High Solitude

Heir of symbolism, father of surrealism, extraordinary verbal inventor, Léon-Paul Fargue reveals himself to be a visionary in his prose poems. He calls High Solitude a "diorama of states of the soul."

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In this work, originally published in 1941, Fargue revives both the night of prehistoric times and that of the end of the world. And, between the two, this fantastic universe also: the Paris that he so loved and of which he was the unforgettable Piéton. Paris, whose secret geography he traces, in the company of the ghosts of those who were dear to him. The Paris of white nights, stations, and cafes.

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But every road, every street, leads to this high, unique place: solitude. "I work at my solitude, searching to guide it in the sea of insomnia where the long line of the dead has thrown us..."

LÉON-PAUL FARGUE (1876-1947) was a writer of poems, novels, and essays. He was a member of Les Apaches, an artist's group formed by Ravel and others, and a close friend of Alfred Jarry. Walter Benjamin considered Fargue the greatest poet in twentieth-century France and the two met in the 30s, with Fargue touring the philosopher around the arcades and other parts of Paris. Fargue was considered the great walker of the city of lights and recounted his perambulations in D'après Paris (1931) and Le Piéton de Paris (1939). Other books of his include Haute solitude (1941) and Déjeuners de soleil (1942).

Rainer J. Hanshe was born in Tehran, Iran, raised in New York, and has resided in Europe and elsewhere. He is the author of the novels The Acolytes and The Abdication, as well as of the hybrid entity Shattering the Muses (2016), a collaboration with visual artist Federico Gori, Closing Melodies (2023), a phantomatic encounter between Nietzsche & Van Gogh, and Dionysos Speed (2024). His translations include Baudelaire's My Heart Laid Bare (2017; 2020), Belgium Stripped Bare (2019), and Paris Spleen (2021), Évelyne Grossman's The Creativity of the Crisis, Antonin Artaud's Journey to Mexico: Revolutionary Messages, and Léon-Paul Fargue's High Solitude. as well as longer and shorter works by other authors.His newest work, Humanimality, is forthcoming in 2025. Beyond Sense, a vatic exploration of the aphasiac disintegration of Hölderlin, Baudelaire, Nietzsche, and Artaud, is due out in 2026. He is at work on a new book entitled Burn Poet Burn.