The Libertine     by Louis Aragon Original title: Le Libertinage Original language: French Published by Calder Publications Limited Pub. Date: 1994 Format: Paperback, 160 pages ISBN: 071454020X List Price: $11.95, £6.99 Buy online from Amazon.co.uk for £6.99 Buy online from Amazon.com for $11.95 Published by Calder Pub. Date: 1987 Pub. Place: UK Format: Paperback, 185 pages List Price: £6.99 Not available for ordering Published by Calder Pub. Date: 1987 Pub. Place: UK Format: Hardcover, 185 pages Not available for ordering

Prefacing this collection of very short stories, Aragon writes: ‘I have sought the illusion of having infinite power over the world, as others seek it in opium. Events yielded to my will. I retouched the good Lord and gave him whiskers.’ This youthful arrogance, this disrespect for the rules of reality and narrative convention produces an amazing set of fragmentary episodes, each of whose parts are pieced together in the manner of a Surrealist collage. In The Big Torus, for example, the preparations for a wedding-night are juxtaposed with the build-up of international hostilities prior to the outbreak of war and shot through with images of money-lenders on hot Cairo nights, brothels emptying and carrier pigeons falling from the skies. In Parameters a host of vague characters converge around the figure of a mysterious man who spends a summer in a country house beside a river. In The Mirror-wardrobe, One Fine Evening a scene of possible marital infidelity is acted out in front of an eclectic audience of Generals, Presidents and Siamese twins, the husband, too afraid to open the wardrobe in which his usurper may be hiding, succeeding only in smashing his own image in the wardrobe mirror. What emerges from this frenzy of disintegration is a strange type of coherence, the moment of clarity that sometimes emerges after surpassing the limits (the titles Parameters and The Big Torus both imply circumscription and boundaries — which, in both cases, are broken).

‘Regiments attack horses, windows spit forth pitch and there are blows struck between the sky and us. Concepcion wanders about aimlessly. Can you see her? A black man takes her in his arms. Three, four floors. Gunfire and pikes. The universe creaks on a bed. Tassels on the drapery, sad tassels. Blood flows in the rebellious town. Now the man is looking at a patch of stars and the bride’s white stockings are raised up over her thighs. Shadows dance in the wind.’ p159 (from The Big Torus)