The Blue Flowers [Paperback]

 

 

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Raymond Queneau (1903-1976) provided a summary of his novel "The Blue Flowers" (1965): "...'I dream that I am a butterfly and pray there is a butterfly dreaming he is me.' The same can be said of the characters in my novel...". The plot wigwags between the bedlam-inducing Duke of Auge (clobbering his way through History at 200 year clips) and the perennially-dozy Cidrolin (fixed to the '60s and his barge on the Seine).

Is one dreaming the other? That is the basic conceit of this lavishly surreal and philosophically-rich novel.

I espeially recommend this title to readers who enjoy books by Italo Calvino, Umberto Eco & Georges Perec.

Did I mention the talking horses?

'The Blue Flowers' is the most lovable of all Raymond Queneau's novels, one of those rare books you never want to end (for me, the only others I can think of are 'Huckleberry Finn' and 'Dance to the music of time'). It relates two paralell narratives (or rather - and Queneau is the great mathematical novelist! - base and perpendicular narratives): the historical narrative of the endearingly aggressive Duc d'Auge, nay-sayer to royal authority and public opinion, friend of Gilles de Rais and the Marquis de Sade, and debunker of religion to the extent of daubing on caves in the Perigord region to 'prove' the existence of humanity before Adam; his three daughters, including the defective, bleating Phelise, and their small-minded spouses; his squire Mouscaillot and their talking horses, philosophical Demosthenes and taciturn Stef; and his clerical foils, the abbes Biroton and Riphinte. We meet the Duke at 175 year historical intervals - refusing to rejoin the barbarous crusades in 1264, and forced to slaughter disapproving bourgeoisie; investing in new weaponry, most notably the cannon, in defence of his castle in 1439; dabbling in alchemy in 1614; fleeing the French Revolution in 1789. Throughout he hunts, visits the capital, marries woodcutters' young daughters, feasts ferociously, and debates with his clergy.
From the terrifying active Duke, the contemporary story focuses on passive Cidrolin, once wrongly convicted for a crime for which he is still persecuted by an unknown graffiti artist who daubs obscene accusations on his fence every night. Now living on a barge, drinking endless glasses of essence of fennel, he doesn't do much, giving directions to tourists, staring at construction sites or the nearby camping site. Any trip out of the ordinary invariably finds him back where he started; conversations are banal and repetitive. Like the Duke, he has three daughters and sons-in-law, a dead wife and the first name Joachim. He spends most of his time taking siestas, dreaming of the Duke. When the Duke sleeps, usually replete from an enormous meal, he dreams of Cidrolin. Queneau says his book's starting point was the old Chinese saying about a philosopher - When he went to sleep, he dreamt of a butterfly; when he woke up, he wondered whether he was a butterfly dreaming of a philosopher.
'Flowers' is, according to the experts, Queneau's most dense and philosophical novel, an intimidating mixture of Chinese philosophy, 'Finnegan's Wake', Plato, Hegel etc. It certainly deals with Big Themes, such as History, Time, Cosmology, Art, the Importance and Interpretation of Dreams. But for the less intellectually alert amongst us (including me), 'Flowers' offers sundry, more accessible pleasures. The comic set-pieces, which can arise from slapstick; bathos and deflated rhetoric; the deadpan recording of absurd conversations, and the absurd convolutions of deadpan conversations. the characters, from whom biography and psychology is deliberately and crucially elided, nevertheless end up being so completely endearing you don't want to leave them. The eulogy to dreams and their subversive power over official history. The detective story element - what crime was Cidrolin accused of? Who is his persector? Why is the watchman of the camp spying on him? Who sabotaged the new flats? Mostly, 'Flowers' is a joy for its language: the historical settings and wide social range of characters allowing for an Augian feast of archaic and obsolete words, jaw-breaking technical terms, slang, puns, neologisms, for all of which Barbara Wright finds delightful and rich equivalents in the wealth of English life and literature. So inventive, audacious and important is her translating, she should really be credited as the book's co-author.

Queneau is a master, as is his translator Barbara Wright. I don't think you will find a translation that communicates more of the book's essence than this one. Every sentence is a play on words and meaning...Wright manages to take Queneau's French "jokes" and make them equally artistic English ones. This book is a delight in its entirety, perfectly deliberate and crafted, yet whimsical, personal, rambling, historical, and more all at once. It is as forward-thinking as Joyce's Ulysses, and in my opinion as important a primer for the ultimate literature.

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5.0 out of 5 stars Past, present, past becoming present; and dreams!
There is a phrase in the original french edition of this book which explains everything: "REVER ET REVELER C'EST A PEU PRES LE MEME MOT". Read more

Published on Dec 30 1999 by Michele Chemolli

5.0 out of 5 stars A book about dreams, past, present, a barge and a knight.
Think of a book with two main characters and you cannot tell which one is actually living or is just the dream of the other. Well, if it sounds strange it is normal. Read more

Published on Jan 11 1998

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