Don't remember this at all. No doubt I read it b/c it was porn written by a Surrealist. The back cover tells me that it's about a paralyzed old man who gets his sexual experience by watching other people have sex thru peepholes. The real translation of the original French title wd be "Irene's Cunt" but Grove probably cdn't get away w/ that at the time. ( )

What an interesting and surprising book this was. It grabbed me from the first line (“Don’t wake me up, for God’s sake, you bastards, don’t wake me up, look out I bite I see red.”), which continued on into explosive prose expressing the desire to remain in bed. It continued to hold me even in portions that were hard to interpret. I guess I should warn you that the book has very explicit passages, so if that doesn’t appeal to you, you should skip it (and this review!).

In a nutshell, a young man who has apparently had his heart broken goes into the provinces to be with his relations. There isn’t a whole lot to do and he has a cynical attitude towards life there – bored with everything, and finding fault with it all. He visits a brothel and sees some pretty squalid scenes of debauchery there, one prostitute being described as “writhing like a soul in hell.” He only finds release in writing, and sometimes feels the presence of his old lover while he does so. He can’t figure out what to write about until he’s wandered the countryside a bit, then the idea for a young woman named Irene comes to him.

The book then segues into a description of Irene, her mother Victoire, and her grandfather, who has been paralyzed and in a wheelchair for 40 years, a victim of syphilis contracted at a brothel. Comically (and painfully), the grandfather can still become aroused, and watches helplessly on as farm maidens occasionally engage in oral sex in front of him, as if he was part of the furniture. He’s scorned by all, but in reality he feels “true freedom in my apparent slavery” even as he sees his own daughter, a sentiment which was quite a surprise to me. The last vision the young author has of Irene makes it clear that she behaves ‘as a man’ when it comes to sex, just taking physical pleasure in it and not looking for any emotional attachments, and that her mother is known in the community for her lesbian affairs.

As I think about what “de Routisie” (now believed to be Louis Aragon) was trying to say with these three characters in the country, it’s interesting to me that they all find complete freedom and acceptance in their conditions, particularly as it relates to sex, while the young author cannot find cathartic pleasure in physical relations, and envies those who can. To him sex is more of a curse, as his body occasionally requires an outlet. The sex scenes are blunt and I suppose shocking, but brief, and surrounded by what seems to be a surrealistic painting. I believe that’s the other point of crafting the novel as he did - it’s a story within a story, there are a couple different narrators, and the style of the prose occasionally becomes stream of consciousness. It’s hard to know what’s ‘real’, and indeed this mind-bending is a central part of the surrealist movement that Aragon was a part of in 1920’s-1930’s France.

As he puts it at the end, “arranging everything into a story is a bourgeois mania”, and “imbeciles see novels, romantic ballads, everywhere”. This is not a conventional story, it’s a set of dreamlike images. It’s surreal in its unconventionality, and yet real in its depictions of sex, and it was intended to provoke a reaction. (btw I’m happy the original title in French was, uh, ‘shortened’ in this translation). For Aragon, sex seems to be both at once sad and banal, the somewhat disgusting action no better than dogs, but at the same time powerful enough to briefly transcend the human condition, for those who are able to channel this ability (and for this reason, he says “how I would like to be an ordinary pervert”, which brought a smile).

Camus said it was the ‘finest of all works touching on eroticism’. I don’t know about that, but it’s certainly one of the most artsy, and unique.

Quotes:
On feeling someone who is not there:
“I sometimes tried desperately to see you, by closing my eyes, or on the contrary opening them very wide on the shadows of the room. But you were there suddenly. Your walk. Your dress. It seemed that you chose to come precisely at the time when I was writing at my narrow table, with only the wall before me. Then the room with all its nooks and corners, and the area where the carpet was turning blue, belonged entirely to you. I knew you were walking back and forth behind my back, mute. Sometimes you came close to me. My heart would pound. I knew that to turn around would be to make you vanish. I did not turn around. I wrote. Little by little you became bolder. I felt your breath. I did not turn around.”

