DIACRITIK Houellebecq as a metaphor or Borges's cow Receive Mail alerts Legal mentions Navigation of articles

“While the works of Alain Robbe-Grillet inspired me from the outset with a deep, radical boredom, I devoted hours, perhaps days of effort trying to read them. »Michel Houellebecq, Interventions (2020)

In “La sphere de Pascal” (Other inquisitions, 1952), Jorge Luis Borges writes this: “Perhaps universal history is only the history of a few metaphors”. To paraphrase the Argentinian author, it is also possible that the literary history of Michel Houellebecq is only the history of a few metaphors. Or a single metaphor that sums them all up. We'll see.

This may surprise more than one this rapprochement between two writers at first sight so dissimilar. There is, however, a link between them that I do not hesitate to qualify as... metaphorical, if we are to follow the definition given of this trope by the young Borges: "The union of two different things, one of which decants in the other, with a view to explaining a phenomenon. (“La metáfora”, Cosmopolis, 1921). An analogical conception to which he will always remain deeply attached, adding to it, a few years later, a second function: “to provoke emotions” (“Norton Lectures” Harvard, 1967, The Art of Poetry, Gallimard, 2002). Beyond his spontaneous Platonism, Borges remains on this terribly Aristotelian subject:

“Metaphor is the transport (epiphora) to a thing of a name which designates another, transport from genus to species or from species to genus, or from species to species, or from after the analogy report. (Poetics)

Throughout his life, Borges never stopped speaking out on the subject. In the form of an essay or a story or a poem, although there is no great difference for him between these three modes of literary expression. Hence – one should be surprised – the constant presence of animals in his work, since the comparison between animals and humans is the bearer of an image and a traditional source of meaning. With, sometimes, in him, a shift from metaphor to allegory or fable, because if there is a textual 'transfer', it is because reality also likes to play at 'transfer'. Sometimes, as in his Manual of Fantastic Zoology (1957), which ten years later became The Book of Imaginary Beings (1967), it is about fantastic or imaginary creatures. Sometimes domestic. Sometimes human. Others, the critter takes the form of a knife, a dagger, an alfange. A bookcase, a mirror, or quite simply the shape of a word, since, as a faithful admirer of his compatriot Leopoldo Lugones (1874-1938), "every word is a dead metaphor".

It is in this sense that Michel Houellebecq seems to me profoundly Borgesian. There are also many animals in his home. For the most part, human. Not only. In his novels, men are above all presented in their deep animality. Animals, in their deep humanity. He's not the first to do this. Nor the last. Dogs, rats, sheep, penguins, pigs, canaries and so on. Not cats. Or very little. Houellebecq is the anti-Colette. But cows, yes. Messy. In almost all of his novels. All the varieties or almost: limousines, Breton, Norman, Charolais, industrial ("The Laughing Cow"). Presented in their bovine humanity, to establish the human 'bovidity' of his French contemporaries. He thus poses as a general de Gaulle of literature (“The French are calves”). He needed no less, both installed in grandeur, one historical, the other literary. Of course, it can happen to him to take a break. To narratively leave the cow a little behind. As if he was having a little vegan crisis for the time of a novel. The narrator of Platform admits to eating only mashed cheese mousseline and not being interested in meat products. The character Houellebecq from La carte et le territoire (2010) goes even further in denigration: “The cow itself (…) seems very overrated to me,” he says. He much prefers the pig. I understand. In Submission (2015), it is disdain that dominates, since the narrator does not hesitate to draw a parallel between a car park and the surrounding countryside where a few Charolais cows are parked.

Not so with Borges. No cows at home. Or in disguise. We certainly find one in a youthful poem by Ferveur de Buenos Aires (1923) where a blind cow's head presides, on the front of a neighborhood butcher's shop, over the "meat sabbath" that takes place there daily. inside. Here is a very nice metaphor. Very bloody. Cinematographic. At the Rocky Stallone. Then nothing. Two or three times throughout his career as a writer, he evokes the hollow wooden cow used by the lascivious Pasiphaé to be blown up by a bull and give life to the Minotaur. Yet he is Argentinian, Borges. He should know about cows. He wrote about the gauchos, these cowboys of the pampas, about the Martín Fierro (1872), the epic poem by José Hernández that has become the literary emblem of an entire nation. He much prefers the tiger. His intimate, private cow: “Since my childhood, the stripes of tigers have suggested to me the mysteries of the writing of a God… of God… where the secret of creation must be found. In each tiger the stripes vary, but the message is always there” (Interview with Rima de Vallbona, 1969).

