Some words from Philip Cunha

Today's recursivism takes as its object that ever-receeding vesper that was the object of Gramont's project- the possibility of truly primordial eggression. If we consider centrism as ground, a tacit assumption perhaps, but one which has become inextricably embedded in the tradition at least since Desmarais, it becomes not only the most urgent question that the Recursivists find themselves tasked with addressing, but one upon which the much-discussed new paradigm of navigation is predicated.

Gramont and the Cut-Up Mode of Labyrinthology

As many of our readers are no doubt aware, much of Matthieu Gramont's labyrinthology is heavily informed by Dadaism. We know from his letters that Gramont corresponded extensively with Tristan Tzara in the 1930's. Particularly influential upon Gramont's labyrinthology is Tzara's notion of the cut-up method of composition. As Desmarais and Belanger turned their critical efforts increasingly towards the problems of ethical navigation, establishing the mode of labyrinthology that has since become known as Principalist Centralism, Gramont's writings became more polemical and more oblique. He became possessed of the notions that labyrinthology must mirror properly recursive navigation, and that virtually all labyrinthology that preceded Recursivism was, at root, prescriptivist and sought to delimit the scope of both labyrinthecture and navigation. In a 1938 letter to Tzara, Gramont writes,

"Explicative and poetic modes of discourse, though dissimilar in execution, do equal violence to the mystery of the labyrinth and thus to the fundamental aim of Recursivism as such. It is thus that a labyrinthology that is proper to Recursivism must employ aleatory and even misleading prose that is, to a certain degree, fundamentally unparsable to the reader or - at the very least - a discourse which lends itself to such a subjectivism that, for the hypothetical walker, it becomes 'in each case my own." (trans. Schaeffer, 1998)

If we look at Gramont's lectures and scant publications of the 1940's, we find a labyrinthology that is, by all rights, inscrutable. Gramont eschewed punctuation and structure, composing instead through chance-based processes of reorganization. According to Inès Bédard, Gramont would often flick matches at his manuscripts, letting "the documents burn here and there before stomping out the flames...he would piece together the fragments later with no concern as to how they would function as a text." By way of example, I've quoted from an unpublished essay on the atriums of the Alpujjara Mountain Labyrinth given as a lecture in 1941:

"in rant in the atriums the contradiction walker is with the chamber the attention to light allowing structural tasked like notions as components scriptural or design which may most productive offer take a must arriving atrium the ring is remain charge purely passive actively passive this deciphering seems of terms, for the more of example emotive second upon stance exuded by a both base to the location aesthetic paid of either a navigation of center to disclose the receive the vestibule but clue disclosures the room may be temporal structural aesthetic the logic of or purely rooted as or even fourth he mode of then engagement when intuition bullfighter regarding in the navigator reaching the atrium must all of knowing door or how to egress third and in something like secondary…" (trans. Sonnenberg, 2010)

I'm curious indeed to hear what some of our readers thoughts on the late Gramont, the writings of whom we have yet to dissect here at CLP, but which remain relevant and compelling in our current epoch.

Fatalism and the Late Kobrin

Kobrin, age 24, in Győr, circa 1876

Transcribing my many (and at times incomprehensible/deranged) navnotes from Manaus - notes which, once rendered in text, I will surely post for our readers here - has given me cause reflect anew on the enigma that is Mezin Kobrin. As most of our readers no doubt know, in his lifetime Kobrin traveled extensively and completed eighteen labyrinths, using materials ranging from glass to bamboo to igneous rock. Remarkably, Kobrin's productivity increased as he aged. In fact, twelve of these eighteen labyrinths were constructed in the last decade of his life. As I have just navigated the previously unknown, arguably unnavigable and center-less Amazonian labyrinth which I have dubbed the Manuas Cave Labyrinth, I have been given cause to reflect on Kobrin's late labyrinthectural writings, writings with which I was previously unfamiliar and would have proven invaluable indeed had I been aware of them. For curious readers, these late writings have been anthologized and translated by Ari Ghisk under the title "Contributions to Acentrism" and are available via Junctures Ltd. Printing.

My navjournals will provide context to my sense that in the case of the Manuas labyrinth (as well as the Amazon Basin labyrinth, which as Cruemer noted when beginning work "finishing" its construction seemed "an utter aporia of walking" - a labyrinth which, given my recent navigation, I now believe was left intentionally unnavigable by Kobrin at the time of his death), we have perhaps an unprecedented example of a purposefully center-less, and, ultimately for the walker, fatal labyrinth. Simply put, it is my contention that Kobrin, possessed of the notion of a sovereign, "pure" labyrinth, began, in the waning years of his life, to design labyrinths devoid of traditional structural components (atriums, Great Rooms, and, yes, even centers). It is thus that a certain nihilism enters Kobrin's work, an alarming symptom of a sociopathic labyrinthecture that was arrested only by the designer's own failing health.

Kobrin at age 65 (Szolnok, Summer, 1941)

The late Kobrin is remarkably dense, ponderous and poetic, so I will quote only this brief and profoundly relevant passage, taken from Section XVI of the Szeged Lectures (1928).

The center is a leaping-forward if left remote, an area in which the corridor gathers itself into itself only in the absence of external entities. It is what is nearest and most far away from the subject, a guiding principle that may do only violence. To dissemble it, to upend its unavoidable thrust, this is our task. What of the squandering that occurs if the center is left permeable? The labyrinth thus becomes history, machination, "prone-conquerable" to the walker. To surpass this is the enactment of proper labyrinthecture - the truth of proper recursivism in the wake of Gerrit.

