‘Maintenant que tous les arts sont morts, un immense pouvoir s’éveille en moi après cet abandon et dans ma solitude. Pour moi qui suis né avec l’athéisme de mon siècle, cette histoire s’achève par un goût de l’agriculture et de l’astronomie.
- Je vous adore, je n’adore que vous, dis-je à la Terre et au Ciel.
Pieds nus sur le sable, athée, je n’étais pas sans âme’.1
This post is the continuation of: François Augiéras (II).
El Golea
The El Golea chapter2 starts with a Nietzsche quote: ‘Les œuvres qui ont réussi à survivre étaient toutes, au sens le plus profond du mot: de grandes immoralités’. The West was for Augiéras: Sade, Nietzsche, Rimbaud, AND the resurrection.
‘So many appeals only deepened my loneliness under the starry sky, I accepted my share of eternity, which separated me from men, granted me to the afterlife … Should I regret my mistake, my now hopeless loneliness: the elite I was writing for does not exist … especially as it would first be necessary to define what can be called an elite. It is enough to observe around oneself to see that the satisfaction of the material needs, or the instinct of reproduction of the species, dominates everything. There is perhaps not one man (or woman) in a thousand interested in higher and disinterested questions…3
In the English edition the same Nietzsche quote reads: ‘All great works and deeds that have remained and have not been washed away by the waters of time - were they not all in the profoundest sense immoralities?’ Quite different, but a lot closer to the original German text: ‘Alle grossen Werke und Thaten, welche stehn geblieben sind und von den Wellen der Zeit nicht fortgespült wurden, - waren sie nicht alle im tiefsten Verstände grosse Unmoralitäten?’
This is a problem with translations (to and from French). Augiéras would probably have loved the original imagery, but likely had to make due with the text as he quote’s it. An important reference I feel, as he later in the book laments the west has lost its will to dominate.
‘The Whites, after having through their perfect vulgarity destroyed all existing notions of the sacred, and first of all their own, now present themselves as the heirs of all the arts of the world; they are at best intermediaries between a past which escapes them and an unforeseeable future’.4
‘Because finally the Russians, the Arabs, the Chinese, the Jews, the Bulgarians, all the future masters of the world … mom (Polish – Slavic) connects me obscurely with the enemies of Europe’.5
Augiéras lived this ‘end of empire’; to visit his friend in Dira (in today’s Mali) he boarded a vessel from Bordeaux to Dakar (in today’s Senegal), took the train to Bamako, then traveled north to Dira. After his usual overstaying his welcome, he took a boat over the Niger river to Gao, traveled from there in convoy over land to El Golea (in today’s Algeria). All the while he had not left ‘France’. He inherited the Buffalo-Bordj (former fortress with palm plantations close to El Golea) from his uncle, but lost it as France was losing even its ‘Will to Power’ over ‘French Algeria’.
Augiéras seemed to have lived by the idea that his artworks, once accomplished, became autonomous and would seek their own way into the world. From the Sahara desert he literally send colored notebooks out into the world. How many, and what happened to them is unclear. By chance one reaches ‘our man in Algiers -’ Camus, who enjoyed it and forwarded it to fellow writer Gide. Augiéras wrote to Paul Placet, after having send a large package of drafts for safekeeping; ‘You know my old rule of caution: scatter, scatter’. His whole live he copied and send-off his works to different people ‘for safe keeping’.
‘My worst worry: that you lose my manuscripts’ he wrote to Paul 6, and not completely without base. Everywhere he over-stayed his welcome, disgruntled landlords cleaned-up the mess he left behind. This often involved burning what appeared to have no use or value to them. Close to El Golea, Augiéras found an abandoned block-house that was disappearing into the dessert sands. He painted the interior walls, and then filled-up the doors to avoid people from vandalizing his work. For him there was a parallel with the prehistoric Lascaux cave (Montignac), that had been re-discovered after thousands of years, and was now appreciated. He possibly repeated this in Morocco and Tunisia.
An interesting feature of Augiéras’ thinking was his conviction that sometime in the future he would be recognized and famous. He ones explained to Paul Placet that; ‘In this book, I play on two tables at the same time. I want to please future professors at the Sorbonne… and pure souls close to nature; at the level of deep sensitivity I am closer to the latter’. According to Paul an example of the ‘permanent guerrilla state’ Augiéras was in. It is also this guerrilla strategy of hiding, copying and scattering that sees, even decades after his death, ‘new’ work pop-up and posthumously published. In his biography, Paul is wondering aloud how many of Augiéras works, and in how many versions, might actually still be out there.
