The Acentric Pendulum of Wim Cruhs

Cover of Wim Cruhs' magazine, no. 29 of 50, only edition

Alex's last post, an edifying taste of the resonances between Kobrin's extremist labyrinthecture and Gerrit's provocative labyrinthology, gives me occasion to proffer an excerpt from my recent essay, "'Given to Labyrinths': The Acentric Pendulum of Wim Cruhs," which I will present at this year's upcoming NASCLS in Benesov. (Details about the conference are forthcoming, as is my discussion of Dr. Izokawi's PNSD therapy.)

Without further ado, my excerpt:

"Dutch labyrinthologist Wim Cruhs founded his short-lived and oft-forgotten school, Peripatetic Realism, while studying as a frustrated medical student at the University of Salzburg in the late 1960s. With the help of Austrian artist Lukas Brunn and Spanish poet Manuel Cortego, Cruhs released in 1968 the one and only issue of his magazine, Cochlea, as an 'underground forum,' he put it, 'to vent the pent-up energies of young and idealistic navigators.' He derived the title from his fascination with the labyrinthine structure of the inner ear, the ear's centrality to balance and therefore ambulation and navigation, and the term's origination from the Greek word for snail, suggestive to him of a meditative pace. Most important, the title directly pertains to the labyrinthological notions he put forth in his manifesto for Peripatetic Realism, which appeared in Cochlea. Allow me to quote from his salvo:

"'We fundamentally misunderstand the nature of the labyrinth, and therefore the nature of man, when we construe the navigator's condition as a twin state of exile: first exiled from the telic clarity of the purposive, lived structures of house, work, and play, and second, and more important, exiled from the center. I leave it to the labyrinthects to discuss the former, but I propose to consider the latter [...] for from the center there can be no exile. [...] What is it that sets man apart from the rest of creation? It is in part his bipedalism, which equips man with a structurally idiosyncratic means of locomotion. But it is also in part his brain's cortex, enabling the complex, abstract ideations which elaborate yet transcend his material condition. In navigation we can behold the beautiful union of these distinctive hominid capacities, whose consummation I hold to be peripatesis: itinerant meditation, whose antecedent is Aristotelian. [...] We are thus, in our nature, given to labyrinths.'

"Later in his manifesto, Cruhs imagines an Arcadian labyrinth whose corridors brim with walkers not seeking a center but seeking philosophical dialogue. Cruhs soon abandoned this vision when he met Jacques Oligreff in Paris. Oligreff's dissertation on solitary navigation profoundly transformed much of Cruhs' notions of labyrinths, but Cruhs' rejection of the notions of exile not only influenced Oligreff, and later the young Cunha, but also became an essential tenet to Acentrism in its nascency.

"To the heart of our concerns, then: What are we to make of Cruhs' statement, 'from the center there can be no exile.' I argue that Cruhs' notions of exile imply a concept that I am coining the acentric pendulum. The concept proves simple yet elegant, but its ramifications are serious: if one congresses at the center of a labyrinth, then one is, in fact, exiled from the labyrinth as such. Akin to Gerrit's rules of navigational procedure, Cruhs' acentric pendulum capsizes the fundamental quiddity of the labyrinth. The labyrinth does not merely cease to be a labyrinth if one congresses at the center. Rather, the navigator becomes lost upon congression. In other words, the navigator is not lost while navigating. The navigator is lost if—in body or in mind—he believes he has reached the center. Thus, neither corridor nor center, neither navigation nor congression, are exiled from each other. They are inextricably co-defined.

"The co-definition of corridor and center, therefore, leave the labyrinth literally in a dialectical argument with itself—as if the were labyrinth a pendulum swinging infinitely between its poles. But Cruhs distinguishes between, if you will, centric problems and acentric problems. The former, what I am calling centric pendulation, is a labyrinth's conventional dialectic in the presence of a physical center. The latter, or acentric pendulation, is the far more troublesome dialectic in the absence—known, believed, or designed—of a center. The acentric pendulum, I think Cruhs believes, is a requisite condition of all labyrinths. Even without a center, it is necessary for a navigator to believe there is a center, even if the navigator recursively avoids it."

Wim Cruhs is alive and well, but he is a nomadic figure who eschews the academy and the spotlight alike. I have not had the pleasure of correspondence with him, but I hope to see him—and hear his reaction to my analysis and its implications for Acentrism—in Benesov.