Call for Papers

The NASCLS in association with the Nicola Fierst Society invites 250-word proposals for papers and panels for the 2011 meeting of the International Gollesten Circle. The conference will be held May 12-15, 2011 in Kuching, Borneo. Specific Topic Panel: Gollesten and Milosovici: Intersections of Structural Obfuscation in the Natural Labyrinth. Deadline: January 21. Contact via NASCLS web ring.

A Scholar of Ill Repute

My dear labyrinthians,

You may have noted a bit of a lull here at the Cincinnati Labyrinth Project. Fear not, however, for the reasons behind our relative inactivity are decidedly positive. John K. is focused on a rather difficult navigation of the Ribbon Reef Labyrinth in Mauritania, and I, along with fellow CLP columnists Walt and Mark, have just attended the famous annual Bern Labyrinthological Circle conference in Switzerland. The conference was excellent, with particularly superb, progressive talks from Bernhard Smallencroft and Anders Heitkamp. Perhaps the most fascinating and exciting bit of labyrinthia that we gleaned concerns the construction of the Amazon Basin Labyrinth, a labyrinth which, as some of our readers may know, was begun by Mezin Kobrin but left incomplete at the time of his death. The project, which drew many skeptics based on its sheer scope (the blueprints posit an area of over 35 miles), has been picked up by CORRIDOR motion DESIGN, a forward thinking labyrinthectural firm out of Portland, OR. More on this exciting news later.

Now, onto the subject of this post, a considerably less pleasant matter. As you, my dear reader, have no doubt noticed, we have, here at CLP, always done our best to avoid participating in the factious and polemical modes of criticism which pervade the landscape of contemporary labyrinthology. It is our contention that what is called for in our present epoch is a labyrinthology which, as my good friend and colleague Philip Cunha says, mends the broken corridor. This being said, recent events have come to pass which I, for one, simply cannot abide nor turn a blind eye. During my sojourn in Bern this past weekend, I had the pleasure of spending a good bit of time with CLP Polish correspondent Czeslaw Gorski, a labyrinthologist well known in European intellectual circles for his writings on "blind ambulation." Gorski has been working on a rather fascinating article for some time now, of which I have read several drafts. The piece takes as its subject a rather problematic, yet widespread, exegesis of Book Seventeen of Gollesten's Framework, an interpretation introduced by Dutch New Interiorist labyrinthologist Rutger Roorback.

In essence, Roorback argues that Gollesten's critique of Aaldi's quantalogical reduction hinges on a fallacious interpretation of Aaldi's notion of cognitive constancy navigation (CCN). Roorback's views, as erroneous as they may seem to us, have become popular in labyrinthological syndicates throughout Europe, proving particularly influential on the Viennese Centralists. My issue with Roorback lies, however, not in my disagreements with his scholarship, but in the way in which he handled the prospect of cogent, well argued dissent entering into the realm of mainstream labyrinthology in the form of my dear friend Gorski's exceptionally well crafted article. The article had been approved months ago for publication in Perímetro, the prestigious Portuguese labyrinthology quarterly. This past weekend in Bern, however, Gorski revealed to me that as a result of Roorback's connections and influence in Portuguese labyrinthological circuits, the article has been pulled from publication.

I can say without hyperbole that this is a travesty. It is deceit of the lowest kind and, forgive me if I seem overly crestfallen, it is precisely the sort of underhandedness that threatens the very sanctity of contemporary labyrinthology. Gorski has agreed to let us publish his article in installments, the first of which I will be posting this weekend. In the meantime, dear reader, please consider jotting a note to Perímetro, as I have, to express your disdain for both their publication and sense of intellectual ethics alike.

Gramont and "La ligne propre"

As I mentioned in my comment to John's thread below, naturalism and observational navigation are issues which are given sustained consideration in the thought of a wide range of modern and contemporary labyrinthians. In Aaldi's text, nature as such is subjected to the quantalogical reduction. Reede's interiorist skepticism, manifested most notably in the writings and lectures from the Tiranė period, often takes as its subject the sensible and corporeal experience of the natural labyrinth. As John intimated, it is in the labyrinthological project of Gollesten that naturalism is reclaimed from the critique of the Medialists.