Domme
Just below Domme you find Fénelon castle, these days famous as the location for Ridley Scott’s The Last Duel (2021), but in 1949 the home of local writer Estrelle Mongibaud. Augiéras is invited to read to her from Le Veillard et l’Enfant that had just come out (locally printed in Perigueux at Augiéras’ own expense, but stated to be ‘printed in Belgium’). Estrelle lived alone in the castle and for lack of heating Augiéras ended up reading to her in her bed. She between the sheets, he only under the cover ‘on two different floors’. By the end of the evening he was asked to go and sleep in the only other available bed, the historic bed that had belonged to the great Fénelon. After a kiss on the cheek Estrelle laughs out:
‘Make the author of Le Veillard et l’Enfant sleep in a bishop's bed! François de Salignac de la Mothe Fénelon, tutor to the Duke of Burgundy, author of Télémaque and former master of these places, is putting aside his curtain wall this night to receive the one who seems to me to be the most barbarous of poets! The situation is not lacking in salt! The unfortunate must be turning in his grave! …
I warmed myself … thinking that now the bed would be doubly historic… I imagine the smile on the faces of tourists when a guide later tells how Augiéras, after having read his works, well into the night, was brought to share first and decently the bed of a woman writer then, with less decency that of the one who was parish priest of Carennac before becoming a great prelate of France’.7
Between 1949 and his death in 1971 Augiéras is wandering around the black Périgord, taking trips to Greece, Italy, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Mauritania, Senegal, but in between returns to his spiritual home (Les Eyzies, Limeul, Meyrals, Hautefort, Sarlat, Belvès). Over time his health and financial situation worsen and he stays on-and-off in the care homes of Fougieras, Carsac-Aillac, St.Cyprien, Domme, Montignac. Suffering three heart-attacks.
Best preserved memory remains from his time in Domme, where he wrote Domme ou l’Essai d’Occupation. The book ‘documents’ his ongoing struggle to make his life a work of art. A struggle with the local clergy and government, having him famously moved to a mental institution. But after observation the medical report revealed; ‘the encephalograph tracing often shows an absolutely unknown psychic activity. Unknown psychic activity does (however) not justify internment’.
I read a literary critic ones, declaring Augiéras’ work to be ‘straightforward’; always in the first person, always in the present, always following a linear timeline, and always describing direct experiences in the world as he perceived them. As above references reveal, there are some reasons to doubt this. Case in point the part of the L’Apprenti sorcier, based on an actual court case in which Augiéras was accused of immoral behavior involving a minor. In real life he was acquitted, in the book he writes;
‘I could be arrested. I decided to avoid prison by magic, to ally myself with my eternal soul; I was angry with myself for letting time pass without making an effort on this side. … I saw my face on the mirror of the water. A smile came to my lips, a smile in which cunning competed with the joy of seeing me, of knowing that I was eternal. … After doing what I said, my soul hidden in the mirror of water where the lawyers would not seek it, my true self safe from prosecution, I returned to my priest…
- It's incredible. I see the child, the trial, the judges; I see this whole thing. … but what I don't see, but then not at all, is you. …
- I see a source, he said to me, and I see you.
- This is where I hid my soul.
- There, in the spring?
- Yes.
- You are strong, he whispered. Then he added: You will have to take it back after your trial; do not forget.
I'm scared for you; come, I can save you from the brood of men, but you must die. One night alone you must disappear from the number of the living and pass over to our side. … we would be absolved of our errors if we came out of this trial alive; in fact, he was in danger of drowning with me, which cleared him of the assassination. Judgment of the river, of God perhaps, ordeal, which corresponded well to his mentality, to his habit of deciding nothing for himself’.8
The river was of course the Vézère. Augiéras ends his testament; ‘I believe in the survival of my immortal soul. Being of a non-Christian religion, I would like my body to be burned on an island in the Vézère and my ashes scattered over the water’.
This was not to be, instead he got allocated a temporary plot on the edge of Domme’s graveyard. As it came to the ears of Paul a few years later, the unmarked grave could be vacated he brought a flat stone from Les Eyzies and hand-carved Augiéras’ signature into it. The grave is still there, all the way down, against the fence.
No one gathered the documents, letters, drawings or paintings from the attic of the Montignac hospice after his death. They dispersed and rotted away. For the documentary José Carrera revisited the attic, he had last visited it just before Augiéras’ death. There had been an installation of canvases in various sizes. It had impressed him, he had assumed (as did Paul), that someone would have taken them to storage… Did someone remove them? Will they one day pop-up again? Maybe a befitting open-end to an unusual story.
A lot remains to be told and explored, I might do so in future posts.
N.B. I came across references to the following English translations of Augiéras’ work:
Augiéras F., 1954. The Old Man and the Child (?),
Augiéras F., 2001. The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Pushkin Press. ISBN 978-1901285444,
Augiéras F., 2008. A Journey to Mount Athos. Pushkin Press. ISBN 978-1901285390,
Augiéras F., 2011. Journey of the Dead. Pushkin Press. ISBN 978-1906548421.
‘Now that all the arts are dead, an immense power awakens in me after this abandonment and in my loneliness. For me, who was born with the atheism of my century, this story ends with a taste for agriculture and astronomy.
