THE BATTLE OF PHARSALUS

by Claude Simon ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 1971

Claude Simon has always been the earthiest, the most erotic of the nouveau romanciers. Landscapes and memory and time have been his themes, but always ""the memory of the muscles,"" of the smell of grass and rotting fruits, of family histories, houses, mementoes. He began his career as an artist, and his lush images are evocations of the painter's eye; haunted by his violent experiences, especially those during the Spanish Civil War, he has incorporated these autobiographical events into the many patterns of order and disorder which constitute his fictions. But the aesthetic that once served as a technique ""to telescope time so that we see everything at once instead of in succession, to convert narration in time into a picture in space,"" has become, in The Battle of Pharsalus, a dreary, diagrammatic abstraction, a spatial fantasy without character, nuance, or incidents, a putatively philosophical meditation on history, religion, war, travel, art, and the pornographic imagination. No doubt Simon intended his hero's hazy search for the site of Caesar's battle, the shifting locales of France, Greece, and Italy, and the recurring replay of a scene of sexual intercourse done with the most minute and minor variations (including moments where the hero apparently changes sex), all as a metaphor for the twists and turns and puzzles of the creative process itself. Alas, some lines from Rilke which fascinate Simon -- ""It submerges us. We organize it. It falls to pieces. We organize it again and fall to pieces ourselves"" -- are the only fitting description of what goes on in The Battle of Pharsalus between the reader and the writer and, above all, between the writer and his work.

Pub Date: March 1, 1971

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Braziller

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1971

Categories: FICTION