A tiger is elegant. Handsome. Majestic. A cow, just the opposite. It's gross. It moos, it shits, it grazes. It watches the trains pass. As an agricultural engineer, Houellebecq knows all about ruminants. It's autobiographical, his thing. As in his first novel, Extension of the domain of struggle (1995). From the first pages, the cow sets the tone. The tone of the novel. The tone of the man. Of all his later work. He purposely put it in. As a symbol. As a signature. His personal goddess. His own tiger. In the form of animal fiction, a dialogue with philosophical pretensions written by the protagonist, between a Breton cow and a filly, where it is a question of the "being-in-the-world and the being-in-itself of the cow" . Sounds like Heidegger. It's Heidegger! Houellebecq is an agricultural engineer infatuated with philosophy: Spinoza, Kant, and especially Schopenhauer, his darling. The most bovine of philosophers. A piece of beef. Extension's protagonist doesn't care if he's ugly! "Indeed, double is the nature of the Breton cow," he continues as if nothing had happened. At certain times of the year (precisely specified by the inexorable workings of genetic programming) an astonishing revolution takes place in his being. (…) What (she) wants (then) …) is, as the breeders say in their cynical talk, “to be filled”. Also, they fulfill it more or less directly; the syringe of artificial insemination can indeed, although at the cost of certain emotional complications, replace the bull's penis with this service. In both cases the cow calms down and returns to the original state of attentive meditation. »

My cousin has a teenage daughter who just turned 16yrs. On Monday they had a fight, fists and all as she was tired… https://t.co/qhhlxKSgBt

— 🌻Maqhawe🌻 Fri Jul 23 08:39:28 +0000 2021

In return, the filly is doomed to a life of enjoyment, with larigot pickpocketing stallions who won't stop jumping her when the time is right. When she's in heat. This is the message. Very Houellebecquian. Let's not forget that Extension of the Domain of Wrestling was written in the midst of the mad cow crisis, this spongiform disease more or less close to the sleeping sickness known as IFF (fatal family insomnia). A disease that prevents sleep. Which leads to certain death from lack of sleep. By the impossibility where the patient finds himself to pause, the world which is in him. Would only be for one night. Or a nap. Or a handjob. However short they are. It is by unrolling the thread of this metaphor that Houellebecq will develop his work and his vision of the world, affected, the latter, by this same spongiform affection which puts him in a state of drowsy daze, because he is never at rest from himself. And its inhabitants, the earthlings, the same. Houellebecq's heroes all seem to be at the final stage of the IFF. About to sink. Unable to put themselves at rest from the universe where they are. Doomed to suffer the confusing effects of this disease. Let them fight as best they can. Sex, alcohol, drugs, drugs, travel, writing… who knows what else. All is well. To hold on a little, knowing that they won't be able to hold out for long. Not being able to put the world within us to sleep from time to time is terrible. It's reverse Goya. “The Sleep of Reason Begets Monsters” is the title of one of his Caprichos. That's where he is, Houellebecq, following this goyesque vein to make a 'black painting'. And his heroes are at the same point. Brooding, too. Taken from uncontrollable tremors for lack of sleep. Just like its readers, who mitigate their own tremors thanks to this delegation of insomnia that Houellebecq gives them by interposed novel. By interposed characters. As long as the reader reads without being able to close his eyes, as long as he attends the fictional staging of the fatal insomnia that awaits him, he can doze a little. To rest a little. As paradoxical as it may seem. Reading Houellebecq is like taking a good nap. Thanks to him, the reader rests from this world depicted in its great binary complexity: there are those who fuck and those who get fucked. Often they are the same, at different times in their lives. With more or less intensity. The writer creates his heroes to unveil this cruel reality… and to hold on, for his part… in Ireland, in Almeria or in a tower block in the 13th arrondissement of Paris. The reader also reads his novels to hold on and be able to catch his breath… before going to work.

The autobiographical vein of Michel Houellebecq's novels is more than obvious. Normal, therefore, that many of its protagonists are agronomists or relatives. Who work in similar departments or agencies. Or according to him, we don't give a damn... except wind. It leaves time to mope. To get caught up in the melancholy of urban pastures. To yearn. Enough to ? You're welcome. From life itself, this great 'longing'. Driven as they are by their bovine gaze on people and things. By their bovine gait. Like their existence. From the unnamed hero of Extension to Florent-Claude Labrouste of Sérotonine (2019), passing by Michel Djerzinski of Elementary Particles (1998), specialist in genetically modified cows, the latter. Without forgetting, of course, the Daniel of Possibility of an island (2005) who, in the absence of being an agronomist, is a cloned neo-human, genetically traceable to infinity, just like the cows of the post "cow mad cow": "Shortly after the so-called "mad cow" epidemic, new forms were promulgated in the traceability of beef. In the butcher departments of supermarkets, in fast food establishments, one could see appearing small labels, in general worded thus: “Born and raised in France. Shot in France. A simple life, indeed. (Possibility of an island).