I find Mathieu Gramont's naturalism to be particularly interesting due in part to the fact that much of his labyrinthology functions as what is essentially a deconstruction of modern labyrinthological theory at large. As our readers know, the recursivist movement, which Gramont initiated, denies both exteriorism and interiorism as appropriate methodologies for navigating and investigating labyrinths as such, advocating instead a labyrinthology in which navigation and ambulation are paramount. In a lecture from the spring of 1940, entitled "La ligne propre" ("The Clean Line"), Gramont articulates an aesthetics of observational navigation. The piece is contained in the French language collection of Gramont's letters and lectures published by Editions Arceneaux, unavailable in translation at present. This excerpt finds Gramont sympathizing with Gollesten, and calling for a new vocabulary with which to assess the aesthetics of the labyrinth. The translation is my own.

"By decisively avoiding the center and the perimeter alike, we bring about a state of affairs in which the structure of the corridors within the sensible labyrinth effectively becomes our horizon. Our eyes focused solely upon the expanse of the corridor, undeniable as Gollesten has shown, and irreducible to constancy as posited by Aaldi. The aesthetics of the post-Industrial labyrinth force us to approach naturalism within the labyrinth in the same manner posited by the exteriorists, though we dispute their fundamental teleologico-labyrinthology. As Gollesten points out, the structure of the labyrinth may only be assessed in the context of properly authentic navigation. But how may we consider the aesthetics of the corridor?

Labyrinthectural theory, bound and blocked from primordiality by its dependence on quantalogical notation, does not provide us with a suitable vocabulary for assessing the beauty of the labyrinth's form. Moreover, the teleological fallacies of post-Aaldian labyrinthology continue to exercise their insidious influence on the topography of contemporary labyrinthecture. Utility should never be the locus. A corridor should beckon us in manifold ways, entreating us always to ambulate. It is the task of the labyrinthian to assess the corridor, but not to explain it away. This is, as Gollesten points out, the crisis of observational navigation in modernity."

Rare Bird Sightings: Observational Navigation from Lake Erie

Labyrinth navigation does not always serve as its own end. In his Framework, Gollesten indeed describes congression as the most authentic mode of navigation, but he also acknowledges a host of other meaningful navigational modes. In an oft overlooked passage in his more meditative, pastoral, and colloquial Book 12, "Earth, Sky, Creature, Weather: Restructuring Natural Boundaries in the Built World," Gollesten, in a moment of uncanny prescience, muses:

The authentic [author's emphasis] labyrinth is not inimical to the natural landscapes and organisms in which the boundaries and corridors are structured. In fact, we see in the Classical epoch of labyrinths, which, we may firmly assert, is a veritable Golden Age, that the architects commissioned were those men who dwelled closest to the habitats of labyrinth sites. Urban architects were deemed ill-equipped to establish edifices who could merge man's structures with sky, earth, creature, and weather. Thus, we witness a staunch effort in Classical Labyrinthology to fuse artifice with nature. The authentic labyrinth, then, preserves the natural order while altering Nature's physiognomy.

It is well known, and well mourned, that Modern Labyrinths did not value the fusion of artificial and organical. Rather, incepting in the early days of the Industrial Revolution, we behold the birth of new paradigm, the paradigm that man's structures do not merely rival nature's complexity, but in fact best nature's 'legerdemain.' Indubitably, this paradigm is predicated in the Cartesian project of the domination of Nature, as nefariously delineated by and fallaciously quantified by Aaldi.

Displacement was the modus operandi; some even argue it was the modus vivendi in this Dark Age of labyrinthology. Yet, inevitably, flora and fauna developed ways to thrive within and among the boundaries of the labyrinth, perhaps in that Darwinian fashion which is causing so much contention still in this day. It is reported by a British navigator in the early 1800s that the English Claret-Bellied Pheasant, purported to be hunted to its extirpation, was healthily living and propagating in the Derbyshire Amber Labyrinth. This was the first of a genus of reports documenting the conservative properties of labyrinths.

As man sullies the soil and burdens the beast, perhaps the labyrinth stands as a refuge. I speculate that we will grudgingly testify to man's destruction in the age to come, an age in which technology removes man further from his authentic being, and in which Nature becomes enemy. May a time come when the naturalist must navigate the labyrinth to observe the remaining survivors of a species?

