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Marcel Moreau, born in 1933 in Hainaut, Belgium, moved to France in 1967 where he emerged as a major novelist and essay writer. His latest book, Bal dans la tête, was widely received. His work in Frank is a response to the text that precedes it by Werner Lambersy
Marcel Moreau
One day he seemed timid to me,
suspended between laughter and disillusionment,
Taken aback perhaps by a new absurdity...
He seemed to be waiting for an insurrection that didn't come.
Or a happiness he could not handle.
He showed me the juvenile instant of hell
He was a combination of dreamy poetry
and the imminence of war...
I did not know he had such innocence,
A light lava, almost cooled...
In his case, it was an unexpected form of doubt
or humility...
or his way of passing from the intensity of deafness
to the experience of listening.
I spoke to him, I remember, of profound writings.
He stammered out his friendship, his enthusiasm,
a confused and tremorous music ...L'Oeuvre Gravé, Didier Devillez (1992)
Stéphane Mandelbaum: http://www.damasquine.be/Pages/Painting/Mandelba4.htm
IN THOSE DAYS, Bam exercised the noblest trade of all: he attended to the Bellies of Women. To qualify for this position, there was no need for him to attend college, acquire skills and graduate. It was quite simple: such a college could not decently exist. Indeed, it did not exist, not even in the imagination, and especially not in the higher spheres of imagination. In fact, Bam himself had once written: "In these matters, one is born predestined, one grows up devouring and one dies exhausted. The little one knows is never something that is taught, and never will be."
It must be said that this occupation required so much work, energy, care, love and utter dedication that it would not have occurred to anyone at that time to question seriously its distinction. Embodying as it did the quintessence of nobility, it was unthinkable for this office to be entrusted to anyone other than a volunteer. Sometimes Bam told himself that, by stretching his passion for Women's Bellies to such extremes, he had attained some unknown state of sanctity. A state of sanctity inspired by the flesh, causing sheer ecstasy and fits of mysticism, whose throes were to be sucked up into the mystery of all mysteries--the entrails of eternity.
So, back in those days, many a woman would come and present her belly to him. And, because each belly was different, Bam would have to offer a new interpretation at each consultation. It was his Desire that guided him toward the right interpretation. Proceedings would usually begin with a gentle fumbling, followed by a non-violent demonstration of animality. But however he operated, his duties invariably culminated in an act of adoration. His initial feeling of wonder would give way to lust, and through this lust, the belly was deified. The service would end with words of mercy and praise, and other such rites. In most cases, the woman would go home feeling that her belly was different, that its essential nature had changed and was no longer in perfect conformity with prevailing biological standards.
No sir, the occupation which Bam had chosen to exercise was not an easy one. The softest belly, which appeared to have been spared the tremors of life, might well be seized by the most formidable shaking, at times with criminal intent. Others, ravaged by a life of debauchery, could be read as easily as a holy book advocating the Excellency of unbridled pleasure. Others still, caracterized by Marian rotundity, seemed untouched by any form of excess, including malevolence. But Bam had learned to distrust such deceptive signs of serenity. He knew that an unexpected caress, sustained by stimulating conversation, was enough to turn a gentle belly into a ferocious and licentious being. In short, much of Bam's bizarre knowledge had originated from the bellies of women. For a long time, he confined his traveling to their bodies, having understood, once and for all, that they possessed the key to what had been his life, and to what would be his death. On several occasions, he came close to losing his sanity in the process, for the acquisition of such intense, orgasmic and intoxicating knowledge would plunge him into a state conducive to suicide.
But Fate was to decide otherwise. One day he was paid a visit by a young girl so beautiful that, on seeing her, he fell to his knees. After helping him up, she uncovered her belly; its magnificence surpassed anything he had ever seen or touched. He was so dazzled that he failed to notice her pregnancy, in which he had played no small part himself. She just said to him, "It will be a monster." Upon which, she produced a knife and thrust it into his guts. So, according to his wishes, he passed away facing the Absolute. It could have been the Verb. Instead, it was its She-Messenger, its supreme incarnation.
The Sad Demise of Bam, Belly Consultant
Translated from the French by Tanya Leslie
http://gyoza.com/frank/html/51Moreau.html
Although it is impossible here to offer a comprehensive survey of all the important Belgian writers and movements, a few more less classifiable names must also be included. Among them, Plisnier is remembered for his literature of commitment, and Jean Ray for his fantasy. Simenon, André Baillon, Jean de Boschere, Marcel Thiry and Norge also remind us that literature cannot be neatly pigeonholed according into trends and styles. Recently, certain writers have challenged notions of the narrative without succumbing to the stereotypes of the "new novel." Names that come to mind are Dominique Rolin, Hubert Juin, Pierre Mertens, Marcel Moreau, Gaston Compére, Henry Bauchau, Guy Vaes and Conrad Detrez. In the last decade there has been a wave of young writers whose styles have a variety of linguistic origins, atmospheres and altered realities. They include Eugène Savitzkaya, Jean-Philippe Toussaint, Paul Emond and Francis Dannemark. These literary trends have been matched by developments in drama: Maeterlinck was the pioneer in a theatrical tradition later revived by Fernand Crommelynck and Michel de Ghelderode, and now maintained in the peculiar worlds of Jean Sigrid, Charles Bertin, Paul Willems, René Kalisky, Jean Louvet and Jean-Marie Piemme.(...)
