Category Archives: Über-Transgression…

Bestia Bestialissima

by in Über-Transgression..., History, Latin, Linguistics, Literature, Mixed Metaphors, Quotations, Theology, Translation and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Auberon Waugh called himself a “practitioner of the vituperative arts”. Perhaps it was a Catholic thing. And unless you know Latin, you won’t understand. Or you won’t understand as much as you might. I don’t know Latin well, but I can appreciate some of the wonderful vituperation in a book of Latin exorcisms I’ve found scanned at Google Books. The title alone is good: Flagellum Daemonum: Exorcismos Terribiles, Potentissimos et Efficaces, which means (I think) The Flail of Demons: Exorcisms Terrible, Most Potent and Effective. Or is the title Fustis Daemonum: Adiurationes Formidabiles, Potentissimas et Efficaces, meaning The Cudgel of Demons: Adjurations Formidable, Most Potent and Effective?

Vituperation from the Flagellum Daemonum (1644)

Vituperation from the Flagellum Daemonum (1644)


Either way, one of the exorcisms contains a good list of curses directed at the Devil. He’s called Bestia Omnium Bestiarum Bestialissima, meaning “Beast of All Beasts the Most Beastly”. Beside that, there are Dux Hæreticorum and Lupus Rapacissimus, “Duke of Heretics” and “Most Rapacious Wolf”. There’s an odd Sus Macra, Famelica, et Immundissima, which means something like “Scrawny, Famished and Most Filthy Hog”. Lovecraft would have liked Nefandissimus Susurrator, “Most Unspeakable Whisperer”, and Draco Iniquissimus, “Most Iniquitous Dragon”.

Pessimus Dux Tenebrarum is “Most Evil Duke of Darkness” and Janua et Vorago Inferni is “Door and Abyss of Hell”. Seminator Zizaniarum, meaning “Sower of Tares”, refers to Matthew xiii, 25: “But while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went his way.” And those are only a few of the curses poured on the Devil’s head. I’ve turned the full list into plain text. As it says in the book that originally led me to the Flagellum Daemonum, “The following is a specimen of one of these vituperative addresses”:

Audi igitur insensate, false, reprobe, et iniquissime Spiritus. Inimice fidei. Adversarie generis humani. Mortis adductor. Vitæ raptor. Justitiæ declinator. Malorum radix. Fomes vitiorum. Seductor hominum. Proditor gentium. Incitator invidiæ. Origo aravitiæ. Causa discordiæ. Excitator malorum. Dæmonum magister. Miserrima Creature. Tentator Homininum. Deceptor malorum Angelorum. Fallax animarum. Dux Hæreticorum. Pater Mendacii. Fatue Bestialis. Tui creatoris Inimicus. Insipiens ebriose. Inique et iniquorum caput. Prædo infernalis. Serpens iniquissime. Lupe rapacissime. Sus macra, famelica, et immundissima. Bestia eruginosa. Bestia scabiosa. Bestia truculentissima. Bestia crudelis. Bestia cruenta. Bestia omnium Bestiarum Bestialissima. Ejecte de Paradise. De gratiâ Dei. De Cœli fastigio. De loco inerrabili. De Societate et consortia Angelorum. Immundissime Spiritus Initium omnium malorum. Trangressor bonæ vitæ. Veritatis et Justitiæ persecutor. Auctor fornicationum. Seminator zizaniarum. Dissipator pacis. Latro discordiæ. Pessime dux tenebrarum. Mortis inventor. Janua et vorago Inferni. Crudelis devorator animarum omniumque malorum causa. Malignissime Dæmon. Spurcissime Spiritus. Nefandissime susurrator. Nequissima Creatura. Vilissime apostata. Scelestissima latro. Impiissima bestia infernalis. Superbissime et ingratissime Spiritus. Iniquissime refuga. Tyranne, Omni bono vacue. Plene omni dolo et fallaciâ. Hominum exterminator. Derisio totius Angelicæ Naturæ. Maledicte Satana a Deo. Excommunicate a totâ cœlesti curiâ. Blaspheme Dei et omnium Sanctorum. Damnate a Deo atque Damnande. Spiritus Acherontine. Spiritus Tartaree. Fili Perditionis. Fili maledictionis æternæ. Rebellis Dei et totius cœlestis curiæ. Serpens crudelissime. Draco iniquissime. Creatura damnata, reprobata et maledicta a Deo in æternum ob superbiam nequitiam tuam.

