Ephemera

Relics of the way that avant-garde literature, art and music were used by their audiences, both within underground communities and (often posthumously or late in life) in popular culture.

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 1848 Provisional Government Medallion. 1848. Two-sided medallion in cast metal. 1 3/8 inches.

Cast metal medallions were among the most popular ways to celebrate, commemorate, or express solidarity with a wide array of events, causes, and people in the 19th Century. As such, in the volatile situation of revolution they played a role in legitimizing what emerged as the provisional government among an array of competing groups and claims. It is evident that this medal, announcing the leftist Provisional Government, was struck in great haste, in the heat of the moment, as part of their tactics to cement their claim before the revolution was recuperated by reactionary forces, as had occurred in 1830 when liberal monarchists seized the moment to establish a constitutional monarchy with (temporarily) free press, while the Left was still attempting to present a united front. The mold seems to have been prepared within an hour – the lettering is crude (the "4" in 1848 is backwards), the spacing and layout awkward; clearly, time was of the essence. Among the great many other medallions struck around this time was one also held by the Revenant Archive, celebrating the Romanticist poet Alphonse Lamartine, who had announced the republic and became Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Provisional Government. The archive also holds the back half of a stamped-metal medallion of the liberal songwriter Béranger.

The front reads: "23 24 25 / Février 1848 / Rep[ublique]. Franc[ai]se / Gouvernement Provisiore" ("23 24 25 / February 1848 / Fr[en]ch Rep[ublic]  / Provisional Government".

The back lists the group of activists and politicians who had declared the republic: "Dupont. Lamartine. Lédru-Rollin. Arago. Grémieux. Ma[??]e. Garnier-Pagès. Marrast. L[ouis]. Blanc. Flocon. Albert. Pagnerre[?]".

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Anonymous, Fair-Copy Book. Date Unknown, late 19th or early 20th Century. 

 

Handwritten notebook containing fair-copies of letters relating to music and literature, and calligraphic fair copies of Romanticist, Parnassian, and Decadent poetry, using multiple hand-written "fonts" within single pieces of writing.

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Pierre-Jean de Béranger Medallion. Date Unknown, c. 1840-1850. Back plate of two-sided medallion in stamped metal, aureole with titles of popular songs. 2 inches.

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Promotional insert for Alphonse Brot & Saint-Véran, Le Déesse Raison. 1880. Double-sided Colour Printing on card, 7 x 5 cm. Petit Moniteur Universel, Paris.

Despite his avant-garde roots (and having written the earliest known text self-identifying with that term), Brot spent most of his life writing very popular melodramas and serial novels--which however retain elements of Frenetic Romanticism, including exaggerated violence and passion and themes of social and political justice. Both melodrama and serial novels operated in society in a way strangely analogous to our current mode of television and film: big budget melodramas focused on thrilling story-telling, familiar tropes, and spectacular special effects to produce blockbuster runs, while weekly installments of novels resembled internet television (dominated by a few major companies but with dozens of small ones also competing, with staggered releases but not a set broadcast schedule). Note that this little advert--probably included with the purchase of another book--is promoting the upcoming series, which will be published in 20 weekly episodes (in very cheap paperback editions, most now decayed) costing five cents each; after the series ends, fans will be able to purchase the full, bound novel on higher quality paper, the equivalent of a box set of DVDs today. That final, bound paperback edition is also in this archive (see "Literature")

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Jules Claretie Postcard. Undated, c. 1900. Double-sided Postcard. Printer Unknown. With letter from unknown Correspondent to Mlle. Gonnard[?], c. 1903.

As a socialist activist, an archivist-historian of revolution and of the early avant-garde, a theatre director, and a novelist and playwright, Jules Claretie is heavily represented in this archive (see Historiography, Personal Artifacts, and The Gazette Anecdotique, to which he was a frequent contributor.) It was probably as playwright that Claretie earned enough celebrity to lead to the production of postcards sporting his image, such as this one from the turn of the century (while Claretie was still alive) which was used by an unidentified person writing to a young child, probably a niece.

