and a readiness to take up where others have left off, a willingness to reflect on the activity in which one is engaged and on the challenges that it proposes and to revise one’s composition accordingly, and an acceptance of one’s own limitations and of the limitations of the representational process.35 The Art Class as Lesson in Aesthetic Compromise The series of references to the drawings produced by Eller and his classmates during their art class acts as a link between the Shakespearean motif and the descriptions of the boys’ informal ‘illustrations’ of their textbooks. In addition to the various extracts from Julius Caesar and the descriptions of the marginal doodlings, the text also devotes a number of passages to M. Martin’s formal art instruction and to the boys’ very variable efforts to copy the bust of Caesar that serves as model for their lesson: Michel Daval a pris le fusain, a commencé à dessiner l’oreille de César, la pommette, la pointe du nez, le bandeau, tout à fait surpris du résultat, de l’absence totale de ressemblance entre cette figure grimaçante qu’il suscitait, de plus en plus horrible et sarcastique, et le visage en plâtre de l’impérator qu’il regardait, s’est arrêté, ne sachant plus quoi faire. (p. 30)

While these brief passages noting the difficulties experienced by these generally untalented ‘artists’ provide comic relief, they also make several very serious points about the nature of the representational activity. Thus, the differences between the results produced by each member of the class relates not simply to the uneven talents of the individuals concerned, but also to their position in relation to the model. M. Martin’s instruction to his group to note and remember their seat in the classroom (p. 140) offers a simplified concrete instance of 35 Compare ‘Je connais des écrivains estimables qui “tissent” ligne après ligne sans jamais revenir en arrière. Je relis; deux ou trois mots me sautent à la figure comme faux. Il faut absolument les corriger; ils sont comme des fautes d’orthographe. Pas seulement deux ou trois mots, deux ou trois phrases, la page entière. Ce que j’écris à la page 200 peut m’obliger à reprendre de fond en comble les dix premières pages. Il y a certainement des passages de mes livres que j’ai refaits cinquante fois. Lorsque l’on compose non selement avec des mots, mais avec des ‘masses’ de texte, par exemple des citations plus ou moins littérales, parfois fort longues, prises un peu comme des mots, on se trouve devant des problèmes d’ajustement vertigineux. Cela vaut la peine.’ (Butor, ‘Réponses à Tel Quel’, Répertoire II, pp. 298–99).

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the more general principle expounded by Vernier in his lesson on map-making – i.e. that representation is relative to viewpoint – while Eller’s reflections about the differences between the model used in the art class and the engraving that serves as frontispiece to his English textbook marks his first inklings of the difference between representation and truth, a difference that is, of course, going to become increasingly apparent in the course of his uncle’s narrative: Il y avait une gravure représentant le dictateur, et tu te demandais comment il était possible que ce fût le même homme que celui dont tu avais essayé de dessiner les traits, sous la surveillance de M. Martin, deux étages plus haut, tout à l’heure; les deux visages avaient si peu de ressemblance. (pp. 30–31)

Moreover, the fact that the model on which these aspiring artists are working is itself a reproduction and, probably, a reproduction of a reproduction once again foregrounds the theme of cultural tradition that runs throughout the text and draws attention to the constant presence of that tradition within every new work. In short, it would seem that for Butor, the notion of artistic originality turns out to be as illusory a goal as definitive representation. Finally, the account on pages 43–44 of Denis Régnier’s critical appraisal and abandonment of work on his drawing of Caesar corresponds closely to Butor’s own description of his working methods: Denis Régnier examinait le profil de César qu’il avait dessiné sur sa feuille, et n’en était pas satisfait; le front était trop bas, sans doute; les yeux auraient dû être plus marqués. Il a taillé la pointe de son fusain avec du papier éméri, a souligné paupière et pupille, mais cela donnait à l’imperator un air hébété tout à fait différent de celui du modèle, et il avait l’impression que le visage même qu’il dessinait se moquait de son manque d’habilité. L’heure tournait; ses camarades pour la plupart commençaient à ranger leurs affaires. Désespérant d’arriver à mieux, jugeant que les autres devaient avoir terminé leurs oeuvres et que, par conséquent, il y aurait un autre modèle la fois prochaine, il a inscrit son nom en haut et à gauche, en ajoutant la mention “seconde A”.

The sequence of reactions that Denis experiences as he appraises his own drawing at the end of the lesson – dissatisfaction followed by even greater dissatisfaction with his revised version, acknowledgement that he has done as much as he can on this occasion and anticipation regarding future assignments – bears close resemblances with those experienced by Butor as he comes to the end of a project. In Butor’s case, the stages by which a writing project is terminated

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follow a predictable pattern of rereading, revision and abandonment rather than completion. Typically, as he tells Georges Charbonnier, he rereads several times, revising points of detail on each occasion until he realises that this sort of microstructural ‘correction’ has reached its limit: ‘Au bout d’un certain temps, il n’y a plus de détails qui sautent aux yeux avec autant de violence, et si je reprends le texte, pour moi il est lisse, il n’y a plus de mot évidemment mauvais, il y a une sorte de poli, si vous voulez’.36 This realisation, however, only engenders much more radical concerns about the work as a whole. With the elimination of stylistic irritants and minor errors, it is the entire composition that is suddenly thrown into question: ‘Les corrections qu’il faudrait y apporter, à ce moment-là, ne sont plus des corrections de détail, ça n’est plus tel mot, ou telle phrase, non … c’est tout le texte qui me semble alors contestable, à un certain niveau. Et ceci, jusqu’au moment où c’est toute l’oeuvre qui me semble contestable!’.37 At this point, the only solution is to acknowledge that this is as far as he can take this particular project and move on to another one. In short, like Denis Régnier, he has to accept the compromise inherent in the artistic enterprise and the partial failure that is the inevitable outcome. Once he has done this, all that remains to be done is to acknowledge authorship by appending his name to what he has produced, allow the work to proceed to the next stage (in Denis’s case assessment by the teacher, in Butor’s appraisal by his readers and critics) and to look forward to the next endeavour: au bout d’un moment, je ne sais plus comment corriger ce livre-là, ce livrelà est fixé, il est solidifié, il est tel qu’il est. Il n’y a plus qu’une solution, c’est d’écrire un autre livre. Et cet autre livre à écrire, je ne sais pas encore exactement comment l’écrire. Et c’est pourquoi je publie le livre précédent, en disant: voilà le point où j’ai pu arriver avec ces éléments-là.38

Philately, Intertextuality and the Compilation of the Book The final cluster of references to visual representation that I should like to consider here concerns the passages devoted to the boys’ stamp collections. On one level of interpretation, the boys’ collection and exchange of stamps can be read as a juvenile equivalent of the commercial activities described by Vernier in his outline of the history 36 Butor in Charbonnier, Entretiens avec Michel Butor, p. 127. 37 Butor in Charbonnier, Entretiens avec Michel Butor, p. 127. 38 Butor in Charbonnier, Entretiens avec Michel Butor, pp. 127–28.

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of colonial trade. The stamps, like the gold extracted from the mines of Potosi, are a form of currency among the boys, possession of which confers considerable power on the individual concerned. The various transactions that take place between Cormier and Denis Régnier involve a range of strategies that testify to the development of a taste for trade. They set out their ‘shop window’ by bringing their stamp books to class, fix and alter exchange rates according to supply and demand, flood the market to bring down prices and resort to bluff and deception in their attempt to second-guess the position of their business partner. Moreover, the possession of stamps allows the owner not only to procure more of the same, but also to buy the services of others. Thus, Denis Régnier is able to get others to do his schoolwork for him by promising privileged trading conditions: ‘Denis Régnier […] a recopié le cahier de préparations anglaises que Michel Daval venait de lui passer contre la promesse de sérieux avantages dans les transactions de timbres’ (p. 230). Stamps also figure prominently in Régnier’s exploitation of his estranged father who is always ready to assuage his own paternal guilt through financial transactions with his son (p. 103). It would seem that exploitation is as rife in the stamp trade as it is in the adult world of commerce and that the acquisitive and exploitative instincts that have caused so much human, cultural and environmental damage in the course of history are present even in these amateur philatelists.39 However, if the passages devoted to the commercial activities of the schoolboys reinforce the points made by Vernier in his account of the discovery of the New World, they also have a rather more positive formal function, reflecting as they do one of the most distinctive features of Degrés. The circulation of stamps among the pupils and their stamp collections mirrors the intertextual dynamics of Degrés, which is based in part on the extraction and redistribution of passages from other texts. Butor’s novel is in some respects a much more sophisticated version of the stamps books compiled by the boys. In both cases, the point of departure for the ‘book’ consists of readymade material which is assembled and reassembled in the course of compilation to form new permutations. Moreover, the permutations that emerge are governed by strict principles of association: in the case of the stamp books, the classification of individual stamps according 39 See also Waite, ‘Butor’s Degrés: Making the Reader Work’.

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to country of origin, date of issue, face value or rarity value; in the case of Butor’s book, the ordering of extracts according to thematic pertinence or formal affinity. Indeed, the success – commercial or aesthetic – of the assemblages depends in large part on the coherence of their internal organisation. It is, for instance, in part the orderliness of Denis Régnier’s stamp book that gives him the commercial edge in the stamp market (p. 101). Finally, in both cases, the ready-made material is not simply reassembled into new permutations: it is also the stimulus for the production of original compositions, in Butor’s case, Degrés, in Régnier’s case, the mini-narratives of his dreams, in which his imagination devises fabulous new stamps commemorating the events of ancient history and made of rare and precious materials: Denis Régnier rêvait à de merveilleux timbres de Troie avec des remparts, d’Ithaque avec des bateaux, de Carthage avec l’effigie d’Hannibal, d’Utopie, énormes, avec celle de Gargantua et avec celle de César, tachés de sang, de la république romaine. (p. 215) les rêves de Denis Régnier, timbres et puissance, timbres d’or irridié d’un kilo, conservés dans les profondeurs de la terre à Mexico. (p. 261)

Régnier may not be satisfied with his endeavours in the art room, but the discipline that he shows in the organisation of his stamp collection, combined with the vivid images conjured up in his dreaming mind, reveals an aesthetic sense that counterbalances the unscrupulous nature of some of his waking activities.40 The purpose of this chapter was to demonstrate that, although much less conspicuous than the intertextual material, the references to visual representation in Degrés perform a number of key thematic and formal functions. Support for a polemical reading of the text as a critique of the French educational system is readily found in many of the passages describing the illustrations that figure in the school manuals. These illustrations are evidently less than satisfactory visual aids and their shortcomings mirror those of the educational system as a whole. Like much of the instruction that the children receive, the manuals are descriptive rather than analytical, a fault that manifests 40 Compare the way in which Alain Mouron’s nightmare (p. 370) recycles material from Homer, Shakespeare, Virgil, Racine and Marco Polo. See Dällenbach, Le Livre et ses miroirs dans l’oeuvre romanesque de Michel Butor, p. 39, and Jongeneel, Michel Butor et le pacte romanesque, pp. 138–40.

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itself in the very perfunctory attention paid to the relationship between text and image. The capacity of the illustrations to reinforce the points outlined in the text of the manuals is seriously impaired by the deficiencies of the accompanying captions and exercises which consist, by and large, of rudimentary and rather obvious single-line commentaries or ill-defined questions that curb rather than encourage personal initiative. Moreover, the rather haphazard grouping of illustrations into series reflects the incoherence of a curriculum that would seem to prize factual knowledge over understanding and whose overambitious coverage promotes the memorisation of ‘selected highlights’ as opposed to comprehension of the relationships between phenomena and of the manner in which they have evolved. However, if the illustrations fail to enlighten, they do at least serve to widen the otherwise narrow horizons of the boys by offering them glimpses of bygone eras and far-flung locations and by providing them with a host of potential points of departure for their own imaginary journeys in time and space. It is this associative potential of the illustrations – what Barthes calls ‘poétique’41 – that makes them such a fitting vehicle for the broader themes of Butor’s text and, in particular, for his examination of the deeply problematical issues raised by the history of human exploration. That exploration is a fundamental human impulse is not in question. Nor does Butor question the initiative, courage and achievement of the great explorers of the past. Rather it is the use to which humans put their discoveries that concerns him. As Vernier’s pivotal lesson demonstrates, and as the illustrations of the Potosi mines and the colonial tobacco plantation show, the line between exploration and exploitation is very finely drawn and all too easily erased. However, the issue that Degrés raises has a relevance that extends beyond the confines of the history book and the specific brutalities of Europe’s colonial and imperial past. It is an issue that arises in a multitude of unrelated, everyday contexts, and the moral consequences of ignoring it are very grave, as Vernier discovers to his cost. Vernier may be seen as Butor’s spokesman on the question of European imperialism, but his moral and pedagogical authority is undermined by his failure to apply the lessons he has learned from the past to his own situation and to the immediate present. Moreover, although his abuse of his situation and of the power that it gives him has fairly dramatic 41 Barthes, ‘Les Planches de L’Encyclopédie’ in Le Degré zéro de l’écriture, suivi de Nouveaux essais critiques, Paris, Seuil, 1952 and 1972, pp. 89–105.

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consequences, his is not an isolated case. That the impulse to exploit is as deeply rooted as the impulse to explore is attested not only by Vernier’s treatment of Eller, but also by the behaviour of his pupils and, in particular, by certain inconsistencies in their reactions to the visual material that they encounter. Thus, although they engage emotionally with the images of slavery and repression and show themselves to be genuinely responsive to the associative power of the visual representation, their own trade in images – stamps – betrays an acquisitive and exploitative instinct that, far from being innocuous, is in fact a juvenile version of the rapacious fervour that drove the colonialist to plunder and enslave the New World. Finally, and somewhat predictably, the descriptions of the illustrations and other forms of visual representation also have an important metafictional role, offering a running commentary on the dominant structural features of the text – its tripartite structure, its relativistic treatment of narratorial voice and perspective, its extensive use of intertextual citation – and offering a résumé of some of Butor’s more general views on literature and art – the inherently accretive nature of the cultural tradition, the incompleteness of the literary or artistic work and the inevitably distortive nature of representation. In addition to their role as internal mirrors of the text, these mises en abyme also serve to bring into sharper focus individual members of Vernier’s class. In most critical accounts of Degrés, the cast of the novel is presented as being strictly hierarchised: it has a protagonist, three more or less prominent secondary characters (Eller, Jouret and Micheline Pavin) and a large body of ‘comparses’ (the other teachers and pupils) who, as individuals, command relatively little attention. While it is true that the ‘stories’ of the minor characters are simply sketched in and are full of lacunae, it is, nevertheless, the case that many of them achieve a temporary prominence within the text. In the case of the schoolboys, these moments of relative prominence frequently coincide with the references to visual representation. As one or other of Eller’s classmates scrutinises the illustrations in his manual or the stamps in his collection, or as he doodles in the margins of his books or struggles to reproduce the model in his art lesson, the narratorial spotlight pauses on him temporarily, isolating him briefly from the other activity going on around him. This short-lived prominence is not simply an indicator of Vernier’s passing interest in certain members of his class; it has implications that extend beyond the dynamics of the classroom and the exigencies of Vernier’s project. What these passages reveal

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above all perhaps is that each of these boys is, in his own way, striving to make sense of the world that he inhabits and is engaged in activities – daydreams, the compilation of stamp albums, rudimentary marginal drawings, disappointing artwork – that, although predictable, testify to the creative energy present in each of these boys, which is for much of the time masked by the indolence of adolescence or stifled by the demands of the curriculum. Implicit in all Butor’s stories of mediocre everymen embarking on apparently modest but ultimately unrealisable writing projects is the conviction that the creative drive – the desire to produce an ‘oeuvre’ which will record one’s experience and help one to gain a better understanding of it – is not the exclusive attribute of the ‘professional’ writer or artist, but that it is a much more widely held aspiration which manifests itself in a multitude of unconventional literary and artistic ‘genres’. In Degrés, this belief manifests itself primarily in the accounts of the boys’ various responses to visual representations and their variable attempts to produce their own. There is no evidence to suggest that any of these boys is destined for an ‘artistic’ career, but their endeavours reveal them to be struggling with many of the problems and issues that confront the professional writer or artist. It seems likely that most, perhaps all, of them will one day discover, like Vernier, that they have turned into unremarkable and unfulfilled middle-aged men. However, for the moment they still have potential: the potential of a rising generation.

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5

Beyond Words: Collage, Collaboration, Text and Image

While Butor has not ruled out the possibility that he will return to fiction,1 to date Degrés remains his last novel. Butor has offered various explanations for this, at least provisional, abandonment of the novel form. A seven-month stay in the United States acted as a catalyst, causing him to shelve indefinitely the novel project that was still at the germinative stage when he left Europe2 and prompting him to try, on his return, to develop an intermediary form that would incorporate both fictional and factual elements and would convey his heterogeneous impressions of this vast continent. Elsewhere he cites the liberating effect that the opportunity to collaborate with visual artists and composers had on his work and claims that these creative encounters with others promoted the development of new writing styles and forms.3 On other occasions, he draws attention to the fact that throughout his brief career as a novelist, his output had in fact been very varied: he had continued to write poetry and critical essays and had published the first of the five volumes on the theme of the ‘génie du lieu’ in 1958, two years before the publication of Degrés.4 Finally, he 1 See Desoubeaux (ed.), Entretiens: quarante ans de vie littéraire, vol. II, pp. 26, 44, 52; Entretiens: quarante ans de vie littéraire, vol. III, p. 228. 2 See Desoubeaux (ed.), Entretiens: quarante ans de vie littéraire, vol. III, pp. 230–31, 309–10. 3 See Santschi, Voyage avec Michel Butor, p. 78. See Desoubeaux (ed.), Entretiens: quarante ans de vie littéraire, vol. III, pp. 163, 238–48. 4 See Desoubeaux (ed.), Entretiens: quarante ans de vie littéraire, vol. I, pp. 243–44. Compare ‘Les quatre romans se sont suivis comme des théorèmes, chacun étant la conséquence des problèmes qui avaient surgi dans la réalisation du précédent. Ensuite, je me suis rendu compte que je continuais malgré tout à écrire des essais. Et comme on m’a demandé de regarder les poèmes anciens que j’avais faits, le jeune poète, que je pensais avoir enfermé dans un placard, en est ressorti. Je me suis mis à écrire des textes poétiques d’une autre sorte, pour des livres de luxe ou pour accompagner des photographies. Ainsi, j’ai été obligé de constater que je travaillais sur

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has also admitted a degree of discomfort about the swift public prominence that at least some of his novels had brought him – notably, La Modification and L’Emploi du temps, each of which was awarded one of the annual French literary prizes5 – and a desire to avoid premature and restrictive classification as a novelist.6 However, as Butor has pointed out, his renunciation of the novel form did not result in the renunciation of fiction. With the obvious exception of his critical writing, virtually all the prose works he has produced since Degrés involve elements of the ‘romanesque’.7 These elements take a variety of forms, notably, the creation of narrative voices that belong to invented characters or collectivities, that comment on real, verifiable locations and whose commentaries alternate with citations from documentary sources; the elaboration of dream sequences, which are attributed to real historical or literary figures or, as in the case of Portrait de l’artiste en jeune singe, to Butor, but are not accounts of real dreams, but rather inventions of Butor’s conscious mind; the fusion of autobiographical and fabricated elements; and the deployment of a range of literary devices that blur the distinctions between genres and create formal or thematic links between the factual and fictional elements of the text. If the continuing presence of the romanesque is the feature that acts as the strongest force of cohesion in Butor’s work, allusion to and exploitation of the visual arts are also notable constants in the very large and varied corpus of work that he has produced over the last forty years. This chapter is devoted to a selective survey of the work of this period. It demonstrates that, despite the apparently abrupt change in direction that Butor’s work took after the publication of Degrés, the fascination, which is already evident in his fiction, for the visual arts and for the relationship between word and image has determined in plusieurs genres à la fois et que mes livres ne formaient pas une suite linéaire, mais une espèce d’arbre. A partir de ce moment-là, j’ai décidé d’explorer les intervalles entre les branches, de réexaminer les genres littéraires dans leur ensemble’ (Desoubeaux (ed.), Entretiens: quarante ans de vie littéraire, vol. II, pp. 44–45). 5 L’Emploi du temps was awarded the Prix Fénéon (1956) and La Modification was awarded the Prix Renaudot (1957). 6 See Desoubeaux (ed.), Entretiens: quarante ans de vie littéraire, vol. III, p. 123. 7 This term was coined by Roudaut, ‘Parenthèse sur la place occupée par l’étude intitulée 6 810 000 litres d’eau par seconde’. See also Desoubeaux (ed.), Entretiens: quarante ans de vie littéraire, vol. I, p. 231, where Butor insists on the continuity in his writing and, in particular, on the similarities between Degrés and his later work. See also Desoubeaux (ed.), Entretiens: quarante ans de vie littéraire, vol. I, p. 246, for a commentary on the role of the fictional elements in the work produced after Degrés.

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large part the evolution of his subsequent work, whether it takes the form of criticism or one of the various cross-genre forms that he has developed either through individual experimentation or through collaboration. The chapter focuses on three principal issues: the prominence in Butor’s work of compositional techniques that derive from collage/assemblage; the numerous and diverse collaborative ventures that have punctuated his career since Degrés; and his critical and creative exploration, in the essai and in the travel book, of the relationship between text and image. Collage The structure of Degrés – in particular its dense juxtaposition of quotations from a wide range of sources and its attempt to record the various incidents taking place simultaneously in the lives of the staff and pupils of Vernier’s school – anticipates one of the methods of composition that Butor favours in many of his subsequent texts. If the macro-structure of Degrés is founded on the principle of expansion – the pivotal hour of the class is effectively ‘exploded’ by Vernier’s narrative – the internal structuring of the novel is based rather on an approach that closely resembles assemblage or collage. As Butor has indicated on a number of occasions, his fondness for this type of compositional method is closely associated with his preoccupation with questions relating to narrative voice. Collage offers the pictorial equivalent of polyphony, and the composition of many of the texts following Degrés shows a concern to create structures that permit the interaction of a wide range of ‘textual voices’: ‘La citation est un moyen extraordinairement puissant de réaliser une polyphonie et par conséquent, d’avoir un champ de signfication beaucoup plus complexe’.8 If there is no dominant focalising narrator in Mobile, Description de San Marco, 6 8100 000 litres d’eau par seconde, or Intervalle, there is, nevertheless, a plethora of voices, which, as they merge, separate, intercut and overlay each other, produce an intricate polyphony that reflects the geographical, historical and cultural complexity of the sites evoked. Thus Mobile juxtaposes and combines four different sorts of narrative voice that are intended to represent particular dimensions of the United States: quoted statements by notables of American history; quotations taken from indigenous Native American sources; 8 Desoubeaux (ed.), Entretiens: quarante ans de vie littéraire, vol. III, p. 46.

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the anonymous, intersubjective and collective voice of the American subconscious as it manifests itself in dreams; and a host of individual, but anonymous voices whose snatches of dialogue offer multiple discrete insights into the American psyche: Il y a d’abord des citations de grands hommes américains ou que je pourrais appeler pré-américains. Par exemple Franklin, Jefferson, Carnegie. Et puis les pré-américains ou enfin les pré-européens d’Amérique, des Indiens, un certain nombre d’Indiens cités eux aussi. Cela fait déjà toute une population de personnages identifiés. On pourrait dire – pour continuer la comparaison musicale – toute une population de solistes. Et puis, en dessous ou à côté, il y a toute une population anonyme, notamment lorsque j’évoque la nuit, lorsque j’évoque les rêves. Les rêves que l’on a aux Etats-Unis, que les Américains ont à l’intérieur des Etats-Unis; des rêves qui passent de sujet en sujet, de rêveur en rêveur et même d’Etat en Etat. Alors il y a des discours de rêves qui franchissent toutes sortes de frontières. Et puis, en dehors de ces rêves, il y a bien d’autres discours d’individus anonymes, des petites bribes de dialogues par exemple. Tout cela fait un ensemble polyphonique extrêmement vaste dans lequel on peut se promener.9

Description de San Marco tackles the subject of the relationships between word, image and site in St Mark’s Basilica in Venice, a building that Butor has described as ‘un véritable livre dans l’espace’.10 Here, the ‘description’ of the building is carried out by three types of voice: the voice of the scriptures, extracts of which are used as inscriptions accompanying and explaining the mosaics that decorate the walls and vault of the basilica; the voice of an anonymous commentator/guide who describes the building, catalogues its features, explains and interprets the iconography, translates the inscriptions and, through its explicit addresses to the reader/visitor, oversees and orchestrates his/ her visit;11 and the voices of the visitors whose conversations in several different languages merge, diverge, echo round the building and create within it a Babel-like effect that translates into twentieth-century terms the cultural interaction that has characterised the site for some 2000 years: Et tous ces cris, toutes les conversations emportées dans ce mouvement, dans cette houle de foule, dans ce lent tourbillonnement, ces fragments de dialogues que l’on saisit, qui vont, viennent, s’approchent, tournent et disparaissent, montent, s’engloutissent, transparaissent les uns dans les autres, 9 Butor in Santschi, Voyage avec Michel Butor, p. 52. 10 Couffon, ‘Michel Butor: une interview sur Description de San Marco’, p. 5. 11 See, for instance, the instructions and words of encouragement that punctuate the text: ‘Laissons tomber la pluie’ (p. 24), ‘Entrons’ (p. 26), ‘Continuons la lecture de la Génèse’ (p. 32), ‘tous ces arcs sous lesquels nous passerons’ (p. 42).

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s’interrompent les uns les autres, glissent, dans toutes les langues, éclats, relents, avec des thèmes qui émergent, s’organisent en cascades, canons, agglomérats, cycles. (Description de San Marco, p. 12)12

In 6 810 000 litres d’eau par seconde, where Butor attempts to evoke his impression of Niagara Falls, there are three principal narrative voices or sources: Chateaubriand, whose descriptions of the Falls in both Atala and his Essai sur les révolutions anciennes et modernes are cited in Butor’s text;13 an anonymous ‘speaker’ who takes the reader on a guided tour and provides a commentary focusing particularly on the various sporting feats associated with the Falls; and a number of couples who have come as tourists to view the Falls and who, like the characters of La Modification, would seem to act as representative examples of different age groups and types of relationship: ‘parmi ces personnages, de jeunes mariés en voyage de noce, des couples plus âgés, une vieille dame et son gigolo, etc.’.14 Here, the polyphonic structure is intended to convey the semiological richness of this extraordinary and much-visited site and, in particular, the complex interaction of the natural, the social and the cultural that characterises it. The quotations from Chateaubriand convey the evocative power that the Falls hold for the European imagination; the tour-commentary draws attention to the Falls as a site where the struggle between man and nature has been rehearsed on numerous occasions, while the fragments of the conversations taking place between the various couples combine with the sexual connotations implicit in the references to the phenomenal physical power of the water-flow to draw attention to the role which the Falls have played in American mating rituals: ‘Ce qui m’a fasciné dans ce lieu, c’est autant le spectacle que l’utilisation touristico-érotique qu’en font les Américains: ils y viennent en voyage de noce, tous les jeunes mariés y ont rendez-vous pour une grande parade nuptiale’.15 Of the texts that illustrate Butor’s exploitation of collage/assemblage methods, Intervalle is perhaps the most intricately worked. The typographical presentation of the text in a layout with three distinct margins suggests the presence of three types of narrative voice. 12 Compare ‘la basilique et son campanile comme lieu où les langues viennent se retrouver’ (p. 46). 13 See Charbonnier, Entretiens avec Michel Butor, p. 147. See also Roudaut, ‘Parenthèse sur la place occupée par l’étude intitulée 6 810 000 litres d’eau par seconde’ and Lydon, Perpetuum mobile, pp. 184–86. 14 Butor, Curriculum vitae, p. 166. 15 Butor, Curriculum vitae, pp. 167–68.

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However, close examination of the details of the segments of texts reveals that they are themselves composed of the utterances of numerous different narrative voices. The left-aligned segments of text are devoted primarily to the description of the passengers in the waiting room and the conversations that take place between them. However, these segments also contain a number of other elements (the text from the advertising posters that decorate the walls of the waiting room, crossword clues, ‘situations vacant’ advertisements, property advertisements, newspaper articles and extracts from a guide to Venice) that introduce a variety of types of discourse and serve as an ironic commentary on the dialogue of the passengers. The centrally aligned segments of text are composed of a heterogeneous assortment of passages, including the following: excerpts from several literary intertextual sources (Nerval’s Sylvie and his Voyage en Orient, Baudelaire’s Fleurs du mal, Constant’s Adolphe, Molière’s Misanthrope and Butor’s own Description de San Marco);16 extracts from the newspapers that the passengers are reading; metafictional passages of commentary on Intervalle itself (‘autocritique’); passages that correspond to certain ‘internal voices’, one of which registers the internal functioning of the characters’ bodies, while their thoughts, memories and fantasies are recorded by a set of ‘magnétophones intimes’ and ‘cinémas intimes’.17 Finally, the right-aligned segments consist of a retrospective journal (‘journal après coup’) that charts the evolution of the project of Intervalle. If the various types of margin, the different typefaces (regular, italic, lower case, upper case) and differentiating punctuation (quotation marks, dashes, brackets) used in Mobile, 6 810 000 litres d’eau par seconde, Description de San Marco and Intervalle draw attention to the range and diversity of the voices recorded, each text is underpinned by elaborate networks of correspondences. In each case, the textual and intertextual material is highly heterogeneous, but the presence of crosstextal motifs, situational parallels and recurring themes ensures the internal compositional coherence of the volume. In his numerous glosses on the unorthodox structure and page layout of Mobile, Butor has used a number of quite different analogies to describe the methods used in the composition of the text, including comparisons with cellular structures, with the entries of encyclo16 See Jongeneel, Michel Butor et le pacte romanesque, pp. 240–61; Spencer, Site, citation et collaboration chez Michel Butor, pp. 48–50; McWilliams, The Narratives of Michel Butor, pp. 95–102. 17 See Spencer, Site, citation et collaboration chez Michel Butor, pp. 28–32.

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pedias, dictionaries and catalogues, with orchestral music and with collage.18 Diverse though these analogies are, they all draw attention to the prominence and interaction in Mobile of certain thematic and formal tensions, notably, similarity versus difference; connection versus disjunction; harmony versus discord; order versus disorder. In disrupting so radically the linear continuity of the sentence, in distributing his found materials in uneven segments of text that are ostensibly unrelated, but are, nevertheless, linked by an elaborate system of crosstextual correspondences, Butor aims to suggest the centrifugal and centripetal forces that characterise the United States: the deep-rooted divisions that separate the different races, classes and creeds; the extraordinary natural landmarks that distinguish its most celebrated sites and frequently act as physical barriers between different territories; the temporal décalages that limit communication across the country; the various climates and landscapes that have determined the lifestyles and traditions of different communities; the nostalgia for the Old World that haunts the different European immigrant groups and their enduring attachment to the language of their forebears;19 the codes and etiquette that regulate and standardise communciation among the white middle classes; the shared dreams that testify to a distinctive American psyche; and the commercialism and consumerism that, to the European in the 1960s, seemed to be so ingrained in the American psyche as to be a national characteristic. In Mobile, colour is at once a marker of division and an indicator of homogeneity.20 The violent tensions that differences in skin colour generate in the United States are indicated in Mobile not only in the explicit references to racism, but also in the discord between juxtaposed segments of text: ‘j’ai en effet dû reconnaître que la violence […] s’exprime […] à l’intérieur de Mobile. En particulier par certaines juxtapositions très crues: des juxtapositions de textes qui se suivent et se battent en quelque sorte les uns avec les autres.’21 By contrast, the lists of colours that accompany the advertisements in the mail-order 18 See Santschi, Voyage avec Michel Butor, pp. 57–60; Charbonnier, Entretiens avec Michel Butor, p. 157; Butor, Improvisations sur Michel Butor, pp. 136, 145–46; Butor, Curriculum vitae, p. 134. 19 The text is punctuated with references to the foreign-language newspapers read by the many different ethnic communities that make up the American population and by references to the foreign-language radio broadcasts to which they listen. 20 See Lydon, Perpetuum Mobile, p. 166, and Dhavernas, ‘Effets de couleurs pour une représentation des Etats-Unis’ in Calle-Gruber (ed.), Butor et l’Amérique, pp. 141–50. 21 Butor in Santschi, Voyage avec Michel Butor, p. 59.

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catalogues used by Butor as source material suggested to him a means of creating chromatic links across the text and a way of producing unfamiliar graphic and semantic conjunctions : j’ai pris dans les catalogues des énumérations qui me permettaient de saisir une façon américaine de saisir les couleurs. […] Il y a des passages de Mobile où je prends des monuments américains, des phénomènes naturels américains, etc., et où j’applique à cette liste une liste de couleurs qui est américaine aussi, mais qui originellement est appliquée à d’autres objets. […] Ces rencontres frappantes de deux termes qui, au premier abord, sont très éloignés, ces images que l’on trouve individuellement dans les textes surréalistes, nous allons pouvoir, en utilisant ces listes, ces champs de vocabulaire, avoir vraiment des champs magnétiques, poétiques […] Chacune de ces listes est une sorte de matrice, et on va pouvoir multiplier l’une par l’autre et donner la totalité des images engendrées par ces deux facteurs. Leur mise en présence nous permet d’ouvrir les portes à de nouvelles chambres de notre imagination.22

In short, the colour schemes borrowed from the Sears Roebuck and Montgomery Ward catalogues provide Butor with a ready-made means of linking disparate phenomena, and of producing ensembles that, by virtue of the new images generated, are greater than the sum of their parts. However, if the mail order catalogues provide Butor with a multicoloured ‘palette’ that allows him to organise and relate the heterogeneous material with which he is working in Mobile, they also figure in a rather more sinister cross-textual series relating to the rampant consumerism of the United States. Of the motifs that run through the text and link its different elements, the consumption motif is undoubtedly the most prominent. The sheer number of references to the many different types of merchandise manufactured, marketed, sold, bought, eaten, drunk, and burned up by Americans suggests that consumption is the nation’s principal activity and that consumerism is a fundamental feature of the American psyche. Among these references are the many different items on offer in the Sears Roebuck and Montgomery Ward mail-order catalogues, which range from the predictable and familiar (everyday household goods) to the outlandish (live exotic animals), the myriad ice-cream flavours listed on the Howard Johnson restaurant menus, the enormous quantities of fuel burned up by the countless cars speeding across the country, the many cars abandoned at the roadside, and the various bumper recipe books 22 Butor in Charbonnier, Entretiens avec Michel Butor, pp. 170–71.

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offering instructions for the preparation of several thousand recipes.23 In the United States of Mobile, consumption and illusionism would seem to be inseparable. A significant proportion of the advertisements in the mail-order catalogues present an assortment of ersatz goods, which include the ring setting designed to ‘magnify’ the precious stone, synthetically produced gems, cultured pearls, the rug ‘qui paraît bien plus cher qu’il n’est en réalité’, the shower curtain that looks as though it is made of satin, various fancy dress costumes (including, ironically, a tramp’s outfit), replica weapons, painting-by-numbers kits and the auto-harp that allows even the musically talentless and untrained to ‘play’ an instrument.24 The American child is born a consumer. Waiting for the newborn baby is a personal ‘service à nourrissons’ designed to help him or her master eating and drinking (i.e. consumption). In the course of his or her life, he or she will be encouraged to absorb a wide range of dietary supplements and medicines that profess to promote relaxation, to counteract some of the results of immoderate consumption (diet pills) and even to stop the clock (anti-ageing pills).25 Consumerism and religion would seem to be inextricably associated in the United States. This rather unexpected association is most fully explored in the lengthy description of Clifton’s cafeteria (pp. 375–89), but it is also signalled in the passing references to the income-generating activities of the clergy26 and in the references to advertisements in the mailorder catalogues for rosary beads, recorded Bible stories and illustrated Bibles (pp. 161, 429, 432, 436). Finally, the relationship between consumption and oppression is explored through the numerous references to the slave trade, to white appropriation of Native American territory, and to the packaging of Native American customs and culture as a spectacle to be consumed by the tourist in the palatable accounts of American history offered by the theme parks (pp. 133–34, 148).27 There is, in Mobile, a highly significant counterpoint between the place-names of Native American sites and the names that the white European settlers and their descendants have imposed on the landscape. 23 For example, the Betty Crocker recipe book, which boasts 2200 recipes (p. 357), the Livre de Cuisine des Américains, which offers 1500 recipes (p. 355) and the Nouveau Livre de Cuisine (p. 361), which lists 1403 recipes. 24 See pages 119, 124–25, 161, 247, 277, 279, 282, 303. 25 See pages 140, 142, 144–45, 355, 397, 401, 441. 26 For instance, the range of different types of jam produced by monks (pp. 269–71, 273–75, 332). 27 Compare Butor’s poem ‘Sur la réserve’ (Ici et maintenant, pp. 35–36).

