Graphic Annotations of China Miéville’s The Last Days of New Paris
The Last Days of New Paris is China Miéville’s novella about a surrealist Paris magically overlapping with our realist Paris. At the back of the book, Miéville offers endnote citations of the surrealist art that inspired his writing. I corralled all the art in this post.
**Spoilers, perhaps? Although, contextless art might entice unconvinced readers to read the novella!**
4 “It’s the Vélo!” -
7 As everyone gathered watched the black virtue
9 There are worse things than garden airplane traps:
9 Flocks of bat-winged businessmen and ladies:
9 mono- and bi- and triplane gemoetries
11 Huge sunflowers root all over
11 up-thrust snakes that are their stems
11 human hands crawl under spiral shells
11 each shark is hollow-backed, with a canoe seat
Scans of Variétés, 1929 (I think?)
11 the stumps of its struts, forty storeys up
Cited book, Paris and the Surrealists, George Melly
15 an impossible composite of tower and human…a pair of women’s high-heeled feet
16 enervation infecting house after house
Miéville’s explains Céline’s mantif of enervation; the text says “the Nazis sought to create…a Céline weltgeist” here’s Wikipedia’s Hegelian definition,
“Weltgeist(“world spirit”) is not an actual object or a transcendental, Godlike thing, but a means of philosophizing about history.”
16 Enigmarelle, foppish robot staggered out of an exhibition guide
16 the dreaming cat
17 sagelands, smoothed alpine topographies like sagging drapes
17 Under one lamppost, it is night
22 Jacques Hérold set a black chain on fire
Herold’s black chain on fire is probably “Dans le Jeu de Marseille, le Marquis de Sade vu” http://www.galerie-alain-paire.com/.../03_2010.../sade.jpg
(found by commenter Mike Williams)
30 a dream mammal watches him with marmoset eyes
31 Redon’s leering ten-legged spider
33 such prim Delvaux bones…prone Mallo skeletons
34 The Musée de l’Armée is being emptied…by curious undergrowth
See note 61 for “irrational embellishments”
36 “They’re called wolf-tables…Manifest from an imagining by a man called Brauner.”
37 a barnacled book
Could not find; if you do, please comment where.
38 a spoon covered with fur
40 “Those who are asleep…are workers and collaborators in what goes on in the universe.”
A scholastic reference to Géographie nocturne was the best I could find.
I had no luck finding La Main á plume, a collectively-written book by André Breton. The title translates to “Hand with Pen”
45 “Ithell Colquhoun?”
Website dedicated to this British Occultist
51 “Confusedly…forests mingle with legendary creatures hidden in the thickets.”
“Sleep Spaces” by Robert Desnos translated to English
51 those rushing futurist plane-presences
51 “Fauves…The negligible old star?”
This is Gertrude Stein’s poem, “Negligible Old Star”
NEGLIGIBLE old star.
Pour even.
It was a sad per cent.
Does on sun day.
Watch or water.
So soon a moon or a old heavy press.
54 a giant’s pissoir
See note 61 for “irrational embellishments”
55 a great sickle-headed fish…a woman made up of outsized pebbles
56 the Palais Garnier, its stairs dinosaur bones
See note 61 for “irrational embellishments”
56 Le Chabanais
See note 61 for “irrational embellishments”
56 A vegetal puppet, stringy, composite floral thing
56 Celebes
57 The sun over Paris isn’t an empty-hearted ring
58 smoke figures wafting in and out of presence
Not sure on this painting’s title or date.
59 “The horse head.”
60 Seilgmann. Colquhoun. Ernst. and de Givry
Amazon link to Grillot de Givry’s referenced book translated to English
61 “On Certain Possibilities of the Irrational Embellishment of a City”
Here is a PDF of Le Surréalisme au service de la révolution n.6 (1933) In which Méiville found the descriptions of the “irrational embellishments”
61 “Chemical-blue, twisted machines of jujube-trees of rotten flesh?”