Below is my closest attempt at a transcription; I welcome corrections and additions:

Address:
Mademoiselle [Gonnard]
chez Mme. [Ren...?]
Villa Dubois
Rue des Allimettes
Cher / [Sancoins]

postmarked c. 26 Oct. 1903?

Message:
Lundi
Tu es heureuse, ma chère petite, [auprès] de [ta] bonne cousine, [qui] [ne] [suit] [qui] [fuire/faire] [pour] [l'intéresses] tu vois de jolis pays, [des] [sites] [enchanteurs], profite bien de [le] [bon] moment – [qui] comptera j'en suis [sure] un numbre de tes [meilleurs] souvenirs, et lorsque tu [reviendrais] près de nous, tu [xxxx] à nous renconter mille et mille choses . . . Bientôt le 17 Nov. nous réunira tous. Toutes les jeunes têtes pensent à [leurs] [toilette] et [se] [promettent] un grand [plaisir] de [fuire] [xxtige] à [leur] [amie], [ta] [soeurs] sera superbe! . . . . . .

Translation:
Monday
You're lucky, my dear little one, [beside your] good cousin, [who/which] [not] [follow] [which/who] [to flee/make/do] for the [interests] you see in pleasant countries, [in] enchanting [sites], profit well by the good moment – [which] will count I'm [sure] of it a number of your [best] memories, and when you [would return] near to us, you [xxx] to tell us a thousand thousand things . . . Soon Nov. 17 will reunite everyone. All the young heads think about [their] [outfits] and [promise themselves] a great [pleasure] of [fleeing] [xxxxx] to [their] [girlfriend], [your] [sisters] will be superb! . . . . . .

~~~written  perpendicularly in card's margin~~~

j'[entènds] dire que ma petite Marguerite sera [aussi] [xxxx] [xixx] . . . .
[j]'[envoie] à Mr Mme [Xenaudin] [toutes] mes [xxxxxxx]
et de [Xxxxxxxx] [de] tout coeur.   M.

Translation:
I [hear] say that my little Marguerite will [also] be [xxxx] [xxxx] . . . .
I send to Mr Mme [Xenaudin] [all] my [xxxxxxx]
and [Xxxxxxxx] [of] all heart.   M.

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Gustave Courbet, The Amazon: Portrait of Louise Colet. Date Unknown, Late-19th to Mid-20th Century. Formerly part of Ryerson Library collection, Art Institute of Chicago. Magic Lantern slide of 1856 painting.

  

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Achille Devéria, Les filles de Niobé. Date Unknown, c. 1860-1900. Mass-produced carte-de-visite of lithograph.

 

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Frank Harris, Prospectus for "My Life and Loves". Undated, 1921-22. Self-Published: Paris. Softcover Octavo Pamphlet, 4 pp.

An inveterate traveler, Frank Harris was a polymath of the cultural margins: libertine, sexologist, left-wing journalist, outspoken pacifist, novelist, artist, cowboy, and editor. His multi-volume autobiography My Life and Loves was banned from sale in the U.S. and many other countries due to its sexual explicitness. Full of bravado, Harris nonetheless advocates throughout the text against misogynist (as well as racist) approaches to sexuality, focusing on female pleasure. 

  

In the prospectus, Harris claims that the autobiography shall present his proposal for a new basis of human society uniting Paganism and Christianity and the rejection of the, "combative Anglo-Saxon and Germanic ideal which must result, as he believes in constant warfare and the ultimate mastery of one race and not perhaps the finest, though the strongest."

Harris was already suffered censorship for his agitation against American involvement in World War I, and in order to avoid it, the autobiography was planned from the start as a private run paid for ahead of time by direct subscription from individual readers, and printed in Weimar Berlin. This rare prospectus for the book emphasizes, rather than downplays, the book's scandalous nature, soliciting members of the intellectual libertine/erotica network. The Revenant Archive also contains a first-edition copy of the initial volume of the book, which this prospectus solicited the funds to print.

 

The entire text is readable in the scans above. 

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Alphonse de Lamartine Medallion. 1848. Two-sided medallion in stamped metal.

Stamped-metal medallions were among the most common ways of expressing enthusiasm for popular (and often semi-popular) figures, whether in the realms of politics, culture, or the sciences. This small (13/16" diameter) medallion expresses solidarity with the new provisional government in the wake of the 1848 Revolution, united under the leadership of the Romanticist poet-turned Liberal politician Alphonse de Lamartine. In fact the medallion was likely struck largely with the purpose of further legitimizing the new government in the face of reactionary opposition. The front contains the poet's face in profile and his name; the back declares the solidarity of leading leftist activist-politicians including Louis Blanc, Ledru-Rollin, and Arago. As shown by its worn and dinged-up surface, this particular medallion was certainly regularly worn by somebody actively involved with the left, probably at demonstrations and meetings of political clubs.

