cathannabel
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L’Emploi du temps (Passing Time) – the mystery of Bleston
Posted in Literature, Michel Butor on January 22, 2012
My present preoccupation is with Butor’s second novel, L’Emploi du temps[1], published in 1956, whose English translation is currently out of print, but which holds a particular fascination, amongst Butor’s many and diverse works. It’s inspired a remarkable number of other literary and artistic works – Allen Fisher’s poem ‘Butor – Passing Time Again’[2], Richard Wollheim’s novel A Family Romance[3], Steve Hawley’s DVD ‘Yarn’[4], and, as we discovered very recently, W G Sebald’s ‘Bleston: A Mancunian Cantical’[5]. This last is not only a direct response to Passing Time, but confirms a gut feeling that the Max Ferber section of The Emigrants[6] is inspired by Butor’s depiction of the city they both came to as strangers, just over a decade apart. A lot more about that to come…
The description of a northern industrial English town is recognisable even 50 years after the time – pollution, fog, and frightful food – and has struck a chord with English readers in particular. However, its interest is wider than that because as you follow the narrator as he tries to find his way around the city, the initially familiar becomes increasingly disquieting and you start to wonder exactly where you are.
One of the intriguing things about the novel is the gap between the prosaic realism of many passages, and the fantastic/supernatural elements which pervade the text. These elements, and the passionate hatred between the narrator and the city, are difficult to reconcile with the actual events depicted – nothing happens that isn’t entirely explicable in rational terms. But from the first page, there is an atmosphere of terror, which intensifies as the narrator finds himself more and more beleaguered. The language is intense and dramatic – Butor talks of fear, of murder and blood, betrayals and lies, secrets and vengeance. These prosaic events take on supernatural overtones – the difficulties and disappointments he encounters are blamed on the opposition of the city, a traffic accident is attempted murder, the many fires are the manifestations of the spirit which possesses and consumes the city, and the fog and polluted atmosphere are enchantments that sedate the inhabitants.
Clearly, Bleston is Manchester, where Butor spent a couple of miserable years, and the descriptions are both recognisable and drawing on the archetypes of Manchester as the iconic industrial city. It’s at once a real, grimy, foggy place, and the infernal city of de Tocqueville and Engels, Dickens and Mrs Gaskell. It’s also, though, the city of Cain, Babylon, and the labyrinth of Daedalus. It’s a city of war, and a city at war with itself. I’ll return to that in a future entry, because I think that is the key to the transformation of the grubby ordinariness of a modern industrial city into a monster.
[1] L’Emploi du temps (Paris: Minuit, 1956)
[2] Allen Fisher, ‘Butor, Passing Time Again’, Gravity (Cambridge: Salt, 2004)
[3] Richard Wollheim, A Family Romance (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1969)
[5] W G Sebald, ‘Bleston. A Mancunian Cantical’, Across the Land and the Water : Selected Poems, 1964-2001 (London : Hamish Hamilton, 2011)
[6] W G Sebald, The Emigrants (London: Vintage, 2002)
Manifesto/Introduction
Posted in Genocide, Literature, Michel Butor on January 22, 2012
My probably infrequent entries to this blog will, I anticipate, fall into three categories, potentially overlapping. Firstly, the work of Michel Butor, nouveau romancier, far less well known than he deserves, one of the most fascinating writers of the postwar era, and all of whose works are rich in allusion and reflection, ideas and passion, intellect and humanity. Secondly, I’ll occasionally write about what other things I’m reading (currently Proust and Stephen King), listening to or watching. And there may be events, anniversaries, and other sources of inspiration that prompt an entry from time to time.
I’m an administrator at the University of Sheffield, where I’m also a part-time student, studying French Language & Cultures for my second undergraduate degree (the first, in English & Biblical Studies, was also with Sheffield, many decades ago). I grew up in West Africa, an experience which has been hugely influential on me, and which can be evidenced not only in my enthusiastic support for Ghana’s national football team (in contrast to my despairing loyalty to Nottingham Forest), but also in my interest in postcolonial African history and, because I lived in Northern Nigeria during the bloody preamble to the Civil War, in genocide and xenophobia wherever they manifest themselves. Alongside my work, and my studies, and my family life, I am passionate about music, literature and visual art.
Postscript
My entries to this blog have proved to be more frequent than I had anticipated. And the topics I’m covering have shifted too. I completed the degree referred to above, and am now a part-time PhD student, doing research on Michel Butor and W G Sebald, and that is absorbing all of my writing/thinking energy on those topics. What I’m reading, listening to or watching does inform my blogging, as do events and anniversaries. But if a theme has emerged over the years it has been more political than I anticipated with a strong focus, not just during Refugee Week, on the plight of those who flee war zones and persecution, and how we respond to their need for sanctuary. I retired from my post at the University of Sheffield at the end of 2015 and hope to have more time to think and write, some of the output of which may end up here. You have been warned.
PPS
Anyone interested in finding out more about Butor – and it would delight me enormously if anyone was inspired to read him by this blog – should start with the novels, which is fine if you read French, a tad more tricky if not, as the English translations are not easy to track down, or rather expensive if you do. I’ll give details of both editions, where possible:
Passage de Milan (Paris: Minuit, 1954)
L’Emploi du Temps (Paris: Minuit, 1956)/ Passing Time
La Modification (Paris: Minuit, 1957)/ A Change of Heart or Second Thoughts
Degrés (Paris: Gallimard, 1960)/ Degrees
Mobile: étude pour une représentation des États-Unis (Paris: Gallimard, 1962) / Mobile
Portrait de l’artiste en jeune singe: capriccio (Paris: Gallimard, 1967) / Portrait of the Artist as a Young Ape
Anthologie nomade (Paris: Gallimard, 2004)
Passing Time 