- I adore you, I only adore you, I say to Earth and Heaven.
Barefoot on the sand, an atheist, I was not soulless’.
Augiéras F., 2006 (1959). Le voyage des morts. Grasset, Les Cahiers Rouges. ISBN 978-2-246-58382-0
Augiéras F., 2006 (1959). Le voyage des morts. Grasset, Les Cahiers Rouges. ISBN 978-2-246-58382-0
‘Tant d’appels ne firent qu’approfondir ma solitude sous le ciel étoilé, j’acceptai ma part d’éternité, ce qui me séparait des hommes, m’accordait à l’au-delà … Dois-je regretter mon erreur, ma solitude maintenant désespérée: l’élite pour laquelle j’écrivais n’existe pas … d’autant qu’il faudrait d’abord définir ce qu’on peut appeler une élite. Il suffit d’observer autour de soi pour constater que la satisfaction des besoins matériels, ou de l’instinct de reproduction de l’espèce, domine tout. In’y a peut-être pasun homme (ou femme) sur mille s’intéressant à des questions supérieures et désintéressées…’
Augiéras F., 2006 (1959). Le voyage des morts. Grasset, Les Cahiers Rouges. ISBN 978-2-246-58382-0
‘Les Blancs, après avoir par leur parfaite vulgarité détruit tous les styles du sacré, et d’abord les leurs, se présentent maintenant comme les héritiers de tous les arts du monde; ils sont tout au plus des intermédiaires entre un passé qui leur échappe et un avenir imprévisible’.
Augiéras F., 2006 (1959). Le voyage des morts. Grasset, Les Cahiers Rouges. ISBN 978-2-246-58382-0
‘Car enfin les Russes, les Arabes, les Chinois, les Juifs, les Bulgares, tous les futurs maitres du monde … maman (Polish – slave) me rattache obscurement aux ennemis de l’Europe ’.
Placet P., 2006. François Augiéras, un barbare en Occident. La Différence, Collection MINOS. ISBN: 2-7291-1593-5
Letter of 17-01-66
Augiéras F., 2000. Lettres à Paul Placet. Fanlac. ISBN 2-86577-217-9
‘Faire coucher l’autheur du Veillard et l’Enfant dance le lit d’un évêque! François de Salignac de la Mothe Fénelon, précepteur du duc de Bourgogne, autheur du Télémaque et ancien maître de ces lieux, écarte cette nuit sa courtine pour recevoir celui qui me semble bien lw plus barbare des poètes! La situation ne manque pas de sel! Le malheureux doit se tourner dans sa tombe! …
Je me réchauffais en pensant que désormais le lit serait doublement historique…
J’imagine la binette des touristes quand un guide plus tard racontera comment Augiéras après avoir fait lecture de ses œuvres, fort avant dans la nuit, fut amené a partager d’abord et décemment la couche d’une femme écrivain puis, avec mois de décence celle de celui qui fut curé de Carennac avant de devenir un grand prélat de France’.
Placet P., 2006. François Augiéras, un barbare en Occident. La Différence, Collection MINOS. ISBN: 2-7291-1593-5
‘Je pouvait être arrêté. Je décidai d’éviter la prison par magie, de m’allier à mon âme éternelle; je m’en voulus de laisser passer du temps sans faire effort de ce côté. … Je vis mon visage sur le miroir de l’eau. Un sourire vint sur mes lèvres, un sourire où la ruse le disputait à la joie de me voir, de me savoir éternel. … Après avoir fait ce que j’ai dit, mon âme cachée dans le miroir de l’eau où les hommes de Loi n’iraient pas la chercher, mon véritable moi à l’abri des poursuites, je rentrai chez mon prêtre. …
- C’est incroyable. Je vois l’enfant, le procès, les juges; je vois toute cette affaire. … mais ce que je ne vois pas, mais alors pas du tout, c’est toi. …
- Je vois une source, me dit-il, et je te vois.
- C’est là que j’ai caché mon âme.
- Là, dans la source?
- Oui.
- Tu es fort, murmura-t-il. Puis il ajouta: Il te faudra le reprendre après ton procès; n’oublie pas.
J’ai peur pour toi; viens, je peux te sauver de la engeance des hommes, mais il faut que tu meures. Une seule nuit tu dois disparaître du nombre des vivants et passer de notre côté. …
nous serions absous de nos erreurs si nous sortions vivants de cette épreuve; de fait, il risquait de se noyer avec moi, ce qui l’innocentait dans cet assassinat. Jugement de la rivière, de Dieu peut-être, ordalie, qui correspondaient bien à sa mentalité, à son habitude de ne rien décider de lui-même.’
Augiéras F., 2006 (1964). L’Apprenti sorcier. Grasset, Les Cahiers Rouges. ISBN 978-2-246-51022-2