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Tommaso Marinetti, Parole in libertà. Date Unknown, c. 1945-1970. Magic Lantern slide of 1919 visual poem.

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Poster of Auguste Maquet, by Cliché Dragon & Lemercier. c.1879. Photoglyptie print. Photopaper on double-sided newsprint w/ critical biography on Maquet verso. Paris-Portrait, Paris. 10" x 14.75"

Auguste Maquet wrote for much of his life under assumed names, but this artifact shows that he eventually achieved a certain degree of popular recognition for his work. As a co-founder of the Bouzingo group, he worked under the pseudonym Augustus Mac-Keat; he published only in journals or copied manuscripts during this period, and I'm not aware of any surviving work from the period unless he is behind the possible pseudonym 'Austuste Bouzenot' in the 1834 Annales Romantiques anthology, an avant-Romanticist essay on Hinduism. In the 1840s and '50s, he co-authored some of the most famous and enduring novels of the 19th Century, including The Three Musketeers, The Man in the Iron Mask, and The Count of Monte-Cristo; but his name was suppressed by publishers to maintain the 'Alexandre Dumas' brand-name--a practice extended to other Dumas collaborators in the avant-garde including Bibliophile Jacob and Léon Gozlan. In 1858 he sued and was legally recognised as a full collaborator on the novels, and went on to become a leader in copyright and writers'-union activism in France; nonetheless their novels continue to this day to be published exclusively under Dumas' name. (There is a movie about Dumas & Maquet, which I still need to watch, with trepidation.)

Alongside his collaborations with Dumas, Maquet not only published a number of novels under his own name (two of them in this archive) but was active as an important Romanticist historian, and co-authored the first systematic, multi-volume history of the French prison system--research that fed directly into his work on Monte Cristo and Iron Mask. (His and Pujol's History of the Dungeon of Vincennes is a part of this archive as well.) He also wrote a number of popular plays in the 1850s, and it was this that led to this poster, part of a series of posters of famous playwrights.

The photograph was mass-produced in 1879 using new, cheap photoglyptie technology, and affixed to a tableau on cheaper paper. On the back is an appreciative critical biography--a detailed blurb, essentially--about Maquet, by the critic Felix Jahyer. Interestingly, it entirely ignores his involvement with avant-garde Romanticism, skipping directly from his graduation in 1831 to the production of his first play in 1839, then tracing his collaborations with Dumas and the subsequent trial. It was published in the Paris-Portrait, an annual publication from which these portraits were intended to be removed.

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Mirabeau Trading/Collectible Card. Uncredited. Undated, late 19th / Early 20th Century. Hachette: Paris. Double-sided printed card.
 

  

 

This small card with a short biography of the Revolutionary leader measures the distance from Mirabeau's subversive nature during his own lifetime to dusty history for school children a century on. It specifies that it is "for use in primary schools", though it is unclear whether as a study-aid, a collectable, or a combination of both. It was published by Hachette, one of the largest of the commercial publishing-houses.

  

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Kenneth Patchen, Prospectus for "But Even So". 1965. Jargon 50/The Nantahala Foundation: Highlands, North Carolina. Softcover Octavo Pamphlet w/pasted-in fragment from plate 1 of forthcoming book, 4 pp. Includes 2 original subscription cards & the cancelled envelope from original mailing from editor Jonathan Williams to Robert Harley, editor of Oyez Press.

   

Kenneth Patchen was one of the most radical literary voices in America in the mid 20th Century. This prospectus for his forthcoming book was circulated among the underground publishing community and members of the Jargon Society. Both the sender of this complete mailing packet, Jargon's publisher Jonathan Williams, and its recipient, publisher Robert Harley, were graduates of Black Mountain College, near which Williams remained for most of his life.

 

 

