New Impressions of Chap

Although most commonly associated with the British Isles the Chap is not a phenomenon of Albion’s alone. There are Chaps from every corner of the globe, and unlikely as it may seem the Old Enemy herself, France, can also lay claim to one of the most eccentric.

Raymond Roussel, (1877 – 1933) was a novelist who novels nobody liked, and a playwright who’s plays were met with derision. Being extremely wealthy he was able to publish and perform his own work at his own cost. He was also a fastidious dresser, whose expensive clothes were worn a fixed number of times, and whose idea of world travel was to never leave ones cabin.

The third child of a wealthy couple Roussel was born in Paris in 1877 he was already showing artistic tendencies when he was enrolled in the Paris Conservatoire at 15 as a pianist. But it was not to be, as after barely a year at the Paris Conservatoire Roussel’s father died leaving Roussel with a huge fortune. This tragedy was to become the making of the man as at that moment he turned his back on music, becoming instead a poet.

It was the start of a career which would see him as the critics’ darling, after all everyone has to have someone to hate. His first work was a poem called Mon Ậme, and published three years later in the newspaper Le Gaulois. A sign of things to come, the poem started with the line 'Mon âme est une étrange usine’ (My heart is a strange factory).

Emboldened by this moderate success Roussel then embarked on creating an epic poem La Doublure. During the writing of this novel in verse form Roussel suffered an unusual crisis where by he claimed he suffered a “sensation of universal glory of extraordinary intensity."

“I was the equal of Dante and Shakespeare… I experienced glory… Everything I wrote was surrounded in rays of light; I would close the curtains for fear the shinning rays that were emanating from my pen would escape through the smallest chink… To leave these papers lying around would have sent out rays as far as China and the desperate crowd would have flung themselves upon my house.” - Dr. Pierre Janet quoting Roussel in The Psychological Characteristics of Ecstatsy (Translated John Herman Raymond Roussel Life Death and Works Atlas Publications 1987)

Although this may have appeared to have been an auspicious omen of his forth coming success it wasn’t. The poem received two reviews, one of which said it was boring, and the other was less kind. Roussel sank into a depression so deep that he required the help of a psychiatrist, Dr. Pierre Janet, who then used him as a case study in his work on Religious Ecstasy.

This early failure and the impact it had on Roussel only deepened his reserve, from this point on he would now go it alone. He would publish himself, nobody else would touch him. But he had a mania for writing partly driven because his self-belief, but also because he needed to recapture that almost religious ecstasy he had experienced during the writing of La Doublure.

Due to his great wealth he could afford to publish his own work, and mount luxurious productions of his own plays. Undertaking such serious endeavours required discipline, and Roussel had that in spades.

His works such as Locus Solus and Impressions d’Afrique were constructed on strict logical principles. The process was to take two sentences which both sound similar, but have different meanings. One was to be the first line and second the final line, and simply construct a novel connecting these two points.

That the novels contained descriptions of impossible articles in a museum, or the bizarre trials of a group of captured Europeans in Africa, was only a reaction of the possibilities created by the beginning and closing sentences. In other words he did not have a clue as to what was going to happen until he started writing, as unhindered by the limitations of plot his mind was free to wander strange routes.

If the novels left readers bemused, the theatre adaptations caused near riots. Or as one contemporary review of Impressions d’Afrique has it:

‘The public looked on in sceptical or even rebellious mood. Three spectators of the common sort, who were sitting behind me, displayed noisy ill-will. They were doing what all discontented Frenchmen do: resolutely hurling witticisms. God preserve you, readers, from being thus caught between two fires’. – Henry Bidou, Journal des débates (translated Andrew Thompson in Raymond Roussel Life Death and Works Atlas Publications 1987)

Convinced that despite the constant failures he was creating works of “immeasurable artist value” Roussel locked himself away and wrote. To allow more time for writing he would take all his daily meals in one sitting. He would also not move for hours at a time. He undertook a world cruise, only for him to never leave his cabin. But then it was only spaces inside his own head which interested him.

He was a particular man, his collars, quite rightly, were worn only once and the rest of his clothes discarded after a fixed number of times. Yet for someone so internalised he was also surprisingly concerned with outward appearances, even going so far as to hire a Charlotte Dufrene to be his mistress of convenience so as to mask his homosexuality. 

Roussel finest work was possibly his caravan. Although, to call this contraption a caravan is a complete misnomer, it was, quite simply, a house on wheels. It contained a bedroom, a study, a bathroom and servants quarters, all of which folded in on each other, allowing the interior to change its function according to the time of day. Fastidious in his clothing, he was equally fastidious about his caravan with the bodywork a creation from Lacoste and an interior carved from maple. This mobile cottage then undertook a 2000 mile round trip to Switzerland and back simply so he could have a different view outside his window everyday as he wrote.   

In the end the constant failure, and the pursuit of his earlier experience of glory became too much. He had lost his fortune publishing and performing works which nobody wanted to read or see, and died of a barbiturate overdose in Palmero in 1933. A sad lonely end to an extrodinary life.

However, he did produce some fine work. Locus Solus and Impressions d’Afrique, have been rightly acclaimed as cornerstones of the avant-garde. They were hailed by the Surrealists, although Roussel didn’t understand their work at all, and are still in print to this day.

Despite it all, Roussel is now held up as one of the more important writers of the twentieth century, a French version of Lewis Carroll, possibly. But naturally, of far more importance than his writing was his upholding of the fine Chappist principles of fastidiousness, genuine eccentricity and wayward genius. An example for us all!