Surrealist end-of-year questions.

It’s the season for end-of-year reviews. Government summits were held, agreements reached. Germany fell in love with a polar bear cub, the inflation increased, William and Kate broke up and got back together. Nobel Prizes were awarded and the flooded basements have dried up.

I’m never quite certain what all of this has to do with us. But I sincerely hope you can look back to a year full of pleasant surprises, mind-boggling coincidences and fascinating encounters.

• How do you evaluate inspiration, behaviour and progression?
• What is a fire that smoulders?
• What is the number 27?
• Is there a way of building in trails of the unexpected?
• What has been the most important encounter of your life?
• How will your session take into account the widest range of participants?
• What is a path through the imagination?
• Are you a fox or a hedgehog?
• What hope do you put in love?

“Papillons” with questions, some of which were originally asked by the Surrealists who gave out a bunch of business cards with philosophical quotes and thought-provoking, slightly disturbing questions at the opening of their Bureau of Surrealist Research in 1924.

Mark Dion echoes this practice with his Bureau of the Centre for the Study of Surrealism and its Legacy at the Manchester Museum since 2005.

Christmassy flower.

Last year around this time I held a rose of jericho in my hand; it felt dead, but strangely elastic. The friendly tour guide at Trausnitz Castle in Bavaria, the partly restored Wittelsbach kunstkammer collection that opened to the public in 2004, had us touch a specimen, no doubt trying to keep the children at bay. I remember thinking, what’s the point? After all she didn’t pour water on it to make it blossom.

But maybe the opportunity to handle the object is the reason why I still remember everything she told us about it: that it is an African desert plant brought to Europe by the Crusaders; that it opens its dead-looking branches and begins to blossom as soon as it is watered; that it was kept in cabinets of curiosities due to its magical, oracular powers (its failure to open symbolised a person’s imminent death); that, according to its Christian symbolism, it was believed to represent the opening of the womb at childbirth, and that it was therefore supposed to blossom only at Christmas.

Proto-Surrealist, handy object.

Glove map of London, 1851, by George Shove. Printed map on leather.

Have you ever jotted down directions on the palm of your hand, for lack of a piece of paper? This glove map of London, created by George Shove to help organise the sprawling grounds for visitors to the Great Exhibition of 1851, would be the more sophisticated version of a hand sketch. The Exposition’s Crystal Palace is near the base of the palm, St. Paul’s Cathedral across two fingers and Kensington Gardens near the wrist.

Currently on display in the exhibition Maps: Finding Our Place in the World at the Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago.

I loved that damn museum.

Gemsbok diorama, Akeley Hall of African Mammals,
American Museum of Natural History, NY.

Water Hole diorama, Akeley Hall of African Mammals.

The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody’d move. You could go there a hundred thousand times, and that Eskimo would still be just finished catching those two fish, the birds would still be on their way south, the deers would still be drinking out of that water hole, with their pretty antlers and their pretty, skinny legs, and that squaw with the naked bosom would still be weaving that same blanket. Nobody’d be different. The only thing that would be different would be you.

Quoted from J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, chapter 16.

Alaska Brown Bear diorama, Hall of North American Mammals.

Australian diorama (detail: crimson rosellas), Birds of the World Hall.

All pictures from the AMNH website.

Conqueror of the Invisible

Cover of Sâr Dubnotal no. 16, L’Affaire Azzef-Poloukhine, 1910.
Robert Desnos juxtaposes each a Fantômas and a Sâr Dubnotal cover in George Bataille’s journal Documents (no. 7, December 1929).

The Surrealists’ fascination with Marcel Allain’s and Pierre Souvestre’s pulp fiction series Fantômas of 1911-1913 is fairly well-researched (see for example Robin Walz, Pulp Surrealism); less known is their interest in the earlier dime novel series Sâr Dubnotal, created by Norbert Sévestre.

Its eponymous protagonist, endowed with supernatural, superheroesk powers such as levitation, telepathy and hypnotism, fights against a range of villains, including Tserpchikopf the Hypnotist (who is actually Jack the Ripper) and the Russian terrorist Azzef. A Rosicrucian and disciple of Hindu yogis adhering to occult powers, Sâr Dubnotal is appropriately nicknamed Great Psychagogue, Napoleon of the Intangible, Master of Psychognosis, Conqueror of the Invisible, El Tebib (meaning “the Doctor” in Arabic), or merely the Doctor.

I hope I’ll be able to get my hands on the series at some point (definitely next time I’m in the BNF) - dunno, but judging from the covers alone (a phosphorescent hand, suspended over a female body hovering above the ground!), I suspect Doctor Who and all of the Heroes heroes should be prepared to pack up and go home.