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 Marie-Joseph Sobrier Medallion. 1848. Two-sided medallion in cast metal. 2 inches.

This medallion celebrates the insurrectionist Joseph Sobrier, who represented the extreme left of the many competing political factions that struggled for primacy in the wake of the 1848 Revolution. He had begun his career as a police spy embedded in the Parisian underground activist scene, but turned coat after being converted to the socialist-occultist Evadamist movement, as promulgated by the eccentric "Mapah" Simon Ganneau. He played a role in the many revolutionary clubs leading up to the revolution, as well as co-editing the socialist magazine The Paris Commune along with the romanticist socialists George Sand and Eugène Sue. When the revolution came, he fought on the barricades and then in the tumultuous demonstrations and street-fighting between the more moderate and more populist factions in setting up the new government. He served in the new government in several capacities, but renounced politics after Napoléon III's coup d'état, publicly endorsing the latter's rigged plebiscite to avoid persecution or exile. This sarcastically-worded medallion commemorates his arrest in May 1848 for his involvement in stirring up an insurrectionist workers' riot that stormed the Chamber of Deputies; the arrest took place at his home on the Rue de Rivoli where he was found to be stockpiling weapons. The medal informs us with caustic sarcasm that the authorities distributed free wine to the crowds in order to pacify them and prevent opposition to Sobrier's arrest.

The Front reads:

Vive la République Democratique et Sociale / Mai 1848
Sobrier / Républicain Socialiste

Front Translated:

Long Live the Democratic and Social Republic / May 1848
Sobrier / Republican Socialist

The Back reads:

De la Maison 16 Rue / de Rivoli, par les honnetes / et moderes qui mettent le / citoyen Sobrier en arresta/tion, et le vin du propietaire / en circulation, aux cris mil / le fois, repetes des a bas les / communistes, vive la Pro/piete, la Famille et le / vin gratis.

Back Translated:

At the House at 16 Rue / de Rivoli, by the honest / and moderate people who placed / citizen Sobrier under arr/est, and the property-owner's wine / being passed around, to the cries a thousand / times repeated of down with the / communists, long live Pro/perty, Family, and / Free Wine.

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Moveable-Type Sort (type component) of the National Amateur Press Association (NAPA). Undated, 1876 – Recent.

The roots of the first true Zine network – non-commercial pamphlets printed by (often adolescent) amateurs in tiny editions on personal reproduction devices at home to be traded, rather than sold, through a network that spanned both local and postal communities – was known as Amateur Publishing and lie in the mid-19th Century when the first affordable home-printing systems were marketed to non-professional writers, publishers and adolescents for the first time. By the mid-1870s hundreds of non-commercial, tiny-run periodicals were being printed in dens and basements across the US and England and traded through a growing mail network. Many, and probably the majority, began their involvement in publishing as teenagers. Many of these self-publishers used Hectographs, a kind of modified lithographic process; others used miniature letter-presses that began being marketed around the same time. The Amateur Publishing movement was the incubator not only for micropress and zine networks, but also of marginal literary forms such as horror, science fiction, and fantasy during their formative stages; H.P. Lovecraft was deeply involved with Amateur Publishing throughout his life and was briefly president of the NAPA, and long-time president of the rival United Amateur Press Association. With the "Mimeo Revolution" of the 1960s, the new technology became the vehicle for the anarchist model of micropress and later zine culture, which dispensed with the official organization, hierarchy, and defined community "membership" lists that characterize the NAPA and UAPA. The NAPA still exists today, but it has little or no contact with the radically lo-fi, decentralized zine community, having focused and specialized instead on the older, more expensive letterpress process and the production of meticulously-produced artists' books.