The first line, Audi igitur insensate, false, reprobe, et iniquissime Spiritus means something like “Hear, then, Senseless, False, Reprobate and Most Iniquitous Spirit”. Then the Devil is called Inimicus Fidei, “Enemy of the Faith”, Adversarius Generis Humani, “Adversary of the Human Race”, Mortis Adductor, “Dragger to Death”, and Vitæ Raptor, “Snatcher of Life”. Then the vituperation really begins.

He Say, He Sigh, He Sow #22 & #23

by in Über-Transgression..., Literature, Quotations, Surrealism and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

“After a million years or so, those screens are about to be removed, and once they have gone, then, for the first time, men will really know what it is to be alive.” — Extreme Metaphors: Collected Interviews with J.G. Ballard, 1967-2008, ed. Simon Sellars and Dan O’Hara (2012).

“A fertile imagination is better than any drug.” — Ibid.

Elsewhere other-posted:

• Vermilion Glands — review of The Inner Man: The Life of J.G. Ballard (W&N 2011)

Sime Time

by in Über-Transgression..., Book Reviews, Clark Ashton Smith, Post-Transgressive Fiction, Simon Whitechapel, Surrealism and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

I came across the writings of Simon Whitechapel a year ago after picking up the first twenty or so issues of Headpress, a 1990s ’zine that dealt with the relentlessly grim, the esoteric and prurient. His style was fascinating, coming across as intelligent and well-read and — at least from first reading — subtly ironic.

In fact he must have impressed some other people during this time too as Headpress’ Critical Vision imprint spun his collected articles together for publication under the title Intense Device: A Journey Through Lust, Murder and the Fires of Hell — they have all the typical interests that run through Whitechapel’s work — there is an obsession with numerology, with Whitehouse-style distortion music, with Hitler and de Sade. There are also articles on farting, on Jack Chick and novelisations of TV shows. They are fascinating, written in a scholarly way with footnotes aplenty but never difficult to understand. He also wrote two non-fiction works during the late 1990s and early 2000s that centred around sadism and the murder of women in South America. They are dark.

There are also the works of fiction. To say that Whitechapel is transgressive is an understatement. His writing bleeds. The ‘official’ work The Slaughter King is filled with the detailed descriptions of sadistic murder, beginning with a serial killer murdering a gay prostitute whilst listening to distortion-atrocity music. The plot is schlocky but serviceable, jumping around inconsistently but the images it creates are terrifying. A bourgeois dinner party straight out of Buñuel and Pasolini’s nightmares where guests are served poisons as if they were the finest consommés: they eat bees until their faces swell, dropping dead at the table, finishing with a trifle “made from the berries of the several varieties of belladonna, of cuckoo-pint, and of the flowers of monkshood”. It’s a sinister book, but nothing compared to his second work.

Whitechapel wrote The Eyes. This is clear just from a simple comparison between his texts, the fascination with language, with sadism, with de Sade. The thing is, The Eyes is supposedly written by some guy called Aldapuerta, Spanish apparently. ‘Aldapuerta’ can be written Alda Puerta — ‘at the gate’, a telling description of these short stories, which go past this point many, many times. The tale of ‘Aldapuerta’ himself is too exact to be believed: a young boy with an interest in de Sade, corrupted by the local pornographer, medical-school training that honed his knowledge, then a mysterious death (echoing shades of Pasolini’s own) and finishing with the “and he might be baaaack” closer. But this point isn’t really an issue and it’s understandable that Whitechapel would want to keep his name away from this work. It is also surrealistically brilliant at times: amongst the brutality, the images it creates are unforgettable.