And here we arrive at another mode of being the in the labyrinth: observational navigation [...] (Black Thicket, 501-503).

Gollesten's musings on labyrinth as refuge, as conservation sui generis, prove eerily correct. Today, many scientists have joined forces with labyrinthians to identify rare, endangered, and reputedly extinct species of flora and fauna within the boundaries of labyrinths. Their efforts, moreover, have engendered preservation campaigns that have successfully rendered a number of labyrinths as wildlife reserves.

Gollesten's musing, directly and indirectly, have also created a class of labyrinthians known, fittingly, as "Observational Navigators." Observational Navigators primarily walk labyrinths to study, explore, and wonder at the interface between the natural and the artificial in labyrinths.

While I am mainly a Metaphysical Navigator, I frequently enjoy Observational Navigation. In fact, one of my favorite holiday traditions involves birdwatching and bird counting in labyrinths across the country. As I mentioned in a comment to Alex's last thread, during this season, after visiting family in Cleveland, Ohio, I stole some time for myself to visit the Lake Erie Labyrinth northeast of the city.

My labyrinth birdwatching began casually, but, after descrying a number of rare birds, I chose to join the Audubon Society's annual Christmas Bird Count. This year marked the 109th Christmas Bird Count, in which thousands of citizen scientists count birds from December 14 to January 5.

The Lake Erie Labyrinth is considered a Class 2 labyrinth, or, more vernacularly, "of medium navigational difficulty." On this visit, my first in over 5 years, I came equipped with my binoculars. Natives, in recent years, have reported hearing the distinct mating call of the rare Gray Whooping Crane. However, no natives have yet observed the exquisite bird.

Before dawn, on a lightly pluvial day, which, I believe, is ideal navigation weather, I embarked in my waterproof brogans to trek the 6 miles of marshy grounds to reach the entrance of the Lake Erie Labyrinth. The labyrinth is situated in a lake basin and is built of softer rock compacted from glaciation tens of thousands of years ago. Given that the labyrinth was erected on wetlands, the boundaries have wide, thick bases that gradually taper to their crests. During two hours into my navigation, the sun rising just above the boundary ramparts, I espied a twiggy structure at a juncture, formed at the corner of the bases of two walls. On closer inspection, I beheld two blotchy eggs, at which time I realized I was observing a nest. Then, startled, I craned my neck at the sudden eruption of a stentorian "whoop" overhead.

It was the endangered Gray Whooping Crane.

I fumbled for my camera to capture this majestic creature, over 5 feet long and with a wingspan of nearly 8 feet. I was not quick enough, and, chagrinned, I continued my navigation.

After another two hours of navigation elapsed, I was approaching the center, which opens into a wet, grassy meadow of sorts about a mile from the Lake. Just when I thought my patient vigilance fruitless, I saw two cranes descending from the sky nearly a half-mile away. This time, my camera readied, I zoomed in and captured these tallest of North American birds right as they were alighting:

While the photograph does not make its namesake apparent, the Gray Whooping Crane is thusly christened for a narrow band of dark gray feathers that vertically line the anterior of its neck, which biologists believe is a either a geographical or sexual selection adaptation.

North American Whooping Crane populations number only in the hundreds, and the birds have only recently begun to breed naturally after man reduced them to near vanishing point. I was privileged, or should I say blessed, to have witnessed and photographed this exceedingly elusive bird.

I encourage all of you labyrinth enthusiasts out there to undertake Observational Navigation. What you see may help preserve some of this planet's most threatened beings. And ecolabyrinthians, continue your noble project.

And, we here at the CLP wish all of you a very Happy New Year. Bon chance as you begin to fulfill your Labyrinthian Resolutions in 2009!

Interview with Thomas Stalle (Part Two)

If you haven't read the first part of my exclusive interview with noted contemporary labyrinthian and Gollesten scholar Thomas Stalle, you can find it here. In this second segment, Stalle talks more about Gollesten's polarizing tome Science, Poetry, and Labyrinth, and addresses the factious nature of contemporary labyrinthology in the wake of Aaldi. The interview was conducted on 11.29.08 via Skype.