On an orgasm; I smiled at the ‘caravans of the spasm’ and imagery which followed:
“Already a fine sweat beads the flesh at the horizon of my desires. Already the canvas of the spasm appear in the far reaches of the sands. They have walked, those travelers, carrying gunpowder in flasks and shoddy wares in crates with rusty nails, from towns of terraces and long paths of water damned by black docks. They have crossed the mountains. Here they are in their striped cloaks. Travelers, travelers, your soft fatigue is like the night. The camels follow them, carrying foodstuffs. The guide waves his stick and the sandstorm rises from the earth, Irene suddenly recalls the hurricane. The mirage appears, and its beautiful fountains…The mirage is sitting naked in the pure wind. A beautiful mirage of man entering the quim. A beautiful mirage strong-limbed like a pile driver. A beautiful mirage of springs and heavy melting fruit. Here are the travelers raving mad, rubbing their lips. Irene is like an arch above the sea. I have not drunk for a hundred days, and sighs quench my thirst. Huff, huff. Irene calls her lover. Her lover with an erection at a distance. Huff, huff. Irene agonizes and contorts herself. His erection is like a god above the abyss. She moves, he flees from her, she moves and strains forward. Huff. The oasis leans down with its tall palms. Travelers, your burnooses turn in the scouring sand. Irene pants to the breaking point. He contemplates her. Her cunt is misty with expectation of his prick. On the illusory saline lake, the shadow of a gazelle…
Let your damned in hell jerk off. Irene has come.” ( )

This book dates from 1928, as a limited edition and it was written in French under the title 'Le Con d'Irène', a title which contains a word probably still unacceptable in the polite sector of the Internet. In his foreword, André Pieyre de Mandiargues gives his opinion that, despite its title and subject matter, this is not an erotic book. It is difficult to contradict this view. To an English reader, its style seems particularly French, although in this edition it has been translated. Its French nature lies in the rich, almost surreal, language it uses, as well as the way it treats of matters which reach to the heart of human sexual relationships. It is the musings of an ageing disabled man as he contemplates his past life and loves, and for me it is weighty with the ennui that flows through Huysmans, supremely literary but at the same time curiously detached from routine human experience. It's an interesting book, quite short, but not what might be inferred from a first glance. ( )

Van alle surrealistische teksten die je lezen kan, kies ik er natuurlijk net die ene uit die ik reeds gelezen had. Irène van Albert de Routisie is immers niet meer dan De kut van Irene van Louis Aragon, een boekje dat ik reeds een drietal jaar geleden tot me nam en waar ik ook toen het belang niet van inzag. Albert Camus roemde dit werkje als 'een erotische tekst van uitzonderlijke schoonheid'. Meer dan een aanzet tot wat een aardige novelle zou kunnen worden, vind ik er niet in. De vertaling, nochtans van Thérèse Cornips (ze vertaalde ook Proust, moet u weten!), loopt voor geen meter. Het voorwoord (van ene Jean-Jacques Pauvert) is om van te gruwen, zo mechanisch.

Alleen de proloog van dit werkje is genietbaar, en eigenlijk best wel meesterlijk: Wek me niet, goddomme, schoften, wek me niet, kijk uit of ik bijt toe ik zie bloed. De ellende alweer dag weer die bende dat wankele dat zuur. Ik wil terug het blinde water in weg met dat weerlicht dat ontij waar geen eind aan komt wat moet dat ze willen dat ik een leven van donder en bliksem leef mijn oren hebben ze stukken plaatijzer laten worden mijngas ontploft bij elk ademen van mijn borst mijn ondergrondse werkers rennen in gangen van benauwenis erop of eronder om het hardst.
Zo gaat dat nog twee pagina's door - pagina's die ik me alleszins niet herinner uit de eerste lezing - pagina's die me daarentegen terug deden denken aan dat maffe en geniale School voor gekken van Sokolov. Was de rest van het boek ook zo, het was me aangenaam geweest. 'Elaas ...

http://occamsrazorlibrary.blogspot.com/2009/01/irne.html ( )

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