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Rogomelec. Selbstporträt. Pseudonyme.
The first translation of Leonor Fini's voluptuous and antipatriarchal gothic novel
Originally published in French in 1979, Rogomelec was the third of Leonor Fini's novels. All the qualities of the paintings for which she is famed can be found in an undermining of patriarchy, the ambiguities of gender and the slipperiness of desire, along with darker hints of cruelty and the voluptuousness of fear.
This novella's ambiguous narrator sets off for the isolated locale of Rogomelec--where a crumbling monastery serves as a sanatorium and offers a cure involving a diet of plants and flowers--and moves through a waking dream of strangely scented monks, vibratory concerts in a cavernous ossuary and ritualist pomp with costumes of octopi and shining beetles. As the days unfold, the narrator discovers that the "the celebration of the king" is approaching, the events of which will lead to a shocking discovery in Rogomelec's Gothic ruins.
This first English translation includes 14 drawings by Fini that accompanied the novella's original publication.
Born in Argentina and raised in Italy, Leonor Fini (1907-96) concluded a rebellious youth with a move to Paris, where there followed six decades of work as artist, illustrator, designer and author with ties to the Surrealist movement. Rejecting the role of muse, her work focused on portrayals of women as subjects with desire rather than objects of desire. She was featured in MoMA's landmark 1936 exhibition Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism, and imagery from her painting Le Bout du Monde was used by Madonna in her 1994 video "Bedtime Story." Fini's first Paris show was curated by Christian Dior; while working for Schiaparelli she designed the bottle for Shocking, the designer's top-selling perfume (and the acknowledged inspiration for Gaultier's torso-shaped bottles). She also designed the costumes for two films, Renato Castellani's Romeo and Juliet (1954) and John Huston's A Walk with Love and Death (1968). Fini is also well known for her illustrations for Pauline Reage's Story of O (one of her costumes inspired the book's final scene).
Originally published in French in 1979, Rogomelec was the third of Leonor Fini's novels. All the qualities of the paintings for which she is famed can be found in an undermining of patriarchy, the ambiguities of gender and the slipperiness of desire, along with darker hints of cruelty and the voluptuousness of fear.
This novella's ambiguous narrator sets off for the isolated locale of Rogomelec--where a crumbling monastery serves as a sanatorium and offers a cure involving a diet of plants and flowers--and moves through a waking dream of strangely scented monks, vibratory concerts in a cavernous ossuary and ritualist pomp with costumes of octopi and shining beetles. As the days unfold, the narrator discovers that the "the celebration of the king" is approaching, the events of which will lead to a shocking discovery in Rogomelec's Gothic ruins.
This first English translation includes 14 drawings by Fini that accompanied the novella's original publication.
Born in Argentina and raised in Italy, Leonor Fini (1907-96) concluded a rebellious youth with a move to Paris, where there followed six decades of work as artist, illustrator, designer and author with ties to the Surrealist movement. Rejecting the role of muse, her work focused on portrayals of women as subjects with desire rather than objects of desire. She was featured in MoMA's landmark 1936 exhibition Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism, and imagery from her painting Le Bout du Monde was used by Madonna in her 1994 video "Bedtime Story." Fini's first Paris show was curated by Christian Dior; while working for Schiaparelli she designed the bottle for Shocking, the designer's top-selling perfume (and the acknowledged inspiration for Gaultier's torso-shaped bottles). She also designed the costumes for two films, Renato Castellani's Romeo and Juliet (1954) and John Huston's A Walk with Love and Death (1968). Fini is also well known for her illustrations for Pauline Reage's Story of O (one of her costumes inspired the book's final scene).
123 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1979
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691 people want to read
About the author
Leonor Fini
24 books24 followersLeonor Fini was an Argentine surrealist painter.
Born in Buenos Aires, she was raised in Trieste, Italy. She moved to Milan at the age of 17, and then to Paris, in either 1931 or 1932. There, she became acquainted with, among many others, Paul Éluard, Max Ernst, Georges Bataille, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Picasso, André Pieyre de Mandiargues, and Salvador Dalí.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonor_Fini)
"She produced the most outré art, liked to cross-dress and had a penchant for living in ménages à trois. And yet, despite once being infamous around the world, Leonor Fini is all but forgotten these days."
(http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/ar...)