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Not only are the Native American place-names generally associated with natural features – lakes, rivers, woodlands, mountains – but they are by and large unique.28 In the case of the Native American names, there is a straightforward, one-to-one correspondence between signifier and signified, a correspondence that acts as a nostalgic reminder of a lost world and a more ‘innocent’ time before the distinctive cultures and languages of the Native American nations were destroyed by the European settlers and before their land was appropriated. By contrast, there is a marked tendency towards repetition in the place-names that were imported by the European settlers, which appear and reappear across the text.29 On one level, the recurrence of these names in physically distant locations testifies to the rapid dissemination of the European immigrant population across this vast territory; on another level, however, it is a sign of a widespread nostalgia for shared aspirations.30 This nostalgia for the Old World also makes itself felt in many other aspects of American society, behaviour and attitudes: in particular, the foreign-language newspapers that the immigrants read, the 28 For example Tuolumee River (p. 23), Lake Waccamaw (p. 31), Pee Dee River (p. 33), Chattahoochee River (p. 36), Ocala National Forest (p. 36), Arapaho National Forest (p. 41), Lake Okechobee (p. 56), Apalachicola River (p. 71), Talladega National Forest (p. 72), Lake Winnebago (p. 92), Wabash River (p. 130), Kottenai National Forest (p. 257), Lake Winona (p. 275), Lake Waukewan (p. 275), Lake Winnisquam (p. 275), Lake Penobscot (p. 286), Adirondacks Mountains (p. 294), Kittatinny Mountains (p. 297), Pohatcong Mountains (p. 301), Lake Tecumseh (p. 355), Lake Wowoka (p. 355), Lake Pana (p. 360), Chikaskia River (p. 360), Susquehanah River (p. 393), Muskingum River (p. 437), Lake Iamonia (p. 454), Lake Chatuga (p. 457), Lake Allatoona (p. 461). Note also the numerous references to translated Native American names that also refer to natural features, to animals or to hunting: ‘la caverne du GrandOuragan’ (p. 21), ‘les monts Roi-de-la-Tempête, Tête-de-Démon et Tromperie’ (p. 40), ‘les lacs de L’Herbe et du Renard’ (p. 90), ‘les lacs de la Tête-d’Ours, de l’Ile-auxOurs’ (p. 91), ‘les lacs de la Peau-d’Ours et du Grand-Arbre-de-Vie’ (p. 91), ‘les lacs de la Peau-de-Chevreuil et du Bison’ (p. 149). 29 For example, Florence (pp. 17–18, 36, 39–41), Windsor (pp. 42–44, 492–93, 509–10), Bristol (pp. 42–44, 498, 504–05), Berlin (pp. 43–46, 274–75, 278, 295, 299–300), Milford (pp. 53–54, 127–29, 131, 158, 160, 285–86, 306, 474, 476), Oxford (pp. 67, 72–74, 207–08, 211, 227), Cleveland (pp. 68–69, 71, 74, 236, 240, 428, 445, 455, 456, 464–65, 467), Cambridge (pp. 88–89, 96–97, 118–19, 218–19), Albion (pp. 87– 88, 98, 133), Hanover (pp. 119–22, 131, 270–71, 300–02, 308), Washington (pp. 124–26, 134–37, 164–65, 168–69, 176–77), Burlington (pp. 147–48, 171–72, 529, 532), Richmond (pp. 181–82, 189, 200, 228–29, 231, 234, 480–81, 499, 511), Manchester (pp. 189, 202, 207, 212, 215, 221, 223–26, 326, 330, 334, 339, 348–49, 366), Newport (pp. 229, 231, 288–89, 302, 369–70, 393–94, 414, 425–27, 437–38, 444, 497–98, 506), Glasgow (pp. 247, 255, 501–02, 513), Newcastle (pp. 473, 477). See also page 159. 30 Compare Hirsch: ‘The European immigrants continue to function within the old frame of reference’ (‘Michel Butor: The Centralized Vision’, p. 337).

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various foreign-language radio programmes to which they listen and the many different types of cuisine that they have brought with them; Jefferson’s various schemes to import European tastes and skills (pp. 193, 196–98), his references to classical antiquity (pp. 500–503, 511– 12), the interior decor of Monticello (pp. 501, 503, 504, 507) and the paintings that he brought back from Paris (p. 445); the consternation expressed by the anonymous white speakers about what they consider to be black appropriation of Christianity (pp. 176–79); the regressive impact that, Louis Sullivan believed, the Columbian exhibition of 1893 had on the development of American architecture and taste (pp. 135–43); some of the wares advertised in the Sears Roebuck and Montgomery Ward catalogues;31 and the newspaper articles on Ward MacAllister’s recommendations to those who wish to acquire good taste and manners (pp. 84, 85, 87, 89, 91, 93, 98–99, 100, 108). The citation of some of the rules of conduct advocated by MacAllister is only one of many references to various sets of instructions and manuals that figure in Mobile. These include recipe books, car and lorry maintenance and repair manuals, Benjamin Franklin’s ‘Information to those who would remove to America’, fishing manuals, marriage guidance manuals, etiquette handbooks, guides to living with heart disease and to overcoming arthritis, and family planning manuals.32 The number and variety of these instruction manuals suggest a desire for mastery and control that might be interpreted as a remnant of the nation’s imperialistic and pioneering history. However, despite the strength of America’s will to master and control its physical environment, it is powerless to tame its unconscious, and the nightmares that trouble the slumber of its citizens reveal deep fears and anxieties that derive from the brutality and oppression on which American society was founded, from the expected retribution of its victims and from an inability to accept otherness.33 The proceedings of the trial of Susanna Martin show, in microcosm, the process whereby society exorcises its irrational terrors through the persecution of a scapegoat who has dared to deviate in some way from the expectations of his or her social group;34 the inability to accept difference is also one of the factors that contributed to the establishment of Native American reservations designed to ‘contain and restrain’ and to the creation of theme parks 31 32 33 34

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For instance, goose-feather pillows imported from Europe (p. 342). See pages 95, 120, 127–28, 130, 150, 151, 153, 154, 245–46. See also Conacher, ‘Mobile ou l’aventure inexplorée dans la nature de la peur’. Susanna Martin was one of the women convicted and hung for witchcraft in Salem in 1692.

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in which the Native Americans are ‘tamed’ and commodified as spectacles; above all, it is the source of the racial prejudice handed down from generation to generation, which expresses itself in a multitude of different ways from banal everyday conversations to the racist commentaries that figure in so-called liberal discourse (in particular, Jefferson’s letters and the extracts from his ‘Notes on the State of Virginia’). America, as represented in Mobile, has a guilty conscience and the various sleeping aids advertised in the catalogues – electric blankets, goose-feather pillows, anti-allergy pillows, relaxation chairs, ‘beauty rest’ mattresses 35 – are a poor defence against the bad dreams that guilt and fear provoke. In Description de San Marco the various passages belonging to the three sets of narratorial voices figure on the page as discrete units of prose of varying length and in different typefaces. Formal coherence is established through the creation of a network of internal correspondences that offer a textual equivalent of the echoes produced by the voices and footsteps of the ‘foule’ in the resonating interior of the basilica. On the most simple level, these correspondences take the form of word-motifs that reappear in a wide range of contexts and in the discourse of different voices. As in Mobile, the recurrence of and variation on certain proper names provide a means of linking the three series. Thus, the description of the Creation mosaic and the quotations from Genesis are linked to the conversations of the tourists by the brief reference to one of Eve’s namesakes (‘Nous venons de quitter Eva’), while variations on the word/proper name ‘rose’ (Rose, Rosa, Rosetta) appear in all three series. Given the physical setting of the Cathedral, it is not surprising that, of the various types of word-motifs, the most common are terms relating to colour, light and water, their regular recurrence across the text and their combination and recombination in different contexts translating into textual terms the impressions made by the play of light and colour on the lagoon and the fluid, constantly changing patterns formed by the reflections on the water.36 35 See pages 341, 342, 344, 354, 372–73. Note, too, the repeat alarm clocks that are designed to give the sleeper a few minutes extra rest (pp. 103, 105, 106) and the aids against bed-wetting (pp. 459–60, 461). 36 Note the painting analogy that the commentator uses to describe his efforts to transcribe his impressions of the scene: ‘Je n’ai pu conserver que quelques pointes, les crêtes, comme un peintre qui dessine une mer un peu agitée, juste ce qu’il fallait pour faire tourner ce murmure, lui faire éclairer, refléter les objets qu’il baigne comme les eaux dans un canal’ (p. 14). See also Mason, ‘An Interpretation through Pattern and Analogy of Michel Butor’s Description de San Marco’.

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The clothing, hairstyles and jewellery of the figures who appear in the mosaics are echoed in the motley fashions of the visitors, while the painted fingernails of the female tourists are similar to the multicoloured stones that make up the mosaics: Je voulais que des gens appartenant à la foule des touristes puissent résonner avec des personnages représentés en haut, ce qui m’était facilité, du fait que l’habillement joue un très grand rôle dans l’art des mosaïques de Saint-Marc. Par le biais de la mode, de la parure, je pouvais lier des femmes d’autrefois à des femmes d’aujourd’hui […] pour attirer l’attention sur les femmes de cette foule, j’ai fait mentionner des couleurs de cheveux, des couleurs de lèvres et des couleurs d’ongles. L’ongle forme comme un petit carreau de mosaïque, comme une petite pierre.37

The ever-present pigeons are reminders of their more illustrious biblical relatives – the Holy Ghost and the dove dispatched from Noah’s Ark, both of which figure in the mosaics and in the biblical extracts38 – while the honeymooners who flock to the city are echoed ironically in the pairs of animals that figure in the mosaics depicting the naming of the animals and the Flood: ‘Le lion près de sa lionne, le cheval avec sa jument, l’ours et son ourse, le dromadaire et sa femelle, le renard avec sa renarde, un couple de léopards et un couple de hérissons’ (p. 33). The correspondences elaborated between, on the one hand, the ‘foule’ of tourists and, on the other, the figures who appear in the mosaics or who are mentioned in the biblical excerpts serve to foreground the theme of continuity that runs through the text. The conversations and preoccupations of the tourists may seem banal and trivial; their multi-coloured clothes, hair and cosmetics may suggest servitude to the ephemeral whims of fashion; however, the parallels that are established between them and the figures in the mosaics and between their fragmented conversations and the incriptions and biblical extracts confer on them the status of heirs to a tradition that is based as much on exchange and plunder as on creed. Close analysis of the text reveals a very marked pattern of references to various forms of circulation: the circulation of the tourists within the building and in the square, the circulation of the water in the canals, but also the circulation of goods and language. The tourists who fret over the gifts that they want to take back from Venice39 are 37 Butor in Charbonnier, Entretiens avec Michel Butor, pp. 177–78. 38 See pages 26, 41, 44. 39 See pages 16, 20, 22, 26, 40.

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obeying the same basic instinct as that which drove the conquerors of the past to bring their war-booty back to Venice and impelled the crusader to steal the body of St Mark from its resting place in Alexandria (p. 17). Similarly, the various requests for translation assistance that punctuate the tourists’ conversations remind the reader of the status of language as the dominant currency of cultural exchange. Moreover, if the translation needs of the visitors are rather mundane, they are, nevertheless, part of a network of references to translation that draw attention to the fact that many of the beliefs on which the Christian Church is founded are based not on the original Scriptures, but on one or other or a mixture of the various translations of them. Viewed in this way, the history of Christianity is essentially a history of human intercourse and commerce. It is a history of exchange, plunder, interpretation, paraphrase, translation and addition, and St Mark’s Cathedral is as much a testimony to that history as a tribute to God. Butor’s collage of different discourses in Description de San Marco is, in many respects, a most fitting tribute to this history and to the church that he has chosen to represent it. The piecemeal manner in which the cathedral was constructed, to which Butor refers on a number of occasions in the text,40 can, in fact, be read as an architectural variation on the process of collage, its assimilation of heterogenous booty from many different parts of the world and the additions, removals and adaptations that were made to it over the centuries corresponding to the processes by which the collage artist combines and integrates his or her found materials, adding, removing and adjusting until a coherent ensemble emerges. Chromatic and liquid motifs also figure prominently in 6 810 000 litres d’eau par seconde and serve to link the various elements that make up the text – the commentary of the speaker, the extracts from Chateaubriand and the fragmentary conversations of the visitors. Here, Butor tries to recreate, through the patterns of his text, the dominant impressions made by Niagara Falls on its visitors. The almost exhaustive lists of colours that figure in the conversations of the black gardeners about the flowers that grow at the Falls create chromatic links that are the equivalent of the multiple rainbows described in Chateaubriand’s text (‘Des arcs-en-ciel sans nombre se courbent et se croisent sur l’abîme’, p. 14), while many of the noises that accompany the snatches of dialogue recall the various rhythms and sounds of water: 40 See pages 19, 20–21, 33, 66 , 67, 69–70, 106, 107.

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Les bruits peuvent varier de hauteur ou de vitesse, mais surtout ils varient de signification; le nom qui leur est donné désigne leur forme et leur origine, le sens qu’ils prennent automatiquement dans un contexte où apparaît le même mot; mais il n’est pas un seul de ces bruits qui ne puisse concourir parfois à décrire l’eau. (6 810 000 litres d’eau par seconde, p. 150)

The theme of consumption, which figured so prominently in Mobile, reappears here in the list of tasteless souvenirs that can be bought in the multitude of shops which have sprung up around the Falls. However, vulgar though these objects may be, the human desire to consume is a variation on a minor scale on the voracious ‘bouche béante’ of the chasm, which devours not only the ‘cent mille torrents’, but also any wildlife or human beings who venture too close to the edge. The related motif of predation links Chateaubriand’s text, which describes the flight of eagles in the gorge, with the conversations of the ageing, but amorous, human predators who pursue youthful quarry in an attempt to compensate for the disappointments of their lives.41 As Michael Spencer has also noted, 6 810 000 litres d’eau par seconde is punctuated with references to various types of deterioration and decay.42 The ill-effects of humanity’s impact on nature are relentlessly charted. This theme first appears in the discrepancy between the opening intertextual extracts from Essai historique, politique et moral sur les révolutions anciennes et modernes (1797) and the modified version that appeared four years later in Atala, Chateabriand’s observations concerning the changes that have taken place in the intervening four years drawing attention to the beginnings of commercial exploitation of the site: ‘Aujourd’hui de grands chemins passent à la cataracte; il y a des auberges sur la rive américaine, et, sur la rive anglaise, des moulins et des manufactures au-dessous du chasme’ (p. 15). This discrepancy between the two versions is the point of departure for Butor’s own variations on the theme of degradation. These variations include not only the damage done to the natural landscape, but a wide range of other types of degradation, including the breakdown of the relationships between the couples who visit the site, the deterioration of the once warm relationship between the black gardeners and the children of their employers (pp. 69–71), the breaking or wearing away of the souvenir 41 See also the menacing analogy used by the speaker to describe the sound made by the ubiquitous air conditioners: ‘Tous les conditionneurs d’air qui bourdonnent comme des essaims d’énormes mouches, d’énormes oiseaux, yeux injectés, becs acérés, serres tranchantes’ (p. 135). 42 Spencer, Michel Butor, pp. 130–31.

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crockery and clothing bought at the Falls (pp. 86–87), and the collapse of the concrete bridge (p. 26). However, despite the prominence of this motif of decay and degradation, it can be seen as part of a broader network of motifs based on certain thematic oppositions. This set of contrapuntal motifs – the mobile versus the stable, the changing versus the immutable, the similar versus the different – underpins the structure of 6 810 000 litres d’eau par seconde and contributes significantly to the co-ordination of its disparate elements into a coherent ensemble. 6 810 000 litres d’eau par seconde is essentially an attempt to capture in words the paradoxical elements of both the Falls and of American culture. Niagara Falls is a site of constant movement and change, but the spectacle itself is a permanent feature of the American landscape and has figured in the mythology of its people from time immemorial. It is composed of elements that are, at least to the naked eye, unchanging – the rock formations of the gorge – and of an element that is constantly mobile and ever-changing – the water. Similarly, American society and culture is founded on a paradoxical tension between the constant and the variable. This tension manifests itself in numerous contexts and the various strands of the text are linked by a motif based on the play between same and different. Thus, although the couples who visit the site come from all over the United States, and although their stories differ in their detail, the fundamental similarities between their situations and their concerns render them interchangeable. The souvenirs sold in the local shops testify to our apparently limitless capacity to devise new types of merchandise, but the recurrence of the motif of the Falls on all the items on offer fuses them into a single homogeneous mass of kitsch. The most pointed instances of this motif occur in passages relating to race. The States may be ‘United’, but the white American sense of identity is based on the notion of difference.43 The white visitors are very concerned to avoid contact with black people and define themselves as being different from blacks by virtue of the fact that they are distinguishable from one another whereas, to their eyes, blacks are not: ‘Mais tu sais bien que tous les Noirs se ressemblent!’ (p. 53). If the references to racism resume one of the dominant themes of Mobile and offer grim snapshots of white American ignorance and bigotry, the conversation between Betty and Abel about the differences between Americans and Canadians offers a slightly comical 43 For an analysis of the theme of difference in Butor’s work, see Smock, ‘The Disclosure of Difference in Butor’.

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variation on the theme, their foolishness and naivety expressing itself most clearly in Betty’s final preposterous observation that, although Canadian women wear the same sorts of dress as American women, they walk differently (p. 27). Although the sheer quantity of references to various types of decay and to racism tend to support Spencer’s argument that 6 810 000 litres d’eau par seconde is informed by an uncharacteristically pessimistic perspective, there are, nevertheless, other cross-textual motifs that act as a counter to the more obvious negative motifs of the text. For, if the tourist industry has transformed the landscape into an ugly commercial sprawl, if most of the visitors to the Falls encounter only disappointment and if the passing of time brings them closer to death and no nearer to fulfilment, the natural cycle of the seasons brings new growth to the countless plants that flourish around the Falls. Indeed, Elmer’s wonderment at nature’s extraordinary capacity for self-renewal encapsulates in a couple of lines the qualified optimism that occasionally makes itself felt in what is otherwise a rather bleak text: ‘Quelle fleur j’ai trouvée et quel printemps dans ce fruit qui se ride, que de graines!’ (p. 69). In Intervalle, the three series of segments of text and the various types of text that figure within these segments are connected by a number of features: the recurrence of thematic refrains; situational parallels between the various intertexts and the schematic romantic intrigue of Intervalle; correspondences between the sections devoted to the ‘autocritique’ and those assigned to the ‘journal après coup’; and the repetition of certain words, phrases and images in the various series.44 Thus, the theme of the ‘voyage’ serves to establish links between the intertextual material (the extracts from Nerval’s Voyage en Orient, Baudelaire’s Voyage à Cythère, and Butor’s Description de San Marco) and the various references to travel posters, the photographic guide to Venice that the woman scans as she waits for her train and the couple’s short-lived fantasy about eloping to Venice. The inconclusive romance between the couple is echoed in the allusions to the unhappy love affair of Adolphe and Ellénore, in the numerous extracts from Sylvie and in the extracts from the France-Soir serial entitled ‘Les Amours célèbres’, which draw on two sections of Nerval’s Voyage en Orient.45 The sections devoted to the internal bodily functions of the 44 See also Mason’s incisive analysis of the text in ‘Expanding Fictions: Butor’s Intervalle’. 45 ‘The chapters entitled ‘San-Nicolo’ and ‘Les Moulins de Syra’. See Spencer, Site, citation et collaboration chez Michel Butor, pp. 48–50.

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characters are linked to the ‘journal après coup’ by the fact that the author of the journal frequently has recourse to anatomical and surgical imagery to explain his reworking of his manuscript,46 while the references to the passengers’ attempts to find the correct crossword solutions are echoed in the references in the retrospective journal to the author’s deliberations on his choice of words and on his revisions of the text. Finally, the ternary titles of the 31 chapters that make up the book draw attention to some of the key recurrent motifs of the text. Thus, the various headings relating to transport (‘Voies’, ‘Canaux’, ‘Detour’) serve to foreground the themes of travel and the indirect efforts of Marc and Adrienne to communicate with each other. The juxtaposition, in some of the section titles, of words relating to sound and to silence (‘Echos’, ‘Mutismes’) draws attention to the counterpoint between the spoken and the unspoken that runs through the various sequences of the text, while the word ‘hantise’, which figures in several of the headings, alludes to the memories of the past and of the dead that flit through the characters’ thoughts, to the reflections on mortality that are articulated in the retrospective journal and to the way in which Butor’s text is ‘haunted’ by the words of other writers. Perhaps the most important of these headings are the various terms that relate to waiting: ‘attente’, ‘lenteur’, ‘limbes’, ‘paralysie’, ‘arrêt’ ‘station’, ‘répit’, ‘entre-deux’ and, of course, ‘intervalle’. Here, as in Passage de Milan, the encounter between the characters is an interruption (a ‘répit’ or ‘intervalle’) in their routine; they are suspended between a past about which they reminisce and a future for which they concoct never-tobe-realised plans; like the bachelors of Le Grand Verre and of Passage de Milan, they live in a state of limbo, paralysed by their inability to take the decisive action that is necessary if they are to fulfil their aspirations.47 Collaboration Although Butor has never completely ruled out the possibility that he will one day return to the novel form, the many interviews he has given in the intervening years stress the liberation that his apparent abandonment of the genre has brought him. According to Butor, collaboration has been the most important factor in this liberation and in 46 See, for example, pages 112, 135. 47 See also Rice’s very interesting article in which he argues that the spatial connotations of the title ‘combine to displace the reader’s attention from time [..] to space’ (‘In the Interval: Butor and Decor’).

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the subsequent development of his career. As he has explained to Madeleine Santschi, the invitations that he received to work with painters and musicians saved him from the limitations that recognition as a ‘novelist’ would have imposed and created opportunities for experimentation and innovation: A une certaine date, j’aurais pu m’enfoncer à l’intérieur d’une oeuvre butorienne, comme ça, solitaire… Quand j’écrivais des romans. J’aurais pu continuer à écrire des romans. Mais j’ai été sauvé, si vous voulez, par des collaborations. Cela aurait été peut-être très bien d’écrire encore des romans […]. Mais j’ai le sentiment d’avoir été sauvé de ce succès qui aurait pu m’arriver un peu trop facilement. Sauvé en partie par ces sollicitations autour de moi: sollicitations des peintres, des écrivains, et je dirais des lieux. […] Cela a donné à ce que j’ai fait une espèce d’aération et d’ouverture qui sont pour moi extraordinarement précieuses. Les peintres m’ont fait inventer, découvrir d’autres chambres et les musiciens aussi.48

However, if the work that Butor has produced since the publication of Degrés is remarkable by the range of genres that he employs and even by the variety of the media within which he has worked, his openness to the opportunities afforded by collaboration had already been attested in both Passage de Milan and in the essay on science fiction that he wrote shortly before the publication of his first novel. If, in Passage de Milan, it seems unlikely that the little cénacle of science fiction enthusiasts who meet in Samuel Léonard’s flat will ever accomplish their collective project, their lively debate and willingness to engage creatively with each other do offer, nonetheless, a modest version of dynamic creative collaboration at work. Other evidence of Butor’s fascination for the collaborative project is, of course, seen in the many references in his fiction, in his travel works and in the various cross-genre works that he produced during the 1960s to the great collective architectural achievements of the past. Most notable among these are the countless references to religious buildings that, by virtue of their scale, the various skills and trades that their construction and decoration demanded and the time it took to complete them, constitute prime examples of the immense creative feats that humanity has accomplished through collaboration. These feats include the two cathedrals of L’Emploi du temps, the Basilica of St Mark’s in Description de San Marco, the numerous religious edifices that appear in the first volume of Le Génie du lieu (Cordoba’s mosque-cathedral, the church of 48 Butor in Santschi, Voyage avec Michel Butor, p. 78. See also Desoubeaux (ed.), Entretiens: quarante ans de vie littéraire, vol. III, pp. 94–95.

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Hagia Sophia, 532–537, Istanbul

Osios David in Thessaloniki, the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, and the remnants of the many temples of Delphi), the Mayan pyramids and temples at Tikal, and the various cities described in the travel works: On a trop tendance à considérer les oeuvres d’art toujours comme l’oeuvre d’un individu et alors on se trouve tout à fait démuni pour analyser des oeuvres comme par exemple Notre-Dame de Paris qui est une oeuvre qui s’est faite pendant un certain nombre de siècles avec la collaboration d’un très grand nombre d’artistes géniaux dont en général on ne connaît pas les noms, dont on ne connaît pas les dates non plus, tout cela forme pourtant une oeuvre qui nous dit toutes sortes de choses. Eh bien, une ville c’est aussi une oeuvre, il y a des villes qui sont particulièrement frappantes, il y a des villes qui ont une très grande unité, je pense à certaines villes italiennes, une ville comme Sienne ou une ville comme Pérouse, ce sont des villes qui nous frappent par un caractère tout à fait ‘personnel’, mais il y en a d’autres qui comportent des régions différentes, des époques différentes, des couches différentes. C’est un peu cela que j’ai essayé d’analyser dans les textes du Génie du lieu.49

Butor’s own collaborative activities are too numerous and too varied to discuss in any detail here. Moreover, access to the results of some of 49 Desoubeaux (ed.), Entretiens: quarante ans de vie littéraire, vol. I, p. 218.

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these collaborations remains very difficult, since, in the case of the work produced with painters, the resulting publications have tended to take the form of deluxe limited editions. Consequently, I shall limit myself here to a brief survey of the types of collaboration in which Butor has engaged, followed by an analysis of some of the general patterns which can be detected in his choice of collaborators. Butor’s conception of collaboration is broad and encompasses a variety of different types of exchange, including the genuine collaborative project in which the participants work together or in reaction to each other, the writing of tributes in response to the work of others, and the production of texts that have been stimulated by the associations generated by identifiable paintings, sculptures or compositions produced by a given artist or musician. Moreover, as he declares in one of his interviews with Madeleine Santschi, his collaborators are not confined to the living. He has found it possible to establish creative ‘dialogue’ with the artists and musicians of the past: En faisant éclater la frontière du roman et en m’aidant de peintres, de musiciens – et même de peintres et de musiciens morts, parce que il y a des musiciens morts et des peintres morts avec lesquels un dialogue est possible pour moi – cela m’a permis de développer des phénomènes stylistiques et imaginatifs de plus en plus variés, et même, à partir d’un certain moment, de fabriquer des livres à partir de ces musiciens et peintres.50

Works such as La Querelle des Etats, Comme Shirley and Le Rêve de l’ammonite are the outcome of actual two-way collaboration undertaken with, respectively, Camille Bryen, Grégory Masurovsky and Pierre Alechinsky. Although information about these projects is generally scarce, in certain cases, the interviews – in particular his extended published ‘dialogues’ with Michel Sicard on Alechinsky – and his correspondence offer insights into the working methods of the writer and artist.51 Thus, in the case of La Querelle des Etats, Butor initiated the process, providing a text that then acted as a stimulus for the conception of the graphic work, while in Comme Shirley, the images preceded Butor’s text.52 Le Rêve de l’ammonite seems to have been produced according to 50 Butor in Santschi, Voyage avec Michel Butor, p. 78. See also Desoubeaux (ed.), Entretiens: quarante ans de vie littéraire, vol. III, p. 54. 51 Butor and Sicard, Alechinsky dans le texte; Butor and Sicard, Alechinsky: frontières et bordures; Butor and Sicard, ABC de correspondance; Butor and Sicard, Alechinsky: travaux d’impression. See also Butor’s very informative contribution to the 1971 Colloque de Cerisy on the nouveau roman: ‘Comment se sont écrits certains de mes livres’ in Ricardou (ed.), Nouveau roman, hier, aujourd’hui, pp. 243–54. 52 See Desoubeaux (ed.), Entretiens: quarante ans de vie littéraire, vol. II, p. 357.

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a strict system of exchange and response, partly no doubt because of the distance separating Alechinsky, who was living at the time in Bougival, and Butor who, during the period concerned, was splitting his time between Nice and the United States. As Butor’s conversations with Sicard indicate, the production of the text was governed by precise, agreed procedures of exchange, response and counter-response: Le livre s’est fait de la façon suivante: il y a d’abord les cinq eaux-fortes à l’intérieur du livre, qui n’avaient d’ailleurs pas leur couleur définitive, puis le texte qui a été composé; avec les épreuves, Alechinsky a mis en marge des remarques en lithographie.53

Many of the texts of Envois and Exprès (Envois 2) belong to the second category of collaboration – they are tributes to artists whom Butor admires and with whom, in some cases, he has worked – and consist of ‘vers de circonstance’ that, in paying homage to a given painter or sculptor, draw attention to the occasion which they are designed to mark: ‘Envois’ représente donc une autre façon d’attaquer le problème de la collaboration avec les peintres: c’est de souligner le caractère d’occasion. Telle date, telle circonstance historique! Alors je fais un texte pour un peintre ou pour un musicien ou encore pour quelqu’un d’autre et ce texte est éclairé par une notice concernant sa génèse!54

In addition to several texts dedicated to writers, musicians, photographers or editors, Envois and Exprès includes tributes to a wide range of contemporary artists including Camille Bryen, Antoni Tàpies, JeanLuc Parant, Gregory Masurovsky, Shirley Goldfarb, Ania Staritsky, Maria-Helena Vieira da Silva, Albert Giacometti, Jacques Hérold, Roger Pfund, Jir“í Kolár“, Seund Ja Rhee and Jacques Monory. Each tribute is accompanied by a brief commentary indicating the origins of the text, the nature of Butor’s relationship with the artist concerned or the reasons for his admiration, and highlighting a particular aspect of the artist’s life or work: for instance, Tapiès’s fascination with textures; Parant’s obsession with spherical forms; Roger Pfund’s rehabilitation and reworking of old photographs of famous writers and dancers;55 Jir“í Kolár“’s juxtaposition of details from the Old Masters in his froissages; the dramatic perspectives of Seund Ja Rhee’s landscapes of the Alpes Maritimes; and Jacques Monory’s exploitation of ‘les images que nous fournit l’astronomie moderne’.56 53 54 55 56

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Butor and Sicard, Alechinsky: travaux d’impression, p. 76. Butor in Santschi, Voyage avec Michel Butor, p. 135. See also Miller, ‘Michel Butor: collaborations avec “Trois Suisses”’. Butor, Ballade du tremblement de ciel, in Exprès, pp. 110–11.

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Claude Gellée (known as Le Lorrain), Seaport with the Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba, 1648

The third category of ‘collaboration’ includes texts that have been ‘generated’ by the work of both contemporary artists and some of the masters of the past. The point of departure for ‘Conversation’, the first text of the first volume of Illustrations, was the paintings of the eighteenth-century Genoan painter Alessandro Magnasco. In many respects, ‘Conversation’ takes up and represents in the form of a textual ‘miniature’ the situation (the anticipated ‘fête’) and some of the themes of Passage de Milan (death, decay and the vanity of all things, deferred desire, non-communication). In ‘Conversation’, the perplexed speaker finds himself cast in the role of a servant eavesdropping on the conversation of an aristocratic couple who would seem to be preparing for some kind of ever-deferred fête galante, who inhabit an eerie disintegrating landscape and whose instructions are relayed to the speaker in an incomprehensible language. There are very evident similarities between the couple, who are described as being emaciated and very tall, and the haggard, elongated figures of Magnasco’s paintings, while the various subjects that crop up in their

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conversation – the planned fête, the ruined château, soldiers who have taken refuge in the decaying outhouses, mysterious ‘capucins’ who will come and buy their ‘cast-offs’ – recall Magnasco’s predilection for the fantastic and the grotesque. If Butor’s evocation in ‘Conversation’ of a world in decline captures the melancholy atmosphere of Magnasco’s compositions, it is also attentive to his technique and to the physical state of his paintings. The tenebrous lighting of Magnasco’s work and the poor state of conservation of some of his paintings have suggested the highly amusing and self-conscious exchange between the couple regarding the corrosive soot that rains down on their guests and obscures their view, the fading of the colours of their universe (‘Ce n’est pas seulement dans vos broderies, mais dans l’univers entier que la couleur rouge s’est ternie’, p. 19) and the disintegration of their world and, indeed, of their own bodies (‘Déjà la peinture de mes joues s’écaille’, p. 27).57 Butor’s ‘collaboration’ with another long-dead painter – Claude Lorrain – offers yet another variation on his favourite theme of the ‘voyage’. L’Embarquement de la Reine de Saba animates Claude’s 1648 painting in a narrative combining elements from the original story that inspired the painting – the Queen of Sheba’s meeting with Solomon58 – with new elements fabricated by Butor that develop ideas and images suggested by Claude’s composition or that ‘complete’ the biblical account. Like Claude’s painting, Butor’s text focuses on the preparations for the journey; explores, through a series of mini-narratives (i.e. the dreams of the members of the Queen’s household and the enigmas that the Queen will pose Solomon in order to test his wisdom), the feeling of anticipation provoked by L’Embarquement de la Reine de Saba; and translates into words the magnetic ‘pull’ of Claude’s ‘invitation au voyage’: ‘Le point de fuite est un point d’attraction. On est emporté vers ce lointain. Donc je veux partir, partir, moi … Tous les tableaux de Claude Lorrain sont des invitations au voyage.’59 As we saw in earlier chapters, Butor’s knowledge of the history of Western art and of the artistic traditions of other cultures is extensive and wide-ranging. It is also clear from the foregoing survey of the 57 For an analysis of the recurrence of the theme of decay in Butor’s fiction, see Miller, ‘Butor’s Beautiful Decay’. 58 1 Kings 10:1–13. Compare Nerval’s fascination with the Queen of Sheba. See Richer, Gérard de Nerval et les doctrines ésotériques, pp. 139–57. 59 Butor in Santschi, Une schizophrénie active, p. 139. Note too, ‘Le temps de l’embarquement de la Reine de Saba est suspendu. La Reine et sa suite sont en état d’attente et l’attente du voyage est toujours un moment privilégié. C’est un vide nécessaire. Les temps morts sont toujours importants. Il y a un bon usage à faire d’eux. C’est

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various types of collaboration that he has undertaken at different points in his career that his artistic tastes are broad and very diverse and that he remains highly responsive to new invitations and opportunities to collaborate with artists from familiar and less familiar cultural traditions. Notwithstanding the range of his cultural allusions, the eclecticism of his tastes and the heterogenity of his collaborative ventures, examination of his choice of collaborative partners does reveal certain patterns. Thus, although some of his many joint projects had their origins in fortuitous encounters or unsolicited invitations, there is also considerable evidence of shared preoccupations and common interests, which, in some instances at least, promoted the establishment of long-term working associations and encouraged collaboration on multiple projects. Of the painters with whom Butor has worked over the last forty years, Pierre Alechinsky has enjoyed a particularly privileged place in his collaborative ventures. Butor has worked with Alechinsky on several occasions and has written or co-written several critical studies on aspects of the painter’s work. In his extended ‘critical dialogues’ with Michel Sicard, Butor has singled out for particular attention a number of features of Alechinsky’s work that correspond to interests of his own. These include the reflexive treatment of the motif of the eye and, in particular, of the ‘regard réciproque’ (p. 42), the use of labyrinthine compositional structures, a fascination for cartography and travel, and a long-standing preoccupation with the relationship between word and image, which manifests itself in numerous different ways: the inclusion in his paintings and his graphic works of various sorts of inscription; the calligraphic treatment of line; the use of cartoon-like formats; the incorporation of ‘illuminated’ margins; the insertion of cryptographic messages in certain works; the creation of visual and verbal puns; and the exploitation of the graphic possibilities of certain letters (p. 195).60 However, perhaps the feature of Alechinsky’s working practice that most appeals to Butor is his predilection for retrieving and rehabilitating discarded texts, which he

pour cela que j’aime les gares et les aéroports. On y échappe à la machinerie supplicielle du quotidien. Dans ces temps de latence, on peut tout imaginer. C’est exactement mon propos lorsque j’écris à partir du tableau de Claude Lorrain’ (Desoubeaux (ed.), Entretiens: quarante ans de vie littéraire, vol. III, p. 227). 60 Butor and Sicard, Alechinsky dans le texte; Butor and Sicard, Alechinsky: frontières et bordures, Butor and Sicard, ABC de correspondance; Butor and Sicard, Alechinsky: travaux d’impression.

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then proceeds to use as a painting surface: ‘Pierre Alechinsky […] récupère les papiers et les écrits des autres, vieux grimoires de notaires, registres des familles […] il colle son dessin sur les mots des autres’.61 In this particular artistic practice Butor finds the visual equivalent of the literary recycling activity that has characterised his work since Degrés. Thus, when Alechinsky chooses to paint over a written, typed or printed text, he is drawing on the history of the document in order to establish a dialogue between the painted forms and the ‘surface déjà parlante’ of his material,62 while his re-use of old banknotes in the series ‘Revalorisations’ (1972) is a way of restoring value to the obsolete currency and, indeed, of endowing it with an aesthetic value that is independent of the fluctuations of the money-markets: Ce texte écrit est important parce que c’est de la monnaie, et que cette monnaie perdue va retrouver une valeur: cela valait cinq cents francs, mais ne les vaut plus, c’est un objet perdu, éliminé, la preuve étant qu’on dessine ou imprime dessus, mais ce fait même va lui redonner, au moins une partie, de sa valeur ancienne, et quelquefois une valeur plus grande que celle qu’il avait autrefois: cela devient une espèce de nouvelle monnaie, avec des propriétés évidemment différentes de l’ancienne qui n’a su conserver sa valeur: le travail de l’artiste s’efforce de rivaliser avec l’ancienne monnaie, l’artiste en proie au même matériau, écrivant lui aussi dessus, va essayer de faire quelque chose qui ne perdra pas sa valeur, et sera une monnaie véritable, une monnaie sans déperdition, sans inflation, une monnaie d’un autre âge ou temps – la monnaie d’un Age d’Or.63

Similarly, in Butor’s recent collaborative work with the Swiss painter Luc Joly, it is the latter’s capacity to inject new life into discarded and found materials through re-use and recontextualisation that attracts the writer to his work: Il cherche dans les décharges et réhabilite ce qui est relégué, réputé usé, périmé, les extradés, que ce soient de beaux passe-partout à fenêtres en rhodoïd ou les fragments superbement déchirés des boîtes en carton qui protégeaient sans que nous leur accordions la moindre attention les trésors des supermarchés. 61 Derouet, Alechinsky, p. 104. As part of an advertising campaign, Olivetti commissioned Alechinsky to produce lavish appointment diaries illustrated by the latter’s drawings on seventeenth-century manuscript sheets and on typescript sheets by Michel Butor. Compare ‘J’avais reçu de Michel Butor une brassée de vieux tapuscrits […] “Voici quelques feuilles de brouillons en désordre sur lesquelles tu pourras t’amuser à dessiner”’ (quoted in Derouet, Alechinsky, p. 104). 62 Butor and Sicard, Alechinsky dans le texte, p. 28. 63 Butor and Sicard, Alechinsky dans le texte, pp. 29–30.