This is where the shoe pinches. And it is there, once again, that Borges guides us. This guy is incredible, almost blind as he was. He sees far, very far. He guides us everywhere. Still. Where he guides me, which amounts to the same thing. He's my captain. He holds my compass. It's my oracle. My great helmsman. Show me the way. So as not to get lost. For Borges, metaphor is a paradigm, an encyclopedia of facts, texts, beings. But its dual function, arousing emotions and explaining phenomena, is determined by the circumstances and the moment of its use. Of its emergence. In other words, a metaphor is a reading. Beginning with the reading that the author himself does in and by writing. “What matters about metaphor is that the reader or the listener perceives it as such” he writes in “La sphere de Pascal”. But let's not ask her to go beyond that, to explain what she is, because what happens with her is what, according to Saint Augustine, happens with time: we know what it is. is except when we are asked, and then we no longer know. Especially when it comes to the metaphor of ourselves. However, in the novels of Houellebecq it is only a question of that. His characters are his metaphor and Houellebecq is the metaphor of his characters. This is where I was coming from. We are in full textual cloning, there. Borges knows a thing or two about self-metaphorization. Hence his morbid fear and attraction for anything that doubles, anything that reflects, anything that clones. In particular, mirrors:

“As a child, I was afraid of mirrors To see there another face than mine, Or a blind impersonal mask Which would undoubtedly hide something Atrocious (…) Now I fear that the mirror will reserve for me The true trace of my soul…” ("The mirror", History of the night, 1977)

Borges obviously does not use the term cloning, so present in Houellebecq. He would no doubt have horrified her. And the reality of cloning even more so. It would have seemed terrible to him. He died just before we started cloning at all costs. Dolly, the sheep, dates from July 1996. Ten years after his own death, in June 1986. Borges would have been horrified, seeing in it the confirmation of his fears. He never stopped emphasizing this "terribility" (pardon me for this horrible neologism). Present in specular doubling. Which leads to metaphor. If “the metaphor (is) this verbal curve which almost always traces the shortest path between two points. (1921), the mirror is the object that seems to forever fix this distance, this gap, this parenthesis between self and self (that's Pessoa). And this proximity, therefore. Michel Houellebecq's novels function, precisely, like a mirror: between him and him, between him and the reader, between the cow and the man and, also, between Houellebecq and Borges, between the cow of one and the cow on the other… which is a tiger. They take place in the gaps and in the proximities that they make possible. All written like biographies of individuals whose trajectory they have traced, roughly since their birth, they forge an autobiographical tension where the double constantly refers to the other and vice versa. Sometimes even with internal repetition, as in Elementary particles where the two half-brothers, Michel and Bruno, are each of them the opposite double of the other. What could be more Bourgesian than that. That the resemblance is based on a radical dissimilarity. The other being always the mirror of the same: “It is to the other, to Borges, that things happen (…) it would be exaggerated to claim that there is hostility in our relations; I live and I let myself live, so that Borges can weave his literature and this literature justifies me (…) I am condemned to disappear, definitively, and only a few moments of me will be able to survive in the other (…) But I must persevere in Borges, not in me…” (The author, 1960).

Let there be no mistake. The double is not the other. The double only wears the mask of one of those others who nest within us. In life and in the novel. Houellebecquian heroes are masks, whose function, like that of any good mask, is not to hide, but to designate those who wear them, installed in the gap between what they believed or wanted. being and what they are: “I will be the other that, without knowing it, I am (…) I am the one who has not deciphered the labyrinth/singular and plural, arduous and different/of the time which is to each and which belongs to all. / I am nobody (…) Echo I am, oblivion I am, nothingness. (The Deep Rose, 1975)

Verses that could have been written by Paul Raison, the protagonist of Anéantir (2022), the last novel by Michel Houellebecq, in which, like Alonso Quijano denying Don Quixote on his deathbed, he seems to want to turn his back to the cow that has always mooed within him. I doubt very much that he fully succeeded.

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