Fantastic Metropolis

It takes courage to court the Marquis de Sade, but then he and Ducornet are old friends, for she read Justine at the age of sixteen. The surrealist’s admiration for Sade is well known and several women surrealists illustrated and wrote about his works, including Toyen, Nora Mitrani and Annie LeBrun. ^[44] Admitting that Sade “walks a fine line between comedy and terror” (25), Gabrielle is alienated by the violence of his novels (68-72). But finding him in prison, so bereft of all his possessions, so angry at the injustice of his arrest, so committed to preserving the freedom of his imagination and the right to dream, she decides to collaborate on the Landa saga. She realizes that when the human spirit is in chains, “a book can be a shelter,” “a book can be all that one has lost” (70). Sadly then as now, the violence of the real world is infinitely worse than anything described in literature. The horrendous tortures of the Indians by the Spanish culminate in the Tophet that took place in 1562 (195-205), while the murderous guillotining of French citizens continues unabated. Comparing these actual atrocities, Sade’s literary “crimes” begin to pale. After all, as he claims, he never killed a soul (49).

As always, there are other themes within the text, particularly the power of women, both mythic and political, and their education. Once again, Ducornet returns to the Gnostic vision of the feminine abyss. Precepts of this dualistic philosophy have persisted in western theology, augmented in the 3rd century by the teachings of Mani, the prophet who shares his name with the eviscerated Yucatán village. In the novel, clerics fear that the creation of the visible universe resulted from the love of Satan and his angels for the daughters of men, thus tainting the physical world forever with evil. In the political realm, Gabrielle, Olympe and 10,000 other women of the French Revolution protest at Versailles only to discover the male leaders of the Revolution are also intent on limiting their freedoms and persecuting the most vocal advocates of women’s rights, women’s education and sexual freedom.

To bring the tail of this essay back to its mouth, it should be reiterated that alchemy is inextricably bound to other philosophical currents. So too are the alchemical images in Ducornet’s novels closely interconnected to other recurring themes—the eternal battle of the forces of good and evil, the global destruction of nature, the fear of the archetypal feminine and bodily pleasure, the oppressive weight of history, and the revolutionary fight for freedom of the imagination and artistic expression. The images in these novels flow together like the molten surface of an anamorphic portrait that comes into focus only on its perpendicular reflective device. This is strong writing, filled with evocations of gut-wrenching terror and sensory delight. In closing it seems this essay has only begun to touch the surface of Ducornet’s writing and the truths she unearths and distills, as she attempts the impossible—to fix images from the edge of the abyss and to capture the constant flux of a volatile world. Like the optical mirror of an anamorphic painting, or the glass surface of the alembic vessel, her novels focus our gaze and allow us to see a reflection of the microcosmic world within.

Notes

For Carol Sampson, whose transformational teaching of metamorphoses metered the writing of this essay.