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Les Indiens Hopi disent que les amoncellements d’ordures ménagères sont les domiciles et maternités de la mort, que c’est notre condamnation qui nous condamne, que c’est nous-mêmes que nous rejetons dans notre rejet. Le spectacle des cimetières de voitures ne nous le confirme-t-il pas surabondamment? Luc Joly recueille ces membra disjecta, ces objets parias, ces fossiles de l’agonie, les réanime par sa chirurgie, leur ouvre les yeux, délivre leurs mains et leurs lèvres, installe ces êtres de frontière dans des domaines de frontière: entre couleur et valeur, entre peinture et dessin, entre surface et sculpture, endroit et envers, intérieur et extérieur, école et tombe. En leur donnant chance d’une seconde vie, c’est une vie nouvelle qu’il nous offre.64

The found materials that Alechinsky and Joly rehabilitate – Butor’s typescripts and the refuse of modern consumer society – may seem to be very different from the found materials that Butor uses in Degrés – extracts from Cicero, Montaigne, Shakespeare, Coleridge, etc. – but the fundamental principle of composition on which the works of the painters and the writer are based is the same. In all three cases, the incorporation of old materials into new contexts serves to defamiliarise and to add new meanings and associations to the original materials. Moreover, as Butor’s commentary on Joly indicates, the process of recycling contrasts with and acts as an admittedly modest counter to the rampant consumerism to which Butor draws attention in Mobile.65 As in the case of his collaborative ventures with Alechinsky, Butor’s interest in the work of a number of artists who were once associated with surrealism – André Masson, Jacques Hérold, Paul Delvaux – may also be explained in part by a shared interest in the relationship between text and image. However, other features suggest quite specific reasons for his interest in the work of particular individuals. The surrealist predilection for ‘primitive’ art, which is evident in the work of both Masson and Hérold, is echoed in the many passages in Mobile and in Butor’s travel works where he describes the indigenous arts and crafts of the Native Americans and the Aborigines.66 The prominence 64 Butor, ‘Pour Luc Joly’. 65 Compare his commentary on the Aboriginal lance-heads that he brought back from Australia: ‘J’ai rapporté d’Australie deux points de lance très belles, taillées dans du verre qui provient pour l’une vraisemblablement d’un isolateur sur un poteau télégraphique, pour l’autre d’une bouteille de Coca-Cola’ (Butor in Didier, Le Retour du boomerang, p. 143). Other recyclers with whom Butor has collaborated include Bertrand Dorny, Jir“í Kolár“ and Jacques Monory. 66 According to Butor, it was André Breton who first drew his attention to Aboriginal art (Butor, Curriculum vitae, p. 201). Note too his explicit acknowledgement of his debt to Surrealism: ‘Je lui dois [au surréalisme], en très grande partie, ma relation

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of the Classical myths in Masson’s repertoire of motifs – in particular, his variations on the Theseus myth and his predilection for compositions based on the labyrinth and the underworld – explains Butor’s attraction to his painting, while, in the ‘exploded’ objects and people of Hérold’s work, Butor found a constantly renewed endeavour to resolve issues relating to point of view, which matched his own experimentation with narratorial voice and perspective.67 In particular, Hérold’s attempt to find ways of representing both the exterior and the interior of his subjects recalls Butor’s attempt in La Modification, through the use of the second-person pronoun, to establish an intermediary point of view that would offer the reader an external perspective on Léon while at the same time giving access to the workings of his mind. Delvaux’s suburban townscapes and his fascination for ‘lieux de passage’ – trains, railway stations, waiting rooms, town squares, streets68 – have an evident appeal for the author of La Modification and Le Génie du lieu. There is also an obvious correspondence between the surrealists’ exploration of the dream state and the prominence of the dream motif in both Butor’s fiction and many of his other works, including Mobile, Portrait de l’artiste en jeune singe, Boomerang and the five-volume Matière de rêves: ‘Les peintres me donnent des rêves nouveaux, qui sont les leurs, mais qui racontent les miens et qui vont

avec l’ethnographie, les arts primitifs, les Indiens, etc. Ça, je sais bien que cela vient du surréalisme’ (Butor in Santschi, Voyage avec Michel Butor, p. 114). See, for example, x the passages and series devoted to the Zuni Shalako ceremonies in Ou, to the Aztec x and Inca civilisations in Ou and Transit, and to Aboriginal, Maori and Indonesian art and oral traditions in Boomerang. See also Desoubeaux (ed.), Entretiens: quarante ans de vie littéraire, vol. III, p. 264. 67 See Butor, ‘Transfiguration’, Répertoire IV, pp. 331–39. 68 See, for example, the following: Vue de la gare du Quartier Léopold (1922, Fondation Paul Delvaux, Saint-Idesbald), Vieille gare du Luxembourg (1922, private collection), La Rue (1939, private collection), Le Train bleu (1946, private collection), Train de nuit (1947, Toyama Museum), Faubourg (1956, private collection), Solitude (1955, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Mons), Trains du soir (1957, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels), Trains de banlieue (1958, private collection), Gare (1959, private collection), Le Vicinal (1959, private collection), La Gare forestière (1960, Fondation Paul Delvaux, Saint-Idesbald), Le Veilleur (1961, The Rockefeller University, New York), Le Passage à niveau (1961, private collection), Le Veilleur II (1961, Nationalgalerie Staatliche Museen Preussicher Kulturbesitz, Berlin), Petite place de gare (1963, Fondation Paul Delvaux, Saint-Idesbald), Le Viaduc (1963, private collection), Gare la nuit (1963, Société nationale des chemins de fer belges), Gare de jour (1963, Société nationale des chemins de fer belges), Les Trois Lampes (1964, private collection), La Fin du voyage (1968, private collection).

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pouvoir rencontrer aussi ceux des autres. Avec quelqu’un comme Delvaux, c’est particulièrement tentant parce que, devant ses tableaux, nous avons tout de suite le sentiment de rêve.’69 The text Butor wrote as his contribution to the jointly authored Paul Delvaux (1975) is an account of a dream that fuses elements from Butor’s own recurrent dreams with figures and sites from Delvaux’s paintings. Here, as elsewhere in Butor, the structure of the dream takes the form of a quest, the object of which remains unspecified, but which clearly relates to issues of personal identity. The settings – a labyrinth-like cityscape, railway waiting rooms, a museum-like ‘cabinet de travail’ – recall some of Butor’s own favoured locations. The writer’s and painter’s shared admiration for Jules Verne is expressed in the titles of some of the paintings that Butor selects as textual generators and in the quotations from Voyage au centre de la terre that punctuate Butor’s tribute. Finally, in addition to the motif of the quest, the oneiric narrative generated by Delvaux’s paintings is characterised by several typical Butorian themes. Thus, the section devoted to Le Salut70 explores an issue – the relationship between limitation and freedom – that was one of the principal themes of La Modification; the section that originates in Delvaux’s Ecce homo or Descente de Croix71 alludes to another theme that figured prominently in La Modification, the psychological impact of a Catholic education (p. 44); finally, the themes of our obsessive search for knowledge about the universe we inhabit and the irresistible appeal of exploration manifest themselves in the various scientific specialists who appear and reappear in the course of the narrative and who have been inspired by the ‘scholars’ who figure in many of Delvaux’s paintings. A shared preoccupation with movement or, more specifically, with the mobilisation of the static explains, in part at least, Butor’s interest in the ostensibly very different work of Calder and Vasarély. The narrative frameworks of Butor’s novels are based partly on a play between the static and the mobile. Thus, in Passage de Milan, the fixed locale of the apartment block provides the framework for the circulation of the characters on the night of Angèle’s party, while, in La Modification, although the protagonist is more or less immobilised by the cramped physical conditions of the train compartment, the compartment itself is speeding across two countries towards Rome. 69 Butor in Santschi, Voyage avec Michel Butor, p. 179. 70 1938, Museum of Modern Art, New York. 71 1949, private collection.

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The optical paintings of Vasarély and the mobiles of Calder are also founded on a tension between the static and the kinetic.72 In the case of Calder, the sculpture is fixed to a given location, but its components move according to the passage of air currents or to the activation of a motorised mechanism, while Vasarély ‘animates’ the static picture surface through the elaboration of intricate geometrical patterns, the interaction of which with light produces a vibrant kinetic effect. If the play on the static and the mobile that characterises both artists’ work offers one explanation for Butor’s attraction to their sculpture and painting, their distinctive means of achieving their kinetic effects also suggest other reasons for Butor’s interest. Given his own frequent declarations about the active, ‘creative’ role of the reader in the production of the text,73 his interest in Vasarély’s work is perhaps not surprising, since the impression of movement created by the latter’s paintings depends on kinetic optical effects that take place in the spectator’s eye and mind. The appeal of Calder’s kinetic sculptures relates rather, I would argue, to Butor’s fascination for questions relating to space and time. The moveable parts of many of Calder’s structures recall natural forms – planets, insects, birds, plants – while their movement is suggestive of the revolution of the planets, the flight of birds and insects through the air, the swaying of plants in the wind or their tropistic growth towards the light. It is this latter association that Butor explores in the text written to accompany Calder’s gouaches in the volume on which they collaborated in 1962. The title of the volume – Cycle – draws attention to both the spatial and the temporal aspects of Calder’s work, referring as it does both to the idea of rotation in space and to the cyclical processes of nature and natural growth. Butor’s text develops this pun in the accompanying prose poems, which evoke the same landscape at different times of day and in different weather conditions and, in particular, the life of the plants that grow in it. These plants, which sway in the wind, open out in reaction to the rays of the sun and release their pollen to generate new life, are Butor’s response to the associations and images generated in his mind by the schematic organic shapes and cursive lines of Calder’s gouaches.74 72 Compare Butor’s commentary on Mobile: ‘Le livre est organisé comme une oeuvre de Calder: il contient des blocs de textes qui ressemblent aux pales de ses mobiles, et qui sont articulés entre eux par des charnières. L’oeil du lecteur joue le rôle du courant d’air pour faire bouger tout ça’ (Butor, Curriculum vitae, p. 135). 73 See Santschi, Voyage avec Michel Butor, p. 23 and Desoubeaux (ed.), Entretiens: quarante ans de vie littéraire, vol. II, pp. 43–44, 76, 91. 74 Butor, Illustrations, pp. 79–89.

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However, of all the collaborative ventures undertaken by Butor, perhaps the most ambitious is the virtual ‘collaboration’ that he envisages in Intervalle. According to the cover notes, this volume has its origins in a commission for a film script that was never shot: Il y a quelques années un metteur en scène de cinéma vient proposer à Michel Butor l’anecdote suivante: ‘Un homme et une femme qui ne se sont jamais vus se rencontrent entre deux trains dans la salle d’attente de Lyon-Perrache, ont une demi-heure de conversation, et repartent chacun de leur côté.’ En fin de compte le film ne peut se faire, mais cette semence germe peu à peu.75

By Butor’s own admission, Intervalle is a variation on La Modification: ‘Dans “Intervalle” il y a une parenté évidente entre l’anecdote centrale, le scénario, et “La Modification”. C’est net. Il s’agit là d’une espèce de variation humoristique de “La Modification”.’76 The setting, the imagined adulterous intrigue elaborated by the couple during their ‘brief encounter’ and several of the other characters77 are strongly reminiscent of the setting, the romantic situation and the characters of the earlier text. However, the resemblances are not limited to the fictional elements. Just as the second-person narrative voice of La Modification addresses the reader and involves him or her in the recounting of Léon’s story, so, in Intervalle, the reader is addressed on numerous occasions, either directly through explicit authorial interjections or indirectly through double-edged statements that figure in the characters’ dialogue or in the material they read as they wait for their trains. However, whereas in La Modification, the ‘vous’ form of narration served primarily to engage the reader in a reassessment of his or her assumptions and a reevaluation of his or her life, in Intervalle, the reader is being asked to complete Butor’s unfinished work. Like La Modification, Intervalle includes a number of fanciful variations on the school composition exercise: Imaginez que vous êtes monsieur Léon Delmont et que vous écrivez à votre maîtresse Cécile Darcella pour lui annoncer que vous avez trouvé pour elle une situation à Paris. […] Imaginez que vous voulez vous séparer de votre femme; vous lui écrivez pour lui expliquer la situation. (p. 115) Sujet de devoirs: à quels moments les interlocuteurs mentent-ils? A partir de quand se sont-ils manqués? Ont-ils su qu’ils s’étaient manqués? Imaginez leur dialogue s’ils ne l’avaient pas su; s’ils ne s’étaient pas manqués, c’est à 75 See also Curriculum vitae, p. 209, where Butor names the director as Robert Mazoyer. 76 Butor in Santschi, Voyage avec Michel Butor, p. 137. 77 For instance, the ‘ecclésiastique’, the young couple, the mother and child.

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dire s’ils avaient eu ce qu’on appelle communément une aventure; imaginez-la. (p. 96)

However, whereas in La Modification, the facetious instructions were designed to involve the reader in Léon’s situation and to encourage him or her to address the broader issues relating to cultural conditioning and personal identity underlying Léon’s marital crisis, in Intervalle, the reader is being invited to proceed from interpretation of the dialogue to the elaboration of an alternative scenario that would explore the ‘non-dit’ in the encounter. Thus, the reader is invited to add to, refine on and complete the portraits of the characters and to determine for him or herself the relationship, balance and boundaries between the dialogue and the thoughts of the characters: ‘Chaque lecteur pourra […] constituer plus finement son personnage, introduisant sa propre frontière entre le dit et le non-dit’ (p. 64). On another occasion, it is suggested that the reader modify the characterisation of the protagonist by turning him into a writer and by redistributing some of the material from other sections of the text and inserting it in the monologues of this writer-protagonist: ‘le lecteur pourra mettre la dernière main au protagoniste en le rendant plus ou moin écrivain lui-même, prélevant dans la réserve décalée un plus ou moins grand nombre de passages d’autocritique pour les insérer dans son monologue’ (p. 74). Even more radical is the direct address on page 46 in which ‘Butor’ the ‘scénariste’ suggests that the reader opens his or her own ‘journal après coup’, thereby adding yet another layer of reflexive commentary on the process of creation, while the brief passages in English that head several of the extracts from the retrospective journal urge the reader to take up his or her own writing tools and suggest that collaboration on ‘Butor’s’ film script is a form of apprenticeship in which the processes of writing and interpretation are complementary and mutually illuminating activities: ‘A do-itmyself novel’ (p. 54); ‘Do it yourself too, of course’ (p. 59); ‘Try my own ways to find your ways’ (p. 64); ‘Try your own way to find my ways (p. 73)’. The role Butor intends the reader to perform extends far beyond that of editor/reviser of his text. In taking up where Butor leaves off and in adding his or her own set of metafictional observations and critiques, the reader effectively takes control of one strand of the text and becomes a writer in his or her own right. In addition to these direct interjections by ‘Butor’, the text includes a number of other passages that, although ostensibly belonging to other strands and other contexts, can also be read as invocations to

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the reader. Thus, one of the job adverts read by the soldier suggests the possibilities of new opportunities for the reader as well as for the soldier (‘… vous apprendrez un vrai métier en moins d’un an’, p. 58), while the slogan of the travel poster that serves as kind of refrain running throughout the text (‘VOUS AUSSI VOUS POURREZ VOYAGER A MOITIE PRIX’) is a constant and insistent reminder to the reader that he or she has the possibility of embarking on a collaborative journey, which, by virtue of Butor’s contribution, means that the reader is effectively travelling ‘half price’.78 Finally, the proposal to shoot alternative biographies of the protagonists, to project these alternatives on to four different screens and then to film a screening of these versions in which the spectators would select, mix and match scenes offers insights into Butor’s thinking about the technical means that might be used to translate his collaborative ambitions into reality: ainsi il pourrait y avoir deux films différents pour l’écran de gauche, deux biographies, deux pour celui de droite, les vies de ces personnages convergeant dans l’anecdote central; donc quatres histoires […] on pourrait à l’intérieur d’une salle filmer une exécution de l’oeuvre: écrans et même spectateurs, choisissant, privilégiant telle région ou réaction, et projeter le résultat sur un sixième écran placé au-dessus du principal, ce qui permettrait de suivre le spectacle actuel en contrepoint avec le résumé d’une autre de ses possibilités. (pp. 118, 120–21)

In some respects, Intervalle can be seen as a logical extension of the various types of collaboration that Butor envisaged in Votre Faust and 6 810 000 litres d’eau par seconde and as a solution to the problems that these radically experimental works posed. Both the earlier works were highly ambitious projects that involved not only the collaboration of other creative artists (including, in the case of Votre Faust, the composer Henri Pousseur), teams of technicians and various types of equipment, but also the participation of the audience. Votre Faust is an ‘opéra mobile’,79 which is composed of multiple elements: images projected on to a screen at the rear of the stage, tape recordings of fragments of conversation, cries, shouts and instrumental noises, quotations from Goethe, Nerval, Marlowe, Petrarch and Gongora, and references to and quotations from a wide range of composers. Each scene has various versions and the orchestration of the multiple elements of the opera is determined at each performance by audience intervention either 78 For an analysis of the ludic aspects of Intervalle, see Rosienski-Pellerin, ‘Intervalle ludique’. 79 Butor, Curriculum vitae, p. 131.

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through voting or spontaneous interruption. In 6 810 000 litres d’eau par seconde, which was written originally for radio,80 the various strands of the scenario were to be transmitted on ten different channels, each of the twelve sections of the scenario identifying the cast, specifying the distribution of the roles across the range of channels and offering the listener a choice of routes through the play. On every hearing the listener would be free to select, combine and recombine the voices and sound effects to produce constantly renewed ensembles. The technical challenges posed by these works are clearly considerable and their execution depends very heavily on external support. As it was originally conceived, Intervalle posed similar problems, requiring as it did the participation of an entire film crew and the backing of a production company. However, the ‘failure’ of the project – the film was never produced – forced Butor to find another way of ensuring its ‘execution’, and the solution he found – his invitation to the reader to complete the process of writing and revision – created the opportunity for a more modest version of the sort of audience participation that he had wanted in Votre Faust and 6 810 000 litres d’eau par seconde, but which practical issues had rendered so difficult to achieve. Whether or not his reader does take up where he leaves off is, of course, unverifiable, but in appealing to the latter’s imagination, he at least bypasses the technical and practical problems that dogged the earlier projects and significantly increases the chances of audience participation. Word and Image, Text and Site So far in this study, Butor’s critical and travel writing has figured only marginally. While it would be impossible to convey in the space available the richness and diversity of his criticism and of his unorthodox travel books, it is also true that his work in these genres offers invaluable insights into his conception of the relationship between verbal and visual representation. Consequently, the final section of this chapter is devoted to a selective overview of the various ways – both direct and indirect – in which he explores the interaction between word and image and between text and site in his critical essay Les Mots dans la peinture and in the increasingly idiosyncratic travel works that he published between 1958 and 1996 under the collective title of Le Génie du lieu. 80 See Desoubeaux (ed.), Entretiens: quarante ans de vie littéraire, vol. III, p. 18. See also Desoubeaux (ed.), Entretiens: quarante ans de vie littéraire, vol. I, pp. 345–46.

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Les Mots dans la peinture Les Mots dans la peinture is composed of 51 short sections each of which is devoted to a given topic and to the analysis of one or more works from a selection of some 55 artworks by different artists and dating from the medieval period to the contemporary. The 51 sections of the text are grouped thematically. The essay opens with three sections devoted to the museum visit and to the various ways in which language impinges on the viewing process. The title – its status, its origin, its functions, the many different forms it has assumed over the last eight hundred years, the effects it has on the viewing/reading of the work – is the principal subject of sections 4 to 26. Sections 4 to 8 serve as an introduction to the topic and examine a number of fairly general issues – the role of the popular ‘surnom’, the focalising function of the title, the contemporary tendency to ‘neutralise’, omit or conceal titles – while sections 9 to 26 consider some of the ways in which different artists have incorporated words into their composition and examine the effects that the inclusion of various types of inscription (légendes, proverbs, proper names, the speech of the represented figures, the perverse or playful label, the riddle) has on the intelligibility of the painting and on its formal organisation. In sections 27–34, it is the status and form of the artist’s signature that comes under scrutiny, while section 35 offers a brief complementary analysis of the dedication. The final third of the book is more diffuse and stresses the diversity of the ways in which artists have incorporated words into their compositions, alluded to speech or used language to locate their subjects within a particular religious, political or cultural context. While sections 36 to 39 concentrate on various types of nonnaturalistic inscription (sentences, banderoles, phylacteries), sections 40 to 45 are devoted to the ways in which painters have ‘naturalised’ the presence of words within the work through the inclusion of various types of documents (books, letters, critical pamphlets, newspapers) or other objects that serve as writing surfaces. The analysis of the use of printed materials in collage that makes up the second half of section 45 introduces Butor’s concluding reflections on the ambiguities that characterise the relationship between word and image in twentiethcentury art: the various types of found documents used in collage, which are frequently chosen because of their texture or their shape rather than because of the meanings they convey; the calligraphic imitation of non-western alphabets and the creation of paintings incorporating marks that resemble Greek, Cyrillic, Arab, or Oriental scripts, but which

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are ‘illisible’; the production of ‘écritures inventées’, i.e. sequences of shapes reminiscent of letters and punctuation, which are grouped in such a way as to suggest continuous prose; and the replacement of a pictorial element (e.g. colour) by a related linguistic element (e.g. the name of a colour). If Les Mots dans la peinture eschews the conventional apparatus of the academic essay, it is nevertheless a scholarly, analytical and illuminating study of the multifarious functions played by words in paintings and in their reception. Its incisiveness and authority have earned it a prominent place in the history of Word and Image studies. In addition to this general appeal, the recurrence in Les Mots dans la peinture of themes and motifs that appear in Butor’s fiction and in some of his earlier essays highlights the continuity in his work and underscores the importance of certain issues in the formulation of his personal aesthetics. His lengthy analysis of the status and functions of the title takes up and develops a topic that he had already discussed in his frequent and often lengthy commentaries on the titles of his novels.81 The titles Butor has chosen for his novels and, indeed, for many of his other texts have generally been based on the play between the primary meaning of the word or words that make it up and its/their secondary meanings.82 Of 81 See, in particular, Butor, Improvisations sur Michel Butor, pp. 75–79. It is worth noting that Butor’s extended analysis of the role of the title in fiction opens with a comparison with painting (p. 75). 82 The title L’Emploi du temps refers to the strictly delimited schedule of Revel’s stay in Bleston, to the ways in which he passed his time during that period and to the elaborate retrospective timetable that he devises in his diary. The ‘modification’ that takes place in Butor’s third novel consists not of the life-change that Léon plans at the outset of his journey, but rather in the change of mind that he undergoes in the course of that journey, which results in the abandonment of his original plans and the maintenance of his current domestic and family situation, i.e. the change to which the title refers involves the undoing of his initial decision to change his life. Finally, the semantically rich word chosen by Butor as the title of his final novel highlights several of the novel’s thematic and formal preoccupations. Thus, by virtue of its etymology it refers to the theme of progress that appears in various guises in the novel (the history of human progress, the educational progress made by the schoolboys, the progress of Butor’s project): ‘Etymologiquement, c’est un pas, un pas horizontal. Mais il y a aussi les pas verticaux: les degrés d’un escalier’ (Curriculum vitae, p. 118). Its geometric meaning draws attention to the importance of perspective and angle in the formal organisation of the novel and in the three overlapping, but inconsistent, versions of events that the text proposes. As a pedagogical term, it highlights the theme of education, while its occurrence in certain set expressions (‘cousins au premier/deuxième degré’) allows it to act as an allusion to the complex family relationships of the teachers and the pupils of Vernier’s school.

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the various commentaries that Les Mots dans la peinture offers on the title, those devoted to the work of Duchamp are particularly interesting because of their relevance to Passage de Milan. Thus, his explanation of the shift from lower to upper case in the title of Duchamp’s Le PASSAGE de la vierge à la mariée83 helps explain his choice of the title ‘Passage de Milan’ for a novel that was in large part inspired by Duchamp’s work. In Duchamp’s painting the emphasis that capitalisation gives to the word ‘passage’ highlights its semantic and formal importance, the theme of ‘transition’ or ‘passage’ from one state to another reflected in the movement of the viewer’s eye across the canvas as it scans both the different stages of the virgin’s transformation and the letters that make up the title: ‘remarquons […] la différence de niveau qu’introduit dans “LE PASSAGE de la vierge à la mariée”, le passage de la grossière capitale d’imprimerie à une élégante minuscule manuscrite, le mot “passage” ainsi souligné accentuant le mouvement de la lecture’ (p. 78). In the case of Passage de Milan, it was the semantic richness of the word ‘passage’ that largely determined Butor’s choice of title. Thus, the phrase that gives the text its title refers not only to the address that serves as the novel’s location, but also to the various journeys of the characters as they circulate within the building, to the various rites of passage undergone by several of the characters – Angèle passes from life to death; Louis passes from the status of suitor (hunter) to fugitive (hunted); Félix is initiated to the grown-up party – and to the passage of the portentous ‘milan’ over the tenement building: Passage de Milan, passage d’une ombre, d’une ombre en croix comme cet animal, cet animal de proie, cet animal qui est le soleil pour les anciens Egyptiens mais qui est le soleil renversé, qui est le soleil de la mort.84

Butor’s commentary, on page 65 of Les Mots dans la peinture, on the planned, but never realised, inscription that was to serve as a kind of mobile title in Duchamp’s Grand Verre is equally illuminating. Here, the absence of inscription is, according to Butor, at once an indicator of nostalgia for a lost mythical era characterised by a perfect correlation between word and image, and a solicitation for a new text that, in the absence of an inscription, will help to elucidate the work. In omitting the planned inscription while leaving a space for it, Duchamp is issuing an invitation to the viewer to produce his or her own text: 83 1912, Museum of Modern Art, New York. 84 Butor in Charbonnier, Entretiens avec Michel Butor, p. 81.

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Alors l’absence de l’inscription dans le lieu préparé pour elle deviendra certes nostalgie d’un état de choses à jamais révolu, mais aussi dénonciation d’un vide, d’une incapacité de notre langage, appel vers un nouveau déchiffrement, un autre texte. (p. 65)

Butor’s analysis of the interpretative consequences of the absent inscription in Le Grand Verre can be seen then not only to offer some explanation for the prevalence of the theme of nostalgia in Passage de Milan, but also to reinforce the thesis elaborated in the first chapter of this study that the novel was his response to the ‘appel’ emitted by Duchamp’s incomplete work. Butor’s analysis, in the section entitled ‘aetatis suae’ (no. 12, pp. 39– 45), of the use of the proper name as title in portraiture raises briefly an issue that was explored obliquely in La Modification. In this section of Les Mots dans la peinture, he examines the portrait series and draws attention to the discrepancy between the stability of the name/title and the often quite remarkable variety of the images to which this name/title has been attached: Dans la permanence d’un titre ou d’une fonction se succèdent des incarnations différentes: à ce nom correspond maintenant cette tête, mais attention, cette tête même est changeante; avant que la mort l’ait fait remplacer par une autre, des rides vont s’y creuser, les cheveux blanchiront, tomberont, le costume évoluera. (pp. 40–41)

Although most of this section of the essay is devoted to an analysis of the portraits of Holbein, this short, general commentary on the portrait series highlights the arbitrariness of the relationship between the proper name and the referential subject. This arbitrariness was, of course, foregrounded in the fanciful stories that Léon elaborated about his fellow passengers in La Modification and in which he distributed, withdrew and redistributed proper names to fit the needs and circumstances of his story. The question of the arbitrariness of the relationship between word and referent reappears in several of the other sections of Les Mots dans la peinture, notably in those devoted to Magritte’s work. Given the fascination for dreams evident in Butor’s fiction, critical writing, collaborative work and the various volumes of Le Génie du lieu, it is not surprising that he should devote so much space to Magritte’s oneiric paintings. His analysis of L’Art de la conversation,85 which offers a view of a kind of fantasy Stonehenge in which the lower level of standing 85 1950, private collection.

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stones spells out the word ‘REVE’, explains the painting as a tribute to Baudelaire, the line ‘Je suis belle, ô mortels, comme un rêve de pierre’ serving as inspiration for the conception of Magritte’s image: ‘Il s’agit bien ici d’une conversation entre Baudelaire et Magritte’ (p. 93). Here the word ‘REVE’ is seen to form the foundation of this elaborate structure, just as the subconscious might be considered to be the foundation of the elaborate structure that is the individual human personality. However, if identification of the word REVE permits a basic psychoanalytical interpretation of Magritte’s image, the presence of other words in the ensemble of standing stones – the derivative ‘REVER’, but also semantically unrelated words such as ‘TREVE’ and ‘EVE’ – serves to remind us once again of the arbitrary nature of the relationship between signifier and signified and to ‘spell out’ the fact that the meaning of a word is derived not from a natural link between word and referent, but rather from the differences between the units of the linguistic system. Viewed in this way – taking into consideration the various ‘décrochements’ that the stone letters permit – Magritte’s painting might be read as an allegorical meditation on the birth of the linguistic system: ‘Par un certain nombre de décrochements, les lettres viennent à s’isoler plus ou moins pour donner naissance à d’autres mots: ‘Eve’, ‘trêve’, ‘rêver’, tout cela soutenant les plus lourdes assises’. (pp. 92–93). However, it is in the section devoted to La Clef des songes86 (pp. 79– 85) that Butor offers his most detailed commentary on Magritte. Like the section devoted to Holbein, this section also focuses on the issue of the arbitrariness of the relationship between the signifier and the signified. However, the perspective it offers is rather different from that presented in ‘aetatis suae’. While he accepts the standard explanation of the discrepancy between the image and the accompanying caption – that Magritte is foregrounding the difference between the referential object (the thing we designate by a generic name) and its painted image – Butor proposes a second stage of interpretation, arguing that a Freudian approach will, in fact, reveal a degree of psychological ‘motivation’ that belies the apparent incongruity of the images and captions in La Clef des songes. Thus, the discrepancy between image and caption is to be explained by mechanisms of repression and substitution, the subconscious generating idiosyncratic emblematic images that stand for experiences normally repressed by the conscious 86 1930, private collection.

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mind: ‘Si j’ai rêvé chapeau, alors que j’ai pensé neige, c’est naturellement parce que je ne voulais pas savoir que je pensais neige; le chapeau représente donc tout ce que, dans mon expérience de la neige, je m’efforce d’exclure lorsque je prononce son nom’ (p. 82). As one might expect, the sections devoted to collage articulate the principles according to which Degrés and many of Butor’s subsequent works were composed. Like his own textual collages, the collages he examines here illustrate the ways in which the combination and recombination of found documents and their insertion in new contexts enrich, modify or neutralise the meanings of the original texts. However, Butor is also sensitive to the graphic potential of the torn, truncated and defaced texts that appear in the work of collagists such as Picasso, Kline and Schwitters. His commentaries on the ways in which they exploit the textural qualities of the found materials (‘textures des textes’, p. 155) show an understanding of the optical impact of different sorts of font and typographical layout. This understanding of the graphic possibilities of print had, of course, already been articulated in ‘Le Livre comme objet’ and was apparent in his fairly conservative experimentation with paragraphing and punctuation in Degrés, although it was only in Mobile and in the prose works he produced thereafter that he began to use typographical variation extensively as a means of organising and structuring the text.87 Finally, it should be noted that the thesis that Butor posits at the outset of the text – that our viewing of a given artwork is never a purely visual experience, that it is inevitably coloured by what we have read or heard about painting (p. 8) – is a variation on an argument that he has developed on numerous occasions, which informs his exploitation of visual and architectural references in his fiction: that is, that our perception and conception of the world are inextricably associated with and indelibly marked by our cultural experience. If Butor has little time for the standardised ‘auto-guide’ or the ‘spectacle audio-visuel’, he nevertheless recognises that the museum-visit is inevitably characterised by a verbal accompaniment made up of conversations, posters, catalogue entries, critical works, etc.: Toute notre expérience de la peinture comporte en fait une considérable partie verbale. Nous ne voyons jamais les tableaux seuls, notre vision n’est jamais pure vision. Nous entendons parler des oeuvres, nous lisons de la critique d’art, notre regard est tout entouré, tout préparé par un halo de 87 See his commentaries on Mobile in Desoubeaux (ed.), Entretiens: quarante ans de vie littéraire, vol. I, pp. 188–91, 261.

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commentaires, même pour la production la plus récente. […] Dès que nous nous mêlons tant soit peu de beaux-arts, on nous a parlé, on nous a montré, nous avons reçu une invitation, vu des affiches, feuilleté, lu parfois un catalogue, nous sommes venus voir quelque chose qui avait déjà dans notre esprit une forte détermination; bien plus forte encore si nous allons dans un musée. Que de paroles, en effet, y conduisent ou troublent notre visite! (p. 8)

The prominence of this topic in Butor’s thinking is signalled by the fact that it is resumed and developed in his commentary, on pages 138–39, on signposting within the landcape and, towards the end of the essay, in the section devoted to the representation of the printed word in painting. These two sections offer further confirmation and illustration of the opening remarks, drawing attention to the way in which printing radically increased the ‘quantité d’écriture qui entoure notre vie quotidienne’ (p. 153) and to the fact that our access to the physical world is filtered through a multitude of verbal signs: Pancartes, enseignes, affiches, étiquettes, plaques, bannières, de toutes tailles et tous matériaux, tableaux d’annonces, panneaux de signalisation, horaires, menus, avis, timbres, graffitis, marques, journaux lumineux, projections, vapeurs d’avions, tissus, tatouages … Et notre paysage intime, notre décor, que d’objets peuvent y servir de support à l’écriture! Hogarth manifestait à cet égard une extraordinaire imagination. (p. 139)

As we have already seen in the preceding chapters, Butor’s fictional protagonists inhabit environments that are chock-full of different sorts of signs and signifying systems and their survival depends in large part on their ability to recognise the meaning-systems to which these signs belong and on their willingness to undertake the painstaking process of déchiffrement that will allow them to make some provisional sense of the environments in which they find themselves. Le Génie du lieu The five volumes of Le Génie du lieu can be seen as Butor’s highly personal attempt to decipher the topography, the history and the culture of the many very different environments that he has visited in the course of his frequent trips and often lengthy periods abroad. In these texts, Butor explores the genius loci of his selected sites in a number of different ways, including physical description, analytical commentary, historical résumé, personal reminiscence and intertextual citation. The first volume, Le Génie du lieu, which was published in 1958 and

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which gives the series its title, takes the form of a fairly orthodox travel book, Butor recounting in separate essays of varying length his visits to a number of European cities and historical sites – Cordoba, Istanbul, Thessaloniki, Delphi, Mantua, Ferrara, Mallia and Egypt. The basic structure of the volume, as Butor points out in Butor en transit, is based on the ‘cercle’ formed by the Mediterranean, each of the sites visited constituting an important point of reference in the immensely complex cultural and political history of the region (p. 33). In each case Butor’s attempt to evoke the genius loci involves the combination of his own personal témoignage – the account of his visit, his encounters with local people, his memories of particular weather and atmospheric conditions, personal epiphanies, etc. – and references to, citations from and descriptions of the texts that inform his perception of the site, offer access to the site’s many cultural layers and account in large part for its appeal to travellers, aspiring travellers and ‘voyageurs immobiles’. Here already, Butor demonstrates through concrete examples a thesis that he will only articulate fully and explicitly some twenty-four years later in his essay ‘La Ville comme texte’. For Butor, the city/historical site is inextricably associated with the words he has read, the conversations he has had before departure, the texts he reads and writes during his visit, and even the texts he reads or writes, or plans to read or write, following the visit: Si j’arrive dans une ville étrangère […] je suis accompagné, accueilli, poursuivi par du texte. On m’en a parlé, j’ai lu à son sujet dans des journaux ou des livres, et souvent je me suis muni de documentation pour la visiter, y faciliter ma vie et ma vue: guides, manuels, ouvrages historiques. Livres que j’ai lu avant mon arrivée, ceux que je lis pendant mon séjour, que je me promets de lire au retour, que je lis parfois effectivement plus tard en me souvenant, en préparant d’autres voyages. Cela s’accompagne parfois d’écriture: lettres qu’il a fallu rédiger pour mettre au point l’aventure, notes que l’on prend au jour le jour (cela m’arrive rarement), ouvrage projeté.88

Thus, his visit to Mantua has been inspired as much by his desire to penetrate the mystery of the place-name that, through his reading and conversations with others, has acquired a certain aura, as by his wish to see Mantegna’s frescos (c. 1465–1474) in the bridal chamber of the Ducal Palace: ‘à Mantoue, non seulement à cause de la camera degli sposi, mais afin d’essayer de percer le secret de ce nom que j’avais rencontré si souvent dans des livres ou des conversations, empreint d’un obscure prestige que je désirais éclaircir’ (p. 97). 88 Butor, Répertoire V, p. 33.