Alex: Why do you think that Gollesten allowed SPL to remain unpublished? Do you feel that it constitutes a finished, fully realized treatise?

Thomas: It's difficult to say for sure. However, Gollesten's letters from the early 1890's do seem to imply that SPL is an unfinished work. Moreover, it seems to have been something of an albatross which he could not complete nor decide to abandon. Take for example, what he says in a letter to Raif Osmanovic from June of 1892. He writes:

"... the ideas explored [in SPL] remain important to me, though I feel that I cannot do justice to them in a hermeneutico-labyrinthological sense. The conflation of poetry, image, science and labyrinthology may strike many as bizarre, even irresponsible. Even still, I feel that such interdisciplinary measures are critical to the exposition of the fundamental being of the labyrinth. Ultimately, perhaps language as such is insufficient, the play of sign and signifier unable to offer us truly primordial access."

I feel that perhaps Gollesten avoided publishing SPL because he did not want the ideas contained therein to be disseminated and codified as "labyrinthology." We note that Gollesten all but stopped publishing treatises in the last thirty years of his life, focusing more and more on lecturing and, later, painting. Ultimately, it is my own contention that the late Gollesten feels that the written word, and thus labyrinthology as such, is unsuitable to the study of labyrinths.

Alex: In this respect, Gollesten reminds me a lot of middle to late period Heidegger, who, as we know, he read extensively towards the end of his life.

Thomas: Absolutely. Gollesten was extremely inspired by Heidegger's tireless search to understand being at its most primordial. In many ways, his labyrinthological project is similarly focused and single-minded in scope.

Alex: Let's change gears a bit and talk about another subject that I know is important to you: the rifts that exist in contemporary labyrinthology in the wake of Kalev Aaldi. Do you feel that Aaldi, Milosovici and the Medial School constructivists are responsible for the almost insidious divergences that exist in labyrinthology?

Thomas: In a word, yes. I feel that the "split" in labyrinthology may be dated back to Aaldi largely because of the type of discourse we find in his writings and lectures. In a sense, Aaldi sought to invalidate the labyrinthologies that he inherited, pre-exteriorism in particular. Accordingly, his writing carries a polemical tone which naturally breeds critical contention. The factions that have emerged in labyrinthology in the last hundred years may all be traced back to Aaldi. We might say, in fact, that contemporary labyrinthology is, in many ways, a footnote to Aaldi, either supporting or rigorously disputing his labyrinthological positions. Gollesten, for example, spent much of his early academic life arguing back the labyrinth from the Medial School (Aaldi, Reede, Milosovici, Ozols, etc.). Subsequent labyrinthians, from circles as diverse as those embodied by the writings of Ambrose Walker and Coulet also have spilled much ink supporting or condemning the Medialists. People talk about various "crises" of contemporary labyrinthology. I think the truest crisis we face is overcoming Aaldi's shadow and mending the fabric of labyrinthological theory.


Be sure to check out part three of the interview, in which Stalle and I discuss contemporary and postmodern labyrinthians whose progressive writings appear to possess what is necessary to mend the "fabric" of which he speaks.

Interview with Thomas Stalle (Part One)

I conducted the following interview with Thomas Stalle on 11.29.08 via Skype. Look for parts two and three of our conversation to be posted here in the next couple days. Here we discuss Stalle's experience translating Gollesten's cryptic Science, Poetry and Labyrinth (to be published by Black Thicket Press in 2010). If anyone has any detailed questions/comments for Dr. Stalle, contact him in person at stalle_t@yahoo.com. Thanks again to Dr. Stalle for taking the time to talk to me.

Alex: Thomas, how are you? Can you hear me okay?

Thomas: Greetings Alex, I'm quite well and yes I hear you loud and clear. I’m just looking at your webpage right now, a very interesting project it seems to me.

Alex: Oh, thank you, I’m glad to hear you say that. Okay, let’s start by addressing a topic that I know all labyrinthians are chomping at the bit to know more about: the impending publication of your translation of HM Gollesten’s famous “lost” text, Wissenschaft, Dichtung und Labyrinth (Science, Poetry and Labyrinth), a text which was written in 1885, but left unpublished until 1946, eight years after Gollesten’s death. Could you tell me a bit about the difficulties involved in translating this elusive text?

