New Oligreff text due in June

Apologies for the lack of blog updates, John and I have both been immensely busy (me with a new Gramont translation and John with organizing the Charles Dedal Colloquium, more on both of these later).

I've just received exciting news from my colleague Tavin Cranston that Essex UP Press will be publishing a new collection of Jacques Oligreff's writing from the 1950's in late June. According to the editor, Stanislav Barta, current chair of the Populist Labyrinth Syndicate and one of Europe's foremost Oligreffians (not to mention one of the only Oligreff scholars who still operates from within the rigid strictures of new-modern recursivism), the collection is to contain "daguerreotypes, acentrist ephemera, Great Room meditations, the full text of the Borges correspondences, and, as is always the case with Oligreff, a labyrinthology that ever casts its eye towards the preponderance of the perimeter."

I think it's well worth our time here to recall what is perhaps Oligreff's most enduring insight, taken from "A Case for New Populism" (1948):

Le culte du centre threatens, at its core, to unhinge both that which the labyrinth constitutes and that which proves constitutive for navigation therein. What is vital is a blurring, the obscurcissant brouillard that Gollesten so presciently put forth in his own labyrinthology. All navigations have existed and are existing.

The Third Door

In 2011, French publishing house Pomme Perdu will launch a series of releases it is calling Minuit sur le Mur, or, Midnight on the Wall. Each release—we are anticipating a total of 12—will feature a contemporary labyrinthologist discussing a specific architectural or structural feature of labyrinths. These unique discussions, which will assume the form of a collection of short essays, will be accompanied by photography by some of the leading photo-navigators in the field. Argentinian photo-navigator Espinoza Gorjado, whose "Study in Defamiliarization" recently graced the walls of many a contemporary museum, is just one of the contributors whose work (much of which is new) I cannot wait to behold.

Alex and I were privileged to receive this week an advanced copy of the first in the series: La Troisième Porte, or, The Third Door, by one of the founding fathers of Neo-Recursivism, Jacques Oligreff.

For our readers who are less familiar with this structure, a third door is "a common labyrinth structure, though not ubiquitous, characterized by a phenomenon of light in the labyrinth atmosphere that creates the illusion of a boundary or obstruction, but is in fact permissive; the only exit to some Second Centers." (CLP, Labyrinths in Theory and Practice: An Introduction, Boston: Essex UP, 2000.)

With the permission of Pomme Perdu, we are proud post a sneak peek of Oligreff's essay with a photograph of an exemplary third door in Amant Fernald's White Slate Indoor Labyrinth outside Ontario:

The third door beckons us— like ghosts we must believe in, for the burden of disbelief is too much.

Oligreff on the State of Navigation in the late 2000's

Not normally known for doomsaying, Jacques Oligreff offerered some pointed criticisms of navigation in our present epoch at the MLC (Midwest Labyrinthology Consortium) meeting which took place this past weekend at DePaul Univeristy in Chicago. I managed to record most of his talk on microcassette (though my recorder died near the end of the almost 140 minute presentation). I'll try to post some audio excerpts later in the week.

"The call for a particularly stringent, codified system of labyrinth ethics - rules of the game, if you will - proves particularly urgent in the wake of Crete's labtech. Gone are the days in which navigators toiled solemnly and without interruption. Gone are the days in which the navigator, looking up at the firmament above him, summoned something deep within himself in order to find the will to press on, against all odds, to find his way to the center or to ambulate reverently, if he so chooses, free from the duress of centrality.

Last autumn I visited the Canyonlands Cave Labyrinth in Utah, one of my favorite domestic labyrinths, and one of the late Kobrin's most successful and inspired labyrinthectural designs. In the past, Chantal, my dear wife, and I have always enjoyed the rigor involved in successfully navigating the labyrinth. We've navigated to the center some 15 times now, and it never has ceased to be a challenge. This past visit was different. As we reached what I knew to be the notoriously difficult second center (Kobrin employs a system of deceptively angled obelisks to compel the navigator to believe he is congressing when in fact he is egressing at a rapid clip), I noticed, attached to the wall, a schematic for finding the center, replete with fastidiously documented photographs of the twists and turns one would encounter throughout the rest of his navigation.

I ask you my fellow labyrinthians, will we allow this to continue? Who will stand with me against the subversive, techno-labyrinthians who endeavor to do violence to the very essence of the labyrinth as we know and cherish it?"

Spirited words, indeed. While I sympathize with Oligreff on the lamentable abundance of subversive and misanthropic navigation in contemporary labyrinthology, I'm reticent to agree that a "rules of the game" is needed. Such a proposal is, to be sure, nothing if not prescriptive and, in a way, appears to run counter to the very essence of labyrinthology. I'm curious hear what any of you might think.

Pierre Coulet: Selected Bibliography and Criticism

In response to Alex's introduction of Klemens Logewnik, I referred to the equally obscure and unconscionably neglected French labyrinthologist Pierre Coulet.

While Coulet lived a notoriously hermetic existence, he wrote prodigiously on a wide spectrum of labyrinthological topics. Renewed interest in his far-reaching body of thought has furnished several recent translations that successfully manage to tackle Coulet's infamously yet rewardingly dense language. These texts are veritable sine qua nons to any complete education in 20th century labyrinthology. I am supplying a selected bibliography (chronologically) that I exhort every labyrinth enthusiast to peruse. Brave and noble scholars, let me know if you fancy the titles in French if you wish to wrestle with the original texts.

• Coulet, P. (1927). In the Vestibule: A New Metaphysics of Entry. Paris: Verre de Hibou.

• ---. (1929). The Metamorphosis from Man to Navigator. Paris: Verre de Hibou.

• ---. (1932). Exile in the Labyrinth: Recursive Navigation. Paris: Plein Air.

• ---. (1935). Some Values of Circumambulation. London: Ashgrove.

• ---. (1941). The First Juncture. New York: Black Thicket.

• ---. (1945). The Castaway, Theseus Unbound, and Other Short Stories. Paris: Plein Air.

Criticism on Coulet still remains sparse, although I suspect we will soon witness a cornucopia of new works. (The University of Manitoba's emerging advanced labyrinthology program is reputed to be crafting a Coulet concentration. I, for one, am eager to learn who the resident Coulet scholar will be.)

Below, find a few of the more significant titles (also chronologically) in the nascent field of Coulet criticism.

• Oligreff, J. (1972). A Coulet Primer. Paris: Ardoise.

• Christophe, Z. (1980). Coulet's Stages of Transformation. Paris: Ardoise.

• Vrzala, A. (2003). Navigating Late Coulet's Allegory of the Drifter. New York: Black Thicket.