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The cities and sites that he evokes in Le Génie du lieu have, for the most part, a considerable ‘poids littéraire’ and, although his references to the literary intertexts associated with any one location are highly selective, most of the essays acknowledge and quote those texts that have coloured his own perspective and have whetted his desire to visit them. Thus, in Butor’s mind, Cordoba is inextricable from Gongora’s poetry and from the Commentaires royaux of Garcilaso de la Vega (p. 27). Gongora’s poetic tribute, A Cordoba, provides Butor with a way of penetrating the cultural layers of the city, his exegesis of the poem identifying a wide range of allusion: references to Seneca and Lucan that serve as reminders of Cordoba’s status as an important Roman settlement;89 an indirect allusion to its very rich Moorish heritage; a reference to its most famous military figure, the Renaissance General Gonzalo de Cordoba; and a reference to the Christianisation of the city’s mosque (p. 17). Moreover, the allusion in ‘A Cordoue’ to the Commentaires royaux of Garcilaso de la Vega adds another layer of associations. If it is true that the latter’s two-part history of the Incas of Peru and of the Spanish conquest of Peru evokes the civilisation that Spain had destroyed, the implicit comparison that, according to Butor, Gongora draws between Cordoba and the ancient cities of Peru places the Spanish city within a much broader set of historical and cultural connotations and suggests the former glory, standing and influence of Cordoba, which, from the eighth until the tenth century, had been one of the world’s most important intellectual and commercial centres. Ferrara is also approached through the most important texts and images that were produced there – Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, Tasso’s Aminte, the paintings of Cosimo Tura, Francesco del Cossa and Ercole de’ Roberti – and some of the texts that were inspired by them – Longhi’s Officina Ferrarese and Goethe’s Torquato Tasso. Here, Butor’s central thesis – that Ferrara posed an admittedly short-lived, but serious challenge to the cultural supremacy of Rome – is illustrated through the references to the literary and artistic masterworks produced at the court of the Este princes.90 For Butor, the painting of Tura, Cossa and Roberti – in particular, the Sala dei Mesi (1471)91 in the Palazzo Schifanoia – and the 89 Seneca and Lucan were both born in Cordoba. 90 See Cole, Art of the Italian Renaissance Courts, pp. 119–41. 91 It is also worth noting that the Salon des Mois is generally considered to show the influence of the Ferrarese manuscript tradition. As Cole points out, ‘It celebrates the good government of Borso d’Este within a seasonal and astrological framework, such as that found in contemporary Books of Hours and is rich in complex literary and verbal allusion’, Art of the Italian Renaissance Courts, p. 131.

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poetry of Tasso and Ariosto show an irreverance and a pagan celebration of the secular courtly life that testify to an alternative nonChristian current of European artistic history, a current that lost its direction with the decline of Ferrara, but responded, nevertheless, to some of humanity’s most fundamental needs: Il se produit en effet [dans la pratique poétique du Tasse et de l’Arioste] une suspension de la croyance au dogme chrétien, traité comme mythologie. Chez l’Arioste, la conscience de cette suspension amène à une étonnante irrévérence, au milieu du monde féerique qu’il nous décrit. […] Ce pays de l’émerveillement que l’on trouve dans le Roland Furieux, c’est celui-là même qui se déploie sur les murs de Schifanoia, tellement plus présent. C’est donc vers ses grands maîtres du quattrocento qu’il faudrait alors se tourner: Tura, Cossa, et Roberti. Il est clair qu’ici devrait intervenir un long commentaire du Salon des Mois et de son paganisme philosophique. Il y a dans la civilisation et l’esprit de Ferrare quelque chose qui n’a pas été suivi, une direction qui a tourné court et qui se trouve dans une merveilleuse harmonie avec certains de nos besoins […]. (pp. 103–104)

The essay devoted to Butor’s pilgrimage to Delphi also highlights the layers of texts through which we view the great historical and archeological sites of the world. Here, as he tracks the history of the site backwards through the real and reputed stages of its development, Butor draws on some of the countless texts about or associated with Delphi that have been overlaid one on the other in the course of twoand-a-half thousand years. Thus, the site that is known primarily for the enigmatic oral messages delivered by its oracle is also, as Butor’s allusions and quotations demonstrate, inextricably associated with the written word. Indeed, the strength of this association is testified by the range of written forms that the works inspired by the site have taken, which include the maxims of the Seven Sages inscribed on the walls of the Temple of Apollo, the poetry of Pindar, Pausanias’s travel guide,92 the philosophy of Plato, and the drama of Aeschylus and Euripides. However, it is in the lengthy essay devoted to his year-long stay in Egypt that Butor’s interest in the relationship between text and site and between word and monument is most fully articulated. Here, the range of the references to literary works (Nerval’s Voyage en Orient, Gide’s preface to Taha Hussein’s Book of Days,93 Bossuet’s Discours sur 92 Periegesis Hellados (Description of Greece). 93 Taha Hussein, Le Livre des jours, translated by Jean Lecerf and Gaston Wiet with a preface by André Gide, Paris, Gallimard, 1947.

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l’histoire universelle, 1681), documentary sources (Edward William Lane’s Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians, 1836; Murtadi’s Merveilles de l’Egypte, 13th century) and religious authority (the Koran) suggests the immensely important role played by Egyptian culture in the evolution of the symbolism, thought and art of other much later cultures. At the same time Butor’s painstaking reconstruction of the chain of translation, borrowing, adaptation and critical commentary relating to Nerval’s Voyage en Orient – Nerval’s exploitation of material from Lane, from Murtadi and other Arab historians (p. 179), his adaptation of a translation by Pierre Vattier of Murtadi’s manuscript,94 Jean Richer’s exegetical commentary on Nerval’s many sources (pp. 176–77)95 – offers a limited but indicative cross-section of the multiple strata of legends, histories and literary texts that have been inspired by the Egyptian pyramids. Butor’s citation of extensive passages from his sources not only adds yet another link to this chain of borrowing; it also mirrors the process of recycling, adaptation and integration that he describes in his account of the re-use of the stones of the ancient monuments in the construction of the great Islamic buildings of Cairo. It is, according to Butor, this process of recycling that gives Muslim Cairo a unique architectural and cultural identity, the integration within new structures of components of ancient monuments serving both to confirm the power of the inherited cultural legacy (pp. 183–84) and to highlight the very particular and immensely rich context in which the Egyptian Islamic tradition evolved: De plus, comme c’est seulement lorsque l’attitude ancienne est évidemment contraire aux prescriptions nouvelles qu’elle prend ce statut de sorcellerie, et que d’autres de ses aspects vont s’intégrer tout naturellement à l’enseignement du conquérant, à son mode de vie, vont lui donner peu à peu […] une physionomie tout originale par rapport à ce qu’il était auparavant ou à ce qu’il est devenu dans d’autres paysages sur d’autres terrains moins encombrés, moins riches […] l’utilisation de ces carrières artificielles est comme le corollaire matériel de cette contamination, et donc la configuration même du Caire musulman, sa différence de structure par rapport à d’autres grandes villes de l’Islam, 94 L’Egypte de Murtadi fils de Gaphiphe, ou il est traité des pyramides, du débordement du Nil, & des autres merueilles de cette prouince, selon les opinions & traditions des Arabes, 1666. 95 See Richer, Gérard de Nerval et les doctrines ésotériques. Nerval is a much-cited literary ancestor in Butor’s work. Butor’s attraction to his work is readily explained by a number of common factors: their passion for travel and for other cultures; their fascination for esoteric religions and secret sects; the importance that they attach to the dream; their densely citational approach to writing.

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illustre les particularités de l’Islam égyptien, les caractéristiques singulières du sol historique et géographique sur lequel il s’est développé. (pp. 184–85)

However, Butor’s analysis of the recycling of texts about the Egyptian monuments and the materials of which they are composed is not simply a neutral traveller’s account; the great edifices and monuments of Egypt, whether they be the immense pyramids and temples of the ancient Egyptian dynasties or the magnificent minarets, mausoleums and mosques of medieval Cairo, constitute a radical challenge to the history of civilisation as it was taught in the secondary schools of France and, consequently, a challenge to the Frenchman’s sense of cultural identity. Thus, in the final pages of the essay, we see Butor sketching out a programme of self-instruction that anticipates not only Vernier’s ‘alternative’ school curriculum (pp. 194–95), but also the equally ambitious, but rather more personal, project of Léon Delmont, the inscriptions on the walls of the tomb of Petosiris at Tounah elGebel and on the Amarna tablets96 offering him yet another example of cultural recycling as well as a new perspective on his origins and, in particular, on the sources of the religious tradition in which he had been educated: donc, dans le tombeau de Pétosiris à Tounah el-Gebel, près de Minieh, d’époque perse, sur les murs duquel, je le savais, sont gravées des maximes dont certaines ont été traduites littéralement dans le livre des proverbes, c’était une lueur sur mes origines et sur celle de la religion dans laquelle j’avais été élevé que je cherchais et peut-être plus clairement encore dans l’amphithéâtre stérilisé d’El-Amarna, un renouvellement, une amélioration dans la position de problèmes qui m’avaient troublé depuis des années et qui me troublaient là bien plus directement et profondément. (p. 196)

Finally, the concluding anecdote of the essay, which recounts Butor’s chance encounter with an Egyptian peasant whom he had met on the boat from Marseille, not only reinforces his emphasis on the links between the European civilisation in which he grew up and the culture of the country he is visiting, but also shows, through his account of the silent stereoscopic show of views of Paris to which Butor’s Egyptian host treats him, how the celebrated monuments of the world constitute a kind of common code that allows people from different linguistic traditions to communicate with each other. Here, the complex 96 It is generally assumed that the tribe referred to as Hiburi in the Amarna tablets is the Hebrew people.

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grammatical, phonetic and semantic apparatus that would permit discussion and the sharing of knowledge, opinions and perceptions is missing, but the shared experience of Parisian and Egyptian sites allows the French teacher and the Egyptian peasant to establish a very basic level of social intercourse and companionship and to express their mutual respect and common sense of cameraderie (pp. 207–08). x In Ou, Butor pays tribute creatively to an artist to whom he had already paid critical homage in an earlier essay. Butor’s own ‘images in words’ – his two series of views of Sandia Peak – are a tribute to Hokusai, whose woodcut series – the original 36 Views of Fuji and the ten supplementary views produced subsequently (c. 1822–32) – had been the subject of the eighth essay of Répertoire III. In composing 35 and 9 views of Sandia Peak instead of the 36 and 10 that Katsushika Hokusai devoted to Fuji in the 1822–32 series, Butor is, by his own admission, marking his respect for the master and, perhaps, although he gives no explicit indication that this is the case, signalling the ‘unfinished’ nature of his own text: J’avais déjà écrit auparavant un texte sur Hokusai, artiste japonais du début du XIXe siècle, qui a publié deux séries d’estampes en couleurs sur le mont Fuji. 36 vues auxquelles il en a par la suite ajouté dix nouvelles. […] J’ai essayé de faire un peu comme lui, de me mettre à son école, mais j’ai voulu marquer mon respect en faisant seulement 35 et 9 vues du mont Sandia.97

Butor’s essay on Hokusai offers useful insights into his own views of Sandia Peak. In that essay, Butor stressed the symbolic nature of Hokusai’s subject and highlighted the status of the mountain as a topographic point of reference and a focal point for the surrounding inhabitants: Le Fuji est un point de repère topographique extraordinaire, il relie tous les habitants de la région qu’il domine par sa haute présence. […] Deux personnes éloignée l’une de l’autre, deux amants, deux amis, savent qu’ils ont en commun dans leur paysage non seulement le ciel et les astres mais aussi ce signe qui organise l’alentour.98

It is this symbolic role that Hokusai seeks to convey in his multiple views of the mountain, the variations in colour and tone, the changes in lighting and in season, the shifting viewpoints all revealing new connections with different parts of the country: 97 Butor, Improvisations sur Michel Butor, pp. 159–60. See also Mélançon, ‘A l’extrême Orient’. 98 Butor, ‘Trente-six et dix vues du Fuji’, Répertoire III, pp. 163–64.

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Hokusaï ne peut se contenter de multiplier les effets de couleur, chaque nouvelle nuance est une autre façon de voir, une autre liaison du Fuji à une partie du pays. Le Fuji voyage en quelque sorte tout au long du jour et de l’année; à tel moment il est par excellence le Fuji vu de telle région. L’itinéraire auquel nous invite Hokusaï est un pèlerinage, et à chacune de ses stations la montagne divine nous dévoile quelque chose de nouveau.99 x

In the views of Sandia Peak that figure in Ou, Butor is less concerned with the significance of the mountain for the people who live in its shadow than with its central status as a point de repère in the ‘landscape’ of his own text and as a visual stimulus in his writing. The two series of views of Sandia Peak run throughout the text and form its central axis. Thus, the changing weather conditions on the mountain mirror not only the variable weather conditions that Butor encounters in his travels to other far-flung locations, which he records in the titles x of the other series of Ou (‘La boue à Séoul’, ‘La pluie à Angkor’, ‘La brume à Santa Barbara’, ‘La neige entre Bloomfield et Bernalillo’, ‘Le froid à Zuni’), but also the supernaturally generated tempests that are described in the Book of Mormon (pp. 163, 171), which is one of the most frequently cited intertexts of the volume. The mountain is also the source of many of the motifs that run through the text and link its various series. It dominates the view from his window and, as he sits writing at his desk in front of the window, its physical features suggest images – geometric shapes, the rounded contours of the female form, claws and teeth, pillars, grooves, cracks and wounds – and chromatic motifs that are incorporated not only into his ‘views of Mount Sandia’, but also into his descriptions, in the other series, of the other very different and distant locations that he visits. Like the recurring shapes and colours that link the elements of Hokusai’s compositions and also link the different compositions that make up the series,100 Butor’s combination and recombination of words and images in different contexts create formal and semantic cross-textual correspondences. Finally, the views of Mount Sandia also 199 Butor, ‘Trente-six et dix vues du Fuji’, Répertoire III, p. 164. 100 Compare Butor’s commentary: Plus instructives encore que ces formes contrastantes seront les formes ressemblantes qui nous permettront de dire avec précision comment apparaît le Fuji; la répétition d’une courbe ou d’une couleur, autour de laquelle s’organisera toute la composition, énoncera la comparaison. La technique de gravure sur bois, obligeant à utiliser une même encre pour différentes parties, donnera aux liaisons colorées une remarquable puissance’ (‘Trente-six et dix vues du Fuji’, Répertoire III, p. 164).

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record Butor’s struggle with words, the snow-covered slopes mirroring the whiteness of his paper, the craggy outlines of its ridges reflecting the jagged lines of the words he has scored out, while his tiredness as he strives to find the right word is evoked in terms of snow-blindness and physical exhaustion (pp. 124, 128, 132, 146). Like Hokusai’s Views of Fuji, Butor’s ‘Vues du mont Sandia’ invite the reader on a kind of ‘pèlerinage’ that, by dint of the various cross-series motifs, not only takes him or her on a round-the-world trip (from the Far West via Europe to the Far East), but makes him or her the travelling companion of the writer engaged in the long, arduous ‘voyage immobile’ of literary production from his chair in front of his desk. However, if Butor’s views of Sandia Peak illustrate the way in which x artistic tradition acts as a stimulus to further creation, Ou also offers an example of the way in which the art of the past may be used to bolster some of our more questionable ‘inventions’. Here, Butor returns to a subject that had already figured prominently in Degrés: the exploitation of visual and verbal representation as a means of misrepresenting the past. Thus, the intertextual extracts from Joseph Smith’s Pearl of Great Price and from the Book of Mormon and the descriptions of the illustrations that figure in the 1962 edition of the Book of Mormon consulted by Butor (pp. 166–71)101 reveal a determined attempt on the part of Smith and his followers not only to generate a new strand of Christian mythology, but also to appropriate the mythology of the pre-Columbian civilisations and to rewrite cultural history in a way that accredits Christianity with artistic and architectural achievements that were, in fact, inspired by very different belief systems. Thus, the Mormon texts and illustrations not only recount the experience of ‘revelation’ that Smith claimed to have undergone, but also offer an alternative version of ancient American history in which the ancient cultures, beliefs and artworks of the Aztecs, Mayas and Incas are ‘reclaimed’ by Christianity: A partir de la planche 17, les illustrations changent complètement de nature; ce sont maintenant des photographies de grands sites précolombiens: aztèques, mayas et incas, de bas-reliefs, bijoux, céramiques et textiles, de tout ce qui pourrait dans l’archéologie américaine corroborer le texte du Livre 101 I have been unable to locate a copy of this edition, but Butor gives the publication details as follows: ‘édition en grand format avec ces illustrations en couleurs, the Deseret Book Company, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA, 1962’ (p. 171). Most of the illustrations are reproductions of the series of paintings based on the Book of Mormon painted by Arnold Friberg during the 1950s.

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de Mormon, avec des légendes tirées d’historiens, notamment professeurs à l’Université Brigham Young. (p. 179)

Here, as elsewhere, Butor does not offer an explicit moral judgement, but the counterpoint that he establishes between the Mormon texts x and illustrations and the account, in the final part of Ou, of Native 102 North American ceremonies and rituals – the Zuni Shalako or winter solstice celebrations – serves as an indirect means of discrediting the Mormon claims,103 the Shalako acting as a representative example of extant Native American culture and religion and offering evidence of long-standing resistance to the influence of Christianity. The next stage of Le Génie du lieu took the form of an immensely complex and very weighty tome (it is 460 pages long), which consists of seven textual series each devoted to a given location. Of the seven series that make up Boomerang, five relate to locations that Butor had visited: ‘La Fête en mon absence’ evokes the ceremonies of a Zuni Shalako that Butor’s family attended during their stay in New Mexico in 1973–74. ‘Courrier des antipodes’ is based on a two-month visit to Australia that Butor made in July and August 1976 and on the correspondence he exchanged with his wife during that period.104 ‘Bicentenaire kit’ marks the bicentenary of the Declaration of Independence of the United States. ‘Carnaval Transatlantique’ links North and South, Europe and South America, France and Brazil through the evocation of the street carnivals of Nice, Butor’s adoptive home in France, and Rio de Janeiro; ‘Archipel Shopping’ records the impressions made by Singapore and the Pacific on Butor during a three-day stopover on his return journey from Australia.105 The remaining two sections, ‘Jungle’ and ‘Nouvelles Indes Galantes’, relate respectively to a region that Butor had not visited and an imaginary location: ‘Jungle’ conveys his conception of a continent – black Africa – that represented the ‘unknown’;106 ‘Nouvelles Indes Galantes’ is a ‘rêverie’ based on Rameau’s opera, Les Indes Galantes, and evokes ‘une zone utopique où la musique 102 The Shalako ceremony, which takes place in early December, celebrates the close of the old year and the beginning of the new. 103 See also McWilliams’s astute analysis of the ironic juxtaposition of extracts from Apollinaire’s La Femme Assise (1920) and Marcel Schwob’s Livre de Monelle (The Narratives of Michel Butor, pp. 88–89) and Burton’s Bakhtinian analyses of polyphony and intertextuality in Butor’s travel works (‘Travel as Dialogic Text’ and ‘Experience and the Genres of Travel Writing’). 104 Butor, Curriculum vitae, p. 220. 105 Butor, Curriculum vitae, p. 221. 106 Butor, Curriculum vitae, p. 226.

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pourrait procurer à l’humanité une harmonie politique, une sorte de paix universelle’.107 It is impossible to do justice here to the formal intricacy and thematic density of Boomerang. However, closer consideration of a selection of passages from one of its series will demonstrate not only Butor’s enduring fascination for the relationship between literature and the visual arts, but also the sophistication of his critical exegesis. The passages concerned are drawn from bicentaire kit and relate to his commentaries on the work of Marcel Duchamp.108 The sections devoted to Duchamp constitute at one and the same time a highly perceptive and intellectually challenging analysis of Duchamp’s work, and an extended mise en abyme109 that provides an oblique commentary on both the compositional tactics and some of the central thematic issues of Boomerang. The series in which the remarks on Duchamp appear resumes and gives an account of the history of a collaborative project that Butor had undertaken with the painter Jacques Monory – USA 1976: bicentenaire kit – which resulted in a mixed media artwork, the function of which was to mark the bicentenary of the Declaration of Independence. The format chosen for the project was intended as a tribute to Duchamp,110 the ‘kit’ consisting of a blue altuglass box containing a number of items that, to the writer and the painter, seemed to sum up the United States. The interior of the box takes the form of three drawers, the first of which contains 20 silkscreen prints by Monory and the accompanying catalogue, while the second contains a number of brochures, leaflets, maps, facsimile reproductions of various sorts of documents, postcards, letters and aerograms.111 The contents of the third drawer vary in each of the 300 kits produced, but each object was chosen for its ‘typically American’ connotations. The provisional list that Butor gives on pages 356–57 includes ‘1 carte de crédit’, ‘1 “token” du métro de New York’, ‘1 broderie à terminer 107 Butor, Curriculum vitae, p. 227. 108 These passages are ‘recycled’ excerpts from a critical essay on Duchamp published in the spring of 1975 (‘Reproduction interdite’, Critique, no. 334, 1975, pp. 269–83). 109 Note Butor’s passing reference in Mobile to the ‘work within the work’ that Duchamp produced for Carrie Stettheimer’s dolls’ house (1920s, Stettheimer Dollhouse, Museum of New York City, New York): ‘New York City Museum: maison de poupée 1920, oeuvre de Varrie [sic] Walter Stettheimer; remarquez le tableau de la salle de bal qui est un véritable Marcel Duchamp’ (Mobile, p. 496). 110 See Coron, Le Livre et l’artiste, p. 32. See also Appy’s commentary in Nixe: mise en question et exaltation du livre, pp. 160–72. 111 See La Mothe’s highly informative and incisive essay on bicentenaire kit: ‘American Holiday: Jeux de sociétés’.

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représentant l’aigle révolutionnaire’, ‘1 bouton propagande (“in God we trust, She will provide”)’, ‘1 sachet de pop-corn’, ‘une boîte de Coca-Cola écrasée’, ‘une nappe en papier sur laquelle sont représentés en effigie les présidents successifs des Etats-Unis’ and ‘un disque pop’. Although the ‘kit’ was inspired primarily by Duchamp’s Boîte en valise, it also incorporates allusions to many of his other works: the ‘blue’ box reminds us of the Boîte verte; the plexiglass used in its fabrication recalls the various works in which glass figured as the dominant medium;112 some of the contents of the ‘kit’ – the banknotes, the wanted poster relating to Patti Hearst, the adverts – recall works such as Tzanck Cheque (1919), Monte Carlo Bond (1924), Belle Haleine, eau de voilette (1921) and Wanted $2000 Reward (1923). That Butor should choose to mark the bicentenary with a tribute to Duchamp is explained in large part by the commentary that figures in Boomerang. In the opening remarks of this commentary, Butor argues that the works Duchamp produced following his emigration to the United States and, in particular, his ready-mades, are underpinned by a single thematic preoccupation: the exploration of the relationship between Duchamp’s native French culture and his adoptive American culture: Marcel Duchamp est un des très rares artistes français à avoir adopté la nationalité américaine […]. Son oeuvre […] présente une valeur éminente d’intervention dans la relation entre ses deux patries. (p. 175)

The reader who is familiar with Butor’s work will immediately recognise in this passage parallels with the author’s earlier works and, of course, with Boomerang. Thus, the original bicentenaire kit and the section of Boomerang that carries the same title record the attempt by another Frenchman to define the distinctive properties of the culture of the country that had welcomed him, though for rather shorter stays than that enjoyed by his compatriot Duchamp. Similarly, the other sections of Boomerang chart Butor’s efforts not only to understand the customs, rituals and art of a number of quite different and far-flung civilisations, but also to situate himself and his own European heritage in relation to the cultural traditions of the countries he visits. 112 Compare Appy’s commentary on the jars of Provision, the collaborative work produced by Henri Maccheroni and Butor in 1976: ‘Pour la bonne bouche, observons cette série de bocaux intitulés Provision cuisiné par Henri Maccheroni, accompagnés de poèmes de Michel Butor. Les bocaux en verre, ceux dont on se sert pour conserver hermétiquement, confiture, fruits à l’eau de vie, et légumes frais, ici contiennent des aquarelles du peintre sur lesquelles l’écrivain a inscrit quelques mots’ (Nixe: mise en question et exaltation du livre, p. 167).

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The passages relating to Duchamp’s ready-mades also serve to highlight a tendency that we have already noted in Butor’s work: his recycling of various types of ready-made material. In many respects, the bicentenaire kit was simply the logical extension of the textual practices that had characterised his work since Degrés. In the kit, Butor brings together a wide range of prefabricated objects and texts that can be seen as ‘popular’ and mass-produced equivalents of the literary intertexts borrowed from ‘high culture’ in Degrés. Similarly, in Boomerang, he incorporates extracts from a wide range of popular and commercial textual sources, including travel brochures from around the globe, small ads (‘lonely hearts’, advertisements for massage parlours), the autobiography of Conrad Hilton (p. 44), and the slogans found on souvenir and political stickers, and he combines these with excerpts from a number of travel works and expedition journals (Bougainville, Cook, Charlevoix), reference works (The Encyclopedia Britannica), anthopological works (Lévi-Strauss, Mauss), natural histories (Buffon), literature (Verne, Lovecraft, Melville, Roussel, Dumas, Hoffman, Bataille, Claudel, Butler, Villier de l’Isle-Adam, Breton, Chateaubriand, Diderot, Lautréamont) and opera (Rameau). The references to mass-production and mass culture serve to draw attention to one of the most prominent themes of Boomerang: the activity of reproduction. Here again, Butor would seem to take his cue from Duchamp. If we accept the analysis that figures on pages 175–76 of Boomerang, the coherence of the work Duchamp produced in the years immediately following his arrival in the United States derives, in large part, from the recurrence within it of the theme of reproduction: ‘On peut y mettre en évidence une singulière représentation de ces deux pays, organisée en particulier autour de la notion de reproduction, aussi bien au sens industriel et naturellement artistique, qu’au sens physiologique […]’. According to Butor, it was Duchamp’s exploration of this theme in the ready-mades of 1913–15 that allowed him to highlight one of the most striking differences between the country and culture that he had recently left and the country and culture that had adopted him. Thus, the massproduced consumer goods that were readily available in American department stores provided him with emblematic objects by which to convey his first impressions of the United States, while the ‘gaps’ in the range of goods on offer conferred on the objects selected as emblems of France a nostalgic poignancy that ‘defamiliarised’ them and made the viewer (or at least the French viewer) look anew at ordinary everyday objects that could be found in any French household:

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La production en masse des objets, leur présentation en grande quantité dans les magasins, donnaient à ceux choisis en France : roue de bicyclette, égouttoir, une dimension nouvelle. Ils changent de nature dans cet air d’outre-Atlantique […]. Aujourd’hui la valeur esthétique, je dirais même sentimentale d’un égouttoir nous est immédiatement évidente […] objet ancien, chargé pour certains d’entre nous de tous les charmes des souvenirs d’enfance, caves de la campagne […]. Mais arrivé à New York, il n’a pu manquer d’être frappé par le caractère remarquablement français de l’égouttoir, courant dans nos bazars, absent là-bas. (p. 176)

In addition to their emblematic functions, the various ready-mades that Duchamp ‘produced’ between 1913 and 1919 can also be interpreted as a sustained meditation on the relationship between consumerism and consummation. Both La Mariée mise à nue par ses célibatires, même and Etant Donnés can be read as allegories of humanity’s irrepressible and ultimately insatiable appetite for gratification; Tzank Cheque, Monte Carlo Bond and Wanted $2000 Reward (1923) all draw attention to the dominance of Mammon in the modern capitalist state, while Belle Haleine, eau de voilette (1921) suggests the illusionistic power of advertising, which, through the artful combination of visual signals, ensures that the potential customer sees what he or she wants to see, and that what he or she sees coincides with the product on offer. Similarly, in Butor, the strength of the human desire to consume is repeatedly affirmed in the countless references to consumer goods and the many quotations from various types of advertising. Thus, in Boomerang, the myriad diverse forms that our search for gratification takes and the equally diverse gamut of ‘consumables’ that are on offer are attested by the lists of commodities that can be purchased in the various parts of the globe, by the travel brochures that reel off the shopping, dining and drinking facilities of their chosen resorts and by the countless small ads where lonely hearts proclaim their needs and desires or where purveyors of sexual services offer fulfilment of erotic fantasies. Butor himself is not exempt, it would seem, from this acquisitive instinct: the recurrent references to the purchases that he makes shortly after his arrival in Brisbane in order to ‘monter mon petit ménage’ (p. 52) and to the saga of his search for a pair of boots (pp. 51, 186) highlight his status as an albeit modest consumer.113 However, Duchamp and Butor do not limit themselves to oblique 113 Compare his reference to the bargain that his wife picked up en route to Australia: ‘Marie-Jo apparaît avec une jupe longue que je ne lui connaissais pas: il y avait des soldes merveilleux à l’aéroport de Bombay’ (p. 7).

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social commentaries. Their work can be interpreted as a counter to the consumerist culture from which they so readily borrow. Thus, in works such as Roue de bicyclette (1913), En prévision d’un bras cassé (1915) and Trébuchet (1917), Duchamp disrupts the production–consumption process by removing the mass-produced object from circulation, diverting it from its original purpose and placing it in a new context that runs counter to its utilitarian function: the bicycle wheel is mounted on a kitchen stool; the snow shovel of En prévision d’un bras cassé is suspended from the ceiling; the row of hooks of Trébuchet is nailed to the floor. In Belle Haleine, eau de voilette and Tzanck Cheque, the punning titles114 and the incorporation of personal in-jokes – the elegant female figure on the perfume bottle is Duchamp in drag; the ‘cheque’ was the impecunious Duchamp’s payment to his dentist Daniel Tzanck – expose the legerdemain of advertising and express Duchamp’s own highly irreverent attitude to the means by which commodities and services are normally obtained. For Butor, the recycling of materials, whether it takes the form of the duchampian transformation of everyday objects into artworks or the incorporation of excerpts from other sources into his own texts, serves as a counterpoint to the many references in Boomerang and elsewhere to the profligacy and wastefulness of modern consumer society. Thus, in Boomerang, the small ads, brochures and prospectuses that Butor cites are removed from the contexts that gave them an immediate commercial purpose – targeting of potential customers, increase in sales – and are integrated into a highly unorthodox literary text that, by virtue of its interpretative ‘difficulty’, resists ready ‘consumption’, the formal unity of which is, in part, based on the foregrounding of certain thematic patterns and recurrent motifs that can be identified in the found materials. The concept of the ‘ready-made’ is also developed in the many passages of Boomerang devoted to explanations of and commentaries on English set-expressions. Here, the French writer, taking his cue from the word-play that he has encountered in Duchamp, which he discusses at length in Boomerang, explores the culture of the United States through the multiple locutions associated with a single linguistic item. Thus, the sections devoted to the United States are punctuated 114 See Butor’s poem, Ballade à travers la vitre, which pays homage to Duchamp’s puns (Exprès, pp. 117–18). The poem was written to accompany his essay ‘Reproduction interdite’ in the catalogue of the Duchamp exhibition that took place in Tokyo in 1981 (Marcel Duchamp, Tokyo, Seitsu, Takwara, 1981). Each verse of Butor’s poem opens with word-play based on the title of Etant donné.

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by references to the multiple meanings and associations of the word ‘blue’ and by brief commentaries on the many set expressions that incorporate the term.115 Taken together these references constitute a network of chromatic motifs that give the American sections of the text a distinctive, dominant tone, a textual equivalent of the blue tint projected on to the contents of the original ‘kit’ by the blue altuglass of the box. However, these chromatic references also show Butor exploring the domain of the ‘linguistic ready-made’. By removing the cliché or idiom from its usual context and placing it in a new and unfamiliar context and set of associations, Butor draws our attention to the polyvalence and versatility of the most commonplace terms in the language. It is this process of defamiliarisation that he describes in an interview given in 1973, which, significantly, he likens to the subversive practices of Duchamp: Lorsqu’on écrit, on peut utiliser des mots rares, bien sûr. Mais ces mots rares ne vont être intelligibles que s’ils sont au milieu des mots quotidiens. […] Ce sont les mots de tous les jours qui vont prendre une lumière différente. Les objets de tous les jours peuvent être révisés ou revus. Par l’intermédiaire de la littérature bien sûr, en en parlant. […] Certains des ready-made de Marcel Duchamp nous offrent des exemples de subversion de l’objet quotidien.116

Finally, the various references to Duchamp’s Boîte en valise not only draw attention to the theme of travel that has been one of the dominant preoccupations of Butor’s work since his first novel, but also highlight both the methods used by the itinerant writer in the assemblage of his texts and the self-citational nature of much of the work he produces. Thus, the references to Duchamp’s suitcase are echoed in the passages in Boomerang in which Butor itemises the contents of the box of documents that he amassed in preparation for the drafting of the text that we are reading, which he transported with him on the various trips undertaken while it was being written (pp. 29–30, 53, 82, 149, 156). Moreover, the text Butor has produced is based on similar compositional principles as the Boîte en valise. Just as Duchamp’s Boîte en valise was conceived as a ‘portable museum’ or travelling exhibition that, by combining photographic reproductions and facsimile models of his earlier works, acts as a representative anthology of his oeuvre, so Boomerang, by virtue of its incorporation of often extensive extracts 115 As Appy points out, the use of three colours of printing ink in Boomerang – black, blue, red – draws attention to ‘la materialité du livre’, i.e. to the status of the volume as a livre-objet (Nixe: mise en question et exaltation du livre, p. 325). 116 Desoubeaux (ed.), Entretiens: quarante ans de vie littéraire, vol. II, pp. 85–86.

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from and allusions to many of Butor’s earlier publications, constitutes a compendium of ‘work to date’, the recurrence within extracts from different sources of a number of familiar Butorian themes throwing into relief the constants that confer on his many texts the unity and continuity of an oeuvre. It is to this pattern of recurrence, reprise and variation that the title of Boomerang refers. While the reference to this well-known emblem of Australia has an obvious synecdochal relationship with the sections devoted to his antipodean travels, it has no obvious connection with the other sections of the text. However, viewed in the context of Butor’s auto-citation, the word ‘boomerang’ takes on new meaning and can be read as an allusion to the periodic return in his work not only of familiar themes, but also of recognisable texts: texts that are (al)ready-made and (al)ready-read, but that continue to resist easy consumption. x In Transit, Butor returns to Japanese art. However, whereas in Ou he had focused on the work of a single artist, in the fourth volume of Le Génie du lieu, he offers his own selective history of the art and architecture of Japan.117 As he informs us on page 195 (Transit B), he has chosen 21 ‘classics’ from the myriad possible examples of prints, narrative scrolls, screens, buildings and gardens: J’ai fixé mon choix sur 21 classiques. Dans certains cas c’est pour des raisons d’affinités profondes, oeuvres que je connais déjà depuis longtemps, qui ont eu le temps de pousser des racines dans ma mémoire, mais pour d’autres j’ai été guidé par les circonstances, ce que j’ai pu voir, les documents que je me suis procurés. Ma liste n’est donc nullement limitative; je me suis seulement efforcé d’équilibrer l’ensemble de telle sorte qu’il n’y ait pas de double emploi et que cela se distribue sur les différentes périodes.

His selection comprises the following: the Hor– yuj– i temple (late seventh century), Ho–o–do– or ‘Phoenix Hall’ at Kyo–to (1052), Ginkaku or ‘Silver Pavilion’ at Kyo–to (1489), the Dry Garden of Ryo–an-ji, Kyo–to (early sixteenth century), the Villa Katsura, Kyot– o (seventeenth century), the narrative scroll of The Tale of Genji (early twelfth century),118 the Shigi-san Engi handscrolls (mid-twelfth century),119 the Frolicking Animals scrolls 117 The sections of Transit devoted to Japan and to Japanese art and culture were Butor’s response to an invitation from a Japanese publisher who wanted to publish a series similar to Skira’s ‘Sentiers de la création’ in which Butor’s Mots dans la peinture had appeared. When it proved impossible to publish Butor’s text, Flottements d’Est en Ouest, in the intended form, he integrated it into Avant-Goût IV and Transit. See Le Japon depuis la France. Un rêve à l’ancre, p. 45. 118 Tokugawa Reimeikai Foundation, Nagoya. 119 Cho–gosonshi-ji Temple, Nara.