Throughout their literary history, Belgian writers have constantly oscillated between wishing to be separate and wishing to be linked with France, for, from the very beginning, recognition has always come via Paris. An article by Mirbeau in Le Figaro brought Maeterlinck to prominence and by an almost natural process, he and his Symbolist friends were drawn to France, where they then settled. Michaux, Marcel Moreau, Dominique Rolin, Françoise Mallet-Joris, Hubert Juin, François Weyergans later followed their example. In 1937, at the instigation of Charles Plisnier, about twenty writers (including Frans Hellens, Marie Gevers and Robert Vivier) signed the manifesto of the Monday Group, which condemned regionalism and declared that "the accidents of history, proximity, spiritual ties and the universal and attractive character of French culture have reduced to a minimum the nuances of feeling between the literatures of the two countries". "In France today, half the authors are Belgian," quipped Jean-Jacques Brochier, editor of Magazine littéraire, referring to writers such as Hubert Juin, Dominique Rolin, Alain Bosquet, Hubert Hyssen, Louis Scutenaire, Jacques Sternberg, Raoul Vaneigem, Béatrix Beck, Gaston Compère, Francis Dannemark, Vera Feyder, Georges Lambrichs, Simon Leys, Françoise Mallet-Joris, Félicien Marceau, Norge, Eugène Savitzkaya, Georges Simenon, Christian Dotrement, Conrad Detrez, René Kalisky, Jean Ray, Marcel Moreau, Henri Bauchau, Jean-Philippe Toussaint, Crommelynck, Verhaeren, Maeterlinck, Ghelderode, Michaux, or Hergé, the father of Tintin. (...)
Belgian writers today have strong feelings of aversion, fatalism and despair towards their own country, where indifference smothers thought--a far cry from the nationalist fervor of the end of the last century. For them, Belgium is merely "a land of milk and butter, where History is frozen...a country where people speak several languages but have nothing to say in any of them...Belgium is a bad dream that you can't shake off on waking" (Mertens) or "a hole in the page of the world" (Javeau). "In this fragmented, almost disintegrating country, unhistory is just one aspect of a long-standing process of acculturation" (Kalisky). "My convulsive, almost emetic introduction to writing, and the fractured syntax and dislocated thoughts that followed, I owe to Belgium--not as it is, but rather as I have suffered it" (Marcel Moreau).
Jean-Luc Outers
Belgium: A Literature Apart
Translated from the French by Ann Johnston
Criticism :
"To save the language each word has to pull its weight; enough weight to outweigh the savage sensuality."
"Um die Sprache zu retten, muß jedes Wort erneut Gewicht haben; genug, um die wilde Sinnenlust aufzuwiegen."
Quintes, Buchet-Chastel (1963)
Bannière de bave, Gallimard (1966)
La Terre infestée d'hommes, Buchet-Chastel (1966)
Le Chant des paroxysmes, Buchet-Chastel (1967)
Écrits du fonds de l'amour, Buchet-Chastel (1968)
Julie ou la dissolution, Christian Bourgois (1971); réd.Jacques Antoine (Bruxelles) Les Eperonniers (1984)
La Pensée mongole, Christian Bourgois (1972); Ether vague (1991)
L'Ivre livre, Christian Bourgois (1973)
Le Bord de mort, Christian Bourgois (1974)
Les Arts viscéraux, Christian Bourgois (1975);Ether vague (1994)
Sacre de la femme, Christian Bourgois (1977); éd. revues et corrigée, Ether vague (1991)
Discours contre les entraves, Christian Bourgois (1979)
A dos de Dieu ou l'ordure lyrique, Luneau Ascot (1980)
Orgambide scènes de la vie perdante, Luneau Ascot (1980)
Moreaumachie, Buchet-Chastel (1982)
Cahiers caniculaires: écrits au fond de l'écrit, Lettres vives (1982)
Kamalalam, L'Age d'homme (1982)
Saulitude, (Photos Christian Calméjane) Accent (1982)
Incandescence, Labor (1984) + Egobiographie tordue
Monstre, Luneau Ascot (1986)
Issue sans issue, Ether vague (1986) ,(1996)
Le Grouilloucouillou, en collaboration Roland Topor, Atelier Clot, Bramsen et Georges (1987)
Treize portraits, en collaboration avec Antonio Saura, Atelier Clot, Bramsen, et Georges (1987)
Amours à en mourir, Lettres Vives (1988)
Opéra gouffre, La Pierre d'Alun (1988)
Mille voix rauques, Buchet-Chastel (1989)
Neung, conscience fiction, L'Ether Vague (1990)
L'Oeuvre Gravé, Didier Devillez (1992)
Chants de la tombée des jours, Cadex (1992)
Le charme et l'épouvante, La Différence (1992)
Noces de mort, Lettres Vives (1993)
Tombeau pour les enténébrés, L'Ether Vague (1993)
Bal dans la tête, La Différence (1995)
Insensément ton corps, Cadex (1996)
La compagnie des femmes, Lettre Vives (1996)
Les arts viscéraux, L'Ether Vague (1996)
Intensément ton corps, Cadex (1997)
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par l'Araignée , avril, 1998 |
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