Of course, Whitechapel is a fake name, redolent of Jack the Ripper, and even Simon was taken from elsewhere — a colleague perhaps? He disappeared during the 2000s, no longer writing for Headpress, a few self-published chapbooks pastiching Clark Ashton Smith… where did he go? There are the rumours of prison time — they are convincing to my mind, as they too revolve around different identities, around extremity and anonymity. I wonder though, if true, just how much this individual actually believed in them. His most recent writings, at his tricksy blog, hint at this, as well as make his ‘relationship’ with Aldapuerta clearer but it’s not in my ability to directly connect the personas.

If you want to be fascinated and repulsed, then the non-author Simon Whitechapel is for you.

Lancashire

Elsewhere other-posted:

• It’s The Gweel Thing… — Gweel & Other Alterities, Simon Whitechapel (Ideophasis Books, 2011)

Performativizing Papyrocentricity #22

by in Über-Transgression..., Book Reviews, Civilization, History, Literature, Mathematics, Philosophy of mathematics, Politics, The Sea and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Papyrocentric Performativity Presents:

• Plates from the Great – Shots from the Front: The British Soldier 1914-18, Richard Holmes (HarperPress 2008; paperback 2010)

• Math for the Mistress – A Mathematician’s Apology, G.H. Hardy (1940)

• Sinister Sinema – Scalarama: A Celebration of Subterranean Cinema at Its Sleazy, Slimy and Sinister Best, ed. Norman Foreman, B.A. (TransVisceral Books 2015)

• Rick Pickings – Lost, Stolen or Shredded: Stories of Missing Works of Art and Literature, Rick Gekoski (Profile Books 2013/2014)

• Slug is a Drug – Collins Complete Guide to British Coastal Wildlife, Paul Sterry and Andrew Cleave (HarperCollins 2012) (posted @ Overlord of the Über-Feral)

Or Read a Review at Random: RaRaR

Bill Self

by in Über-Transgression..., English Usage, Guardianistas, Politics, Post-Transgressive Fiction and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

I would be disturbed and dismayed if Will Self ever wrote an essay on Evelyn Waugh or Clark Ashton Smith. In fact, I hope he has never even heard of CAS. But I’m happy to see Self writing in the Guardian on William Burroughs. It’s a perfect setting for a perfect pairing. And Self, like Christopher Hitchens, raises a very interesting question. What is his mother-tongue? Quechua? Tagalog? Sumerian? Whatever it is, it’s not even remotely related to English.

William Burroughs — the original Junkie — Will Self, The Guardian, 1/ii/2014.

Entitled Junkie: Confessions of an Unredeemed Drug Addict and authored pseudonymously by “William Lee” (Burroughs’ mother’s maiden name – he didn’t look too far for a nom de plume) …

[Self missed his chance there: nom de guerre would have been much better.]

The two-books-in-one format was not uncommon in 1950s America …

Despite its subhead, Wyn did think the book had a redemptive capability …

Both Junkie and Narcotic Agent have covers of beautiful garishness, featuring 1950s damsels in distress. On the cover of Junkie a craggy-browed man is grabbing a blond lovely from behind; one of his arms is around her neck, while the other grasps her hand, within which is a paper package. The table beside them has been knocked in the fray, propelling a spoon, a hypodermic, and even a gas ring, into inner space.

This cover illustration is, in fact, just that: an illustration of a scene described by Burroughs in the book. “When my wife saw I was getting the habit again, she did something she had never done before. I was cooking up a shot two days after I’d connected with Old Ike. My wife grabbed the spoon and threw the junk on the floor. I slapped her twice across the face and she threw herself on the bed, sobbing …” That this uncredited and now forgotten hack artist should have chosen one of the few episodes featuring the protagonist’s wife to use for the cover illustration represents one of those nastily serendipitous ironies that Burroughs himself almost always chose to view as evidence of the magical universe. …

… if you turn to his glossary of junk lingo and jive talk – you will see how many arcane drug terms have metastasised into the vigorous language. …

Burroughs viewed the postwar era as a Götterdämmerung and a convulsive re-evaluation of values. …

An open homosexual and a drug addict, his quintessentially Midwestern libertarianism led him to eschew any command economy of ethics …

For Burroughs, the re-evaluation was both discount and markup …

… and perhaps it was this that made him such a great avatar of the emergent counterculture. …

Janus-faced, and like some terminally cadaverous butler, Burroughs ushers in the new society of kicks for insight as well as kicks’ sake. …

Let’s return to that cover illustration with its portrayal of “William Lee” as Rock Hudson and his common-law wife, Joan Vollmer, as Kim Novak.