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(twelfth–thirteenth centuries),120 the Kegon Engi scrolls by Enicho-bo– Jo-– nin (early thirteenth century),121 the Tale of the Life of the Monk Ippen handscrolls (late thirteenth century),122 Sesshu– To–yo–’s ‘long scroll’ (1486),123 the scrolls of The Painting of the Six Ways (late twelfth century),124 Flowers and Birds of the Four Seasons by Kano– Eitoku (Momoyama period),125 the decorated rooms by Kano– Sanraku and Kano– Sansetsu at – an’s Crows and Plum-Tree (Momoyama Tenkyu-– in (c. 1631), Unkoku Tog – aku’s Pine Trees in the Mist (Momoyama period),126 period), Hasegawa Toh Kano– Naizen’s ‘Portuguese’ screens (c. 1600),127 Ogata Kor– in’s Plum Trees (Edo period),128 Tawayara So–tatsu’s Bugaku Dancers at Daigoji (Momoyama period), Katsushika Hokusai’s Hundred Views of Fuji (1834–42) and Ando– Hiroshige’s Fifty-three Stages of the To–kaido– Highway (1833). If Butor’s choice of works has been determined in part by his own access to them and by their significance in Japanese cultural history, certain works have also been selected because of thematic affinities with his own writing. Thus, the theme of travel figures prominently in several of the works that he describes. Hiroshige’s series Fifty-three Stages of the To–kaido– Highway is based on the artist’s own travels along the road linking Edo and Kyot– o as a member of a retinue taking a tribute – o’– s of horses from the Shogun in Edo to the Emperor.129 Sesshu– Toy ‘long scroll’ pays homage to the landscape and art of China where he had lived and travelled for some six years: ‘Ce sont des années de pèlerinage, d’errances, de surprises que Sesshu enroule dans la coquille de son retour; hommage à la Chine, mais non à tel site en particulier, ou tel temple, plutôt le talisman qui permet de déployer, dérouler l’équivalent de l’immense empire à partir de n’importe quel rocher, tronc noueux, découpure de l’horizon’ (p. 156, Transit B). The Tale of the Life of the Monk Ippen consists of twelve handscrolls painted on silk, which evoke the story of the Monk Ippen, the founder of the Ji sect of Buddhism, who travelled throughout Japan promoting the practice of nembutsu.130 The Legend of the Kegon Sect depicts the lives of Gisho– and Gangyo,– two 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130

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Koz– an-ji, Kyot– o. Koz– an-ji, Kyot– o. Kankiko-– ji, Kyot– o. Mori Hoko-kai, Yamaguchi. – yo.– National Museum, Tok Juko-– in Temple, Daitoku-ji, Kyot– o. Tokyo National Museum. Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon. MOA Museum, Shizuoka. Shimizu, L’Art Japonais, p. 308. See Paine and Soper, The Art and Architecture of Japan, p. 75.

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Korean priests who travelled to China in the T’ang dynasty and who were the founders of the Kegon sect of Buddhism.131 The themes of cultural appropriation and exchange are also illustrated by several of the Japanese works: the Shaka Triad (623) by Tori Busshi in the temple of Hor– yuj– i, which shows the influence of Chinese, Korean and even Greek art;132 the generalised debt to Chinese art and architecture that is apparent in many of the works; the assimilation of elements from Shintoism, Hinduism and the many different sects of Buddhism. Of particular note is the reference to the impact made by European culture in the sixteenth century. Thus, the ‘Portuguese’ screens by Kano– Naizen, described on pages 110–13 (Transit B), which show the arrival of the Portuguese in Japan and their commencement of trade activities, are the point of departure in Transit for a brief imaginary reconstruction of the reactions of the indigenous population to these mercantile invaders.133 In this reconstruction, the double-edged nature of this encounter is suggested – the Portuguese traders offer access to a multifarious and previously unknown world and bring with them all manner of exotic species never seen before; however, the brief references to their priests and ubiquitous Christian symbolism strike a more sinister note that reminds Butor’s readers of the effects of European religious imperialism so frequently and so graphically described elsewhere in his texts: ‘Leurs prêtres ont de longues robes noires pour la plupart, mais certains en ont de brunes avec des capuchons, marchent pieds nus et prennent des cordes pour ceintures. […] Ils aiment beaucoup ce qui est en croix, mettent des croix partout, sur leurs icônes, leurs temples, leurs vêtements, leurs navires’ (pp. 112–13, Transit B). The ‘aesthetic’ themes of the ‘unfinished work’ and collaboration that have run through Butor’s creative and critical writing since Passage de Milan are also exemplified by several of the Japanese works that he evokes in Transit. The idea of the ‘oeuvre inachevée’ is exemplified by the monumental – and, Butor hypothesises, unfinished – task that Hiroshige set himself when he began the execution of variations on – aido– series: ‘Hiroshige a refait près de 40 fois les 55 the original Tok planches du Tokaïdo. […] Il a dû avoir le sentiment de mourir trop tôt, sans avoir réussi à offrir 55 variations des 55 planches’ (p. 22, Transit 131 See Paine and Soper, The Art and Architecture of Japan, p. 71. 132 See Paine and Soper, The Art and Architecture of Japan, pp. 11–12; Swann, A Concise History of Japanese Art, pp. 41–42; Murase, L’Art du Japon, pp. 21, 24. 133 See Swann, A Concise History of Japanese Art, pp. 221–22; Murase, L’Art du Japon, pp. 217–18.

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B). The uncertainty surrounding both the Crows and Plum-tree Screens – an and the Tale of Genji handscrolls offer further by Unkoku Tog candidates for the title of the ‘unfinished work’: J’ai demandé au conservateur qui m’accompagnait au musée de Kyoto si les six cloisons connues peintes de Corneilles et Pruniers par Unkoku Togan constituaient l’oeuvre complète ou si quelques autres avaient été perdues, et il m’a répondu que vraisemblablement c’était incomplet, mais que comme on ne connaissait pas avec certitude l’édifice pour lequel elles avaient été concues, on ne pouvait en être sûr. Lorsque j’ai lu depuis certaines discussions d’experts sur la question de savoir si le Roman du Prince Genji était achevé ou inachevé, cela a rendu un son familier. C’est le même souci qui traverse des siècles de littérature et d’art japonais, ce même souci qui hante depuis des années certains d’entre nous en Occident, une des clefs de notre liberté. (p. 122, Transit B)

The theme of collaboration is illustrated principally by the various narrative scrolls described in the text, several of which can be considered as collaborative enterprises. Thus the scrolls of The Tale of Genji were produced by complementary groups of artists: calligraphers whose task was to recount the tale in script and court ladies who painted the accompanying illustrations.134 The four scrolls of the Frolicking Animals were composed by Buddhist monks, the first two during the early twelfth century, the second two during the latter half of the thirteenth century, and they show widely varying styles as well as discrepancies in subject-matter and in the quality of the artwork.135 Similarly, the various scrolls grouped under the heading of The Painting of the Six Ways were produced by a number of different artists.136 Moreover, in the narrative scrolls that evoke, through pictures and often through text, events from Japanese history, the biographies of religious figures and classics from Japanese literature and oral culture, Butor has found an early ancestor of the extensive collaborative activity that he himself has undertaken with so many contemporary painters and graphic artists and through which he has carried out his own primarily nonnarrative explorations of the relationship between word and image. However, perhaps the most interesting feature of Butor’s survey of Japanese art in Transit is the way in which he models the composition of his book on certain features of the visual and architectural works he examines. His selection of 21 Japanese works can be seen as an allusion 134 Stanley-Baker, Japanese Art, p. 90. See also Terukazu, Japanese Painting, pp. 74. 135 Stanley-Baker, Japanese Art, p. 90. 136 Terukazu, Japanese Painting, pp. 86–87.

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to the various numbered series produced by Hokusai, Hiroshige and other artists, Butor offering here his own ‘21 Views of Japan’ or his personal ‘21 Stages of a Journey through Japan’. Close analysis of the distribution of segments devoted to each of the works reveals a pattern that suggests that he has tried to produce his own ‘Japanese screens’. To each of the 21 works he devotes four textual segments or ‘petits chapitres’, each of which can be seen as the equivalent of a single panel of a fourfold screen. The two-directional format of Transit – it is composed of two main sections, Transit A beginning at the ‘front’ cover and Transit B at the ‘back’– almost certainly also has its origins in the format of the traditional Japanese book, which, as Butor informs us on page 170 (Transit A), began at what the Western reader would consider to be the back of the volume: ‘La première page des livres occidentaux est la dernière des livres japonais, et vice versa’.137 Finally, the tradition that is recounted on page 120–21 (Transit B) whereby the postulant Buddhist nun brought with her into the monastery the lavishly illustrated narrative scrolls that she had produced during her worldly existence, which she would subsequently use as a surface for the inscription of sacred ‘overtexts’, mirrors Butor’s own ‘overwriting’ of the texts of the past and his palimpsestic conception of literary tradition. In the Japanese sections of Transit, Butor is taking up a role played by many illustrious predecessors, that of the ‘intercesseur’ between France and Japan. Here he adds his name to the long list of French writers and artists who succumbed to the lure of Eastern culture and who include Voltaire, Loti, Monet, Claudel and Barthes.138 However, he is also pursuing a very specific personal interest that has been apparent in his work since the second volume of Répertoire, that is, a fascination for the visual dimension of the text and the plastic dimension of the book.139 In the artistic practices of Japan, with its multi137 Note, however, Butor’s own commentary on the format of Transit: Transit demeure un texte occidental et par conséquent, on ouvre de la même façon, on renverse le livre complètement. Dans le livre japonais on ne renverse le livre qu’en partie. (Teulon-Nouailles and Skimao (eds), ‘Entretien Butor’, Le Chat messager, nos. 9–10 (Butor en transit), p. 78) As the title of Transit suggests, this is a work that looks back to the point of departure and forward to the destination(s). Its two-directional format and its combination of Western and Eastern printing practices reflect this dual perspective. 138 See Butor, Le Japon depuis la France. Un rêve à l’ancre. 139 See ‘Sur la page’ and ‘Le Livre comme objet’ in Répertoire II, pp. 100–03, 104–23. See also Desoubeaux (ed.), Entretiens: quarante ans de vie littéraire, vol. II, pp. 233– 46, and the interview given to Appy that acts as introduction to Nixe: mise en question et exaltation du livre, pp. 11–31.

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farious and often distinctive artistic formats and supports – narrative and hanging scrolls, woodcut prints, screens, fans – Butor has found a tradition in which the relationship between word and image is explored in ways that highlight the graphic dimension of the text and the physical properties of the support on which the words and images were inscribed, painted or printed. In Japanese art he found a stimulus to his own fascination for the book as object140 and the volume that he has produced, although very different from the various Japanese works described, offers strong evidence of an attempt to find textual equivalents of some of the art forms described and to create a text that requires of its reader considerable physical manipulation (the reversal and rotation of the volume, the alternation between Transit A and Transit B, the correlation of textually distant segments of the same series). Gyroscope, the fifth and last volume of Le Génie du lieu, is conceived in terms of the ‘programmes’ for an assortment of television channels, each of which is devoted to a particular theme and each of which relates to a particular geographical area.141 Thus, the programmes entitled ‘Minotaure’, ‘Ciel’, ‘Cathay’, ‘Avatar’, ‘Pyramide’, ‘Observatoire’, ‘Vision’ and ‘Voyant’ are associated respectively with Crete, the Villette complex on the outskirts of Paris, Peking, Cambodia, Central America, Elsinor, Namur and Abyssinia (p. 38). While the relationship between literature and the visual arts figures in the ‘transmissions’ of several of the channels,142 it is most fully explored in the scenarios of the Minotaure programme. This programme examines the representation of the Minotaur in the legend of Theseus and in the work of Picasso through the collation and juxtapositon of various types of material, including Plutarch’s life of Theseus, brief biographical summaries and passages of analytical commentary.143 In resuming and reworking the subject of 140 Compare ‘Le parallélipède de papier c’est une forme de livre, une forme très intéressante dans laquelle il y encore énormément de choses à faire, mais ce n’est pas la seule forme du livre’ (Desoubeaux (ed.), Entretiens: quarante ans de vie littéraire, vol. III, pp. 57–58). See also Desoubeaux (ed.), Entretiens: quarante ans de vie littéraire, vol. II, pp. 75–76, 85. 141 Like Transit, Gyroscope is two-directional in format and has two points of entry: (‘porte chiffres’; ‘entrée lettres’). Page references to Gyroscope will be accompanied by an indication of the relevant point of entry. 142 Note, for instance, the scenario for the planned, but never realised, film on Rodin (Programme Cathay, pp. 114ff., porte chiffres). See Butor, Curriculum vitae, p. 259, and Teulon-Nouailles and Skimao (eds), ‘Entretien Butor’, Le Chat messager, nos. 9– 10 (Butor en transit), pp. 114–16. 143 Many of these passages are recycled extracts from ‘La Suite dans les images’, Répertoire III, pp. 263–68 and from Butor’s collaborative work with André Villers: Picasso-Labyrinthe, ‘livret pour un film = Filmszenario’.

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the Harrey tapestries, Butor offers us further evidence of the longevity of the classical myth, Picasso’s countless paintings, prints, drawings and sculptures of the Minotaur and of related subjects testifying to the durability of the myth’s evocative power.144 However, in Gyroscope, Butor is perhaps less interested in the enduring appeal of the myth of the Minotaur than in its capacity to act as a cultural grid by which to interpret the life of the man who represented the subject so obsessively throughout his artistic career. As in L’Emploi du temps, so in Gyroscope, the myth of the Minotaur offers a frame of reference by which to understand modern man, in this case a quite remarkable individual who achieved a kind of legendary status in his own lifetime. Like Revel, who, in the course of his narrative, identifies with several of the characters in the myth, so Picasso is implicitly cast and recast in various roles, assuming and discarding successively the parts of Theseus, Daedalus and even the Minotaur. His many amorous adventures and his abandonment of wives and mistresses are, in Butor’s text, associated both with Theseus’s heartless abandonment of Ariadne and with the Minotaur’s insatiable appetite for young virgins. Thus, on page 69 (porte chiffres), the Narratrice ‘updates’ Minos’s demand for tributes, de-anonymising the sacrificial virgins and attributing to them not only the status of ‘ménines’ (an allusion to Picasso’s variations on Velázquez’s Las Meninas, 1957), but even the names of Picasso’s wives and mistresses: je savais que notre père Minos, dans sa profondeur, avait condamné une telle ville à nous envoyer tous les sept ans sept fois sept jeunes filles avec des noms comme Fernande, Olga, Marie-Thérèse, Dora, Françoise, Sylvette ou Jacqueline, que l’on appelait des ménines, pour le service et l’émerveillement de son fils.

Picasso’s enforced exile in France – he refused to return to Spain while Franco was in power – is reminiscent of the fate of Daedalus, while his activities as a sculptor permit the establishment of associations with both Daedalus and with the latter’s nephew and pupil Talus. Notwithstanding these very evident links between Picasso and Daedalus, the ‘disfigurement’ to which the former subjects the figures in his paintings suggests analogies rather with the Minotaur’s mutilation of its victims, while the exotic sculptures that Ariadne’s monstrous ‘brother’ 144 Compare ‘il y a quelque chose chez lui [Picasso] qui me passionne particulièrement: son côté touche-à-tout et son contact avec les mythes profonds (le Minotaure)’ (Teulon-Nouailles and Skimao (eds), ‘Entretien Butor’, Le Chat messager, nos. 9–10 (Butor en transit), p. 115).

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collects recalls Picasso’s own fondness of ‘primitive’ sculpture and, indeed, the numerous mask-like sculptures that he produced: Puis dans l’indignation et la terreur, lorsque cette transformation de la personne en objet, le fait qu’on manipule, manie, écrase, déforme le corps, le visage humain, lui apparaîtra comme un des traits fondamentaux de notre condition contemporaine. (p. 83, porte chiffres)145 Et se promener parmi d’immenses entrepôts où se pressaient plus de statues encore qu’il en était sorti des mains de Dédale ou des siennes, car il voulait aussi peupler sa solitude, venant des continents les plus lointains ou les plus obscurs, et en particulier des masques si étranges que lorsqu’on y faisait pénétrer son visage, on éprouvait toutes les fureurs des animaux les plus sauvages. (p. 67, porte chiffres)

However, the Minotaur programme has implications that extend beyond the particular case of Picasso. If the analogies with Greek mythology provide a interpretative grid that, in setting Picasso within a much broader cultural context, suggests a psychological connection between his artistic obsession with the Minotaur and his behaviour in his private life, the sections devoted to the analysis of his work are to be read as reflexive commentaries that combine with the extracts from Plutarch to offer a résumé of some of Butor’s own thoughts on art and its history. Through the implicit parallels that it suggests between Plutarch’s narrative techniques and Picasso’s artistic strategies, Gyroscope resumes and reinforces the aesthetic principles developed through the play between the intertexts and illustrations of Degrés. In Gyroscope, as in his 1960 novel, the relativity of all forms of representation is suggested by means of a judicious distribution of quotation and visual allusion. Thus, Plutarch’s references to the discrepancies among the various versions of the story of Theseus and the Minotaur complement the references to Picasso’s Cubist period and the analytical commentaries on it: the relativism that is already implicit in the first-century writer’s qualifications is explored openly and systematically in the twentieth-century painter’s inclusion of different views of the same object within a single canvas: racine profonde du cubisme, le verre ou la bouteille étant présentés simultanément sous divers points de vue, ces objets-là et non point d’autres, car dans la réalité ils nous invitent à les prendre, les manipuler, nous rendent mobiles à leur égard. (p. 51, porte chiffres)146 145 This passage is taken from ‘La Suite dans les images’, Répertoire III, pp. 266–67. 146 This passage is taken from ‘La Suite dans les images’, Répertoire III, pp. p. 266.

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The visibility of Plutarch’s sources within the story he constructs and his re-assemblage of existing materials into a new narrative also has an equivalent in Picasso’s variations on the masters of the past, several of whom are mentioned in Gyroscope. Thus, just as Plutarch draws on and reworks the accounts of Hellenicus, Simonides, Pherecydes (p. 65), Philochorus (p. 67) and Clidemus (p. 73), so Picasso offers variations on Cranach, Velázquez, Rembrandt, Poussin, El Greco, David, Delacroix, Courbet and Manet.147 Though separated by over eighteen centuries, Plutarch and Picasso are seen to illustrate the inherently accretive processes that underlie the development of a cultural tradition. Here, as in Degrés, the artist is always taking up where others left off, not in order to produce the definitive version of a particular subject, thereby ‘disqualifying’ the versions produced by earlier artists, but rather to add his or her contribution to an artistic tradition that he or she acknowledges and assumes as his or her heritage: Il ne se sert point de ses maîtres comme de marchepieds pour lui permettre de réaliser des images qui seraient enfin bonnes et les seules bonnes; il adopte au contraire comme sien la totalité de l’héritage exposé, et y ajoute ce qui lui semble y manquer. (p. 141, entrée lettres)148

Moreover, far from competing with earlier versions, the new version will engage with the works of the past in ways that will reveal previously unseen dimensions of the ‘originals’ and will change the viewer’s perspective on them (p. 143). Finally, both Plutarch and Picasso, like Butor, incorporate into their work reflexive elements that throw into relief the manner in which it has been composed. Picasso repeatedly draws the viewer’s attention to the act of painting in his countless images of the painter and his model (p. 143), while Plutarch’s description of the manner by which Theseus’s boat was preserved/renewed, through the constant replacement of timbers, acts as a mise en abyme reflecting the process by which cultural tradition is at once preserved and regenerated through the addition of individual components that, even as they ensure continuity, guarantee renewal of its fabric: Le vaisseau sur lequel Thésée alla et retourna était une galiote à 30 rames, que les Athéniens gardèrent jusqu’au temps de Démétrius le Phalérien, en ôtant toujours les vieilles pièces de bois à mesure qu’elles se pourrissaient, et en y remettant des neuves en leurs places. (p. 165, entrée lettres) 147 See Reff, ‘Themes of Love and Death in Picasso’s Early Work’; Boggs, ‘The Last Thirty Years’; Galassi, Picasso’s Variations on the Masters. See also Butor’s commentary on Picasso in ‘La Suite dans les images’, Répertoire III, pp. 267–68. 148 This passage is taken from ‘La Suite dans les images’, Répertoire III, p. 267.

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Finally, the passages from ‘La Suite dans les images’ that figure in the Minotaure sections of Gyroscope suggest strongly that for Butor, Picasso’s work offers an exemplar of the kind of oeuvre to which he himself aspires, that is, a body of works that, despite their apparent diversity, constitute a coherent totality, each new work serving to ‘fill a gap’ in the ensemble: Lorsque les oeuvres sont rassemblées, on y distingue fort clairement des suites: les Arlequins, les Minotaures, certaines s’étendant d’un bout à l’autre presque d’une vie, avec parfois des lacunes, des interruptions de plusieurs années, et aussi, à certains moments, des groupes qui tournent autour d’un sujet, chaque toile développant un aspect différent. (p. 14, entrée lettres) C’est alors que ce groupe entier qui constitue vraiment une oeuvre que l’on n’apprécie véritablement que lorsque l’on a pu rassembler un certain nombre de ses membres épars, chacun étant un détail, valable en soi, mais réclamant d’être complété par d’autres. (p. 16, entrée lettres)149

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This chapter has offered a highly selective survey of the work which Butor has produced since his ‘abandonment’ of fiction. Yet, despite this selectiveness, it has identified a very substantial body of evidence that demonstrates Butor’s continuing fascination for the visual arts and illustrates the variety of the ways in which he has exploited visual and plastic sources in his writing. As we saw in the first section of this chapter, collage offers Butor a compositional method that allows him to combine elements from different sources, to interweave numerous different narrative voices and to create complex textual patterns that throw into relief the work’s central themes. For Butor, as for fellow nouveau romancier Claude Simon,150 the appeal of collage lies in large part in the potential it offers to exploit the in-built history and associations of found material, to encourage, through recontextualisation, fresh readings of familiar texts and images and to create, through the elaboration of thematic and formal contrasts and correspondences, new ensembles that, by dint of their internal coherence, are greater than the sum of their parts. The various collaborative ventures that he has undertaken with painters, collagists and graphic artists have permitted him to realise an ambition that had already been evoked obliquely in the discussions of Samuel Léonard and his friends in Passage de Milan, in his critical essay on 149 These passages are taken from ‘La Suite dans les images’, Répertoire III, pp. 264, 266. 150 See Duffy, Reading Between the Lines, pp. 147–62.

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science fiction and in his frequent references to the great collaborative architectural feats of earlier centuries. Collaboration has offered Butor a way of transcending the limits of traditional genres and the opportunity to develop further the interactive tendency of his writing. If the artists with whom Butor has worked seem to form a rather motley group and if their working methods vary considerably from project to project, scrutiny of the texts that he has produced in response to visual stimuli reveals a number of shared preoccupations that explain, in part at least, his choice of collaborative partners. Finally, examination of Butor’s analytical essay Les Mots dans la peinture and of his highly idiosyncratic ‘travel works’ revealed a sustained exploration of the relationship between word and image that has spanned Butor’s career and has ranged from the familiar territory of the Western artistic tradition to the arts and crafts of remote, ‘primitive’ and, in some cases extinct, cultures. In addition to its incisive commentaries on the numerous and diverse functions of words in painting, Les Mots dans la peinture also drew together and articulated in a more systematic and direct manner certain concepts that had already figured in some of his critical essays and in the reflexive passages of his fiction. Although he uses a wide range of different strategies in his attempts in Le Génie du lieu to identify and define the genius loci of the selected sites, he relies particularly heavily on the examination of the texts and images that have been produced by the inhabitants of these sites or by (real or virtual) visitors to them, or have been inspired by their reputation and by the myths and folklore that have evolved around them. While the format of the five volumes varies considerably, in each case Butor explores his chosen sites by gradually exposing the layers of cultural sediment that have accumulated over centuries and, in some instances, millennia. In many, perhaps most, cases, identification of the genius loci is a very mixed experience, for, although the various cultures that have emerged in the often inhospitable locations chosen by Butor offer testimony of man’s inventiveness and resilience, they also expose some of his worst failings: his tendency to appropriate whatever lies in his path whether it be territory or sexual partners; an appetite for cruelty that may take the form of real physical violence or the less harmful, but equally revealing, imaginary and symbolic mutilations to which he subjects others in his representations; and his capacity to rewrite and rerepresent the past in ways that suit his own conception of himself. For

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Butor, the countless texts and images that man has tirelessly generated throughout his history offer a measure both of his potential and of his limitations, and the lessons to be learned from that history are inextricably linked to the very rich and diverse, but frequently highly questionable ways in which man has used his linguistic and artistic talents.

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5

Conclusion

Butor’s rather unorthodox ‘career pattern’ has perplexed and at times exasperated his early critics and readers. His apparent abandonment of fiction seemed to rob the nouveau roman of one of its most serious and culturally wide-ranging authors, while the inaccessibility of some of his collaborative works and of the numerous livres-objets that he has produced, and the relative ephemerality of some of the publishing vehicles he has used, have made it virtually impossible for even the most determined critic to offer a comprehensive overview of his literary and artistic activities. The aims of the present study were more modest. It was based on two broad lines of enquiry: the detailed analysis of the various functions fulfilled by the references to painting, sculpture and architecture in Butor’s fiction and the examination of the ways in which Butor’s fascination for art and architecture determined the subsequent evolution of his writing. The first of these issues was addressed in the first four chapters of the study, each chapter offering a sustained analysis of the visual sources exploited in the four novels and of the ways in which the visual, plastic and architectural references contribute to the development of the principal themes of the texts in which they figure. This analysis not only provided further evidence of Butor’s well-documented erudition; it also revealed the diversity of the ways in which he exploits the visual arts. The range of functions performed by the references to art and architecture is considerable: they serve to provide cultural co-ordinates in the different quests undertaken by the characters, to universalise the central themes of the texts, to reinforce or act as a counterpoint to the intertextual material and to reflect and provide oblique commentary on the processes of writing. Thus, each of the four chapters devoted to the novels examined in detail the following issues: the generative roles played by the visual works in the creation of the various narrative elements

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(fictional environment, characters, scenes, dreams); the relationships between the artistic references and the various voyages of self-discovery undertaken by Butor’s protagonists; the contribution of these references to the development of certain recurring themes (e.g. thwarted aspiration, survival, cultural determinism, freedom, exploration and exploitation); the elaboration of alternative histories of art that, in focusing on certain topics (the representation of desire, the relationship between culture and identity, the relationship between representation, authority and control), highlight both the universal nature of the themes and situations being explored and the status of Butor’s protagonists as everymen; and the role of the artwork, edifice or illustration as mise en abyme reflecting the dominant thematic and structural patterns of the text. In the final chapter, the scope of the study broadened to consider the question of continuity in Butor’s work and to analyse the ways in which the fiction he produced some forty years ago, which remains his most widely read work, anticipated the more radically experimental and at times rather esoteric publications that followed. This chapter examined, in particular, the impact that his interest in the visual arts had on the formal organisation of his subsequent texts and on the collaborative working practices that have figured so prominently in the texts produced since the 1960s. It was seen that Butor’s adoption in Degrés of compositional procedures based on the techniques of collage heralded the methods he would favour in the mixed genre texts of the 1960s and in his travel works. With its juxtaposition of found materials from a wide variety of sources and its emphasis on the establishment of formal correspondences among these discrete materials, collage had an obvious appeal for an author whose writing shows a clear predilection for intertextual citation and such a strong preoccupation with the internal coherence of the work. The very numerous and varied collaborative ventures that Butor has undertaken over the last forty years with painters, collagists and graphic artists is, in many respects, simply the logical extension of his longstanding practice of intertextual citation and his critical writings on the relationship between literature and the visual arts. Although the quantity, diversity and relative inaccessibility of these projects make comprehensive evaluation of his collaborative work impossible at this stage, his choice of collaborators does suggest certain patterns that would seem to be based on the use of equivalent procedures (collage and the recycling of discarded materials, defamiliarisation techniques, perspectival experimentation), common cultural interests and influences

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(primitive art, classical art and mythology) and shared themes (the relationship between word and image, the journey, dreams, movement, time and space). The third and final section of the chapter argued that Les Mots dans la peinture can be viewed to some extent as a synthesis of many of the aesthetic concerns and concepts that had figured in much of Butor’s earlier critical and fictional work. It also highlighted the wide range of visual, plastic and architectural reference that figures in Le Génie du lieu and demonstrated that the exploration of the relationships between the words and images associated with a given site is a crucial stage in Butor’s elucidation of the various elements – both positive and negative – that give it its distinctive character or genius. If the broad themes and meanings of Butor’s texts can, by and large, be deduced by a close reading of the texts and, in particular, by correlation and analysis of the recurrent motifs, it is, nevertheless, true that appreciation of the full complexity of Butor’s work is, as in the case of the work of many of his literary heroes (notably, Joyce and Pound), dependent on our willingness to explore the culture with which he engages and to follow the various interpretative pistes that his texts offer us in the form of literary, musical and visual citation. L’Emploi du temps, La Modification and Degrés can all be ‘understood’ and, indeed, naturalised without the extensive archival work that exploration of these trails of allusion demands, but such readings will not only overlook many of the nuances of the novels, but will also run counter to some of the deeply held aesthetic convictions on which Butor’s work is based. In particular, they will ignore: Butor’s insistence on the ‘openness’ of the text; his conception of the novel as a journey of exploration that encompasses not only the words on the page, but also the cultural context in which those words were set down on paper; his belief that our perception, whether we be readers or writers, is informed by the culture into which we are born; and his convictions that the modern work is, by definition, citational and allusive and that the modern writer’s awareness of the processes by which both contemporary and past cultural phenomena impinge on his or her perception means that he or she has no option but to acknowledge both those processes and the cultural baggage which he or she carries – willingly or unwillingly – at all times. However, lest we should venture so far down the path of allusion that we lose sight of our objective and forsake understanding for mere knowledge, Butor offers us in Portrait de l’artiste en jeune singe the unorthodox autobiography that he published in 1967, a cautionary

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tale that demonstrates through the experiences of a young ‘Monsieur Butor’ that if a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, too much knowledge can be just as dangerous.1 In Portrait de l’artiste en jeune singe, Butor is given a unique opportunity to enrich his knowledge through more or less unrestricted access to one of the richest private libraries and art collections of Europe. However, his protracted stay at the Château de Harburg and the Schloss Wissenstein in Pommersfelden2 is far from being a uniformly positive experience: his exploration of the castles, their galleries and the holdings of their libraries reveals some rather sinister truths about European history and culture, about humanity’s partiality for acquisition and hoarding and about our apparently insatiable desire for knowledge. Portrait de l’artiste en jeune singe resumes and reworks some of the central themes of Degrés and reveals the same ambivalence about man’s thirst for knowledge, for, if many of the texts and images scrutinised by Butor testify to man’s admirable aspirations and remarkable achievements, others show his more shameful traits and activities. Thus, the limited edition history of the Château de H. which Alexander von B. gives to Butor reveals some of the more grisly secrets of the building that he has been exploring. Le Château de H. offers a chilling testimony of our capacity for persecution and cruelty, the accounts of the punishments inflicted on wrongdoers detailing with graphic clarity the perversely inventive forms of torture devised by the sadistic minds of those meting out ‘justice’. Even more disturbing is the fact that, as the occasional allusions to Europe’s more recent history3 and the implicit parallels with the horrors perpetrated 1 For a detailed study of the most esoteric aspects of Portrait de l’artiste en jeune singe, see Waelti-Walter’s excellent monograph, Alchimie et littérature: à propos de ‘Portrait de l’artiste en jeune singe’ de Michel Butor and O’Donnell, ‘Polemic’. For an assessment of its status as a ‘capriccio’ and of Butor’s debt to Hoffmann, see Grimm, ‘From Callot to Butor, E. T. A. Hoffmann and the Tradition of the Capriccio’. 2 Waelti-Walters’s carefully documented study of the text identifies the real models for the locations and the principal characters. See Alchimie et littérature, pp. 101–14. She also identifies the text’s numerous intertexts. These include The Thousand and One Nights; Ovid, Metamorphoses; Thomas Mann, Joseph in Agypten, Vienna, BermannFischer, 1936; Fulcanelli, Les Demeures philosophales, Paris, Jean Schemit, 1930; Basile Valentin, Les Douze Clés de la philosophie, Paris, J. and C. Périer, 1624; Athanasius Kircher, Oedipus Aegyptiacus, 1652 and China Illustrata, 1667; the collective volume of alchemical texts by Artephius, Flamel and Synesius, published in Paris in 1621 and entitled, Trois Traictez de la philosophie naturelle; Jakob Boehme, Mysterium Magnum, 1623; Franz Werfel, Stern der Ungeborenen, ein Reiseroman, Stockholm, Bermann-Fischer, 1949; Le Cabinet des Fées, Geneve and Amsterdam, 1785–1789; The Museum Hermeticum, 1625; L’Almanach de Gotha. 3 See pages 131, 168, 203. See also McWilliams, The Narratives of Michel Butor, pp. 62–63.

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by the Nazi régime demonstrate, man seems to have made no progress in the intervening period, despite his relentless pursuit of knowledge, despite the ‘civilisation’ that he deems himself to have undergone and despite the culture that he has created, which is represented in miniature in the Château de H.4 The collection of the Château de H. and the even more impressive holdings of the Château de W., which Butor visits with the count, are embodiments of man’s contradictions; they are treasure houses of human achievement, but their opulence is also the product of materialistic and ostentatious impulses and some of the most important items in their collections – in particular, the engravings of Hogarth’s Rake’s Progress (p. 184) and Callot’s Désastres de la Guerre (p. 188), but even the lavish still lifes of Jordaens and Snyders (p. 162) – expose man’s voracious appetite, whether it be for fine foods and wines, for debauchery or for territory. Close examination of the holdings of the castles and of the various other collections that Butor visits also shows that the actual activity of collection is a rather dubious pursuit. It cannot be denied that, on one level, it testifies to man’s desire to understand, classify and order his world or that the patronage of the arts that it promotes has rendered possible some of man’s finest achievements. However, there is clear evidence that, in many instances, collection is at best a rather ludicrous and at worst an exploitative and destructive activity. Thus, the very uneven button and fossil collections of the princes von O. W. have their origins in aristocratic indolence and petty one-upmanship: Au dix-huitième siècle, comme ils n’avaient pas grand-chose à faire, ils ont tous été d’enragés collectionneurs, chacun s’ingéniant à découvrir une catégorie d’objets qui n’avait pas intéressé ses prédécessurs; c’est ainsi que l’un eut l’idée de rassembler tous ces boutons, un autre ces quelques fossiles. (pp. 96–97)

Moreover, in the world of the collector, art and money are inextricably associated with one another. Thus, some of the most important works in the library collection of the Château de H. were sold to pay inheritance tax (p. 76), while, as the abbot-curator of the Château de W. explains, the collection of the ‘prince archevêque’ is based not on artistic merit or even personal taste, but on the desire to avoid being defrauded: 4 Note, too, that imaginary versions of the barbaric practices of the past are maintained by the count’s children in the witch-hunt games that they play (p. 81) and by the Count himself in one of his games of patience: ‘Le soir, le comte choisit de réussir La Chasse à la Sorcière’ (p. 107).

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La plupart des peintures datent de la fin du dix-septième siècle, car le prince archevêque, après s’être intéressé à des artistes plus anciens, venant à se rendre compte que la plupart des tableaux qu’on lui avait vendus étaient des faux, s’était décidé à ne plus acheter qu’à des peintres vivants. (p. 161)5

The dinner that Butor attends at the Château de W. takes place in a dining room that is adorned with still lifes by Jordaens and Snyders and matching Saxon porcelain, yet the conversation focuses on currency rates (pp. 162–63). Given this context, it comes as no real suprise when Butor reports at the end of the text that the count subsequently gave up his sinecure as curator of his uncle’s collection, renouncing the world of art and literature in favour of Mammon and taking up a career in banking in Paris. Portrait de l’artiste en jeune singe can also be read an autobiographical version of Degrés, the young Butor cast in the role of enquirer and aspiring writer faced with a plethora of research resources that are even more inexhaustible than those used by Vernier. In these castles, the aspiring artist Butor finds himself in what would seem to be the perfect environment for the acquisition of the knowledge he will need in order to produce his own work. He is surrounded by texts, paintings, engravings and frescoes. The print collection of the Château de H. consists of some 30,000 items (p. 100). His every waking moment involves exposure to the multifarious aspects of European culture and his dreams draw on and rework the images and words that he has viewed and read during the day. However, as his research advances and as he acquires more and more knowledge of the ignominies perpetrated in the Château de H., his mental and physical health begins to deteriorate: his dreams become increasingly disturbed; he experiences feelings of inexplicable unease during the day; he develops an everworsening pain in one eye; as he takes his leave of the countess and her children, his frayed nerves cause his emotions to spill over and he bursts into tears (p. 227). Butor’s gradual enervation is registered through pendant references to the visual arts. Thus on page 79, his enthusiasm about the Château de H. and his situation is translated into visual terms, the landscape that he scans from the windows of the library reminding him of the backdrops found in the religious art of the Flemish Renaissance: ‘Des 5 It is also significant that, on at least two occasions, Butor’s own appetite for knowledge induces him to behave dishonestly: he opens the package destined for Alexander von B. (p. 56) and surreptitiously drinks from the mysterious decanter that stands on the Count’s mantlepiece (p. 218).

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fenêtres on plongeait sur une colline ronde avec quelques arbres, propre à servir de modèle à un peintre flamand du quinzième siècle pour le paysage de l’ascension’. However, by pages 124–25, the analogy that springs to mind when he contemplates the same landscape suggests feelings of malaise and anxiety: De grands rayon, de grandes ondulations, dont je précisais ainsi les frontières, courants et noeuds, de grandes réserves d’ombre et de fraîcheur, des golfes de réverbérations et torpeurs, de douces trombes cristallines, des marées de transparences, des frémissements, des approches d’orages, des cris d’animaux ou des bruits humains. Un peintre me semblait contrôler tout cela, dont je n’avais jamais vu de tableaux, quelques reproductions seulement en noir, dans des revues, avec un souffle léger, une hantise, un sens de l’apparition, dans une lumière inépuisablement nuancée, nostalgique, frissonnante en pleine chaleur, et j’avais mal retenu son nom. ‘Un peintre, disais-je au comte, vous le connaissez sûrement, un romantique: Frédéric, Carl David, Gustav David, Friedrich Gaspard David ou quelque chose comme ça…’ Et naturellement il me disait ce nom, mais le lendemain il se remettait à bouger sur le paysage, à me narguer.