Born in Buenos Aires, she was raised in Trieste, Italy. She moved to Milan at the age of 17, and then to Paris, in either 1931 or 1932. There, she became acquainted with, among many others, Paul Éluard, Max Ernst, Georges Bataille, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Picasso, André Pieyre de Mandiargues, and Salvador Dalí.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonor_Fini)
"She produced the most outré art, liked to cross-dress and had a penchant for living in ménages à trois. And yet, despite once being infamous around the world, Leonor Fini is all but forgotten these days."
(http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/ar...)
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Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews
June 3, 2020
Mostly know as a painter and a designer, Leonor Fini was a writer as well. All around she's a fascinating person to read about, but one doesn't often hear of her fiction? Why is that?
(Did I mention stylish?)
Well, I cannot fully say as I've only read Rogomelec. Perhaps there are more reasons beyond what I can see here... perhaps her fame in other areas made it more difficult for her writing to take off... maybe, just maybe, it her writing was a touch too weird even for the surrealists (that was a joke, I assure you).
To be honest, I don't know how to review this. I once described the film The Beyond as "less of a movie and more of watching someone else's fevered dream." That pretty much sums up this book as well. There is a plot... sort of, but it's more like the outline of a plot, to get us from one surreal event to the next.
Are the surreal moments interesting at least? I would certainly say so, but that is going to be very much an opinionated thing (as is much in terms of surrealist artwork). The book feels much like a classic Gothic in some ways, filled with broken cathedrals, weird inhabitants, and a constant feeling of unease. In many ways the surrealism adds to this aspect (after all, it's not like this is unheard of in the genre, The Castle of Otranto begins with a giant helmet falling on a young man on his wedding day!). This one certainly takes the concept and runs with it though.
I don't use this phrase often, but I don't really get this book... but I'm not really sure you're supposed to. I think this is one of those works that each person is going to have their own interpretation of, and they are all equally right and wrong.
From a design standpoint, I like the illustrations. I like keeping them in mind with the scene Fini is describing, though again, I don't know how to always interpret them. Sometimes I see more in the images when comparing it to what came the page before, other times they look straight forward enough until examined and thought about. Though the illustrations may seem simple at first, I do advise all potential readers to really examine them, the art and story are very much in conversation with each other.
Do I recommend this book? That may be the hardest part of this review... we'll leave it with the statement that I personally enjoyed it well enough, but would not advise for everyone. 3/5 stars
(Did I mention stylish?)
Well, I cannot fully say as I've only read Rogomelec. Perhaps there are more reasons beyond what I can see here... perhaps her fame in other areas made it more difficult for her writing to take off... maybe, just maybe, it her writing was a touch too weird even for the surrealists (that was a joke, I assure you).
To be honest, I don't know how to review this. I once described the film The Beyond as "less of a movie and more of watching someone else's fevered dream." That pretty much sums up this book as well. There is a plot... sort of, but it's more like the outline of a plot, to get us from one surreal event to the next.
Are the surreal moments interesting at least? I would certainly say so, but that is going to be very much an opinionated thing (as is much in terms of surrealist artwork). The book feels much like a classic Gothic in some ways, filled with broken cathedrals, weird inhabitants, and a constant feeling of unease. In many ways the surrealism adds to this aspect (after all, it's not like this is unheard of in the genre, The Castle of Otranto begins with a giant helmet falling on a young man on his wedding day!). This one certainly takes the concept and runs with it though.
I don't use this phrase often, but I don't really get this book... but I'm not really sure you're supposed to. I think this is one of those works that each person is going to have their own interpretation of, and they are all equally right and wrong.
From a design standpoint, I like the illustrations. I like keeping them in mind with the scene Fini is describing, though again, I don't know how to always interpret them. Sometimes I see more in the images when comparing it to what came the page before, other times they look straight forward enough until examined and thought about. Though the illustrations may seem simple at first, I do advise all potential readers to really examine them, the art and story are very much in conversation with each other.
Do I recommend this book? That may be the hardest part of this review... we'll leave it with the statement that I personally enjoyed it well enough, but would not advise for everyone. 3/5 stars
December 13, 2020
On the surface, Fini crafts a relatively simple plot: an unknown narrator leaves a vaguely Mediterranean mainland for the island of Rogomelec, where secretive monks administer an infamous 'cure' at their decrepit monastery. The tale continues in a series of connected vignettes experienced by the narrator on the island. Yet it's one of those books, like Leonora Carrington's The Stone Door (of which I've only read the abridged version found in this volume) and Ithell Colquhoun's Goose of Hermogenes or I Saw Water, where the allusive thicket winds its way through every page and every encounter feels tumescent with hidden meaning. Its relative brevity compared to those books permits a slightly more easily achievable attempt at a 'long view' reading so to speak, although I still hesitate to make any assumptions as to the unwritten machinations thrumming between and beneath the lines. Fini's fiction seems inextricably linked to her paintings, and it is perhaps best to consider her entire oeuvre in all artistic endeavours as one seamless narrative. For that I feel ill-equipped, and I can only hope that her other two seemingly related fictions, Mourmour and L'Oneiropompe, will also find their way into English translation one day. For now I will have to content myself with rereads of Rogomelec—a perfectly welcome way to pass the time.