When I say Burroughs himself must have regarded the illustration – if he thought of it at all – as evidence of the magical universe he conceived of as underpinning and interpenetrating our own …

Much has been written and even more conjectured about the killing. Burroughs himself described it as “the accidental shooting death”; and although he jumped bail, he was only convicted – in absentia by the Mexican court – of homicide. …

When Burroughs was off heroin he was a bad, blackout drunk (for evidence you need look no further than his own confirmation in Junky). …

By the time Burroughs was living in Tangier in the late 1950s, his sense of being little more than a cipher, or a fictional construct, had become so plangent …

Burroughs was the perfect incarnation of late 20th-century western angst precisely because he was an addict. Self-deluding, vain, narcissistic, self-obsessed, and yet curiously perceptive about the sickness of the world if not his own malaise, Burroughs both offered up and was compelled to provide his psyche as a form of Petri dish, within which were cultured the obsessive and compulsive viruses of modernity. …

In a thin-as-a-rake’s progress …

… a deceptively thin, Pandora’s portfolio of an idea …

It is Burroughs’ own denial of the nature of his addiction that makes this book capable of being read as a fiendish parable of modern alienation. …

For, in describing addiction as “a way of life”, Burroughs makes of the hypodermic a microscope, through which he can examine the soul of man under late 20th-century capitalism.

William Burroughs – the original Junkie, The Guardian, 1/ii/2014.

The big disappointment is that he didn’t use in terms of.

He Say, He Sigh, He Sow #23

by in Über-Transgression..., English Usage, In Terms Of, Politics, Quotations and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 8 Comments

“Brion knew it wasn’t William’s fault. But in terms of the general popular culture not recognizing the importance of his contribution, there was a little bitterness.” — phantasmagoric freethinker Genesis P-Orridge interrogates issues around Brion Gysin and William S. Burroughs.

Elsewhere other-posted:

• Ex-term-in-ate!

Performativizing Papyrocentricity #14

by in Art, Über-Transgression..., Book Reviews, Philosophy, Politics, Post-Transgressive Fiction and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Papyrocentric Performativity Presents:

Scheming Demon – The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis (1942)

Ai Wei to Hell – How to Read Contemporary Art, Michael Wilson (Thames & Hudson, 2013)

Toxic Twosome – Doll, Peter Sotos and James Havoc (TransVisceral Books, 2013)

Know Your Limaçons – The Penguin Dictionary of Curious and Interesting Geometry, David Wells (1991) (posted @ Overlord of the Über-Feral)

Pestilent, Pustulent and Pox-Pocked – various books by Dr Miriam B. Stimbers (@ O.o.t.Ü.-F.)

Or Read a Review at Random: RaRaR

Ass You Like It

by in Über-Transgression..., English Usage, Free Will, Guardianistas, Philosophy, Politics, Post-Transgressive Fiction and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 8 Comments

This is a guest post by Norman Foreman, B.A.

Mediaeval Catholic philosophers wrote about both praying and braying. The braying came from Buridan’s ass, a thought-experiment about choice and free will. Imagine a hungry ass set between two piles of hay that are identical in every way: size, shape, colour, tastiness and so on. Some philosophers argued that, if it had no reason to prefer one pile of hay to the other, the ass would be unable to choose and would therefore starve to death.

I don’t agree: inter alia, nervous systems don’t work symmetrically and we don’t experience objects as fully identical when they’re in different parts of our visual field. However, in a literary sense, I understand what it feels like to be Buridan’s ass. To assify myself, I start by imagining this:

• I’m offered £1000 to read a book by the transgressive author Will Self.

