Poudemonium by Julian Rios
Spanish fiction
Original title – Poundemonium
Translator – Richard Alan Francis with Rios himself
Source – Personal copy
I start this month with an experimental piece of postmodern fiction from Julian Ríos. This is the second book I have read by him. I read House of Ulysses a few years ago. He was called by Carlos Fuentes the most avant-garde writer in Spanish. The previous book was, in a way, an homage to James Joyce. He is a huge Joyce fan. One would imagine that being a Joyce fan led him to Ezra Pound, as Pound was an early champion of Joyce’s works. I will hold my hand up; I have a real problem with Pound’s political views, which is why I haven’t read him. We all have the choice to read who we want but for me I have no time for facists like my view with Mr Morrisey I just take the view to miss the material he makes and I am somewhat the same with Pound I see where he fits in the canon and that for me is all I need to know. This book is about fans discovering he had died in Venice and then retracing his life in London.
On repeating it uneasily, death’s ironies, brr waggishly, Luz! dully t-t-t-temptingly here nude at such an early hour,* ye gods! they stole the light bulbs again! in this high dark tiled bathroom, such an odor of lye, or semen….
Gotta condense or revive in a luminous point, a lifelight, the flame’ [soflame] of the funeral wake from a Night of All Souls from which by the end there are barely remains.
The mention of a wake is maybe a nod to Joyce as well
The book is full of wordplay and allusions to Pound’s work, but, as I said, having not read him, I am unaware of how much the prose here and his works are connected. The book follows three Bohemian spanmsih guys that discover mid way ion the book that Pound has died in Venice and what follows is them thinking of him but also the place he had been whilst in London a sort of psychgeography biography of the man short vignettes is later back up with pictures of the places mentioned in the book. Thus is all there remembrance of Pound, a man who had a huge influence on literature in the early years of the 20th century, but then, post World War II, is always connected to his fascist activities in the war.
A hoarse voice, she said, gruff. Vociferous luz, light of lights?’ or perhaps nothing more than incomprehensible stutter, Lux … Lux?4 …as he makes his surprise appear-
ance against the tennis court fence, nervously indicating with his head, or was it a nervous tic? in the direction of Luxembourg Gardens… And she, babelic interpreter, still sitting on the bench, despite the deathfright he gave her, could see clearly that his eyes-iceblue—were filled with tears. There’s nothing more sad, she said, than seeing an old man weep. [Beati que lugents
… Babelle de nuit dixit,
so early in the day, on leaving her sad moist dream, her cheeks shiny from crying, good mourning! Bon jour tristesse! I’ve met you so very late, très tard!6… That nightmare turned you into a crybaby, the Burlador of Sexville teased her, but she’ll probably keep reviewing her dream: there, lost in the room, there were you are, the old man with the blanket, freezing to death, teeth chattering k-k-k-k, and he never stopped scratching the backs of his bony hands. [Rashly?]
some word play here
If you are a Pound fan, you’ll love this if you are a Dalkey Archive fan this is a book for you. I like Rios’ writing style again; this is a book for you. I struggle with Pound. On the one hand, I can’t say I want to see certain politicians just disappear, and the rise of the right in the current day fade away, so we can see the sheer nastiness behind many of these policies. I don’t just mean in the US. There are countries, such as Hungary and Italy, and now even New Zealand, to name a few, pushing people’s freedoms back. So if you want to see where he went in London, this does capture a London in the pictures, I feel, is now gone. Sorry, I enjoyed this as a fun piece about three guys wandering around London, but the Ezra Pound thing is something I will always struggle with. I have Rios Larva, which is actually the first book in a series. I hadn’t known that, but I think they can be read separately. The book has lots of word play, and one can see the translator would have had to work with Rios to work some of the word play or other places where it is explained that the Spanish word for writer can be an anagram around Christ! That’s on my TBR for a later date. Have you read Ríos or Pound?
