Re: Leaves for Art -Regenerating the Literature of Symbolism
 

There shall be numerous small amendments over the next few weeks but as of now, and with thanks to the shade of Melchior Lechter, the full website can now be unveiled:

Hieroglyphic Press

As can be seen details of the first few hardcover releases have also been made visible. Note: the Gozzano volume may be retitled to better reflect its the contents.

Please do email or PM if you have any questions.

Thanks for the complements.

Re: Leaves for Art -Regenerating the Literature of Symbolism
 

Hi Evans. I'm intrigued by this from a literary criticism point of view, but also rather sceptical. I really don't think the Symbolists and the Decadents, who on the whole I admire, were inclined towards either religious orthodoxy or literary formalism. Leon Trotsky correctly identified the Symbolist movement as a 'tuning up' of literary instruments – whose full expression, I think, is heard in later poets such as Rilke and Lorca. The Symbolists were visionary rebels in a repressive and conventional era. Your exclusion of Rimbaud from the list of approved Symbolist authors is worrying. Your inclusion of Schulz is encouraging, but to me he represents everything – a secular focus on the body, the family and society – that you otherwise don't seem to like. In short I applaud your interest in Symbolist and Decadent literature but am worried by the project's overtones of religiosity and traditionalism. Why is Jean Genet not on your list? If you're not familiar with his work, read Funeral Rites and Our Lady of the Flowers – masterpieces of modern symbolist writing in passionate revolt against authority and tradition.

Re: Leaves for Art -Regenerating the Literature of Symbolism
 

This is an interesting debate, but I suspect we're falling into the age-old problem of 'herding cats'. Symbolist, expressionist, modernist - all of the authors cited have been claimed by one or the other movements over the years. And the search for trancendence can incorporate religiosity (as in Huysmans' biography) as surely as it can incorporate decadence.

Zizek recently commented on the 'death of the left' and the fact that it was left to the remnants of the deeply unfashionable and conservative tradition of 'old europe' to reveal the underlying imperial truths of the 'lost years' of the 1990's which began with Balkan interventionism much as it did in the1890's.

Re: Leaves for Art -Regenerating the Literature of Symbolism
 

The exclusion of Rimbaud is worrying indeed. Is this a sin of omission or commission? I am very intrigued by the inclusion of Meister Eckhart on the list - especially as I seem to be in the middle of a Baader-Meinhof effect riff where Rimbaud and Eckhart keep popping up while I struggle with an essay on both as well as St. Peregrine (patron saint of cancer patients). Just coincidentally after having not checked in her at TLO since just before this thread was started.

Re: Leaves for Art -Regenerating the Literature of Symbolism
 

I wonder if Ligotti's work would be acceptable.

Re: Leaves for Art -Regenerating the Literature of Symbolism
 

I'm sure Ligotti would be acceptable, but I'm also sure that his attitude towards 'the sacred' and 'the holy' is one of disgust and anger. The same is true of Baudelaire, the first great poet of urban modernity. The list of approved writers transcends the accompanying manifesto, which is all to the good.

Re: Leaves for Art -Regenerating the Literature of Symbolism
 

How can the "sacred" and "holy" not be connected with symbolism and decadence? Symbolism was obsessed with the "sacred"; decadence with the "holy". Huysmans pattered on and on about the symbols of the catholic church. Bloy was so deep in it he almost never came up for air. As for being rebels. Only to a certain extent. Rachilde was a very conventional woman. A little fascist with a skill for letters. Peladin went about in his monk's cloak recruiting whoever he could to listen to his faux-religious discourses. I could go on. The problem is that a publisher like Dedalus chose mostly to publish the more sexual side of things - but what they published is only representative of a certain side of decadence. And most of the other books fall into the category of "unreadable" - or as Mr. Corrick would say - "those that someone never tried to read".

Re: Leaves for Art -Regenerating the Literature of Symbolism
 

Re: Leaves for Art -Regenerating the Literature of Symbolism
 

"The sacred" and "the holy" have religious connotations and are born out of society and not entirely personal. I feel disgust for "the sacred" and "the holy" but I do not hate myself. I don't view myself as sacred or holy.

Why would it? Am I secretly religious because I am a moral person? Here is something from a Lovecraft letter:

"Personally, I am intensely moral and intensely irreligious. My morality can be traced to two distinct sources, scientific and aesthetic. My love of truth is outraged by the flagrant disturbance of sociological relations involved in so-called wrong; whilst my aesthetic sense is outraged and disgusted with the violations of taste and harmony thereupon attendant. But to me the question presents no ground for connexion with the grovelling instinct of religion."

Re: Leaves for Art -Regenerating the Literature of Symbolism
 

Sounds like the "argument" where disbelief in (and scorn for the notion of) God, is said to imply a license for all those actions that same God presumably condemns.