Οι χορτασμένοι επιτύμβιοι

by Joyce Mansour, Οντέτ Βαρών-Βασάρ (Translator)

Το βιβλίο κυκλοφόρησε στα 1958 και, αν και πρόκειται για μιά κατάδυση στα μύχια της ανθρώπινης ψυχής, φέρει ταυτόχρονα και τους απόηχους της εποχής του. Αποτελείται από τρείς νουβέλες:
Η Μαρία ή η τιμή να υπηρετείς
Οι σπασμοί της Κυριακής
Ο καρκίνος
Ο έρωτας κι ο θάνατος διατρέχουν όλο το βιβλίο. Οι gisants, τα ολόσωμα και ξαπλωμένα πάνω στους τάφους αγάλματα, που ξεπροβάλλουν τον Μεσαίωνα στα γαλλικά νεκτροταφεία, σημαίνουν τον θάνατο - λύτρωση, τον θάνατο που προσμένει κανείς ως ανακούφιση και γαλήνη. Γι' αυτό και είναι satisfaits αυτοί οι νεαροί, όχι απλά ικανοποιημένοι, αλλά έμπλεοι, χορτασμένοι πραγματικά, από έρωτα κι από ζωή.

(από την παρουσίαση στο οπισθόφυλλο του βιβλίου)

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction

211 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1958

About the author

Joyce Mansour was born Joyce Patricia Adès in Bowden, England to Jewish-Egyptian parents. After a month in Cheshire her parents returned with her to Cairo where she lived until she was twenty. Moving to Paris in 1953 she became one of the best known Surrealist poets, authoring sixteen books of poetry, as well as a number of important prose and theater pieces.

Reviews

[Bill Hsu · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was really hoping I'd like this more. But overall I was just not in the mood, or something.

There is some fine writing:

The oldest son of a family with eight boys, I was an adorable angel, freshly at hand, hidden, like an anemone of Candia, and no one could have felt the current of vice that irrigated this pure face, no one could have detected the strength of my desire.

[Alex Sarll]

The title Satisfied Sarcophagi caught my eye with its ring of Clark Ashton Smith; the description "Leonora Carrington meets Georges Bataille" confirmed my interest – though I notice he since seems to have been replaced by Angela Carter, who while doubtless more marketable and less problematic, not to mention even better, is a less exact match. And the introduction further whetted my interest in Joyce Mansour: "Endlessly self-mythologizing, she was known to say 'I was born in 1928 at the far end of Greek antiquity,' and within the Surrealist group there was a legend that she 'lived exclusively on oysters, hot water, and cigars.'" Alas, the fiction mostly intrigued me less than the biography. An exiled Anglo-Egyptian Jew, she nevertheless ended up writing these stories in French, which I think might be part of the problem; I often find that Anglophones writing in French, translated back into English, end up sounding a little silly – just look at Salome. And granted, Bosie didn't help there, but I did notice here that the approving notices at the start for a recent volume of Mansour's verse often singled out the translator for praise – and that's not the same translator who handled this volume. Still, regardless of who's held responsible, I spent much of the book beset by that vague sense of weariness that comes with reading (or watching, or whatever) material that was doubtless transgressive in earlier times, or to more tender sensibilities, but which read in 2026, with the jaded, listless sexual appetite of a 60-year-old colonel, falls a bit flat. Incestuous couplings, non-sequiturs and strange juxtapositios, people trapping animals between their thighs, all pass with the same weightlessness, in prose that, straining for effect, still ends up washing over one while leaving less of a trace than the most joylessly mechanistic stretches of de Sade. "My pubis is nothing more than an immense hole of memory"? That's nice, would you like a biscuit?

So why did I keep reading? Partly sunk cost fallacy, and it's not a long book. Partly that the tum-te-tum of it all was great for getting me back to sleep when I wake in the night. But along the way there were some fabulous moments of more intentional bathos: "I sing the loves of our ancestors who were half-gods with earthly women, but you understand nothing. You only think of feeding the cat." Occasionally an image cuts through, like a house "where even the rats wore mittens". And there were two pieces which really connected with me, Illusions Of Flight and The Religious Intoxication Of Big Cities, both of which are in first person rather than the predominant third. I saw a claim recently, I have no idea with how much truth, that some young people won't read fiction in the third person, only in first. If they do exist, then with Joyce Mansour they might have the right idea.

(Edelweiss ARC)

[Mackenzie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I want to offer a sincere, in depth review of this collection because there are few and of what I’ve seen, they didn’t have much positive to say; I, however, enjoyed the explorations of this collection.

Mansour explores relationships with other, with politic, with religion using her masterful grasp of language that is at once satirical and insightful. She plays with murderers and madmen throughout this collection, the limitations of women’s roles, and the roles of succession; be they of one lover to another or that of an estate.

Her writing is stunning throughout. She describes, at one point, a sunset over the ocean (the ocean is a common scenic feature) as, “The sun lost its footing and drowned.” A sunrise as an opening eyelid and eye. Her most poetic piece, in my opinion, was “Dolman the Evil” and one of her most subversive was “The Tip” (both stories of which were some of my favorites).

Hers is the first work I’ve read of this erotic, Sadean, Masoch-ian genre that features aging characters and love interests that are less-than-pleasantly described. “Cancer” is another of my favorite pieces in which the main character has an erotic obsession with the cancerous growth of his mistress—not his mistress herself.

Mansour lends the genre a sinister edge with her surrealist style, the genre breaking into fragments of further discomfort as even the language itself perverts with the weight of her stories.

If you’re interested in widening your erotic lens, are a fan of surrealist literature, like body horror, or simply appreciate erotic and sensual work that approaches the body in all its sexual and profane glory, I’d highly recommend this collection.