Thomas: Thanks for your question, Alex. Even though the Framework is nearly twice as long, Science Poetry and Labyrinth proved much more time consuming to translate. I completed my translation of the Framework in just three years, I’ve been working on SPL now for almost a decade. At the level of language, the text is difficult, but perhaps no more demanding than Gollesten’s other works. Formally, however, the text is very tough to work with. Gollesten’s writing from the 1880's, SPL, Mind and Labyrinth, Perimeter as Center and What is the Labyrinth?, all incorporate sketches, photography, poetry and, in the case of SPL, a novella in the form of a parable detailing a young boy’s decision to remain on the floor of a labyrinth despite his parents’ decision to circumvent the boundaries. Maintaining the cohesiveness of Gollesten’s writing over this wide range of forms proved to be immensely difficult indeed.

Alex: Many labyrinthians argue that SPL represents a quantum shift in Gollesten’s thinking, do you agree?

Thomas: This is a difficult question. I agree, in a sense, but at the same time I also disagree - if that makes sense. I agree that in SPL and the texts which Gollesten published in the early 1900's there are some important distinctions to be made. For example, in his pre-1870 texts Gollesten is concerned always with arguing the labyrinth back from the constructivists who dominated the field in the early 1800's (Aaldi, Milosovici, Reede, and others). Gollesten’s writings from this period function largely as refutations of the constructivist position. With the publication of the Framework and the 1880's texts, Gollesten would abandon these critiques and focus on the pragmatic, psychical, and poetic faculties of the labyrinth as such. That being said, I feel that Gollesten’s labyrinthological project as a whole is remarkably consistent and focused; the ideas that are fleshed out in SPL are present in his text from the beginning.


Stay tuned for parts two and three.

A New Academy

The University of Western Manitoba has announced the creation of a doctoral program in labyrinthology. The program, expected to accept candidates in the fall of 2010, is anticipated to rival that of the renowned Alsdorf University in Germany, where Gollesten rose to labyrinthological fame while developing his Framework. Speculators are alleging Bernhard Smallencroft is in the running to chair the program.

Gollesten's Shadow

The following excerpt reveals well the extent to which Gollesten's views continue to exert influence over contemporary labyrinth studies. This passage sheds light on Gollesten's complicated interpretation of the ethical ramifications of boundary circumvention.

I urge anyone with even a passing interest in modern or postmodern labcrit to seek out Stalle's recent translations of Gollesten's Framework, and its companion text The Horizon of the Passage, at all costs.



"...we find in boundary circumvention a most glaring example of the unethical labyrinthian. So possessed is he by the need to reach the labyrinth’s telos, or perhaps to facilitate a state of affairs in which he might perceive the labyrinth as a whole, in its grand totality, that he violates the oldest principle of the labyrinth: he attempts to scale the massive stone columns that surround him, he thrashes through the tangles of hedging which encapsulate him and form the straits through which he has long wandered in toil and torment. Why, you may ask, is this such a transgression? Is not the man who transcends the strictures of the labyrinth merely just startlingly enterprising, perhaps even ingenious? Has not such a man found what amounts to a “shortcut” (Abkürzung) to avoid the perils which have befallen those sainted labyrinthians who alighted upon the darkened corridors for time immemorial before him?

I urge any man who would take this view to reevaluate not merely this perspective, but his whole moral constitution as such. I ask you, by the same logic, is not the man who steals his daily bread simply a wizened intellect who has found a way to sate his appetite with no recompense? Has the man who convinces the cordwainer that his boots are made not of wood but of pure Moroccan jute not committed an injustice to Saint Crispin? Let us allow the writing of Kant to guide our thinking: an ethic of the labyrinth hinges upon a categorical understanding of ethics as a whole. To endeavor to transcend the walls of the labyrinth violates the principle law of the labyrinth and thus is tantamount to blasphemy. In a more abstract sense, such an action effectively transforms the labyrinth’s structure at large. The center becomes not the telos but a mere grain of visual datum - a destination, but not a goal. The perimeter too becomes re-accessible, so much so that we might witness from the top of an obelisk our well-wishing colleagues in the wold surrounding us, saluting and carrying on, puzzled but amused to see us transcending the formal edicts of the labyrinth."