However, of all the references to visual art in Portrait de l’artiste en jeune singe, it is perhaps the discreet reference to Dürer’s Melancholia on page 129 that is the most significant. The print that hangs in the Salle des Chevaliers offers him a portentous image of the situation in which he will eventually find himself. Interpretations of Dürer’s engraving abound, but according to the most widely held thesis, the angel is an allegorical figure representing one or more of three related activities: alchemy, art and the pursuit of knowledge. Butor’s reference to the engraving does not require us to choose among these interpretations. His association of art, alchemy and the pursuit of knowledge is well documented and, in Portrait de l’artiste en jeune singe, the young Butor is an aspiring artist whose thirst for knowledge encompasses a fascination for the history and practices of alchemy.6 In Melancholia, the figure is surrounded by the symbols of the disciplines that he needs to 6 Note, too, the strong echoes of Nerval in Portrait de l’artiste en jeune singe. These include the references to Dürer’s Melancholia, which is also cited in Nerval’s Aurélia and ‘El Desdichado’, the dream sequences that recall those in Aurélia and the numerous allusions to hermeticism, mysticism and alchemy that recall the multiple esoteric sources of Nerval’s Voyage en Orient. Shared sources include the esoteric texts of Athanasius Kircher and Jakob Boehme, as well as the Arabian Nights. See Richer, Gérard de Nerval et les doctrines ésotériques.

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practise his craft, but is paralysed by the melancholy traditionally associated with artists and those who embark on quests for knowledge or for the more specific, but even more elusive, Stone of Saturn/Philosopher’s Stone. Similarly, in Portrait de l’artiste en jeune singe, Butor undergoes an initiation into numerous fields of knowledge, but he seems unable to carry out any creative activity, finds himself overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of the texts and images with which he is confronted, and is weighed down by the awareness he has acquired through his reading of the ‘horreur qui rôde’ (p. 209). However, unlike Dürer’s artist and unlike Pierre Vernier, he is able to make his escape. When his visit comes to an end, he does not simply depart but flees and, as he admits, he is fleeing not simply from the castle or even Germany: ‘C’était le lundi du départ, il fallait s’arracher, il était grand temps de fuir, non seulement le château, non seulement l’Allemagne …’ (p. 228). Although he does not finish his sentence, it is clear from everything that has preceded and from the Envoi that concludes the volume that he is also fleeing Europe and the burden of a culture that is rich to the point of oppressiveness, the overwhelming opulence of which threatens to stifle all initiative7 and is a monument both to the grandeur and the misère of man: ‘Comment, après cela, dès la première possibilité offerte, comment aurais-je pu ne pas m’embarquer pour l’Egypte?’ (p. 231).8 7 Compare the Count who, although he has this immense collection at his disposal, spends most of his time playing unproductive but elaborate games of patience. Note, too, the references to instances of arrested development and imprisonment in the past. Thus, Alexander von B. and his wife would seem to have tried to preserve the childhood of their sixteen-year-old daughter by treating her as though she were six and allowing her sovereignty over a miniature world populated by dolls (p. 127), while the poverty-stricken aristocratic families of Eastern Europe live in rags, but continue to sport the family jewels (p. 131). Compare, too, the ambivalent feeling expressed in his interview with Raymond Elaho: ‘Les livres s’organisent d’une façon plus ou moins forte chez les lecteurs et si on ne varie pas suffisamment ses lectures, on risque d’être écrasé par un certain type de lectures. L’activité littéraire est conditionnée en grande partie par la lecture […] c’est aussi une libération par rapport à cela. En écrivant, on brûle la bibliothèque, mais c’est ce feu qui nous nourrit’ (‘Michel Butor’, Entretiens avec le Nouveau Roman, p. 27). 8 Compare Nerval’s ‘voyage en orient’ following his first mental breakdown in 1841. Compare, too, the sentiments expressed in Mallarmé’s Brise Marine, which is cited in full in Litanie d’eau. Note, in particular, the following lines: La chair est triste, hélas! et j’ai lu tous les livres. Fuir! là-bas fuir! Je sens que des oiseaux sont ivres D’être parmi l’écume inconnue et les cieux! Je partirai! Steamer balançant ta mâture, Lève l’ancre pour une exotique nature! See Illustrations, p. 127.

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Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin, Le Singe antiquaire, 1739

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Alexandre Gabriel Decamps, Le Singe peintre or Intérieur d’atelier, 1845

The title of Portrait de l’artiste en jeune singe should alert the reader both to its complex literary and artistic ancestry and to its didactic dimension. The passing allusions in the title to James Joyce and Dylan Thomas have been acknowledged by Butor and analysed at some length by his critics.9 Butor’s assumption of the guise of ‘singe’ is, however, equally important. The cover notes of the book draw attention to the status of the monkey as symbol for the alchemist, while Butor’s interviews highlight the allusion to the Egyptian God Thot who was frequently represented as a baboon.10 Both allusions endow the ‘jeune singe’ Butor with attributes that are at once positive and negative. In both instances, the monkey is credited with remarkable representational skills – the alchemist possessing the ability to reproduce natural wonders, Thot figuring in ancient Egyptian mythology as god of wisdom, 9 See Lydon, Perpetuum Mobile, pp. 196–234, and Raillard, Butor, 1968, pp. 209–11. Note the palimpsestic dimension of the title: Butor’s text alludes to Dylan’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog, which, in turn, alludes to Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. 10 See Desoubeaux (ed.), Entretiens: quarante ans de vie littéraire, vol. I, pp. 308, 317–18.

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inventor of language, maths and magic, teacher of man and scribe of the gods. However, alchemy has also long been associated with necromancy, trickery and the work of the devil, while Thot was considered to be quarrelsome and lecherous. Moreover, in medieval Christian iconography, the monkey was seen as a symbol of degraded humanity. The rather questionable reputation of the monkey in ancient and medieval lore and legend is maintained in subsequent centuries, the inclusion of a monkey in a painting or print frequently serving as a moralising commentary on the activity represented and highlighting the vanity of man’s exploits. Thus, in Renaissance art and in seventeenth-century Dutch genre painting, the monkey represented a range of evils including lust, greed, malice and sloth.11 In the eighteenth century, wit, playfulness and irony tend to replace the more sober moralising of earlier artists. The singerie – a painting, drawing or print in which monkeys, dressed in human clothes, mimic various human activities, including playing musical instruments, painting and sculpting – enjoyed particular popularity during the eighteenth century and examples are to be found in the work of Watteau, Huet, Saint-Aubin, Chardin, Deshays and Goya. In the nineteenth century, the motif of the ‘homme-singe’ also figured prominently in the satirical illustrations of J.-J. Grandville and in the closely observed genre paintings of Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps, while more recent variations on the genre include works by Picasso, Kupka and Kokoschka, in which selfconsciousness and persiflage dominate and suggest a modernist ambivalence about the act of representation: as Theodore Reff points out the monkey has long been viewed as ‘the natural companion of acrobats and fools’.12 I would suggest that, in his choice of title, Butor is placing Portrait de l’artiste en jeune singe within this long and complex artistic tradition and that, in so doing, he is signalling the cautionary nature of the outlandish tale he is about to tell. In particular, he is acknowledging and drawing attention to the risks that face 11 See, for example, the anonymous Frankfurt Paradise Garden (c. 1410–20, Frankfurt, Staedelsches Kunstinstitut) and Dürer’s engraving Madonna with the Monkey (c. 1498). 12 ‘Themes of Love and Death in Picasso’s early work’, p. 38. For a history of the motif of the artist-monkey in the visual arts, see Marret’s concise study, Portraits de l’artiste en singe: les singeries dans la peinture. Examples of the phenomenon include the following: Watteau, La Sculpture (1710, Musée des Beaux Arts, Orléans); Chardin, Le Singe peintre (1739, Musée des Beaux Arts, Chartres); Goya, Caprichos (1799); J.-J. Grandville, Singeries morales, politiques, etc (1832); Decamps, Le Singe peintre (1845, Louvre, Paris); Picasso, Autoportrait en singe (1903, Museo Picasso, Barcelona); Kokoschka, Zircus: le peintre et son modèle (1959, Fondation Balestra, Longiano).

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the young writer, forever in danger of succumbing to the temptation of mere imitation, whether it be the pursuit of illusionism or the mimicry of past masters. If, in Butor’s case, slavish mimeticism holds little temptation and, consequently, little threat, the overwhelming wealth of the cultural resources he encounters in the course of his trip threatens to choke his own creativity and to turn him into a ‘singe savant’.13 Portrait de l’artiste en jeune singe constitutes Butor’s fullest and most probing exploration of his ambivalence about his own cultural heritage. It is this ambivalence that has both propelled him on his travels and brought him back time after time to France. It is this ambivalence that fuelled his interest in non-Western culture and socalled primitive art and that also forced him to revisit again and again the literature, art and music of his own continent. Finally, it is out of this ambivalence that his fictional protagonists were born. In these characters – the fugitive Louis, the lapsed Catholic Léon, the exile Jacques and the obsessive autodidact Pierre – Butor has created fellow travellers with whom he can share at least temporarily the cultural legacy/burden that is his charge.

13 This danger is, of course, also indicated by the description of Butor’s life before his trip to Germany; his account of his status and behaviour when he is with the group of young Parisian intellectuals who adopt him as their ‘singe’ (p. 42) reveals an early tendency to emulate others considered to be more erudite and more intelligent.

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5

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Works by Michel Butor Books* Passage de Milan, Paris, Minuit, 1954 L’Emploi du temps, Paris, Minuit, 1956, reprinted in the ‘Collection Double’ in 1995 La Modification, Paris, Minuit, 1957, reprinted in the ‘Collection Double’ in 1980 Le Génie du lieu, Paris, Grasset, 1958 Répertoire, Paris, Minuit, 1960 Degrés, Paris, Gallimard, 1960, reprinted in the ‘Collection L’Imaginaire’ in 1978 Mobile: étude pour une représentation des Etats-Unis, Paris, Gallimard, 1962, reprinted in the ‘Collection L’Imaginaire’ in 1979 Réseau aérien: texte radiophonique, Paris, Gallimard, 1962 Description de San Marco, Paris, Gallimard, 1963 Illustrations, Paris, Gallimard, 1964 Répertoire II, Paris, Minuit, 1964 Hérold, Paris, G. Fall, 1964 6 810 000 litres d’eau par seconde, Paris, Gallimard, 1965 Portrait de l’artiste en jeune singe, Paris, Gallimard, 1967 Essais sur les Essais, Paris, Gallimard, 1968 Répertoire III, Paris, Minuit, 1968 Illustrations II, Paris, Gallimard, 1969 Les Mots dans la peinture, Geneva, Skira, 1969 x Ou (Le Génie du lieu II), Paris, Gallimard, 1971 Dialogue avec 33 variations de L. van Beethoven sur une valse de Diabelli, Paris, Gallimard, 1971 Illustrations III, Paris, Gallimard, 1973 Intervalle, Paris, Gallimard, 1973 * Page references to L’Emploi du temps and La Modification relate to the ‘Collection Double’ volumes; page reference to Degrés and the Mobile relate to the ‘Collection L’Imaginaire’ volumes.

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Répertoire IV, Paris, Minuit, 1974 Matière de rêves, Paris, Gallimard, 1975 Illustrations IV, Paris, Gallimard, 1976 Second sous-sol (Matière de rêves 2), Paris, Gallimard, 1976 Troisième dessous (Matière de rêves 3), Paris, Gallimard, 1977 Boomerang (Le Génie du lieu III), Paris, Gallimard, 1978 Envois, Paris, Gallimard, 1980 Explorations, Lausanne, L’Aire, 1981 Quadruple fond (Matière de rêves 4), Paris, Gallimard, 1981 Répertoire V, Paris, Minuit, 1982 Exprès, Paris, Gallimard, 1983 Improvisations sur Flaubert, Paris, La Différence, 1984 Avant-Goût, Chavagne, Ubacs, 1984 Improvisations sur Henri Michaux, Montpellier, Fata Morgana, 1985 Mille et un plis (Matière de rêves 5), Paris, Gallimard, 1985 Avant-Goût II, Chavagne, Ubacs, 1987 Avant-Goût III: l’appel du large, Chavagne, Ubacs, 1989 Au jour le jour: carnets 1985, Paris, Plon, 1989 L’Embarquement de la reine de Saba, Paris, La Différence, 1989 Improvisations sur Rimbaud, Paris, La Différence, 1989 Avant-Goût IV : en mémoire, Chavagne, Ubacs, 1992 Transit (Le Génie du lieu IV), Paris, Gallimard, 1992 Improvisations sur Michel Butor, Paris, La Différence, 1993 L’Utilité poétique, Saulxures, Circé, 1995 Le Japon depuis la France, Paris, Hatier, 1995 Gyroscope (Le Génie du lieu V), Paris, Gallimard, 1996 Ici et là : relations intercontinentales, Paris, Publisud, 1997 Le Marchand et le génie (Improvisations sur Balzac I), Paris, La Différence, 1998 Paris à vol d’archange (Improvisations sur Balzac II), Paris, La Différence, 1998 Scènes de la vie féminine (Improvisations sur Balzac III), Paris, La Différence, 1998 Quant au livre: triptyque en l’honneur de Gauguin, Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, 2000

Collaborative Work Alechinsky, Pierre, Michel Butor, Bernard Dufour and Jacques Hérold, Tourmente, Montpellier, Fata Morgana, 1968 Alechinsky, Pierre and Michel Butor, Hoirie-Voirie, Olivetti, 1970 Alechinsky, Pierre and Michel Butor, Le Rêve de l’ammonite, Montpellier, Fata Morgana, 1975 Alechinsky, Pierre, Michel Butor and Jean-Yves Bosseur, Matériel pour un Don Juan, Losne, La Louve de l’hiver, 1977 Alechinsky, Pierre and Michel Butor, Le Chien roi, Paris, Galerie Maeght, 1984 Baltazar, Julius and Michel Butor, Crépuscule, 1979 Baltazar, Julius and Michel Butor, Au plus blanc de la nuit, 1980

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Baltazar, Julius and Michel Butor, Colloque des mouches, Nice, Jacques Matarasso,1980 Baltazar, Julius and Michel Butor, Personnages d’Elseneur, 1980 Baltazar, Julius and Michel Butor, Autres personnages d’Elseneur, 1980 Baltazar, Julius and Michel Butor, Plongée, 1980 Baltazar, Julius and Michel Butor, Contre-plongée, 1980 Baltazar, Julius and Michel Butor, Hé, 1980 Baltazar, Julius and Michel Butor, Herbier lunaire, 1980 Baltazar, Julius and Michel Butor, Les Nuages de Magellan, 1980 Baltazar, Julius and Michel Butor, Saga, 1980 Baltazar, Julius and Michel Butor, Ballade à toute vitesse, 1980–81 Baltazar, Julius and Michel Butor, Fable minute, Librairie Niçaise, 1981 Baltazar, Julius and Michel Butor, Essence de maëlstrom, 1980–81 Baltazar, Julius and Michel Butor, Au sérail d’Ivry, Nice, Jacques Matarasso,1981 Baltazar, Julius and Michel Butor, Filaments sensibles, Luc Moreau, 1981 Baltazar, Julius and Michel Butor, Fenêtres sur le passage intérieur, 1981 Baltazar, Julius and Michel Butor, La Main sur le mur, 1981 Baltazar, Julius and Michel Butor, Moeurs exotiques, 1981 Baltazar, Julius and Michel Butor, Réminiscences du corbeau, 1981 Baltazar, Julius and Michel Butor, Valse de Vancouver, 1981 Baltazar, Julius, Michel Butor and André Villiers, Ferments d’agitation, 1981 Baltazar, Julius, Michel Butor and André Villiers, Rumeurs de la forêt, 1981 Baltazar, Julius and Michel Butor, Bruine, 1982 Baltazar, Julius and Michel Butor, Comédie lointaine, 1982 Baltazar, Julius and Michel Butor, Chansons de la Rose des voix, 1982 Baltazar, Julius and Michel Butor, La Danse des monstres marins, 1982 Baltazar, Julius and Michel Butor, Histoire de la lumière, 1982 Baltazar, Julius and Michel Butor, La Vision de Namur, 1982 Baltazar, Julius and Michel Butor, Le Dégel, 1982 Baltazar, Julius and Michel Butor, Le Sentier, 1982 Baltazar, Julius and Michel Butor, Piste, 1982 Baltazar, Julius and Michel Butor, Veille, 1982 Baltazar, Julius and Michel Butor, Sept à la demi-douzaine, 1982 Baltazar, Julius and Michel Butor, Maison hantée, 1983 Baltazar, Julius and Michel Butor, La Ligne de partage des sangs, 1983 Baltazar, Julius and Michel Butor, Menace intime, 1983 Baltazar, Julius and Michel Butor, Philtre pour Ania, 1983 Baltazar, Julius, Michel Bohbot and Michel Butor, Je salue ce qui me délivre, 1983 Baltazar, Julius and Michel Butor, Manhattan flies, 1984 Baltazar, Julius and Michel Butor, Nymphées, 1984 Baltazar, Julius and Michel Butor, Zodiaque de nuages, 1984 Baltazar, Julius and Michel Butor, Victor Hugo écartelé, Nice, Jacques Matarasso 1984 Baltazar, Julius and Michel Butor, Au-dessus de l’Atlantique, 1985 Baltazar, Julius and Michel Butor, Devises, 1985

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Baltazar, Julius and Michel Butor, Futures nouvelles, 1985 Baltazar, Julius and Michel Butor, Journal de bord, 1985 Baltazar, Julius, Michel Butor and Jean Cortot, Le Prince de l’abîme, 1985 Baltazar, Julius and Michel Butor, Les Gares, 1985 Baltazar, Julius and Michel Butor, Les Ports, 1985 Baltazar, Julius and Michel Butor, Le Train des fantômes, 1985 Baltazar, Julius and Michel Butor, Petites annonces, 1985 Baltazar, Julius and Michel Butor, Petits opéras fabuleux, 1985 Baltazar, Julius and Michel Butor, Révolutions minuscules, 1985 Baltazar, Julius and Michel Butor, Slogan, 1985 Baltazar, Julius and Michel Butor, L’Ajourée, 1986 Baltazar, Julius and Michel Butor, Accroc, 1987 Baltazar, Julius and Michel Butor, Coffre, 1987 Baltazar, Julius and Michel Butor, Petit matin, 1987 Baltazar, Julius and Michel Butor, Promenade à New York, 1987 Baltazar, Julius and Michel Butor, Solitude, 1987 Baltazar, Julius and Michel Butor, Un jour à New York, 1987 Baltazar, Julius and Michel Butor, Un instant de répit, 1987 Baltazar, Julius and Michel Butor, De surprise en surprise, 1987 Baltazar, Julius, Michel Butor and Jean Cortot, Vu et lu, 1987 Baltazar, Julius and Michel Butor, Eventail, 1987 Baltazar, Julius and Michel Butor, A l’écart, 1990 Baltazar, Julius and Michel Butor, Dé, 1990 Baltazar, Julius and Michel Butor, Jour de cafard, 1990 Baltazar, Julius and Michel Butor, Sérénade, 1990 Baltazar, Julius and Michel Butor, Safran, 1991 Baltazar, Julius and Michel Butor, Soufre, 1991 Baltazar, Julius and Michel Butor, Pollen, 1991 Baltazar, Julius and Michel Butor, Phosphore, 1992 Baltazar, Julius and Michel Butor, A bride abattue, 1993 Baltazar, Julius and Michel Butor, Flotille, 1995 Baltazar, Julius and Michel Butor, Au hasard des orbes, 1995 Baltazar, Julius and Michel Butor, Crique, 1995 Baltazar, Julius and Michel Butor, Vivier d’automne, 1995 Baltazar, Julius and Michel Butor, La Guérison par l’oeil, 1996 Baltazar, Julius and Michel Butor, Les Enfants du froid, 1996 Baltazar, Julius and Michel Butor, Vérité en-deçà du Pacifique, erreur au-delà, 1997 Baltazar, Julius and Michel Butor, Baltazarade, 1997 Baltazar, Julius and Michel Butor, Les Plumes du lac, 1997 Baltazar, Julius and Michel Butor, Le Sommeil d’Ariane, 1998 Baltazar, Julius and Michel Butor, Au-delà de la Norvège, 1999 Baltazar, Julius and Michel Butor, Guilin au futur, 1998 Bryen, Camille and Michel Butor, Lettres écrites du Nouveau Mexique, Vaduz, Editions Brunidor, 1970

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Bryen, Camille and Michel Butor, Querelle des états. Petit monument pour Charles Perrault, Vaduz, Editions Brunidor, 1973 Bryen, Camille and Michel Butor, Bryen en temps conjugués, Paris, Galerie de Seine, 1975 Butor, Michel and Alexander Calder, Cycle, Illustrations, Paris, La Hune, 1964, 79–89 Butor, Michel, Jean Clair and Suzanne Houbart-Wilkin, Delvaux: catalogue de l’oeuvre peinte, Brussels, Cosmos, 1975 Butor, Michel and Bernard Dufour, L’Aède en exil, Montpellier, Fata Morgana, 2000 Butor, Michel and Luc Joly, Guignol de voyage, 1986 Butor, Michel and Luc Joly, Cartes sur fables, 1986 Butor, Michel and Luc Joly, Requiem automobile, 1989 Butor, Michel and Luc Joly, Apocalypse, 1990 Butor, Michel and Luc Joly, Les Cavaliers traquant Rousseau, 1990 Butor, Michel and Luc Joly, Tango, Vevey, L’Aire, 1997 Butor, Michel and Jir“í Kolár“, Froissages Relief, 1980 Butor, Michel and Jir“í Kolár“, Fenêtres sur le passage intérieur, Bois-de-Champs, Aencrages & Co, 1982 Butor, Michel and Jir“í Kolár“, L’Œil de Prague, dialogue avec Charles Baudelaire autour des travaux de Jir“í Kolár“, suivi de Réponses et de La Prague de Kafka (pliages) par Jir“í Kolár“, Paris, Editions de la Différence, 1986 Butor, Michel and Jir“í Kolár“, Victor Hugo écartelé, avec des collages de Jir“í Kolár“, Bois-de-Champs, Aencrages & Co, 1988 Butor, Michel and Jirí“ Kolár,“ Zone franche, Montpellier, Editions Fata Morgana, 1989 Butor, Michel and Jir“í Kolár“, L’Enseigne de Vénus, Vaduz, Brunidor, 1990 Butor, Michel and Henri Maccheroni, Almageste, 1983 Butor, Michel and Henri Maccheroni, Fouilles, NRF, no. 298, 1977, 1–10 Butor, Michel, Robert Geslin and Henri Maccheroni, Le Parlement des idoles, 1979 Butor, Michel and Henri Maccheroni, Autres fouilles, Rennes, Ubacs, 1979 Butor, Michel and Henri Maccheroni, Tarot, Cannes, Maryse Candela, 1980 Butor, Michel and Henri Maccheroni, La Vallée des dépossédés, 1981 Butor, Michel and Henri Maccheroni, Sans dessus dessous, 1981 Butor, Michel and Henri Maccheroni, Métro, 1981 Butor, Michel and Henri Maccheroni, L’Horizon vertical, Montpellier, L’écume des jours, 1982 Butor, Michel and Henri Maccheroni, Ballade du sexe féminin, 1983 Butor, Michel and Henri Maccheroni, Le Génie du lieu 6, preface by Luc Ferry, Paris, Editions Alessandro Vivas, 1991 Butor, Michel and Henri Maccheroni, In ictu oculi, 1995 Butor, Michel and Henri Maccheroni, Oeuvres croisées, Bayeux, Musée de Bayeux, 1996 Butor, Michel and Henri Maccheroni, Prolongement, Nice, Bibliothèque Universitaire de Nice, 1998 Butor, Michel and Henri Maccheroni, Récapitulation 2000, Crest, La Sétérée, 2000 Butor, Michel and Henri Maccheroni, Suaire pour une odalisque, Paris, Barde la lézarde, 1997

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Butor, Michel and Henri Maccheroni, Trêves et rêves, 1998 Butor, Michel and Gregory Masurovsky, Litanie d’eau, Paris, Galerie La Hune, 1964 Butor, Michel and Gregory Masurovsky, Comme Shirley, Paris, Galerie La Hune,1966 Butor, Michel and Gregory Masurovsky, Paysage de répons suivi de Dialogues des règnes, 1968 Butor, Michel and Gregory Masurovsky, Western Duo, Los Angeles, Tamarind Lithography Workshop, 1969 Butor, Michel and Gregory Masurovsky, Les Petits Miroirs, La Farandole, 1972 Butor, Michel and Gregory Masurovsky, L’Oeil des Sargasses, Braine-le-Compte, Lettera amorosa, 1972 Butor, Michel and Gregory Masurovsky, Missive mi-vive, 1973 Butor, Michel and Gregory Masurovsky, Saga, 1976 Butor, Michel, Gregory Masurovsky and Henri Pousseur, Chevelures du temps, Liège, Conservatoire de Liège, 1980 Butor, Michel and Gregory Masurovsky, Nuit blanche, Harnoncourt, L’Apprentypographe,1984 Butor, Michel and Gregory Masurovsky, Dimanche matin, Rouen, L’Instant perpétuel, 1985 Butor, Michel and Gregory Masurovsky, Paysage à travers un autre, Pontoise, Musée de Pontoise, 1990 Butor, Michel and Gregory Masurovsky, Iris, Lirac, Editions La Garonne, 1987 Butor, Michel and Gregory Masurovsky, Ange de la baie, Nice, Jacques Matarasso, 1992 Butor, Michel, Pierre Espagne and Gregory Masurovsky, Uchi-Soto, Dedansdehors, Saint-Imier, Canevas, 1995 Butor, Michel and Gregory Masurovsky, Bonne traversée, 1996 Butor, Michel and Gregory Masurovsky, A la recherche de la rose perdue, 1997– 1998 Butor, Michel and Gregory Masurovsky, La Reine de Saba vient faire ses adieux au Roi Salomon, 1998 Butor, Michel and Gregory Masurovsky, Torse, 1997 Butor, Michel and Gregory Masurovsky, A la recherche de la rose perdue, 1998 Butor, Michel, Cesare Peverelli and Georges Limbour, Champ de vitres, Paris, Galerie Lucie Weil, 1969 Butor, Michel and Cesare Peverelli, Les Sept Femmes de Gilbert le Mauvais, Montpellier, Fata Morgana, 1972 Butor, Michel and Cesare Peverelli, Répertoire I, Montpellier, Fata Morgana, 1972 Butor, Michel and Cesare Peverelli, Le Rêve de l’ombre, Paris, Nouveau Cercle Parisien du Livre, 1976 Butor, Michel and Cesare Peverelli, L’Office des mouettes, Geneva, Galerie Editart, 1984 Butor, Michel and Ania Staritsky, Une Chanson pour Don Juan, Veilhes, Gaston Puel 1972

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Butor, Michel and Ania Staritsky, Allumettes pour un bûcher dans la cour de la vieille Sorbonne, 1975 Butor, Michel and Ania Staritsky, Imprécations contre la fourmi d’Argentine, 1973 Butor, Michel and Ania Staritsky, Avertissement aux locataires indésirables, Larroque, Moulin de Larroque, 1974 Butor, Michel and Ania Staritsky, Devises fantômes, Paris, C. Martinez, 1976 Butor, Michel and Ania Staritsky, Musique pour un Don Juan sourd, 1976 Butor, Michel and Ania Staritsky, Entre Natchez et Versailles, 1977 Butor, Michel and Ania Staritsky, Antisèche, Paris, Aux Amateurs de livres, 1978 Butor, Michel and Ania Staritsky, Matières et talismans, Paris, Jean-Michel Place, 1979 Butor, Michel and André Villers, Picasso-Labyrinthe, ‘livret pour un film = Filmszenario’, Tübingen, Konkursbuchverlag, C. Gehrke, 1986

Interviews, Correspondence, Dialogues Albert-Levin, Marc and Michel Butor, ‘Dialogue à propos de “Un printemps à New York”’, Les Lettres françaises, no. 1285, 1969, pp. 3–5 Almansi, G. and Stephen Bann, ‘Interview with Michel Butor’, 20th-Century Studies, no. 6, 1971, pp. 41–52 Butor, Michel and Georges Perros, Correspondance, 1955–1978, Nantes, Joseph K., 1996 Butor, Michel and Lucien Giraudo, Pour tourner la page: magazine à deux voix, Arles, Actes Sud, 1997 Butor, Michel, and Michel Sicard, ‘Entretiens sur les logogrammes’ in Christian Dotremont, Dotremont et ses écrivures, Paris, Jean-Michel Place, 1978, unpaginated Butor, Michel and Michel Sicard, Problèmes de l’art contemporain à partir des travaux d’Henri Maccheroni, Paris, Bourgeois, 1983 Butor, Michel and Michel Sicard, Alechinsky dans le texte, Paris, Galilée, 1984 Butor, Michel and Michel Sicard, Alechinsky: frontières et bordures, Paris, Galilée, 1984 Butor, Michel and Michel Sicard, ABC de correspondance, Paris, Galerie Lelong, 1986 Butor, Michel and Michel Sicard, Alechinsky: travaux d’impression, Paris, Galilée, 1992 Butor, Michel, Eocène, Miocène, Pliocène, preface/interview with Roger Borderie, Paris, Gallimard, 1972 Butor, Michel, ‘Entretien avec Roger Borderie et Henri Ronse’, L’Arc, no. 39, 1969, pp. 1–4, 20–22, 42, 60–66, 100–101 Butor, Michel, ‘Michel Butor dit pourquoi il est ému par Pietro Longhi’, Connaissance des arts, no. 210, août 1969, pp. 43–50 Butor, Michel, Curriculum vitae: entretiens avec Andre Clavel, Paris, Plon, 1996 Butor, Michel, Frontières: entretiens avec Christian Jacomino, accompagnés de quelques exemples, Saint-Maximin, Le Temps parallèle, 1985 Calle, Mireille, ‘Thèmes, variations, suites et non: entretiens avec Michel Butor’,

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in Mireille Calle (ed.), Les Métamorphoses Butor, Sainte-Foy, Le Griffon d’argile, 1991, pp. 1–55 Calle-Gruber, Mireille, ‘Quant à l’oeuvre Butor: entretiens avec Michel Butor, Jean Starobinski et Jean-Francois Lyotard’, in Mireille Calle-Gruber (ed.), Narrer: l’art et la manière, Revue des Sciences Humaines, no. 221, 1991, no. 221, pp. 221–34 Chapsal, Madeleine, ‘Michel Butor’, Les Ecrivains en personne, Paris, Juilliard, 1960, pp. 79–95 Charbonnier, Georges, Entretiens avec Michel Butor, Paris, Gallimard, 1967 Couffon, Claude, ‘Michel Butor: une interview sur Description de San Marco’, Les Lettres françaises, no. 1008, décembre 1963, p. 5 Dällenbach, Lucien, Le Récit spéculaire: essai sur la mise en abyme, Paris, 1977 Desoubeaux, Henri, ‘De Duchamp à Butor et vice versa’, Mélusine, no. 12, 1991, pp. 157–63 Desoubeaux, Henri (ed.), Michel Butor, douze ans de vie littéraire parisienne: entretiens anciens 1956–1967, Rennes, Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 1997 Desoubeaux, Henri (ed.), Michel Butor, Entretiens: quarante ans de vie littéraire, 3 vols, Nantes, Joseph K, 1999 Didier, Béatrice, Michel Butor: le retour du boomerang, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1988 Dotremont, Christian, Michel Butor and Michel Sicard, Cartes et lettres: correspondance 1966–1979, Paris, Galilée, 1986 Elaho, Raymond Osemwegie, Entretiens avec le nouveau roman: Michel Butor, Robert Pinget, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Nathalie Sarraute, Claude Simon, Sherbrooke, Naaman, 1985 Freixe, Alain, ‘Voir, entendre les couleurs du silence’, perso.wanadoo.fr/ chantiers/entretienbutor.htm Jeannet, Frederic-Yves and Michel Butor, De la distance: déambulation, Rennes, Rennes, Ubacs, 1990 Kolbert, Jack, ‘An interview with Michel Butor’, American Society of the Legion of Honor Magazine, vol. 45, no. 2, 1974, pp. 90–93 Kuffer, Jean-Louis, ‘Au miroir de Michel Butor, Balzac est notre contemporain’, Le Passe-muraille, octobre 1998, http://www.culturactif.ch/revues/passe murailleoctobre.htm Lancry, Yéhuda, Michel Butor, ou la résistance, Paris, J.-C. Lattès, 1994 Launay, Michel, Résistances: conversations aux Antipodes, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1983 Le Sidaner, Jean Marie, Michel Butor, voyageur à la roue: entretien suivi de textes, Paris, Encres, 1979 Nicolas, Alain, ‘Comment aborder le colosse balzacien? L’écrivain Michel Butor propose quelques pistes’, L’Humanité, 27 mai 1999, http://www.humanite. presse.fr/journal/ 1999/1999-05/1999-05-27/1999-05-27-020.html) Otten, Anna, ‘Interview with Michel Butor: The Writer as Janus’, Review of Contemporary Fiction, vol. 5, no. 3, 1985, pp. 92–97

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Santschi, Madeleine, Une schizophrénie active: deuxième voyage avec Michel Butor, Lausanne, L’Age d’homme, 1993 Santschi, Madeleine, Voyage avec Michel Butor, Lausanne, L’Age d’homme, 1982 Teulon-Nouailles, Bernard, ‘Entretien à Gaillard’, in Skimao et Bernard TeulonNouailles, Qui êtes-vous Michel Butor ?, Lyon, La Manufacture, 1988, pp. 301–21 Teulon-Nouailles, Bernard, and Skimao, ‘Entretien Butor’, Le Chat messager, nos. 9–10 (Butor en transit), 1994, pp. 14–16, 22–25, 32–34, 78–80, 88–89, 101–03 and 114–17 Valette, Bernard, ‘L’Oeuvre romanesque de Michel Butor, une écriture de la modernité?’, Revue des lettres modernes, 1992, nos. 1052–1057, pp. 61–94

Secondary Works Ackerman, James S., The Architecture of Michelangelo, London, Penguin, 1986 (first published in 1961) Ades, Dawn, Neil Cox and David Hopkins, Marcel Duchamp, London, Thames and Hudson, 1999 Albérès, R.-M., Michel Butor, Paris, Éditions Universitaires, 1964 Aldred, Cyril, Egyptian Art in the Days of the Pharaohs 3100–320 BC, London, Thames and Hudson, 1980 Alechinsky, special number of Repères, no. 17, Paris, 1984 Allgren, Joseph and Dean McWilliams, ‘The Structure of Michel Butor’s “Courrier des Antipodes”’, Romanic Review, vol. 75, no. 2, 1984, pp. 230–41 Alter, Jean V. , ‘Michel Butor: Portrait de l’artiste en jeune singe’, French Review, vol. 41, no. 5, 1968, pp. 757–60 Ames, Van Meter, ‘Butor and the Book’, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism’, vol. 23, no. 1, 1964, pp. 159–65 Appy, Frédéric, Nixe: mise en question et exaltation du livre, Paris, La Différence, 1985 Arkell, David, ‘M. Butor’s Landlady’, PN Review, vol. 8, no. 6, 1982, pp. 6–7 Attal, Jean-Pierre, ‘ ‘Deux détectives littéraires’, Critique, vol. 17, no. 167, 1961, pp. 319–29 Aubral, François, Michel Butor, Paris, Seghers, 1973 Auraix-Jonchière, Pascale, ‘Le Miroir et le processus de mythification dans La Modification de Michel Butor’, Roman 20–50, vol. 25, 1998, pp. 161–77 Baguley, David, ‘The Reign of Chronos: More on Alchemy in Butor’s L’Emploi du temps’, Forum for Modern Language Studies, vol. 16, 1980, pp. 281–92 Baldwin, Claude Marie, ‘Myths in Butor’s Passage de Milan: Works of Mondrian and Duchamp as Generators of the Text’, Perspectives on Contemporary Literature, no. 13, 1987, pp. 18–23 Barr, Alfred H., Picasso: Fifty Years of His Art, New York, Museum of Modern Art, 1946, revised 1974 Barthes, Roland, ‘Littérature et discontinu’, Critique, no. 185, 1962, pp. 817– 29, reprinted in Essais critiques, Paris, Seuil, 1963, pp. 175–87