January 18, 2021
Reading Rogomelec reinforced my sense of why novels like Marcus's Age of Wire and String (or even Tom McCarthy's relatively more 'straightforward' Remainder) are so appealing -- the complete lack of cliché. The best sort of surrealist or experimental fiction creates an effect akin to David Lynch's films, which DFW correctly described as dreamlike in precisely the sense that you don't know what Lynch wants from you, there's something mysteriously destabilizing and alienating about his work (well, not The Straight Story, but you see DFW's point); the usual transaction between artist and audience is subsumed into an almost trance-like dream state.
Similarly, Rogomelec is aggressively astringent re: reason/thought/logic, in a good way; I have literally no idea what is going on or what Fini is trying to say, but somehow it works. I suppose it's similar to reaching the point, with music, where even the 'mainstream' noise albums (Haswell et al.) are somehow boring or predictable; maybe this sort of fiction is most appealing only when you've nearly exhausted the usual possibilities of the format.
Similarly, Rogomelec is aggressively astringent re: reason/thought/logic, in a good way; I have literally no idea what is going on or what Fini is trying to say, but somehow it works. I suppose it's similar to reaching the point, with music, where even the 'mainstream' noise albums (Haswell et al.) are somehow boring or predictable; maybe this sort of fiction is most appealing only when you've nearly exhausted the usual possibilities of the format.
June 21, 2020
Reading this is like stepping into one of Fini's paintings. Dreamlike, mysterious, beautiful, disorienting. Evocative and ungraspable as a billow of incense. There's not much I can say about it, except to urge you to read it for yourself.
April 26, 2020
3.5/5
Leonor Fini's, "Rogomelec", is, according to the back page, both a "novel" and "novella" - it is neither. It's a short story with 14 original, simple but fitting, drawings contained in a pocket-sized book. Nevertheless, it reminds me of Dorothea Tanning's, "Chasm", mixed with elements of Poe, Lovecraft and Robert Chambers. Every page has something slightly askew before the number of oddities per page increases as our narrator moves further into an unreal landscape after arriving at a retreat with strange potions with supposed curative powers and witnesses a procession and celebration laced with symbolism for, "the king".
Fini's fiction resembles her art in a focus on decay, ancient-hellish landscapes, bizarre elements tinting the subject with a sense of the uncanny, lustrous clothing and the like. It's also taut and expressive without being wordy.
Although I can't find much fault in Fini's, "Rogomelec", it is not the best example of this style of storytelling. However, lovers/readers of the authors I've already mentioned or weird fiction of the Thomas Ligotti ilk might enjoy this.
August 5, 2021
Fevered, ornate, so so beautiful, but in the faint sense of a sketch, and not so much a novel. There’s ethereal, airy prose that feels soft, the ghost of words, but that lightness, while serving its aesthetic purposes, also feels evanescent, like it fades away as soon as it breezes through the mind. It’s more of an effect, and while I did not mind such an effect, I cannot recommend it to many.
October 23, 2020
Rogomelec is described as a “voluptuous and antipatriarchal gothic novel” but only half of that description is correct. It’s certainly voluptuous and gothic, but the work presents nothing for or against patriarchy, and it’s only about 20 pages worth of text, which means it’s not even a novella. Fini’s focus in Rogomelec is on describing surreal scenes, and in service of this the narrator serves primarily as an observer and does very little. The scenes described are fine but nothing to write home about, and Fini would have been better off using her artistic talent and painting them. However, while Fini was a talented artist, the sketches scattered throughout this short tale add nothing to it.
Largely a series of scenes described one after another, Rogomelec has no deeper purpose that I could discern, and so it’s little more than a curiosity. Which is a shame, since, as Anna Kavan showed in her novel Ice more than a decade before Rogomelec was published, strange fiction can be so much more than weird for the sake of weird. 3/5.
Largely a series of scenes described one after another, Rogomelec has no deeper purpose that I could discern, and so it’s little more than a curiosity. Which is a shame, since, as Anna Kavan showed in her novel Ice more than a decade before Rogomelec was published, strange fiction can be so much more than weird for the sake of weird. 3/5.
