THE DEMOISELLE (1)
By:
October 19, 2024
In Raymond Roussel’s 1914 proto-sf novel Locus Solus, Professor Canterel takes visitors on a tour of the so-rational-they’re-crazy inventions to be found on the titular estate. In this excerpt, translated by HILOBROW’s Josh Glenn, we discover a flying mechanism programmed to create a truly outré work of art.
On a Thursday in early April, my learned colleague Professor Martial Canterel invited me, along with a few other close friends of his, to visit the immense park surrounding his well-appointed villa in Montmorency.
Locus Solus — as the estate is known — is a calm oasis to which Canterel has retreated to pursue his multivarious and fruitful projects with complete peace of mind. In this isolated spot he is sufficiently sheltered from the hurly-burly of Paris, yet nevertheless — should his research require him to peruse a bookshelf within a specialized library; or if the moment has arrived for him to make to the scientific community, via one of his breathlessly anticipated press conferences, a sensational announcement — he can arrive in the capital in fifteen minutes.
It is at Locus Solus that Canterel spends almost the entire year, surrounded by disciples who, full of passionate admiration for his nonstop discoveries, unhesitatingly assist him in the accomplishment of his work. Several of the villas many rooms have been luxuriously equipped as high-tech laboratories; these are maintained by numerous assistants. Having devoted his life entirely to science, the professor hasn’t stinted in devoting his considerable fortune (he is a childless bachelor) to overcoming any material obstacles that might have impeded the progress of a career relentlessly focused on accomplishing the goals he’s set for himself.
The clock had just struck three. The weather was fine, and the sun was shining in an almost perfectly clear sky. Canterel had received us not far from his villa, outdoors, in a charming gathering-spot that boasted various wicker seats under venerable trees in the shade of which we assembled.
As soon as everyone who’d been summoned there had arrived, the professor set forth on a guided tour of the estate. Our group tagged along obediently.
[…]
As we ascended the hill, the foliage thinned out. Soon the terrain became completely bare all around us. Finally, as we crested the ridge, we arrived at a wide, perfectly level, and completely exposed esplanade.
A few more steps brought us to a small piece of equipment structurally similar to a demoiselle — a mechanical paving implement, that is to say, used for pounding cobblestones into place. Apparently lightweight, despite being constructed almost entirely of metal, this demoiselle-device was suspended beneath a small, canary-colored aerostat — the silhouette of which, particularly its spherical lower section, evoked a hot-air balloon.
The ground over which the little aerostat hovered was remarkable-looking.
Spread out, over a fairly large area, were human teeth — of every shapes and color. Some of them, of a dazzling white, contrasted sharply with the smokers’ incisors, which came in every imaginable shade of brown and browner. Every tint of yellow could also be discerned within this bizarre assemblage, from feathery straw tones to repulsive tawny ones. Blue teeth, whether light or dark, contributed to this polychromatic spectacle, as did piles of black teeth and the roots of bloody teeth — some pale red, others a bold scarlet.
The contours and proportions of the teeth varied infinitely — immense molars and monstrous canines were ranked side-by-side with almost imperceptible “milk teeth.” Numerous metallic sparkles appeared here and there, reflected from fillings or gold caps.
RADIUM AGE PROTO-SF: “Radium Age” is Josh Glenn’s name for the nascent sf genre’s c. 1900–1935 era, a period which saw the discovery of radioactivity, i.e., the revelation that matter itself is constantly in movement — a fitting metaphor for the first decades of the 20th century, during which old scientific, religious, political, and social certainties were shattered. More info here.
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