Here is a PDF of Cahier d’un retour au pays natal (Notebook of a Return to the Native Land) translated to English
62 a feathered sphere the size of a fist
63 a winged monkey with owl’s eyes
64 It stands like a person under a great weight…hedgerow chic
66 everyone…feels as if they are on the mezzanine of a snake-flecked staircase
68 They are in rubble full of birdcages…a baby’s face the size of a room
“The Shooting Gallery” paintings are all here, on WikiArt
69 a storm of birds
71 Chabrun, Léo Malet and Tita
#71. La Main á plume (“Hand with Pen” in English)was a periodical, or series of pamphlets written collectively. See https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Main_%C3%A0_plume https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Main_%C3%A0_plume
Thanks to commenter George Trosper for this one.
71 Thibaut had fought the Carlingue once, alongside Laurence Iché
Laurence Iché’s poem, I Prefer Your Uneasiness Like a Dark Lantern, taken from the book, Surrealist Women.
I prefer your uneasiness like a dark lantern
without ever knowing that phantom goes through me
when the lamp of battles burns all its thirst
Only the leaf
on a final point of life
will run into the hoop of knowledge
The eagle-headed caterpillar
the wind-haired eagle
are engulfed by the bath of shredded mirrors
with nostalgic seals of lips
and glances that collide
Those are the shredded mirrors
that reptiles inhabit
for the smiles of the wind steal all the velvets of forgetfulness
with the same avidity that windows steal landscapes
underneath lines drawn from the sun
Like the meteor trail of a hope
they embraced
the nervous spurt of printer’s blood
the cavalcade of inextricable branches of chance
in the ballet of days that shelter you
immobility cooked into table legs
and catacombs of the past in the shadow of the present
to make of me a drying umbrella
Translated from French by Myrna Bell Rochester
74 Sacré-Cœur
See 61 on “irrational embellishments”
75 a ladder of sinewy muscled arms
Thanks to George Trosper on this one.
77 A huge featureless mantif woman holed by drawers…dolls crawling crablike
77 “My pajamas balsam hammer gilt with azure.”
Simone Yoyotte’s poem “Pyjama-Speed”
My pyjamas gilt with azure and Bois-Colombes
Tranquil atmospheres — and dance
The pavane of silence and Jew. — I am moved
— so be it — but no and if I departed softly
and the river country of my self lightly
and I smile. — My pyjamas gilt and embroidered
with myself (spear) and worst of all gilt with azure
my pyjamas balsam hammer gilt with azure
so-called Bois Colombes and Jew and you’ve made it.
Translated from French by Myrna Bell Rochester
88 Trapped in their Marseille hinterland…the Surrealists had drawn new suits, a cartographic rebellion
Find out more about these cards at this French language blog.
92 “A lobster. With wires…”
93 scratch-figures etched with keys
Couldn’t find the title of this photo; please comment if you do.
94 a great shark mouth…smiling like a stupid angel
Alice Rahon’s 1942 story, “The Sleeping Woman” can be previewed on Google Books
94 It is a sandbumptious
97 the Lion of Belfort
For more on “irrational embellishments” see 61
Max Ernst’s Une semaine de bonté on Amazon
99 the Statue of Liberty
105 where the Palace of Justice once was…sawdust swirls from the windows and doors of Sainte-Chapelle
For more on “irrational embellishments” see 61
105 the squat square towers to either side of its sunburst central window
For more on “irrational embellishments” see 61
106 Arno Breker’s looming, kitsch, retrograde marble figures
108 Hélene Smith…glossolalic channeler of a strange imagined Mars
124 the Société de Gévaudan…in a Lozere sanatorium
I couldn’t find a source for where Miéville found the provided information.
125 A man in a coat watches eyelessly from a chessboard head
125 “the Soldier with No Name!”
127 tiny exquisite corpses ripped into their components by machines
162 “It’s a self-portrait.” … “Of Adolf Hitler.”
That’s it! There’s a few missing notes, so let me know if you find them. Feel free to share this with Miéville and surrealism fans far and wide.