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Bazin, Germain, Baroque and Rococo, trans. J. Griffin, London, Thames and Hudson, 1964 Bazin, Germain, The Baroque: Principles, Styles, Modes, Themes, trans. Pat Wardroper, London, Thames and Hudson, 1968 Bennett, Tony, The Birth of the Museum, London, Routledge, 1995 Bessière, Jean, ‘Migration et transit: d’une rhétoricité de l’écriture: à propos de l’Amérique et des lieux de Michel Butor’, New Comparison, no. 10, 1990, pp. 135–46 Bessière, Jean, ‘Peinture et écriture: les droits du visible: Paulhan, Char, Michaux, Butor’, in André M. Rousseau, J. Molino and Roger Bozzetto (eds), Art et littérature (Actes du Congrès de la Société française de littérature générale et comparée, Aix en Provence 24–26 sept. 1986), Aix en Provence, Université de Provence, 1988, pp. 49–72 Blair, Ruth, ‘“In Transit”: Travel Narrative as a Habit of Mind, with Particular Reference to Mardi and Butor’s Boomerang’, Australian Journal of French Studies, vol. 23, no. 3, 1986, pp. 259–76 Blesh, Rudi and Harriet Janis, Collage: Personalities, Concepts, Techniques, Philadelphia, Chilton Book Co., 1962 Bloch, Adele, ‘Michel Butor and the Myth of Racial Supremacy’, Modern Fiction Studies, vol. 16, no. 1, 1970, pp. 57–65 Bloch, Adele, ‘Michel Butor and the Social Structure’, International Fiction Review, vol. 4, 1977, pp. 32–36 Boggs, Jean S., ‘The Last Thirty Years’, in Roland Penrose and John Golding (eds), Pablo Picasso, 1881–1973, Ware, Wordsworth Editions, 1988 (first published by Elek, 1973), pp. 197–242 Boggs, Jean S., Picasso and Things, Cleveland, Cleveland Museum of Art, 1992 Book-Senninger, Claude and Jack Kolbert, L’Art de Michel Butor, New York, Oxford University Press, 1970 Boucher, Bruce, Italian Baroque Sculpture, London, Thames and Hudson, 1998 Bougy, Patrice, ‘De Verrès à Vernier. Place et fonction des langues et littératures anciennes dans Degrés de Michel Butor’, L’Information littéraire, no. 4, 1990, pp. 6–10 Bradbury, Malcolm, Dangerous Pilgrimages: Trans-Atlantic Mythologies and the Novel, London, Penguin, 1996 (first published in 1995) Britton, Celia, Claude Simon: Writing the Visible, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1987 Britton, Celia, The Nouveau Roman: Fiction, Theory, Politics, New York, St Martin’s Press, 1992 Britton, Celia, ‘Opacity and Transparence: Conceptions of History and Cultural Difference in the Work of Michel Butor and Edouard Glissant’, French Studies, vol. 49, no. 3, 1995, pp. 308–20 Brosman, Catharine S., ‘A Source and Parallel of Michel Butor’s Mobile: In the American Grain’, Modern Language Review, vol. 66, 1971, pp. 315–21 Brunel, Pierre, ‘Architectures en dialogue: la gageure de Michel Butor, Travaux de Littérature, 12, 1999, pp. 197–204

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Brunel, Pierre, Butor: L’Emploi du temps. Le texte et le labyrinthe. Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1995 Brunel, Pierre, ‘Le Journal de Jacques Revel: un “objet littéraire” dans L’Emploi du temps de Michel Butor’, Travaux de Litterature, vol. 11, 1998, pp. 399–403 Budini, Paolo, ‘Le Jeu de la précision et de la méprise: une relecture de La Modification de Michel Butor’, Francofonia, no. 34, 1998, pp. 7–39 Burry, Mark, Expiatory Church of the Sagrada Familia: Antoni Gaudí, London, Phaidon, 1993 Burton, Stacy, ‘Experience and the Genres of Travel Writing: Bakhtin and Butor’, Romance Studies, no. 21, 1992–1993, pp. 51–62 Burton, Stacy, ‘Michel Butor’s Dialogue of Fiction and Experience: Egypt in Passage de Milan and Le Génie du lieu’, in Gindi Hoda (ed.), Images of Egypt in Twentieth Century Literature, Cairo, Department of English Language and Literature, University of Cairo, 1991, pp. 103–14 Burton, Stacy, ‘Travel as Dialogic Text: Butor’s Renditions of “America”and “Australia”’, Genre, vol. 28, no. 1–2, 1995, pp. 17–33 Cabanne, Pierre, Entretiens avec Marcel Duchamp, Paris, Pierre Belfond, 1967 Calle-Gruber, Mireille (ed.), Butor et l’Amérique, Paris, L’Harmattan, 1998 Calle-Gruber, Mireille (ed.), La Création selon Michel Butor: réseaux–frontières– écart, Paris, Nizet, 1991 Calle-Gruber, Mireille, (ed.), Les Métamorphoses Butor, Sainte-Foy, Québec, Le Griffon d’argile and Grenoble, Presses Universitaires de Grenoble, 1991 Calle-Gruber, Mireille, La Ville dans ‘L’Emploi du temps’ de Michel Butor, Paris, Nizet, 1995 Carpenter, Thomas H., Art and Myth in Ancient Greece , London, Thames and Hudson, 1991 Carrouges, Michel, Les Machines célibataires, Paris, Arcanse, 1954 Caruan, Wally, Aboriginal Art, London, Thames and Hudson, 1993 Charney, Hannah, ‘Quinze, Place du Panthón: la mythologie du vérifiable chez Michel Butor’, Symposium, vol. 19, no. 2, 1965, pp. 125–31 Chavdarian, Seda A., ‘L’Emploi du temps: A Distorted Shadow’, Romance Notes, vol. 27, no. 3, 1987, pp. 205–11 Chavdarian, Seda A., ‘Images of Chaos in Butor’s Mobile, 6810000 Litres d’eau par x seconde, and Ou ’, Perspectives on Contemporary Literature, 1984, no.10, pp. 49–55 Chavdarian, Seda A., ‘Michel Butor’s La Modification: the revolution from within’, International Fiction Review, vol. 13, no. 1, 1986, pp. 3–7 x Chavdarian, Seda A., ‘Problems of Representation in Butor’s Ou’, International Fiction Review, vol. 14, no. 2, 1987, pp. 100–02 Clark, K., Landscape into Art, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1956 (first published by John Murray in 1949) Claude, Catherine, ‘De Passage de Milan à 6 8100 000 litres d’eau par seconde. La forme et l’invention littéraire chez Michel Butor’, La Nouvelle Critique, vol. 117, 1968, pp. 45–51 Cogard, Karl, ‘Un trou dans L’Emploi du temps’, Op. Cit., no. 12, 1999, pp. 181–85

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Cohen, John Michael, The Baroque Lyric, London, Hutchinson University Library, 1963 Cole, Alison, Art of the Italian Renaissance Courts: Virtue and Magnificence, London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1995 Conacher, Agnès, ‘Mobile ou l’aventure inexplorée dans la nature de la peur’, in Mireille Calle (ed.), Butor et l’Amérique, Paris, L’Harmattan, 1988, pp. 81–92 Coron, Antoine, Le Livre et l’artiste: tendances du livre illustré français, 1967– 1976, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, 1977 D’Ambra, Eve, Art and Identity in the Roman World, London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1998 Daix, Pierre, Picasso, New York, Praeger, 1965 Dällenbach, Lucien (ed.), Butor aux quatre vents, Paris, José Corti, 1997 Dallenbach, Lucien, ‘Une écriture dialogique?’, La Création selon Michel Butor, 1991, pp. 209–14 Dällenbach, Lucien, Le Livre et ses miroirs dans l’oeuvre romanesque de Michel Butor, Paris, Minard, 1972 Dand, E., ‘Alchemy and Optimism in Butor’s L’Emploi du temps’, Forum for Modern Language Studies, vol. 15, 1979, pp. 264–78 Dard, E., ‘Science Fiction in the Novels of Michel Butor’, Forum for Modern Language Studies, vol. 18, 1982, pp. 47–62 Davies, J. C., ‘Butor and the Power of Art: The Quest of Jacques Revel’, Australian Journal of French Studies, vol. 16, 1979, pp. 105–15 Davies, J. C., ‘Psychological Realism in Butor’s La Modification’, Symposium, vol. 35, no. 3, 1981, pp. 215–34 Davis, Betty, ‘Mythological Allusions and Classical Names in Michel Butor’s L’Emploi du temps’, Literary Onomastics Studies, 1985, no. 12, pp. 25–36 Debaisieux, Martine, ‘Dreaming the “Baroque Nile”: In the Wake of Butor’s Aesthetics’, Review of Contemporary Fiction, vol. 5, no. 3, 1985, pp. 157–64 Derouet, C., Alechinsky, Paris, Le Musée national d’art moderne: Cabinet d’art graphique, Centre Georges Pompidou, 1990 Descharnes, Robert and Clovis Prévost, Gaudí: The Visionary, preface by Salvador Dali, London, Bracken Books, 1989, originally published as La Vision artistique et religieuse de Gaudí, Lausanne, Edita, 1971 Dhavernas, Catherine, ‘Effets de couleurs pour une représentation des Etats Unis’, in Mireille Calle (ed.), Butor et l’Amérique, Paris, L’Harmattan, 1988, pp. 141–50 Dixon, Roger and Stefan Muthesius, Victorian Architecture, London, Thames and Hudson, 1985 (first published in 1978) Duchamp, Marcel, Duchamp du signe, Paris, Flammarion, 1975 Duffy, Jean H., ‘Art, Architecture and Catholicism in Butor’s La Modification’, Modern Languages Review, vol 94, no. 1, 1999, pp. 46–60 Duffy, Jean H., ‘Butor and Gaudí: The New Cathedral in L’Emploi du temps’, in Margaret-Anne Hutton (ed.), Text(e) Image, Durham, University of Durham, Durham French Colloquies, no. 7, 1999, pp. 157–75. Duffy, Jean H., Butor: La Modification, London, Grant and Cutler, 1990

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Duffy, Jean H., ‘Cultural Legacy and American National Identity in Michel Butor’s Mobile,’ Modern Language Review, vol. 98, no. 1, 2003, pp. 44–64. Duncan, Alastair, ‘Baudelaire in Butor’s Passing Time’, Review of Contemporary Fiction, vol. 5, no. 3, 1985, pp. 98–102 Duncan, Alastair, Claude Simon: Adventures in Words, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1994 Elsner, Jas, Imperial Rome and Christian Triumph, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1998 Elsner, John and Roger Cardinal, The Cultures of Collecting, London, Reaktion Books, 1994 Faulkenburg, Marilyn Thomas, Church, City, and Labyrinth in Bronte, Dickens, Hardy, and Butor, New York, Peter Lang, 1993 Fauvel, Maryse, ‘La Modification de Butor: livre-musée en mutation’, Romance Notes, vol. 36, no. 2, 1996, pp. 181–89 Feest, Christian F., Native Arts of North America, London, Thames and Hudson, 1980 and 1992 Fer, Bryony, David Batchelor and Paul Wood, Realism, Rationalism, Surrealism: Art between the Wars, New Haven and London, Yale University Press in association with the Open University, 1993 Fermigier, André, Picasso, Paris, Librairie générale française, 1969 Field, Trevor, ‘Imagery of Shafts and Tubes in Butor’s Passage de Milan’, Modern Language Review, vol. 70, 1975, pp. 760–63 Field, Trevor, ‘Les Anagrammes révélatrices dans L’Emploi du temps’, Australian Journal of French Studies, vol.12, 1975, pp. 314–25 Frohock, W., ‘Introduction to Butor’, Yale French Studies, no. 24, 1959, pp. 55–61 Galassi, Susan G., Picasso’s Variations on the Masters: Confrontations with the Past, New York, Abrams, 1996 Gaudin, Colette, ‘L’Emploi du temps, l’emploi des temps: An Introductory Lesson on the Expression of Time’, Teaching Language Through Literature, vol. 15, no. 2, 1976, pp. 10–24 Gay-Crosier, Raymond, ‘Personnage et pronom personnel dans La Modification de Butor: Essai sur les modalités de la perspective’, in Antoine Naaman and Louis Painchaud (eds), Le Roman contemporain d’expression française, Sherbrooke, Faculté des Arts, 1972, pp. 192–217 Gilbert, Creighton, Michelangelo on and off the Sistine Chapel, New York, Georges Braziller, 1994 Giraudo, Lucien, L’Emploi du temps, Michel Butor, Paris, Nathan, 1995 Gloyne, Jill, ‘The Integrated Quest: Its Structure and Role in L’Emploi du temps’, Australian Journal of French Studies, vol. 22, no. 3, 1985, pp. 307–20 Gloyne, Jill, ‘The Use of “Temps” in L’Emploi du temps: A Study in Transformation’, Essays in French Literature, vol. 22, 1985, pp. 71–83 Godel, Vahe, ‘Le “Miroir à mémoire” de Michel Butor’, Critique, vol. 33, 1977, pp. 531–33 Godin, Georges, Michel Butor, pédagogie, littérature, Ville de la Salle, Hurtubise, 1987

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Goldwater, Robert J., Primitivism in Modern Painting, New York and London, Harper, 1938 Gollut, Jean-Daniel, Conter les rêves, Paris, José Corti, 1993 Gombrich, Ernst H., ‘Image and Word in Twentieth Century Art’, Word & Image, no. 3, 1985, pp. 213–41 Grant, Marian A., Michel Butor, L’Emploi du temps, London, Edward Arnold, 1973 Grégoire, Monique, ‘Michel Butor’, Nuit blanche, no. 48, 1992, p. 53 Greidanus, Tine, ‘L’Imagination poétique de Butor dans L’Emploi du temps’, Neophilologus, vol. 50, nos. 3 and 4, 1966, pp. 307–15 and pp. 422–33 Grieve, J., ‘Rencontre ou piège: A Footnote to La Modification’, Australian Journal of French Studies, vol. 8, 1971, pp. 314–18 Griffiths, Paul, Modern Music: A Concise History, London, Thames and Hudson, 1994 (first published in 1978) Grimm, Reinhold, ‘From Callot to Butor, E. T. A. Hoffmann and the Tradition of the Capriccio’, Modern Language Notes, vol. 93, no. 3, 1978, pp. 399–415 Griton-Rotterdam, Nathalie, ‘Antiquité et modernité’, in Analyses et réflexions sur Michel Butor, ‘L’Emploi du temps’: la ville, Paris, Ellipses, 1995, pp. 67–71 Hamon, Philippe, Imageries: littérature et image au XIXe siècle, Paris, José Corti, 2001 Harrison, Charles, Francis Frascina and Gill Perry, Primitivism, Cubism, Abstraction, New Haven and London, Yale University Press in association with the Open University, 1993 Heath, Stephen, The Nouveau Roman: A Study in the Practice of Writing, London, Elek, 1976 Helbo, André, ‘Discontinu et mobilité’, Degrés, vol. 2, 1973, m–m10 Helbo, André, Michel Butor vers une littérature du signe, Brussels, Complexe, 1975 Henderson, Linda Dalrymple, Duchamp in Context: Science and Technology in the ‘Large Glass’, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1997 Hetherington, Paul, Pietro Cavallini: A Study in the Art of Late Medieval Rome, London, Sagittarius Press Hibbard, Howard, Bernini, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1965 Hibbard, Howard, Michelangelo, London, Pelican 1985 (first published in 1975) Higgins, Reynold, Minoan and Mycenaean Art, London, Thames and Hudson, 1997 (first published in 1967) Hillenbrand, Robert, Islamic Art and Architecture, London, Thames and Hudson, 1999 Hiller, Susan, The Myth of Primitivism, London and New York, Routledge, 1991 Hilton, Timothy, Picasso, London, Thames and Hudson, 1976 Hirsch, Marianne, ‘Michel Butor: The Decentralized Vision’, Contemporary Literature, vol. 22, no. 3, 1981, pp. 326–48 Hoft March, Eilene, ‘Truth or Literary Consequences: Butor’s Confessions of a Portraitist’, Neophilologus, vol. 78, no. 3, 1994, pp. 361–70 Honour, Hugh, Neo-Classicism, London, Penguin, 1991 (first published in 1968)

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Howitt, J. B., ‘Michel Butor and Manchester’, Nottingham French Studies, no. 12, 1973, pp. 74–85 Hughes, Robert, Barcelona, London, Harvill, 1992 Hughes, Robert, The Shock of the New: Art and the Century of Change, London, Thames and Hudson, 1991 (first published in 1980) Hutcheon, Linda, Narcissistic Narrative, London, Methuen, 1984 Inglis, Angus A., ‘The Application and Development of Michel Butor’s Collage Principle in Illustrations IV’, Review of Contemporary Fiction, vol. 5, no. 3, 1985, pp. 103–07 Inglis, Angus A., ‘Art, Chaos and Celebration: An Analysis of Michel Butor’s Illustrations III’, Australian Journal of French Studies, vol. 25, no. 2, 1988, pp. 190–206 Iversen, Niels, ‘Le Beau Sauvage dans Degrés’, Revue Romane, vol. 15, 1980, pp. 185–202 Janvier, Ludovic, Une parole exigeante, Paris, Minuit, 1964 Jean, Gilberte, ‘Entretien avec Michel Butor: la mithridatisation par le roman policier’, Tangence, no. 38, 1992, pp. 107–15 Jefferson, Ann, The Nouveau Roman and the Poetics of Fiction, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1980 Jongeneel, Else, ‘Le Bâtiment inachevé: le rôle de la Nouvelle Cathédrale’, in Analyses et réflexions sur Michel Butor, L’Emploi du temps: la ville, Paris, Ellipses, 1995, pp. 72–75 Jongeneel, Else, ‘Un meurtrier en cause: la fonction du vitrail de Caïn dans L’Emploi du temps de Michel Butor’, Neophilologus, no. 3, 1980, pp. 358–73 Jongeneel, Else, Michel Butor et le pacte romanesque: écriture et la lecture dans ‘L’Emploi du temps’, ‘Degrés’, ‘Description de San Marco’ et ‘Intervalle’, Paris, Corti, 1988 Jongeneel, Else, ‘Trois fenêtres sur l’Amérique: la triple focalisation dans Degrés de Michel Butor’, French Literature Series, 1990, no. 17, pp. 43–50 Jordan, R. Furneaux, Western Architecture: A Concise History, London, Thames and Hudson, 1969 Judovitz, Dalia, Unpacking Duchamp: Art in Transit, Berkeley and London, University of California Press, 1995 Jullien, Dominique, ‘Intertextuality as Labyrinth: The Presence of Racine in Michel Butor’s L’Emploi du temps’, Yale French Studies, vol. 76, 1989, pp. 108– 24 Jullien, Dominique, Récits du nouveau monde, Paris, Nathan, 1992 Kerbrat, Marie-Claire, Leçon littéraire sur ‘L’Emploi du temps’ de Michel Butor, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1995 Kiene, Michael, Pannini, Paris, Les Dossiers du Musée du Louvre, Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 1992, catalogue of an exhibition held at the Louvre between 15 October 1992 and 15 February 1993 Kitson, Michael, The Age of Baroque, London, Paul Hamlyn, 1966 Kline, T. Jefferson, ‘Degrees of Play in Butor’s Degrés’, L’Esprit créateur, vol. 31, no. 4, 1991, pp. 32–41

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Knee, Robin, ‘Michel Butor’s Passage de Milan: The Numbers Game’, Review of Contemporary Fiction, vol. 5, no. 3, pp. 146–49 Kolbert, Jack, ‘The Image of the City in Michel Butor’s Texts’, Romance Quarterly, vol. 32, no.1, 1985, pp. 13–22 Kolbert, Jack, ‘Points of View in Butor’s Criticism: Geometry and Optics’, Kentucky Romance Quarterley, vol. 18, no. 2, 1971, pp. 161–76 La Mothe, Jacques, ‘American Holiday: Jeux de sociétés’, in Mireille CalleGruber (ed.), Butor et l’Amérique, Paris, L’Harmattan, 1988, pp. 115–26 La Mothe, Jacques, L’Architecture du rêve. La littérature et les arts dans “Matières de rêves” de Michel Butor, Amsterdam, Rodopi, 1999 La Mothe, Jacques, ‘Echographies: Alechinsky et Butor’, Dalhousie French Studies, 1995, no. 31, pp. 65–79 Lahuerta, Juan José, Antoni Gaudí, trans. Christiane de Montclos, Milan and Paris, Electa and Gallimard, 1992 Lalande, Bernard, Butor: La Modification, Paris, Hatier, 1972 Langdon, Helen, Claude Lorrain, London, Phaidon, 1989 Larson, J, ‘The Sibyl and the Iron Floor Heater in Michel Butor’s La Modification’, Papers on Language and Literature, vol. 10, no. 4, 1974, pp. 403–14 Leiris, Michel, ‘Le Réalisme mythologique de Michel Butor’, Critique, vol. 14, no. 129, 1958, pp. 99–118 Lesage, Laurent, ‘Michel Butor: Techniques of the Marvellous’, L’Esprit créateur, vol. 6, no. 1, 1966, pp. 36–44 Levey, Michael, Early Renaissance, London, Penguin, 1991 (first published in 1967) Levey, Michael, High Renaissance, London, Penguin, 1991 (first published in 1975) Levitt, Morton P., ‘Michel Butor: Polyphony, or the Voyage of Discovery’, Critique, vol. 14, no. 1, 1972, pp. 27–48 Lipman, Jean. and Richard Marshall, Art about Art, New York, E. P. Dutton in association with Whitney Museum of American Art, 1978 Lorin, Claude, L’Inachevé, Paris, Grasset, 1984 Lusk, Edward J., ‘Conditioning and Geometric Harmonizing: “Des autres machines de Butor”’, Neophilologus, vol. 79, no. 2, 1995, pp. 227–34 Lydon, Mary, ‘Michel Butor: monstre de lecture’, French Review, vol. 52, 1979, pp. 423–31 Lydon, Mary, Perpetuum Mobile: A Study of the Novels and Aesthetics of Michel Butor, Edmonton, University of Alberta Press, 1980 Lydon, Mary, ‘Sibylline Imagery in Butor’s La Modification’, Modern Language Review, vol. 67, 1972, pp. 300–08 Lynton, Norbert, The Story of Modern Art, Oxford, Phaidon, 1980 Lyotard, Jean-François, Discours, figure, Paris, Klincksieck, 1971 Maleuvre, Didier, Museum Memories: History, Technology, Art, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1999 Marin, Louis, ‘Textes en représentation’, Critique, vol. 26, 1970, pp. 909–34

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285

Martens, Lorna, ‘Empty Center and Open End: The Theme of Language in Michel Butor’s L’Emploi du temps’, PMLA, vol. 96, no. 1, 1981, pp. 49–63 Martin, John R., Baroque, London, Allen Lane, 1977 Martindale, Andrew, Gothic Art, London, Thames and Hudson, 1967 Mary, Georges, ‘Des figures aux structures, un passage mal frayé: La Modification, Sylvie’, Poétique, vol. 12, 1982, pp. 259–77 Mason, Barbara, ‘La Critique et l’alchimie’, Oeuvres et Critiques, vol. 10, no. 2, 1985, pp. 129–41 Mason, Barbara, ‘Doubling Forms, Tensions and Shifts: A Reading of Michel x Butor’s Ou’, Essays in Poetics, vol. 11, no. 2, 1986, pp. 18–28 Mason, Barbara, ‘Expanding Fictions: Butor’s Intervalle’, Review of Contemporary Fiction, vol. 5, no. 3, 1985, pp. 126–32 Mason, Barbara, ‘Illustration in Michel Butor’s Illustrations’, Romanic Review, vol. 77, no. 2, 1986, pp. 141–54 Mason, Barbara, ‘An Interpretation through Pattern and Analogy of Michel Butor’s Description de San Marco’, Forum for Modern Language Studies, vol. 14, 1978, pp. 72–78 Mason, Barbara, ‘Language and Ideology in Michel Butor’s Improvisations sur Flaubert’, Nottingham French Studies, vol. 28, no. 1, 1989, pp. 53–64 Mason, Barbara, Michel Butor: A Checklist, London, Grant & Cutler, 1979 Mason, Barbara, ‘“Opusculum Baudelairianum”: Michel Butor, Jirí“ Kolár:“ Collage and Contestation’, Australian Journal of French Studies, vol. 25, no. 2, 1988, pp. 207–20 x Mason, Barbara, ‘Ou: The Title as Sesame, or Releasing Butor’s “Génie”’, French Forum, vol. 11, no. 1, 1986, pp. 71–82 Mason, Barbara, ‘“Poème optique”: An Illustration by Michel Butor’, Mosaic, vol. 17, no. 3, 1984, pp. 103–15 Mason, Barbara, ‘Quotations from Sylvie and Description de San Marco in Michel Butor’s Intervalle’, Romance Quarterly, vol. 32, no. 1, 1985, pp. 65–76 Mason, Barbara, ‘Whiteness and Writing in Michel Butor’s Works: The Example of Christian Dotremont and Beyond’, Dalhousie French Studies, vol. 12, 1987, pp. 37–53 Matthews, J. H., ‘Michel Butor: l’alchimie et le roman’, Revue des lettres modernes, nos. 94–95, 1964, pp. 51–66 McWilliams, Dean, The Narratives of Michel Butor: The Writer at Janus, Ohio University Press, 1978 McWilliams, Dean, ‘The Novelist as Archeologist: Butor’s L’Emploi du temps’, L’Esprit créateur, vol. 15, 1965, pp. 367–76 McWilliams, Dean, ‘William Faulkner and Michel Butor’s Novel of Awareness’, Kentucky Romance Quarterly, vol. 19, 1972, pp. 387–402 Mélançon, Robert, ‘A l’extrême Orient: “35 vues du Mont Sandia le soir l’hiver” et “Neuf autres vues du Sandia”’, in Mireille Calle-Gruber (ed.), Butor et l’Amérique, pp. 65–80 x Miguet-Ollagnier, Marie, ‘Activité et représentations du feu dans Ou de Michel Butor’, Revue des lettres modernes, vols. 1133–1141, 1993, pp. 45–65

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Miller, Elinor S., ‘Approaches to the Cataract: Butor’s Niagara’, Studies in Twentieth Century Literature, vol. 2, 1977, pp. 33–54 Miller, Elinor S., ‘Butor’s Beautiful Decay’, Romance Notes, vol. 29, no. 1, 1988, pp. 61–69 Miller, Elinor S., ‘Critical Commentary, II: Butor’s Quadruple fond as Serial Music’, Romance Notes, vol. 24, no. 2, 1983, pp. 196–204 Miller, Elinor S., ‘Death, Transmutation and the Artist’, Romance Notes, vol. 24, no. 1, 1983, pp. 82–89 Miller, Elinor S., ‘Michel Butor: collaborations avec “Trois Suisses”’, Rémanences, no. 6, avril 1996, pp. 77–86 Miller, Mary Ellen, The Art of MesoAmerica from Olmec to Aztec, London, Thames and Hudson, 1986 Miller, Mary Ellen, Maya Art and Architecture, London, Thames and Hudson, 1999 Minogue, Valerie, ‘Distortion and Creativity in the Subjective Viewpoint: Robbe-Grillet, Butor and Nathalie Sarraute’, Forum for Modern Language Studies, vol. 12, 1976, pp. 37–49 Minor, Vernon Hyde, Baroque and Rococo Art and Culture, London, Lawrence King, 1999 Montel, Jean-Claude, ‘Mobile: America, the Novel’, Review of Contemporary Fiction, vol. 5, no. 3, 1985, pp. 108–11 Morcos, Gamila, ‘La Descente aux Enfers dans La Modification de Butor et L’Enéide de Virgile’, Dalhousie French Studies, vol. 16, 1989, pp. 84–98 Morcos, Gamila, ‘Mobile de Butor: typographie et justification’, Australian Journal of French Studies, vol. 18, no. 1, 1981, pp. 56–76 Morrissette, Bruce, ‘Narrative “You” in Contemporary Literature’, Comparative Literature Studies, vol. 2, 1965, pp. 1–25 Moszynska, Anna, Abstract Art, London, Thames and Hudson, 1990 Mourgues, Odette de, Metaphysical, Baroque and Precieux Poetry, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1953 Mower, David, Gaudí, London, Oresko Books, 1977 Mrozowicki, Michal, ‘Degrés ou les dégradations de la structure mensongère’, Kwartalnik Neofilologiczny, vol. 32, no. 4, 1985, pp. 441–61 Murase, Miyko, L’Art du Japon, trans. Pierre-Emmanuel Dauzat, Paris, Libraire Générale Française, 1996 (first published in 1992) Murray, Linda, Michelangelo, London, Thames and Hudson, 1980 Murray, Peter and Linda Murray, The Art of the Renaissance, London, Thames and Hudson, 1963 Murray, Peter, The Architecture of the Italian Renaissance, London, Thames and Hudson, 1969 O’Donnell, Thomas D., ‘Michel Butor and the Tradition of Alchemy’, International Fiction Review, vol. 2, 1975, pp. 150–53 O’Donnell, Thomas D., ‘Polemic’, Diacritics, vol. 2, no. 2, 1972, pp. 52–56 Olson, Roberta J. M., Italian Renaissance Sculpture, London, Thames and Hudson, 1992 Oppenheim, Lois, ‘Animation of the Work of Art: Michel Butor’s L’Embar-

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quement de la Reine de Saba’, Modern Language Notes, vol. 109, no. 4, 1994, pp. 741–52 Oppenheim, Lois, Intentionality and Intersubjectivity, a Phenomenological Study of Butor’s ‘La Modification’, Lexington, French Forum, 1980 Oppenheim, Lois, ‘Michel Butor’s L’Embarquement de la Reine de Saba: An Allegorical Undoing of Aesthetic Experience’, in Marlies Kronegger (ed.), Allegory Old and New in Literature, the Fine Arts, Music and Theatre and Its Continuity in Culture, Dordrecht, Kluwer Academy under Auspices of World Institute for Advanced Phenomenological Research and Learning, 1994, pp. 131–39 Oppenheim, Lois, Three Decades of the French New Novel, Urbana, University of Illinois Press, 1986 Paine, Robert Treat and Alexander Soper, The Art and Architecture of Japan, London, Penguin, 1955 Paoletti, John and Gary M. Radke, Art in Renaissance Italy, London, Lawrence King, 1997 Patai, Daphne, ‘Temporal Structure as a Fictional Category in Michel Butor’s La Modification’, French Review, vol. 46, 1973, pp. 1117–28 Paterson, Janet M., ‘Le Vitrail de Caïn: l’engendrement textuel dans L’Emploi du temps de Michel Butor’, Romanic Review, vol. 70, 1979, pp. 375–83 Pellegrino-Ceccarelli, Alba, ‘Michel Butor et ses peintres’, Degrés, no. 34, 1983, f1–f18 Penrose, Roland and John Golding (eds), Pablo Picasso, 1881–1973, Ware, Wordsworth, 1988 (first published 1973) Petersson, Robert T, The Art of Exstasy: Teresa, Bernini, and Crashaw, London, Paul Hamlyn, 1966 Poggi, Christine, In Defiance of Painting: Cubism, Futurism and the Invention of Collage, New Haven and London, 1992 Pringle, Mary Beth, ‘Butor’s Room without a View: The Train Compartment in La Modification’, Review of Contemporary Fiction, vol. 5, no. 3, 1985, pp. 112–18 Pringle, Mary Beth, ‘Fictions in Fiction: Henriette and Cécile in Michel Butor’s A Change of Heart’, International Fiction Review, vol. 16, no. 1, 1989, pp. 26–31 Pugh, Anthony R., ‘Butor on Beethoven, or The Limits of Formalism’, International Fiction Review, vol. 3, 1976 Quéréel, Patrice, La Modification de Butor, Paris, Hachette, 1973 Raillard, Georges, Butor, Gallimard, 1968 Raillard, Georges, Butor, Paris, U.G.E., 1974 Raillard, Georges, ‘Quelques notes prises au cours d’un premier déchiffrement x de Michel Butor: Ou, le génie du lieu, 2’, Marche Romane, vol. 21, 1971, pp. 41–55 Raillard, Georges, ‘Référence plastique et discours littéraire chez Michel Butor’, Critique, vol. 28, no. 299, 1972, pp. 328–44 Ramírez, Juan Antonio, Duchamp: Love and Death, Even, London, Reaktion, 1998 Reff, Theodore, ‘Themes of Love and Death in Picasso’s Early Work’, in Roland

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Penrose and John Golding (eds), Pablo Picasso, 1881–1973, Ware, Wordsworth, 1988 (first published 1973), pp. 11–48 Reichler, Claude, ‘“Plus voir qu’avoir”: Michel Butor, le voyage et les Indiens d’Amérique’, Nouvelle Revue Française, vol. 493, 1994, pp. 87–99 Rhodes, C., Primitivism and Modern Art, London, Thames and Hudson, 1994 Ricardou, Jean (ed.), Nouveau roman, hier, aujourd’hui, 2 vols, Paris, Union Générale d’Editions, 1972 Ricardou, Jean, Le Nouveau Roman, Paris, Seuil, 1973 x Rice, Donald B., ‘The Exploration of Space in Butor’s Ou’, in George Stambolian and Henri Peyre (eds), Twentieth Century French Fiction: Essays for Germaine Brée, New Brunswick, Rutgers University Press, 1975, pp. 198–222 Rice, Donald B., ‘In the Interval: Butor and Décor’, Yale French Studies, no. 57, 1979, pp. 208–27 Richer, Jean, Gérard de Nerval et les doctrines ésotériques, Paris, Editions du Griffon d’Or, 1947. Rosienski-Pellerin, Sylvie, ‘Intervalle ludique’, Romance Notes, vol. 29, no. 2, 1988, pp. 169–79 Rossum-Guyon, Françoise van, ‘Aventures de la citation chez Butor’, in Françoise Van Rossum Guyon (ed.), Colloque de Cerisy: Michel Butor, Paris, U.G.E., 1974, pp. 17–39 Rossum-Guyon, Françoise van, (ed.), Colloque de Cerisy: Michel Butor, Paris, U.G.E., 1974 Rossum-Guyon, Françoise van, Critique du roman: Essai sur ‘La Modification’ de Michel Butor, Paris, Gallimard, 1970, reprinted in ‘Collection Tel’ in 1995 Rossum-Guyon, Françoise van, ‘Le Génie du lieu, ou quelques aspects des dernières oeuvres de Michel Butor’, Het Franse Boek, vol. 36, 1966, pp. 156–62 Roubichou, Gérard, Michel Butor: une étude de ‘La Modification’, des notes, des commentaires, des documents, et des thèmes de réflexion, Paris, Bordas, 1973 Roudaut, Jean, ‘Mais je reviendrai…’, in Lucien Dällenbach (ed.), Butor aux quatre vents, Paris, Corti, 1997, pp. 99–117 Roudaut, Jean, ‘Michel Butor, critique’, Critique, vol 16, no. 158, 1960, pp. 579–90 Roudaut, Jean, Michel Butor, ou le livre futur, Paris, Gallimard, 1964 Roudaut, Jean, ‘Parenthèse sur la place occupée par l’étude intitulée 6 810 000 litres d’eau par seconde parmi les autres ouvrages de Michel Butor’, Nouvelle Revue française, vol. 28, no. 165, 1966, pp. 489–509 Roudiez, Leon S., French Fiction Today, New Brunswick, Rutgers University Press, 1972 Roudiez, Leon S., ‘Une gaieté violette (Lecture d’un roman de Michel Butor)’, Romanic Review, vol. 68, 1977, pp. 32–42 Roudiez, Leon S., ‘Gloses sur les premières pages de Mobile de Michel Butor’, Modern Language Notes, vol. 87, no. 6, 1972, pp. 83–95 Roudiez, Leon S., Michel Butor, New York, Columbia University Press, 1965 Roudiez, Leon S., ‘Murs, fenêtres, miroirs: réflexions à partir de textes de Michel Butor’, Stanford French Review, vol. 2, 1978, pp. 81–90

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Roudiez, Leon S., ‘Picasso and Butor: Series and Sets’, Modern Language Studies, vol. 9, no. 2, 1979, pp. 89–94 Roudiez, Leon S., ‘Problems of Point of View in the Early Fiction of Michel Butor’, Kentucky Romance Quarterley, vol. 18, no. 2, 1971, pp. 145–49 Roudiez, Léon S., ‘Le Réel et la peinture: comment décrire ce qui se dit?’, in Mireille Calle (ed.), La Création selon Michel Butor: réseaux, frontières, écarts, Paris, Nizet, 1991, pp. 163–76 Roudiez, Leon S., ‘Un texte perturbé: Matière de rêves de Michel Butor’, Romanic Review, vol. 75, no. 2, 1984, pp. 242–55 Rousset, Jean, La Littérature de l’âge baroque en France. Circé et le paon, Paris, Corti, 1954 Rousset, Jean, ‘Trois romans de la mémoire’, Cahiers Internationaux de Symbolisme, nos. 9–10, 1965, pp. 75–84 Rubin, William S. (ed.), Picasso and Braque: Pioneering Cubism, New York, Museum of Modern Art, 1989 Rubin, William S. (ed.), Primitivism in 20th Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and Modern, New York, Museum of Modern Art, 1984 Ryan, Marie Laure, ‘Michel Butor’s L’Emploi du temps: Matrix of a Phenomenology of Reading’, Esprit Créateur, vol. 21, no. 2, 1981, pp. 60–69 Salado, Régis, ‘Labyrinthes: un état des lieux (A partir de L’Emploi du temps de Michel Butor)’, Op. Cit, 1994, no. 3, pp. 233–36 Schama, Simon, Landscape and Memory, London, HarperCollins, 1995 Scott, Jonathan, Piranesi, London, Academy Editions, 1975 Seitz, William C., The Art of Assemblage, New York, The Museum of Modern Art, 1961 Sellier, Philippe, ‘La Ville maudite chez Michel Butor’, Mosaic, vol. 8, no. 2, 1975, pp. 115–30 Senninger, Claude-Marie, ‘Passage de Milan or the Butorian Way of Unveiling Character’, World Literature Today, vol. 56, no. 2, 1982, pp. 269–73 Sewter, Albert. C., Baroque and Rococo Art, London, Thames and Hudson, 1972 Seylaz, Jean-Luc, ‘La Tentative romanesque de Michel Butor de L’Emploi du temps à Degrés’, Etudes de Lettres, vol. 3, no. 4, 1960, pp. 209–21 Shearman, John, Mannerism, London, Penguin, 1991 (first published in 1967) Shimizu, Christine, L’Art Japonais, Paris, Flammarion, 2001 Shimizu, Toru, ‘Michel Butor and the Japanese Classic Arts’, World Literature Today, vol. 56, no. 2, 1982, pp. 281–86 Short, Robert, Dada and Surrealism, London, Lawrence King, 1994 (first published in 1980) Siganos, André, ‘Butor au labyrinthe: pour une stratégie de l’égarement’, Op. Cit, 1994, no. 3, pp. 215–21 Silk, Sally M., ‘When the Writer Comes Home: Narrative Failure in Butor’s La Modification’, Style, vol. 26, no. 2, 1992, pp. 270–86 Skimao and Teulon-Nouailles, Bernard, Michel Butor, Qui êtes-vous?, Lyon, La Manufacture, 1988