What Kobrin calls for then is nothing other than a labyrinth without a center. But where does this leave us as historians and navigators? What is the place of the labyrinthologist in such a labyrinthology? And where does this leave the walker?

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."

Constructivism and Recursivism

It may interest our readers to know that after years without communication, I’ve recently been in dialogue once again with my dear friend Jules Poulsen, labyrinthian in residence at Bursa University. Poulsen is perhaps the preeminent Reede scholar in contemporary labyrinthology, and despite his constructivist leanings, I find the majority of his scholarship to be well considered and quite important within the realm of our current epoch’s labyrintholgical studies. His is a constructivism which eschews Aaldian reductivism in favor of a more disclosive, quasi-ontological labyrinthology that still hinges on interiorist principles. Poulsen has been researching the Valdis Reede archives at Bursa for the last five years, and working on what will surely be the definitive edition of Reede’s labyrinthology. Apropos of the heated exchanges we’ve been having at CLP meetings of late about the dialectic that exists between recursivism and constructivism, I decided to consult Poulsen on the notion of such an interconnectedness, one that, if it exits, synthesizes important labyrinthological positions of two schools of thinking which seem, on the surface, to be diametrically opposed. Poulsen’s response corroborated several of my ideas, and proved to be quite elucidating indeed:

"... I think there are elements of Reede's text which, if properly considered, go a long way towards ‘bridging the gap’ between modern constructivism and recursivism. I am sympathetic to your position re: the dialectic(s) that exist between disparate branches of contemporary labyrinthology. As Bruun said, ‘labyrinthology x, even if it posits conflicting views as labyrinthology y, may still be shown to be a subset of labyrinthology y, and vice versa.’ We find evidence of such an interconnectedness to exist between Reede’s middle period quantalogical interiorism and the circumambulatory recursivism of Desmarais and Duverger.

In Reede’s text, though there is an Aaldian skepticism as to the nature/existence of the corporeal, extra-mental labyrinth as such, we find an ontological, almost Gollestenian reverence for the being structure of labyrinth qua labyrinth. Reede’s text prioritizes neither center nor perimeter, progression nor egression. His is a labyrinthology which at once calls for a radical skepticism on the part of the navigator with respect to his sensible faculties, and identifies the pre-predicative elements (corporeal and psychical) which constitute and sustain the navigatory experience.

Recall that Desmarais, in Il y a Seulement le Couloir, posits a very similar system of labyrinthological perception, but for different reasons. For Desmarais, questions about the corporeal nature of the labyrinth are problems which have been created by the constructivists and, in his view, are best left to the New Interiorists. In short, the ‘problem of body in the labyrinth’ is not a problem for Desmarais. This being said, Desmarais is, like Reede, concerned with the fundamental nature of navigation and its relationship to the being structure of the labyrinth at large. Desmarais charts the pre-predicative navigational experience by way of the navigator’s sensible framework, and comes up with a system of labyrinthology which, if idealogy is bracketed, is almost identical to that of Valdis Reede.”

This is precisely the kind of progressive, non-factious labyrinthology that we here at CLP are excited about. Look for Poulsen, along with Philip Cunha, to be a big name in the field in 2009. Anyone else have thoughts about the 'common ground' that may be said to exist between these two disparate systems of labyrinthology?

The French Recursivists

The only known photograph of Matthieu Gramont, taken by Inès Bédard in Vitré, Ille-et-Vilaine in 1940, two years before his untimely death.

Inès Bédard, Paris, 1944 (photographer unknown)

From left to right: Hubert Belanger, Rémy Desmarais, Arnaud Duverger. Photo taken in 1939 by Maurice Fournier near the perimeter of the Belovezhskaya Pushcha Labyrinth, Belarus.

French Recursivism: A Brief Overview

John’s excellent Pierre Coulet bibliography thread below made me realize that we here at CLP have, heretofore, presented precious too few posts which investigate the fascinating annals of 20th century French labyrinthological thought. The French occupy an important and unique place in the canon of modern labyrinthology. Undoubtedly the most intriguing, not to mention controversial, of French labyrinthological factions were the Recursivists, a group born out of a manifesto written by Matthieu Gramont in 1939.

Gramont was an erstwhile exteriorist who had grown dissatisfied with labyrinthology at large as a result of the widespread influence of New Constructivism in 20th century European intellectual circles. He reacted with ire to the dominance of Aaldian thinking in modern labyrinthology, putting forth theories that rejected both constructivist and exteriorist ideas alike. For Gramont, the walker should fully embrace le chaos de la navigation (“the chaos of navigation”), employing counter-intuitive, willfully anti-logical navigational tendencies in an effort to, at all costs, avoid both the center and the perimeter alike. Gramont’s labyrinthology was, of course, reviled by Aaldians and Gollestenians, though certain of the more idiosyncratic acolytes of the latter contingent did find his ideas invigorating (c.f. Belanger’s Gramont at the Perimeter of Gollesten). For Gramont, what mattered most was existing as “walker qua walker,” and nothing more.

Gramont met with an almost poetic demise at the young age of 27 in the Shiriri Mountain Labyrinth in 1942, apparently resigning himself to wander the awe-inspiring labyrinth for several days until he perished of hunger. The mantle of Recursivism was taken up by Arnaud Duverger, Inès Bédard, and Rémy Desmarais, the former of whom used a highly selective interpretation of Coulet’s First Juncture to provide theoretical underpinnings to Recursivism.

I’ll try to get excerpts from Gramont’s manifesto and Desmarais’ seminal essay Il y a Seulement le Couloir (“There is Only the Corridor”) posted in the next couple days.