Would I accept? Yes. It would be distasteful, but I’d do it for £1000. Self’s writing is so bad that I might give the money back rather than finish the book, but I’d have a go. Now change the situation:

• I’m offered £1000 to read a book by the transgressive author Stewart Home.

Would I still accept? Yes. Again, it would be distasteful, but I’d do it for the money. Or I’d try, at least. The next step turns me into Buridan’s ass. I imagine this:

• I’m offered £1000 to read a book by either Will Self or Stewart Home (not both). And I have to make the choice for myself.

Now I’m on the horns of a dilemma. I would want the £1000, but I can’t decide which transgressive author I’d rather NOT read. Home is a downmarket version of Self, Self is an upmarket version of Home. It’s Self-as-chav vs Home-as-Oxbridge-grad. And/or vice versâ. They’re both keyly committed core components of the Guardianista community, with all that that implies in terms of issues around bad English, mixed metaphors and “in terms of”. I’m happy to say I’ve never read a book by either of them. So if I were offered £1000 to do so and had to choose either Self or Home, I couldn’t do it. Not unassisted. I’d have to toss a coin. Best of three. Or best of five dot dot dot

Previously pre-posted (please peruse):

• Titus Graun
• Ex-term-in-ate!
• Reds under the Thread

The Term Turns dot dot dot

by in Art, Über-Transgression..., English Usage, Guardianistas, In Terms Of, Literature and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

In Titus Graun, I interrogated issues around the Grauniness, or Guardianisticity, of two keyly committed core components of the counter-cultural community: the semiotician Stewart Home and the æsthetician John Coulthart. Seeking to utilizate their usage-metrics for the core/epicentral Guardianista phrase “in terms of” (i.t.o.), I interrogated their personal websites like this in terms of January 2013:

site:http://www.johncoulthart.com “in terms of”
About 2,180 results

site:http://www.johncoulthart.com “the”
About 8,860 results

site:http://www.johncoulthart.com “and”
About 8,150 results

site:http://www.stewarthomesociety.org “in terms of”
About 123 results

site:http://www.stewarthomesociety.org “the”
About 602 results

site:http://www.stewarthomesociety.org “and”
About 599 results

Noting that Coulthart’s site used “the/and” approximately 14 times more often than Home’s, I adjusted Home’s raw i.t.o.-score accordingly: 123 x 14 = 1722. I concluded that Coulthart, with an i.t.o.-score of 2180, was approximately 26·59% Graunier than Home – exactly as one might have hoped, given that Coulthart is not merely a Guardianista (good), but a gay Guardianista (doubleplusgood). But that was in terms of January. When I re-interrogated their websites in terms of June 2013, I discovered that the semiotic situation had transitioned in a most disturbing and disquieting way:

site:http://www.johncoulthart.com “in terms of”
About 1,080 results

site:http://www.johncoulthart.com “the”
About 8,680 results

site:http://www.johncoulthart.com “and”
About 8,010 results

site:http://www.stewarthomesociety.org “in terms of”
About 119 results

site:http://www.stewarthomesociety.org “the”
About 541 results

site:http://www.stewarthomesociety.org “and”
About 536 results

I was aghast (literally) to see that Coulthart’s i.t.o.-metrics have spiked (in reverse). Other lexicostatistical metrics have transitioned relatively little: his site now seems to use “the/and” approximately 15·5 times more often than Home’s. Home’s raw i.t.o.-score is 119 and 119 x 15·5 = 1844·5. So it is now Home who is approximately 70·78% Graunier than Coulthart.

This can only be described as highly suspicious. What has Coulthart been up to? Has he been spraying his site with verbicide? Has he donned a black Savoy nihilinja-suit™, crept out under cover of darkness and clubbed innocent i.t.o.’s as they lay basking in the feral radiance of Manchester’s Most Maverick Messiahs? If so, this is “‘Pushing the Transgressive Envelope Too Far’ Too Far” too far. Even M.M.M.M. must look askance at behaviour like that. Surely.

Previously pre-posted (please peruse):

• Titus Graun
• Ex-term-in-ate!
• Reds under the Thread