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Smart, Alastair, The Renaissance and Mannerism in Italy, London, Thames and Hudson, 1971 Smart, Alastair, The Renaissance and Mannerism outside Italy, London, Thames and Hudson, 1972 Smock, Ann, ‘The Disclosure of Difference in Butor’, Modern Language Notes, vol. 89, no. 4, 1974, pp. 654–68 Smyth, Edmund J. (ed.), Postmodernism and Contemporary Fiction, London, Batsford, 1991 Spencer, Michael C., ‘Architecture and Poetry in Réseau aérien’, Modern Language Review, vol. 63, 1968, pp. 57–65 Spencer, Michael C., ‘Avatars du mythe chez Robbe-Grillet et Michel Butor: étude comparative de Projet pour un révolution à New York et de Mobile’, in Jean Ricardou (ed.), Colloque de Cerisy: Robbe-Grillet, vol. 1, Paris, U.G.E., 1967, pp. 64–84 Spencer, Michael C., ‘Les Citations ambigues de l’oncle Michel’, Australian Journal of French Studies, vol. 20, no. 1, 1983, pp. 93–104 Spencer, Michael C., ‘Etat présent of Butor Studies’, Australian Journal of French Studies, vol. 8, 1971, pp. 84–97 Spencer, Michael C., Michel Butor, New York, Twayne Publishers, 1974 Spencer, Michael C., ‘Michel Butor ou l’incitation au voyage, même’, Romance Quarterly, vol. 35, no. 2, 1988, pp. 161–69 Spencer, Michael C., ‘Michel Butor: Literature in an Electronic Age’, Meanjin, vol. 28, 1969, pp. 472–78 Spencer, Michael C., ‘L’Ouverture chez Butor’, Degrés, no. 1, 1973, pp. l–15 Spencer, Michael C., Site, citation et collaboration chez Michel Butor, Sherbrooke, Naaman, 1987 Spencer, Michael C., ‘Son et lumière at the Niagara Falls’, Australian Journal of French Studies, vol. 6, 1969, pp. 101–12 Spencer, Michael C., ‘Tours et détours onomastiques dans Boomerang’, Romance Quarterly, vol. 32, no. 1, 1985, pp. 39–48 Spencer, Michael C., ‘The Unfinished Cathedral: Michel Butor’s L’Emploi du temps’, Essays in French Literature, no. 6, 1969, pp. 81–101 Spitzer, Leo, ‘Quelques aspects de la technique des romans de Michel Butor’, Archivum Linguisticum, no. 13, 1961, 171–95 and no. 14, 1962, pp. 49–76 St.-Aubyn, F. C., ‘Butor and the Stuff of Dreams’, World Literature Today, vol. 56, no. 2, 1982, pp. 251–58 St. Aubyn, F. C., ‘Butor’s Rare and Limited Editions: 1956–1983’, Review of Contemporary Fiction, vol. 5, no. 3, 1985, pp. 176–83 St. Aubyn, F. C., ‘East Meets West: Michel Butor’s “Dans les flammes”’, Substance, vol. 15, 1976, pp. 222–30 St. Aubyn, F. C., ‘The Illustration of an Unillustrated Illustration: Butor’s “Paysage de repons”’, Australian Journal of French Studies, vol. 15, no. 6, 1978, pp. 289–300 St. Aubyn, F. C., ‘Michel Butor and Phenomenological Realism’, Studi Francesi, vol. 6, 1962, pp. 51–62

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St. Aubyn, F. C., ‘Michel Butor’s America’, Kentucky Foreign Language Quarterly, vol. 11, 1964, pp. 40–48 Stanley-Baker, Joan, Japanese Art, London, Thames and Hudson, 2000 (first published in 1984) Stary, Sonja G., ‘The Artist and the Monkey in Butor’s Portrait de l’artiste en jeune singe’, Symposium, vol. 34, 1980, pp. 68–81 Steens, M.-J., ‘La Vision chez Michel Butor’, Neophilologus, vol. 53, 1969, pp. 8– 10 Steens, M.-J., ‘Le Grand Schisme de Michel Butor’, Revue des Sciences Humaines, vol. 134, 1969, pp. 331–37 Stone-Miller, Rebecca, Art of the Andes from Chavin to Inca, London, Thames and Hudson, 1995 Strand, Dana, ‘The Role of Dreams in Michel Butor’s La Modification’, Romance Quarterly, vol. 32, no. 1, 1985, pp. 91–100 x Strand, Dana, ‘Time and Again: Repetition in Michel Butor’s Ou, le génie du lieu 2’, Neophilologus, vol. 72, no. 4, 1988, pp. 516–23 Struebig, Patricia A., La Structure mythique de ‘La Modification’ de Michel Butor, New York, Peter Lang, 1994 Sturrock, John, The French New Novel, London, Oxford University Press, 1969 Sullivan, Françoise Dupuy, ‘Qui parle dans Degrés?’, French Review, vol. 64, no. 6, 1991, pp. 956–65 Suther, Judith D., ‘Apology for Mobile’, Romance Quarterly, vol. 32, no. 1, 1985, pp. 55–64 Sweeney, James Johnson and Jospe Lluis Sert, Antoni Gaudí, London, Architectural Press, 1960 Szmurlo, Karyna, ‘Le Désir de l’espace féminin dans l’écriture de Michel Butor’, Modern Language Studies, vol. 25, no. 4, 1995, pp. 75–83 Tamuly, A. M, ‘Un Déterminisme de comédie: A propos de La Modification de Michel Butor’, Australian Journal of French Studies, vol. 9, no. 1, 1972, pp. 86–97 Tapié, Victor-Lucien, The Age of Grandeur: Baroque Art and Architecture, trans. A. R. Williamson, London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1960 Terukzu, Akiyama, Japanese Painting, London and Basingstoke, MacMillan, 1977 (first published in 1961) Thomas, Nicholas, Oceanic Art, London, Thames and Hudson, 1995 Todorov, Tzvetan, La Conquête de l’Amérique: la question de l’autre, Paris, Seuil, 1982 Tomkins, Calvin, Duchamp: A Biography, London, Chatto and Windus, 1997 Tomkins, Calvin, The Bride and the Bachelors, London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1965 Valette, Bernard, Butor: La Modification, Paris, Ellipses, 1999 Valette, Bernard, ‘Entretien avec Michel Butor’, in Analyses et réflexions sur Michel Butor, ‘L’Emploi du temps’: la ville, Paris, Ellipses, 1995, pp. 15–23 Waelti-Walters, Jennifer R., Alchimie et littérature: étude de ‘Portrait de l’artiste en jeune singe de Michel Butor’, Paris, Denoël, 1975

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Waelti-Walters, Jennifer R., ‘The Architectural and Musical Influences on the Structure of Michel Butor’s Description de San Marco’, Revue de Littérature Comparée, vol. 53, 1979, pp. 65–75 Waelti-Walters, Jennifer R., ‘Butor’s Museums’, Contemporary Literature, vol. 18, 1977, pp. 62–74 Waelti-Walters, Jennifer, ‘Butor’s Use of Literary Texts in Degrés’, PMLA, vol. 88, 1973, pp. 311–20 Waelti-Walters, Jennifer, Michel Butor, Amsterdam, Rodopi, 1992 Waelti-Walters, Jennifer, Michel Butor: A Study of his View of the World and a Panorama of his Work, 1954–1974, Victoria B.C., Sono Nis Press, 1977 Waelti-Walters, Jennifer, ‘Suppressed Rage as a Creative Force in Michel Butor’s Work: L’Emploi du temps and Répertoire V’, Romance Quarterly, vol. 32, no. 1, 1985, pp. 49–54 Waite, Alan, ‘Butor’s Degrés: Making the Reader Work’, Australian Journal of French Studies, vol. 21, no. 2, 1984, pp. 180–93 Waldman, Diane, Collage, Assemblage and the Found Object, London, Phaidon, 1992 Walters, Jennifer R., ‘Butor’s Juxtaposed Selves’, Essays in French Literature, vol. 9, 1972, pp. 80–87 Walters, Jennifer R., ‘Literary Alchemy’, Diacritics, vol. 1, no. 2, 1971, pp. 7–14 Walters, Jennifer R., ‘Michel Butor and “The Thousand and One Nights”’, Neophilologus, vol. 59, 1975, pp. 213–22 Walters, Jennifer R., ‘La Recherche géographique et historique de l’identité butorienne’, Marche Romane, vol. 21, 1971, pp. 57–63 Walters, Jennifer R., Symbolism in Passage de Milan’, French Review, vol. 42, no. 2, 1968, pp. 223–32 Warme, L. G., ‘Reflection and Revelation in Michel Butor’s La Modification’, International Fiction Review, vol. 1, no. 2, 1974, pp. 88–94 Warncke, Carsten-Peter, Picasso, 2 vols, trans. W. Fruhtrunk, Cologne, Taschen, 1995 Warnke, Frank J., Versions of Baroque, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1972 Weinstein, Arnold, ‘Order and Excess in Butor’s L’Emploi du temps’, Modern Fiction Studies, vol. 16, no. 1, 1970, pp. 41–55 White, John, Art and Architecture in Italy 1250–1400, New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1983 (first published in 1961) Wilson, Clothilde, ‘La Modification or Variations on a Theme by Mme de Staël’, Romanic Review, vol. 15, no. 4, 1964, pp. 278–82 Wilton Ely, John, Piranesi, London, Arts Council of Great Britain, 1978 Wind, Edgar, Michelangelo’s Prophets and Sibyls, Lectures on Aspects of Art, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1960 Wine, H., Claude: The Poetic Landscape, London, National Gallery Publications, 1994 Wittkower, Rudolf, Art and Architecture in Italy 1600–1750, New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1982 (first published in 1958)

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Wittkower, Rudolf, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, the Sculptor of the Roman Baroque, London, Phaidon, 1953 Wolfram, Eddie, History of Collage, London, Studio Vista, 1975 Zerbst, Rainer, Antoni Gaudí, Cologne, Taschen, 1993

Special Numbers of Journals on Butor L’Arc, no. 39, 1969 Obliques, Butor-Masurovsky, février 1976 World Literature Today, vol. 56, no. 2, 1982 Review of Contemporary Fiction, vol. 5, no. 3, 1985 Romance Quarterly, vol. 32, no. 1, 1985, Oeuvres et Critiques, vol. 10, no. 2, 1985 Revue Frontenac, no. 15, décembre, 2000

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Index

5

Index

6 810 000 litres d’eau par seconde, 2, 7, 8, 52, 55, 190, 191, 193, 194, 203–05 abandonment of novel, 1, 189–90 Aboriginal culture, 215–26 Abyssinia, 250 Ades, Dawn, 16 Aeneid, The, 119, 127, 144, 178 Aeschylus, 232 alchemy, 263–64 Aldobrandini family, 141 Alechinsky, Pierre, 2, 209–10, 213–14 Almanach de Gotha, L’, 260 Amarna tablets, 234 America, 147, 149, 160, 162, 166, 169, 179, 189, 191–92, 195– 200, 202, 205, 209 Apollinaire, Guillaume, 29, 238 Apollo Belvedere, 113 Apoxyomenos, 113 Appy, Frédéric, 45, 240, 244, 249 Ariadne, 92, 251 Ariosto, Ludovico, 231, 232 Arkell, David, 57 Artephius, 260 Assaad, Fawzia, 7, 8 Athens, 69, 97 authorial proxies, 41–55 Aztecs, 164, 237 Baalbek, 69, 97

Duffy_09_Index

294

Baldwin, Claude-Marie, 15 Baltazar, Julius, 3 Barbault, Jean, 128 Barcelona, 74, 81 Baroque, 131–36 Barthes, Roland, 9, 10, 86, 249 Bataille, Georges, 241 Baudelaire, Charles, 194, 205 Bellini, Giovanni, 141 Belvedere torso, 113 Beni Hassan, 53 Bénic, Lorraine, 8 Bennett, Tony, 93, 94 Benveniste, Emile, 9 Bernini, Gian Lorenzo, 13, 124, 130– 36, 148 Bible, 62, 64, 197, 200, 212 Bicentennaire Kit, 5, 8, 239 Bloch, Adèle, 168 Bodin, Jean, 163 Boehme, Jakob, 260, 263 Boileau, Nicolas, 151 Bombay, 98 Book of Mormon, The, 236–38 Boomerang (Le Génie du lieu III), 2, 7, 216, 238–45 Booth, Wayne C., 9 Borromini, Francesco, 106, 131 Bossuet, Jacques Bénigne, 232 Boucher, François, 124 Bougainville, Louis-Antoine de, 241 Bougy, Patrice, 151

6/4/03, 14:25

Index

295

Breton, André, 215, 241 Britton, Celia, 1, 4 Brunel, Pierre, 10–11, 74, 88 Bryen, Camille, 3, 209, 210 Buddhism, 246–47 Buffon, Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de, 241 Burri, Albert, 46 Burry, Mark, 80 Burton, Stacy, 32, 238 Butler, Samuel, 241 Cabanne, Pierre, 46, 47 Cabinet des Fées, Le, 260 Cage, John, 54 Cain, 62, 68 Cain window, 58, 59–73, 84, 98, 101 Cairo, 233–34 Calder, Alexander, 3, 217–18 Calle-Gruber, Mireille, 8, 10, 74, 75, 88 Callot, Jacques, 260 Cambodia, 250 Capriccio, 260 Caravaggio, 3 Carrouges, Michel, 28 cathedrals, 58, 59–87, 98, 101, 207–08 Catholicism, 61, 68, 80, 103–48 Cavalcanti, Guido, 105 Cavallini, Pietro, 13, 106–10, 124, 146 Celtic culture, 60 Central America, 250 Challe, Charles Michel-Ange, 128 Champollion, Jean François, 162, 166 Chantelou, Paul Fréart, Sieur de, 134 Chaplin, Charlie, 163 Chapman, George, 162, 166 Chapsal, Madeleine, 86, 136 Charbonnier, Georges, 2, 16, 32, 37, 41, 42, 84, 92, 183, 193, 195, 196, 201, 225 Chardin, Jean-Baptiste-Siméon, 124, 139, 265, 267

Duffy_09_Index

295

Charlevoix, Pierre François-Xavier, 241 Charon, 119 Chateaubriand, François Auguste René, Vicomte de, 193, 203, 241 Chinese art, 247 Cholet, Jean, 108 Christianity, 60, 62, 101, 103–48, 200–02, 237–38, 247, 267 Cicero (Marcus Tullius), 151, 163, 215 cinema, 59, 96–99, 100, 152 Clark, Kenneth, 141 classical culture, 101, 113, 115–18, 124, 130, 138, 141, 146 Claude Lorrain, 3, 13, 123, 139–44, 211–13 Claudel, Camille, 241, 249 Clérisseau, Charles-Louis, 128 Clidemus, 253 Cluny, Hôtel de, 108, 138 Cnossos, 69, 97 Colbert, Jean-Baptiste, 134 Cole, Alison, 231 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 151, 162, 174, 179, 215 collaboration, 45, 59, 86–87, 161, 178, 189, 206–222, 247, 248 collage, 191–206, 258 colonialism, 163–64, 166–68, 183– 84, 186–87, 198, 199 Columbus, Christopher, 162, 179 Comme Shirley, 209 Conacher, Agnès, 8, 199 Conceptual Art, 17 concrete music, 54–55 Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers, 29 Constant, Benjamin, 194, 205 consumerism, 196–99, 203, 204, 241–43 Cook, James, 241 Cordoba, 230, 231 Coron, Antoine, 239

6/4/03, 14:25

296

Index

correspondences, 195–206, 243–44 Cossa, Francesco del, 231 Couffon, Claude, 192 Cox, Neil, 16 Crete, 250 cultural appropriation, 101, 177–81, 237, 247 cultural exchange, 61, 101, 108, 147, 201–02, 247, 249 Cumaean Sibyl, 116, 119, 144 Curriculum Vitae, 2, 25, 43, 57, 69, 74, 80, 82, 84, 86, 193, 195, 218, 219, 221, 238, 239, 250 Daedalus, 251 Daigoji, 246 Dällenbach, Lucien, 47, 104, 185 Dante Alighieri, 151, 162, 178, 179 Dard, E., 163 Darwin, Charles, 82 David, Jacques-Louis, 124, 139 Davis, Betty, 100 De Quincey, Thomas, 179 death, 40–41, 43 Decamps, Alexandre Gabriel, 266, 267 decay, 61, 203–04, 205 déchiffrement, 57, 61, 91, 229 defamiliarisation, 258 deferral, 38–40 Degrés, 2, 4, 6, 13, 14, 149–88, 185, 190, 191, 207, 215, 241, 259, 260, 261 Delacroix, Eugène, 3 Delphi, 208, 230, 231 Delvaux, Paul, 215–17 Derouet, C., 214 Descharnes, Robert, 76, 77, 78, 80, 81 Description de San Marco, 2, 191, 192– 93, 194, 200–03, 205, 207 Deshays, Jean-Baptiste, 267 Desjardins, Marc, 8 Desoubeaux, Henri, 2, 54, 71, 189, 190, 191, 207, 208, 209, 218, 222, 228, 244, 249, 250

Duffy_09_Index

296

detective fiction, 62, 63–66, 78, 81– 82 Detroit, 69 Dhavernas, Catherine, 195 Diderot, Denis, 241 Didier, Béatrice, 2 discovery, 44, 149, 162–71, 184 Dorny, Bertrand, 215 Dostoievski, Fyodor Mikhaylovich, 91–92 dreams, 22, 25, 29–30, 40–41, 50, 51, 80, 82, 83, 119–21, 125–26, 129, 138, 147, 160, 169, 185, 190, 192, 195, 200, 212, 216– 17, 226–27, 258, 262, 263 Dotrement, Christian, 2, 3 Dubuffet, Jean, 46 Duchamp, Marcel, 13, 15–56, 225– 26, 239–44 Duffy, Jean H., 8, 9, 59, 105, 106, 119, 138, 144, 254 Duflos, François, 128 Dufour, Bernard, 3 Dumas, Alexandre, 241 Duncan, Alastair, 4 Dürer, Albrecht, 3, 263, 264, 267 Dionysius, 92 education, 149, 153–61, 185–86 Egypt, 45, 230, 230–35 Elaho, Raymond, 1, 104, 264 Eleade, Mircea, 10 Elsinor, 250 Embarquement de la Reine de Saba, L’, 3, 12, 211–12 Emploi du temps, L’, 2, 7, 10–11, 13, 150, 190, 207, 224, 259 Encyclopedia Britannica, 241 Envois, 210 Euripides, 237 everyman, 84, 105, 106 exploitation, 149, 162–72, 186–87 Exprès, 210, 243 Eyck, Jan van, 72, 73 Ezekiel, 115

6/4/03, 14:25

Index

297

Fabre-Cols, Claude, 7, 8 fairs, 59, 93–95, 99, 100 Fascism, 146, 147, 261 Faust, 177 Ferrara, 230–32 Fitch, Brian T., 8 Flamel, Nicolas, 260 found materials, 184–85, 213–15, 242–43 Fragonard, Jean-Honoré, 139 Franklin, Benjamin, 199 freedom, 42, 70–71, 113, 128, 148, 168–69, 217 Friberg, Arnold, 237 Frolicking Animals scrolls, 245, 248 Fuji, Mount, 236 Fulcanelli, 260 Fuseli, Henry, 175, 176 Galassi, Susan G., 253 Gama, Vasco da, 162 Garcilaso de la Vega, 231 Gateau, Jean-Charles, 7 Gaudí y Cornet, Antoni, 13, 59, 74– 87 Genette, Gérard, 9 Génie du lieu, Le, 2, 7, 8, 14, 53, 86, 189, 207, 216, 222, 229–54, 255 Gesù Church, 131 Giacometti, Albert, 210 Gide, André, 232 Gilbert, Creighton, 118 Ginkaku (‘Silver Pavilion’), 245 Giraudo, Lucien, 2, 10, 11 Gloyne, Jill, 57 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 221, 231 Goldfarb, Shirley, 210 Goldman, Lucien, 9 Gold Rush, The, 163 Gongora y Argote, Luis de, 221, 231 Fernandez de Cordoba, Gonzalo, 231 Gothic architecture, 58, 60, 74, 81

Duffy_09_Index

297

Gothic art, 107 Gottlieb, Adolph, 47 Goya y Lucientes, Francisco José, 124, 267 Grand Veneur, 105 Grandville, J.-J., 267 Grant, Marion A., 10 Greimas, A. J., 9 Grimm, Reinhold, 260 Griton-Rotterdam, Nathalie, 79, 88 Guardi, Francesco, 124 Gyroscope (Le Génie du lieu V), 2, 7, 250–54 Harrey tapestries, 58, 61, 84, 89–93, 101 Hasegawa To–haku, 246 Helbo, André, 86 Hellenicus, 253 Henderson, Linda Dalrymple, 26, 27, 28 Hérold, Jacques, 3, 210, 215, 216 Hetherington, Paul, 108 Hibbard, Howard, 112, 116, 134 Hilton, Conrad, 241 Hinduism, 247 Hiroshige, Ando–, 246, 249 Hirsch, Marianne, 198 Hoffman, E. T., 241 Hogarth, William, 260 Hokusai, Katsushika, 2, 235–37, 246, 249 Holbein, Hans, 226, 227 Homer, 151, 162, 174, 185 Ho–o–do– (‘Phoenix Hall’), 245 Hopkins, David, 16 Ho–ryu–ji temple, 247 Houdon, Jean-Antoine, 137 Huet, Jean-Baptiste Marie, 267 Hughes, Robert, 20, 81 Ici et là: relations intercontinentales, 197 Illustrations II, 3, 7 Illustrations III, 3, 7

6/4/03, 14:25

298

Index

Illustrations IV, 3, 7 Illustrations, 3, 7, 211, 217, 264 imperialism, 80, 134–36, 146, 149, 150, 153, 164, 166, 168, 186– 87, 198, 199 Improvisations sur Balzac, 2 Improvisations sur Flaubert, 2 Improvisations sur Henri Michaux, 2 Improvisations sur Michel Butor, 2, 3, 16, 45, 58, 70, 79, 135, 147, 148, 157, 158, 224, 235 Improvisations sur Rimbaud, 2 Incas, 237 Indonesian culture, 216 Inglis, Angus A., 11, 12 intertextuality, 86, 105, 151, 153, 163, 172, 176, 183, 184, 185, 187, 191–206, 229, 237, 238, 241, 244–45, 250, 252, 253, 254, 257, 258, 260 Intervalle, 1, 2, 5, 7, 193, 194, 205– 06, 219–21 Istanbul, 208, 230 Jacomino, Christian, 2 Japanese art, 235–36, 245–50 Japon depuis la France, Le, 249 Jarry, Alfred, 29 Jean, Gilberte, 63 Jeannet, Frédéric-Yves, 2 Jefferson, Thomas, 200 Joly, Luc, 214–15 Jongeneel, Else, 6, 68, 73, 75, 85, 88, 89, 152, 153, 163, 172, 176, 194 Jo–nin, 246 Jordaens, Jacob, 261, 262 journey, 25, 30, 42, 44, 50, 51, 83, 98–99, 103–48, 162, 163, 186, 205, 212, 219, 221, 224, 225, 230–32, 237, 238, 244–45, 246, 259 Joyce, James, 266 Kafka, Franz, 28 Kano– Eitoku, 246

Duffy_09_Index

298

Kano– Naizen, 246–47 Kano– Sanraku, 246 Kano– Sansetsu, 246 Keats, John, 151, 166, 179 Kegon Engi scrolls, 246 Kerbrat, Marie-Claire, 10, 74, 88 Kiene, Michael, 124, 125 Kinetic Art, 17 Kipling, Rudyard, 151, 170, 173 Kircher, Athanasius, 260, 263 Klee, Paul, 47 Kline, Franz Josef, 2, 28 Kline, T. Jefferson, 170, 173 Knee, Robin, 55 Kokoshka, Oskar, 267 Kolár“, Jir“í, 3, 210 Kolbert, Jack, 57 Koran, 233 Kupka, Frantisek, 267 Lalande, Bernard, 10 La Mothe, Jacques, 8, 12, 239 Lancry, Yéhuda, 7 Lane, Edward William, 233 Langdon, Helen, 144 Laocoön group, 113 Largo Argentina, 130 Launay, Michel, 2 Lautréamont, Comte de (Isidore Ducasse), 241 Leeds, 69 Letters of Julian the Apostate, The, 108, 138 Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 163, 241 Litanie d’eau, 264 Liverpool, 69, 74, 77, 85 Livy, 151, 162 Lodge, David, 9 Longhi, Pietro, 231 Loti, Pierre, 249 Louvre, Palais du, 122–27, 139 Lovecraft, H. P., 241 Lucan, 231 Lydon, Mary, 5, 6, 15, 30, 47, 49, 54, 55, 82, 105, 149, 195

6/4/03, 14:25

Index

299

Maccheroni, Henry, 3 Magellan, Ferdinand, 162 Magnasco, Alessandro, 311 Magritte, René, 47, 226–28 mail-order catalogues, 196–97 Mallarmé, Stéphane, 264 Mallia, 230 Manchester, 57, 69, 85 Mann, Thomas, 260 Mantegna, Andrea, 118, 230 Mantua, 230 manuals, 199 Maori culture, 216 maps, 62, 67, 152, 172–74, 182, 239 Marlowe, Christopher, 221 Marret, Bertrand, 367 marriage, 34–35 Martin, Susanna, 199 Marzoyer, Robert, 1 Mason, Barbara, 11, 12, 200, 205 Masson, André, 46, 215, 216 Massys, Quentin, 164–66 Masurovsky, Grégory, 3, 209, 210 Matière de rêves, 12, 216 Mauss, Marcel, 241 Mayas, 208, 337 McAllister, Ward, 199 McWilliams, Dean, 5, 6, 15, 32, 55, 74, 75, 82, 88, 104, 110, 138, 139, 167, 194, 238, 260 Mélançon, Robert, 235 Melville, Hermann, 241 Michelangelo Buonarroti, 107, 109, 110–22, 126, 137 Miller, Elinor S., 210, 212 Minotaur, 251, 252 mirrors, 26, 71–73, 97 mise en abyme, 49, 90–91, 97, 143, 153, 171–85, 197, 258 Mobile: étude pour une représentation des Etats-Unis, 1, 2, 4, 7, 8, 52, 191, 194–200, 216, 218, 228 Modification, La, 2, 7, 8–10, 13, 103– 48, 150, 190, 216, 219–20, 226, 259

Duffy_09_Index

299

Molière, 151, 194 Mondrian, Piet, 15 Monet, Claude, 3, 249 Monory, Jacques, 210, 239 Montaigne, Michel de, 151, 178, 215 Montesquieu, Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de la Brède et de, 151 Monteverdi, Claudio Giovanni Antonio, 127 Monticello, 199 Moorish art and architecture, 81, 231 Morcos, Gamila, 144 Mots dans la peinture, Les, 3, 14, 222– 29, 255, 259 Mrozowicki, M, 152 Multimedia Art, 17 Murtadi, 283 museums, 58, 59, 87–93, 96, 98, 99, 100, 122–27, 258 Museum Hermeticum, 260 music, 54–55, 68–70 names, 100, 197, 198 Namur, 250 narrative perspective, 151–52, 173– 74, 258 Native American culture, 200, 216, 238 Nerval, Gérard de, 194, 200, 221, 222, 233, 263 Niagara Falls, 52 non-communication, 32–37 non-fulfilment, 20, 38–40 North by North-West, 163 nostalgia, 38–40, 198–99 Notre-Dame de Paris, 208 nouveau roman, 1, 150, 257 Numbers, Book of, 121 O’Donnell, Thomas, 260 Oedipus, 92 Ogata Ko¯rin, 246 Ollier, Claude, 1

6/4/03, 14:25

300

Index

opera, 2, 222, 238, 241 Oppenheim, Meret, 46 Oppenheim, Lois, 7, 8, 9, 12 Ottolenghi, Maria Grazia, 3 x Ou (Le Génie du lieu II), 2, 235–238 Oudry, Jean-Baptiste, 124 Ovid, 260 Paine, Robert Treat, 246 Painting of the Six Ways, The, 246, 248 Palazzo Doria Pamphili, 131 Palazzo Farnese, 131 Palazzo Schifanoia, 231–32 Palazzo Barberini, 131 Pannini, Giovanni, 13, 108, 122–27, 148 Panthéon, 108, 136, 138, 139 Parant, Jean-Luc, 3, 210 Paris, 136–37 Passage de Milan, 2, 5, 13, 15–56, 86, 104, 206, 207, 217, 225, 247 Pausanias, 232 Peking, 250 Pellegrino-Ceccarelli, Alba, 12 Perros, Georges, 2 Persephone, 92 Persica, 115 Peru, 231 Petitot, Ennemond Alexandre, 128 Petosiris, Tomb of, 234 Petra, 97 Petrarch, Francesco, 221 Peverelli, Caesar, 3 Pfund, Roger, 210 Phaedra, 92 Pherecydes, 253 philately, 183–85 Philochorus, 253 Piacentini, Marcello, 147 Picasso, Pablo, 3, 228, 250–54, 267 Pindar, 232 Pinget, Robert, 1 Piranesi, Giovanni Battista, 127–30 Pirithoüs, 92

Duffy_09_Index

300

Plato, 232 Plutarch, 250, 253 Pollock, Jackson, 3 Polo, Marco, 151, 161, 163, 179, 185 polyphony, 69–70, 151–52, 172, 191–92, 193–94 Portrait de l’artiste en jeune singe, 11, 14, 190, 216, 259–68 Pound, Ezra, 259 Pousseur, Henri, 5, 12, 54 Poussin, Nicolas, 123, 234, 139–44 Prévost, Clovis, 76, 77, 78, 80, 81 Pringle, Mary Beth, 106 Quéréel, Patrice, 10 Querelle des états, La, 209 Rabelais, François, 151, 166 Racine, Jean, 151, 177, 179, 185 racism, 195, 200, 204–05 Raillard, Georges, 4, 15, 74 Rameau, Jean-Philippe, 241 Ramirez, Juan Antonio, 26 Raphael Stanze, 113 ready-made, 243–45 Reff, Theodore, 253 Reformation, 60, 61 Renaissance, 60, 61, 67 Renaudot, Théophraste, 163 Reni, Guido, 106 Répertoire I, 2, 7, 45, 50, 51, 103 Répertoire II, 2, 4, 54, 57, 104, 145, 249 Répertoire III, 2, 7, 180, 181, 235, 236, 252, 253, 254 Répertoire IV, 2, 7, 86, 216 Répertoire V, 2, 7, 230 Réseau aérien: texte radiophonique, 2, 7 Rêve de l’ammonite, Le, 209 Ricardou, Jean, 1, 49, 210 Rice, Donald B., 206 Richer, Jean, 233 Robbe-Grillet, Alain, 1, 4 Robert, Hubert, 128 Roberti, Ercole de’, 231

6/4/03, 14:25

Index

301

Rochegrosse, Georges Antoine, 155 Romanesques, 14, 90, 190–91 Romanesque architecture, 60 Rome, 69, 103–48, 231 Rosienski-Pellerin, Sylvie, 221 Rossum-Guyon, Françoise van, 8, 9, 105, 151, 153 Rothko, Mark, 3 Roudaut, Jean, 4, 7, 8 Roudiez, Léon, 152 Roussel, Raymond, 28, 29, 241 Russian Formalism, 89 Ryo–an-ji, Dry Garden of, 245 Saint-Simon, Claude Henri de Rouvroy, Comte de, 151, 163 Salem, 199 San Pietro in Vincoli, 110 Sandia Peak, 235–37 Sant’Agnese in Agone, 131, 134 Sant’Andrea della Valle, 110 Santa Cecilia, 108, 146 Santa Maria degli Angeli, 131, 137 Santa Maria Maggiore, 131 Santschi, Madeleine, 1, 2, 28, 29, 55, 84, 86, 148, 189, 192, 195, 207, 209, 210, 212, 216, 218, 219 Saqquara, 53 Sarraute, Nathalie, 1 Schama, Simon, 135 Schwitters, Kurt, 228 Schwob, Marcel, 238 science fiction, 29, 51, 86, 152, 158, 163, 169, 207 Scott, Jonathan, 130 self-citation, 239, 240, 244, 250, 253, 254 Seneca, 231 Sert, Jospe Luis, 81 Sesshu– To–yo–, 246 Seund Ja Rhee, 210 Shakespeare, William, 151, 166, 174, 175–77, 179, 181, 185, 215 Shalako, 216, 238 Sheffield, 69

Duffy_09_Index

301

Shigi-san Engi handscrolls, 245 Shimizu, Toru, 7, 246 Shintoism, 247 Sicard, Michel, 209, 213, 214 Silk, Sally M., 136 Simon, Claude, 1, 254 Simonides, 253 singerie, 267 Skimao, 28, 32, 46, 250, 251 Smart, Alastair, 164, 166 Smith, Joseph, 237 Smock, Ann, 204 Snyders, Frans, 261, 262 Soper, Alexander, 246, 247 Sophocles, 151 Spencer, Michael C., 5, 6, 11, 15, 55, 105, 194, 203, 205 Spitzer, Leo, 11 St.-Aubyn, F.-C., 11, 12 Stanley-Baker, Joan, 148 Staritsky, Ania, 3, 210 Stockhausen, Karlheinz, 54 Strand, Dana, 119 Struebig, Patricia, 8, 9–10, 148 Surrealism, 17 Swann, Peter, 247 Sweeney, James Johnston, 47, 81 Synesius, 260 Taha Hussein, 232 Tale of Genji, The, 245, 248 Tale of the Life of the Monk Ippen, The, 246 Talus, 251 Tàpies, Antoni, 210 Tasso, Torquato, 231, 232 Tawayara So–tatsu, 246 Tenku–-in, 246 Terukazu Akiyama, 248 Teulon-Nouailles, Bernard, 28, 32, 46, 250, 251 Theseus, 89, 90, 92, 216, 250–53 Thessaloniki, 208, 230 Thomas, Dylan, 266 Thot, 266, 267

6/4/03, 14:25

302

Index

Thousand and One Nights, The, 263 Tikal, 208 Timgad, 69, 97 Tintin in America, 163 titles, 223–28 Todorov, Tzvetan, 9, 10 Tomkins, Calvin, 16, 17, 18, 22, 24, 26, 27, 42 Tori Busshi, 247 Tounah el-Gebel, 234 Transit (Le Génie du lieu IV), 245–250 translation, 64, 154, 178, 192, 202, 233 Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The, 163 Tubulcain, 68 Tura, Cosimo, 231 typography, 152, 193–94, 200, 214 Unkoku To–gan, 246, 248 Utilité poétique, L’, 80 Valentin, Basile, 260 Valette, Bernard, 10 Vanitas, 60 Varèse, Edgar, 233 Vasarély, Victor, 217–18 Vatican, 109, 110, 112, 113, 114, 115, 146 Vattier, Pierre, 233 Velázquez, Diego Rodriguez de Silva y, 251 Venice, 191–92, 194, 200–02, 205

Duffy_09_Index

302

Verne, Jules, 29, 151, 163, 217, 241 Vernet, Claude-Joseph, 128 Vien, Joseph-Marie, 128 Vieira da Silva, Maria-Helena, 210 Villa Katsura, 245 Villers, André, 250 Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, Jean Marie Mathias Philippe Auguste, Comte de, 29, 241 Virgil, 119, 127, 151, 185 Vleughels, Nicolas, 124 Voltaire, 151, 163, 179, 249 Votre Faust, 12, 221–22 Voyage immobile, 97, 145, 237 Waelti-Walters, Jennifer, 5, 11, 68, 76, 105, 151, 153, 260 Waite, Alan, 153, 183 Watteau, Jean-Antoine, 124, 139, 267 Werfel, Franz, 260 Wilton-Ely, J., 128 Wind, Edgar, 116, 118 witchhunts, 199 Wittkower, Rudolf, 134 Yabal, 68 Yubel, 68 Zecheriah, 115, 120–21 Zerbst, Rainer, 81, 87 Zuni Indians, 238

6/4/03, 14:25