Hubert, "Remedios Varo & Benjamin Peret"

[Dave Monroe]

... from Renee Riese Hubert, Magnifying Mirrors:
Women, Surrealism, and Partnership (Lincoln: U of
Nebraska P, 1994), Chapter 10, "Subversion and
Creativity: Remedios Varo and Benjamin Peret," pp.
255-76 ...

Clothes, wrappings, ribbons, threads, and strings
become involved in a constant process of doing and
undoing contours, or reestablishing and affeacing
relations between different orders of things as well
as both concealing and revealing a crucial enigma.
(258)

... she intermingles Christian and pagan "intertexts"
for the sake of subversive clashes.  (259)

Peret's writings often feature equally disquieting
juxtapositions of discordant elements, notably by
allowing the commonplaces of urban modernity to
encroach on and undermine the sublime, thus producing
a hilariously satirical mismatch.  (261)

... a dream process in which the act of recognition is
deliberately hindered by unnamable shapes belonging to
shifting webs.  (261)

Rosa is mentioned in many lines and many texts,
seemingly without designating and identifiable woman. 
The name can refer to both a flower and a color, which
in true surrealist manner enter into new combinations
and new movements in the course of the text.  Rosa
watches, Rosa dreams, rosa is an image, Rosa is a
halo, but no single metaphor or principle of analogy
emerges as it does, for instance, in Renaissance or
symbolist lyrics.  Rosa functions as a conjuring word
that opens up the world of imagination.  (261)

... the "text" in this last excerpt is Benjamin
Peret's collection of love poems (written just before
he and Varo met), Je sublime, but, of course, cf. V.
(and, of course, V.).  Cf. also David Cowart (Thomas
Pynchon: The Art of Illusion) on Henry Adams' (Mont
St. Michel and Chartres) description of the rose (!)
window at Chratres cathedral as a source (along with,
as often noted, Michaal Graves' The White Goddess)
for, in particular, Pynchon's description of the
dismantling of the Bad Priest.  V. sub Rosa?  Hm ...

This, by the way, is one of my quibbles with Charles
Hollander, who rightly notes that the use, mention of
the Remedios Varo paintings in The Crying of Lot 49
aludes to the Menippean satires of Marcus Terentius
(!) Varro (!!), but seems to all but dismiss the
(obvious, I think) relevance of Varo's paintings
themselves, and does not explore the possible
resonances--even to Hollander's own characterization
of Pynchon--to be found in her other works, not to
mention in her own connections, biography.  Again,
from Hubert ...

Most of the writers and artists discussed in previous
chapters had to go into exile during the war years for
political reasons.  There are at least oblique
references to the Nazis in [Leonora] Carrington's and
[Ulrica] Zurn's writings.  [Lee] Miller actively
sought out war sites as scenes of representation. 
Although [Alice] Rahon and [Wolfgang] Paalen fled from
occupied Europe, their works barely reflect political
disturbances.  Benjamin Peret (1899-1959) and Remedios
Varo (1908-63) are the first couple actively commited
to political action, particularly during the Spanish
Civil War, and whose partnership depended to a large
extent on their political involvement.  (255)

... and it is perhaps not uninteresting to note that
one of Benjamin Peret's major works is a surrealist
novella of sorts with the resonant (for the 60s)
title, Death to Pigs.  But do see ...

Hollander, Charles. "Pynchon, JFK and the CIA: Magic
   Eye Views of The Crying of Lot 49." Pynchon Notes
   40-41 (1997): 61-106

Interesting, ingenious, and, as we've seen here
lately, still, endlessly provoctive ...



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