January 23, 2021
I think it fits into the camp of 'weird fiction' but obviously with closer ties to francophone (Baudelaire and his cats) than anglo (Lovecraft) works. The illustrations are a nice addition, but I think three things are striking about it and just edge it up to 4 stars for me.
1. For all the unexplained things that go on, there is not some overwrought and forced 'sense of mystery' here. It still reads in a fairly straightforward way and is less canned.
2. Relatedly, but not quite the same, there is a complete lack of explanation or intimation of how the reader should feel about the events described or their relationship to life. Neither narrator nor events attempt to give the reader a box of feeling to put this into.
~spoiler, I guess~
3. For all that works here, it's still just a very prototypical story. Narrator goes from her home to an other place, deepening 'mystery' encountered at that place, leaves. Nice to see this small thing used to good effect.
Also, I was tickled by "Hilarion, the swaggering monk."
1. For all the unexplained things that go on, there is not some overwrought and forced 'sense of mystery' here. It still reads in a fairly straightforward way and is less canned.
2. Relatedly, but not quite the same, there is a complete lack of explanation or intimation of how the reader should feel about the events described or their relationship to life. Neither narrator nor events attempt to give the reader a box of feeling to put this into.
~spoiler, I guess~
3. For all that works here, it's still just a very prototypical story. Narrator goes from her home to an other place, deepening 'mystery' encountered at that place, leaves. Nice to see this small thing used to good effect.
Also, I was tickled by "Hilarion, the swaggering monk."
April 8, 2021
A strange and wonderful journey!
May 22, 2023
Must re read this again, as it is incredibly short and so much slips away upon first reading.
It makes one wish they could re
read their own dreams in as much detail.
If Swift is Surrealist through his rage,
Then Fini is Surrealist through her desire.
It makes one wish they could re
read their own dreams in as much detail.
If Swift is Surrealist through his rage,
Then Fini is Surrealist through her desire.
Read
February 25, 2025freaky but i liked it. can’t rate yet though i gotta sit on this one
August 19, 2021
3
When I finished Rogomelec I felt as though I was waking up from a dream.
We follow an unnamed narrator as they travel to the mysterious island of Rogomelec whose only inhabitants appear to be monks. Honestly, the whole narrative reads like a dream. It's very fast paced as one setting blends seemlessly into another. The narrator seems to shift locations effortlessly.
The characters we meet say strange things as though they are talking to themselves rather than each other. We meet a woman called Xenia who explains to the narrator a bit more about the island. The monks there are very odd and our narrator distinguished them by smell to start with rather than by name.
As for our unnamed narrator, we don't know anything about them. Who they are or what they look like? The only indication on the gender of the narrator is someone calling them "young man". Although personally I pictured the narrator as a women, but it doesn't really matter.
My favourite part involved a concert in an ossuary and as the music gets louder and more intense, the narrator describes the bones throbbing and turning to the rhythm. "I saw tibias rise like piano keys, sometimes playing in groups. I saw the femurs turning round and round, and other bones - clavicles, greater trochanters, vertebrae - making spherical, clocklike motions, abruptly stopping from time to time."
I find the book difficult to explain or understand, but I guess that's the point, surely? The book induces a constant feeling of unease as if something bad is going to happen to the narrator.
This unease culminates in the last part of the book as the narrator tries to reach the source of a scream they can hear. However as they do so they are constantly tripped up and blocked by thickets, vines and dead ends. On finally reaching the source, they find a hanged man. Dead. This part felt like a nightmare with the ending a flustered result of this encounter. The narrator panics and wants to leave the island. But as they are doing so they want to say goodbye to Xenia and the others but they can't for they have rowed too far out to sea. This could be them waking up and losing contact with the dreamlike state of Rogomelec.
When I finished Rogomelec I felt as though I was waking up from a dream.
We follow an unnamed narrator as they travel to the mysterious island of Rogomelec whose only inhabitants appear to be monks. Honestly, the whole narrative reads like a dream. It's very fast paced as one setting blends seemlessly into another. The narrator seems to shift locations effortlessly.
The characters we meet say strange things as though they are talking to themselves rather than each other. We meet a woman called Xenia who explains to the narrator a bit more about the island. The monks there are very odd and our narrator distinguished them by smell to start with rather than by name.
As for our unnamed narrator, we don't know anything about them. Who they are or what they look like? The only indication on the gender of the narrator is someone calling them "young man". Although personally I pictured the narrator as a women, but it doesn't really matter.
