Signs & Symptoms

by Róbert Gál, Madelaine Hron (Translator), Lucia Nimcová (Illustrator)

Róbert Gál is one of the freshest voices to come from Prague over the past few years. His writing is a mix of philosophy and prose poetry that explores the tenuousness of one's identity and existence. Ironical in his outlook, Gál's aim with this volume is to bring the great Romanian philosopher E. M. Cioran into the present in the same way that John Zorn, whose music provided the impetus for writing this book, brought Ornette Coleman into the present with Spy Vs. Spy. This volume is a composition of aphorisms, longer and shorter fragments of thought, and the photographs of Lucia Nimcová, which were taken specifically for this collection.

Genres: Philosophy

84 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2003

About the author

Róbert Gál is a Slovak-born writer and editor living in Prague. He is the author of several books of aphorisms, fiction, and philosophical fragments available in English translation, including Tractatus (Schism Press, 2022), Naked Thoughts (Black Sun Lit, 2019), Agnomia (Dalkey Archive Press, 2018), On Wing (Dalkey Archive Press, 2015), and Signs & Symptoms (Twisted Spoon Press, 2003).

Reviews

[Malcolm · Rating 3 out of 5]

Róbert Gál’s writing is sparse, sharp and in places downright obtuse – but then his form in this collection is the aphorism and the short philosophical moment of musing. The aphorism seems to have a bad philosophical rap, often it seems reduced to the epigram of Oscar Wilde and Dorothy Parker, or the faux spiritualism of faux-eastern inflected New Ageism (and give me “To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness” over faux spiritualism any day).

Gál’s work hovers somewhere in the realm of the (self-described) neurotic-poetic, at times literary but much more often appears to be ontological and existential (not as in the ~ism, but as in of-existence). There is the bleakness of “Life is a trial by death”, the cynicism of “He who seeks, shall be found out”, the sardonic “The end justifies the consequences” and even, from time to time, the optimistic “Hope does not die. It reincarnates”. This opening section of ‘Epigraffiti’ as he labels it is all short statements that at times hit with a jolt – where the good aphorism can and should make us stop, reflect, wonder and muse: none of those banal inspirational poster quotations here.

For the rest of the short book Gál becomes much more literary, and longer – running up to about 150 words (or a little more) in some cases, less aphorisms than one to ten sentence essays that tend to become longer in the second section ‘Signs & Symptoms’ with the effect that the text tends to slow down as the occasional slightly longer ‘essay’ spills over one or two pages, as ideas become less blitzkrieg like (a characteristic of the aphorism) and become a little more nuanced and a little more subtle – although still pretty bleak and neurotic, but in almost every case retaining an element of the optimistic, as in #XV:

By aestheticizing the inane we have opened up the passageway to passions that have today climaxed in horror and pornography. There is no escape from this sphere of the explicit’s influence, save perhaps by imitating the implicit, such as through poetry.

I’m left with a problem of how we are expected to take this second section of ‘Signs & Symptoms’, with its implications of semiotic suggestion and diagnosis – more Lacan then Nietzsche (I’m intrigued at the number of commentators of Gál who invoke the intensely rational Nietzsche in their comments). This problem lies not in the second section, but the third, labelled ‘Postludia’, with its suggestion that what has gone before is playful – the ludic, with its hints of autotelia (having meaning only on its own terms) and demarcation from the non-ludic world. This third section, with its shorter ‘essays’ and the return of the aphorism suggests a shift from nuance to confrontation; the intersession demanding reflection and consideration.

So, I am left with Gál’s concluding four comments, and the second in particular where he draws on J L Austin’s distinction between constative ‘statements’ that describe and performative utterances that enact (a distinction at the core of much of the philosophical base of contemporary social and cultural analysis influenced by Judith Butler’s and others’ work), but for Gál the issue in Signs & Symptoms is the balancing of these aspects of speech, and the change he underwent while writing.

Gál’s work is poetic, but it is also in this case as he notes a work of philosophy, enriched and unsettled by Lucia Nimcová’s astonishing and quite beautiful photos (self portraits?) of a vulnerable, unsettled, in places alarmed and challenging young woman. In doing so Twisted Spoon Press have showcased to impressive Slovakian cultural workers whose work deserves more profile and consideration.

I’ll be going back to Signs & Symptoms even if only to be pushed off balance by Gál’s combination of truism and paradox, his neurotic optimism and unstable balance of constative and performative. It’s not an easy text to make sense of (Gál’s questions are deeply hidden in the text), but it’s worth the adventure.

[Rowan Tepper · Rating 5 out of 5]

A brief but challenging work of aphoristic philosophy, Signs and Symptoms demands a second reading. Utilizing pictorial and performative elements in an unconventionally structured text, this is a highly original contribution to philosophy in the tradition of Nietzsche and Cioran.

[Carrie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love a book of philosophical aphorisms with anorexic nude photos.

[CD Borden · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Because a word is just the image of the word, a mute thought does not exist."
—Róbert Gál

[Joseph Schreiber · Rating 5 out of 5]

For my review see:http://wp.me/p4GDHM-h7

[Tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Signs & Symptoms" satisfies less (at least based on a single reading) than "Agnomia" or "Naked Thoughts" (two other books of his available in English), even though it comes with guide to interpretation in the Author's Comments, after the work itself. So I owe the book a second reading, but at a later date. [Another novel with a perhaps analogous ending that serves as a tool of interpretation is the last page of Edouard Levé's "Suicide" (not written by him), which also must only be read at the book's conclusion.] In the meantime, as a guy who recently turned 60, I'm a bit confused by Gál's statement that John Zorn "brought Ornette Coleman into the present with 'Spy vs. Spy.'" How Coleman could be seen as *outside* the present (circa 1987) is, to me, as likely as some new composer saying (2019) that he's going to bring Zorn "into the present." But that's a matter for jazz snobs, like me, not book reviews.