My favourite part involved a concert in an ossuary and as the music gets louder and more intense, the narrator describes the bones throbbing and turning to the rhythm. "I saw tibias rise like piano keys, sometimes playing in groups. I saw the femurs turning round and round, and other bones - clavicles, greater trochanters, vertebrae - making spherical, clocklike motions, abruptly stopping from time to time."
I find the book difficult to explain or understand, but I guess that's the point, surely? The book induces a constant feeling of unease as if something bad is going to happen to the narrator.
This unease culminates in the last part of the book as the narrator tries to reach the source of a scream they can hear. However as they do so they are constantly tripped up and blocked by thickets, vines and dead ends. On finally reaching the source, they find a hanged man. Dead. This part felt like a nightmare with the ending a flustered result of this encounter. The narrator panics and wants to leave the island. But as they are doing so they want to say goodbye to Xenia and the others but they can't for they have rowed too far out to sea. This could be them waking up and losing contact with the dreamlike state of Rogomelec.
Read
November 4, 2024"Was she the one who had made me want to shed my skin? I was now far less inclined. I smiled at the thought."
"I wanted to stay alert and lucid at this precise moment, as I saw an advancing parade of furry creatures with enormous eyes, and one-eyed creatures with huge, long black eyelashes in perpetual motion; others wore large jackets made of strings of shells and trains of algae covered with a silvery liquid, perhaps mercury. Others had no eyes at all; in the place of heads were eyeballs that appeared and disappeared."
"Daphne! Would she have a slightly open mouth, eyes wide with fear? Or, would she smile voluptuously, knowing the blessing of finally becoming a plant?"
"I performed the customary gestures without feeling present."
"I wanted to stay alert and lucid at this precise moment, as I saw an advancing parade of furry creatures with enormous eyes, and one-eyed creatures with huge, long black eyelashes in perpetual motion; others wore large jackets made of strings of shells and trains of algae covered with a silvery liquid, perhaps mercury. Others had no eyes at all; in the place of heads were eyeballs that appeared and disappeared."
"Daphne! Would she have a slightly open mouth, eyes wide with fear? Or, would she smile voluptuously, knowing the blessing of finally becoming a plant?"
"I performed the customary gestures without feeling present."
August 4, 2021
‘the tamed stone that seemed to want to become wild again’
‘i immediately dove back into the delight of this waking death’
read this in one sitting, how could you not? it feels like riding a surrealist escalator through an enticing and nightmarish monastery. to enter smiling, brimming with a desire to be cured (of what?), to leave tense, the cure unfinished and forsaken (of what?)! rogomelec: he who stones the king!
‘i immediately dove back into the delight of this waking death’
read this in one sitting, how could you not? it feels like riding a surrealist escalator through an enticing and nightmarish monastery. to enter smiling, brimming with a desire to be cured (of what?), to leave tense, the cure unfinished and forsaken (of what?)! rogomelec: he who stones the king!
January 29, 2022
Hop on a boat and be guided by outside souls and internal desires and fevers that cause dreams to slip and slide and blur off the page. This is a rabbit hole unlike any other I've read. Like Leonora Carrington ballroom dancing with a giant man made out of peyote. This book rules and I'd love to see it as a film.
August 10, 2021
A surrealist take on a gothic novel by the painter Leonor Fini who brings her painterly qualities to prose
August 17, 2021
I enjoyed this short read. Art is interestingly peculiar. It is a very imaginative story. I like it very much.
September 20, 2021
A dark surrealist fairy tale with hints of decadent literature from one hundred years earlier.
October 3, 2023
oh !!!!! some beautiful lines in this had no idea what was going on but i loved it
April 23, 2024
"I'm going to try to steal the dawn from the insects."
August 8, 2024
not bad. not the greatest work of surrealism but the author denies the word anyway so she may be operating on something else. life lies with the scissors inside you.
January 23, 2025
Les soirs, la nuit? Mais on se livrera aux ombres, on chevauchera les ténèbres.
March 6, 2025
Quick read, but very fun and mysterious. It was a nice world to get lost in for a little.
June 16, 2025
Beautiful and disturbing, a classic of surrealist literature.
September 5, 2020
Leonor Fini's "Rogomelec" is a novella that strips the decadent novel to the bone through a sparse, Surrealist lens. A bit of a puzzle that I suspect has no "solution," it demands multiple reads. Equal parts frustrating & intriguing, though many things I grow to love start that way.
Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews