Michel Houellebecq is tans plaaslik in die nuus omdat van sy werk in Afrikaans vertaal is. Drie van sy romans, Whatever (1994 in Frans, 1998 in Engels), Platform (2001/2002) en The Map and the Territory (2010), het ek nog nie gelees nie. Platform het veral vanweë die negatiewe uitbeelding van Islam bekendheid verwerf. In hierdie verband moet in gedagte gehou word dat Houellebecq op Réunion gebore is en dat hy van sy kinderjare in Algerië deurgebring het.
In The Possibility of an Island (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2005, 345p) lewer Houellebecq snydende kommentaar op die mensdom. "Man speaks like a dog barks to express his anger, or his fear ... The self is the synthesis of our failures" (p 6). "When you grow old you need to think of reassuring and gentle things ... we train ourselves for death" (p 55). Dalk vanweë sy Afrika-agtergrond skryf Houellebecq: "No culture of the mind ... had ever been able to develop in societies with a high level of delinquency, simply because physical security is the condition for free thought" (p 229). "We had not surrendered; to the end we had refused to collaborate and to accept a system that was designed to destroy us" (p 281).
Houellebecq het veral na die publikasie van sy roman, Atomised (London: Vintage, 2001, 379p), wye bekendheid verwerf. Die boek handel oënskynlik oor twee broers, maar eintlik oor die outeur se onbehae in die hedendaagse samelewing. "The world is precisely the sum of information we have about it" (p 324). "Without points of reference, a man melts away" (p 141). "I'd like to believe that the self is an illusion ... but if it is, it's a pretty painful one" (p 76-77). "In contemporary Western society, death is like white noise to a man in good health; it fills his mind when his dreams and plans fade. With age, the noise becomes increasingly insistent, like a dull roar with the occasional clang. In another age it was the expectant sound of the kingdom of God, now it is in anticipation of death. Such is life" (p 95). "Man is not made to grasp death, neither his own, nor that of others" (p 342). "Religions are basically an attempt to explain the world; and no attempt to explain the world can survive if it clashes with our need for rational certainty" (p 323). "In the midst of nature's savagery, human beings sometimes (rarely) succeed in creating small oases warmed by love" (p 103). Plaaslik kan die volgende opmerking in die kol wees: "What the masses adored above everything was the image of evil unpunished" (p 248).
Benewens die genoemde vyf romans is daar 'n vroeër boek, in 1991 in Frans gepubliseer, wat lig op baie van die idees in sy romans werp. Ek verwys na Houellebecq se H P Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2006, 247p). In sy 1998-voorwoord noem Houellebecq dit "a sort of first novel" (p 23). Die rolprentregisseur Barbet Schroeder het dit "the most brilliant of Michel Houellebecq's books" genoem (p 245). Ingesluit in die Engelse weergawe is die teks van twee van Lovecraft se kortverhale: "The Call of Cthulhu" (1926) en "The Whisperer in Darkness" (1931). Eersgenoemde storie se eerste sin lui: "The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents" (p 123).
Howard Phillips Lovecraft (1890-1937) het die lewe onverstaanbaar gevind en hy het die natuur/heelal as vyandig teenoor die mensdom ervaar. (Dit is presies die teenoorgestelde van die "anthropic principle".) Mense se doen en late word eintlik irrelevant. Hy "feels himself to be very far from humanity in every way" (p 96). "[I] am all out of touch with everybody and have been for years" (p 194). Dit verduidelik die newetitel van Houellebecq se boek. Lovecraft se verhale word as "weird fiction" geëtiketteer. Daarin speel wetenskapsfiksie, fantasie en die makabere of grieselige (bv gruwels en vrese) 'n groot rol. Hy was 'n bewonderaar van veral Edgar Allan Poe se werk. Lovecraft het bykans sy hele lewe grootliks ledig en doelloos in Providence, Rhode Island, deurgebring. As skrywer het hy na sy dood aansien begin kry. Byvoorbeeld, Stephan King erken hom as 'n belangrike vormende invloed op sy eie werk.
Volgens Houellebecq is Lovecraft se uitgangspunt as skrywer: "Life is painful and disappointing. It is useless, therefore, to write new realistic novels" (p 29). "Those who love life do not read ... access to the artistic universe is more or less entirely the preserve of those who are a little fed up with the world" (p 30). Lovecraft "saw religions as so many sugar-coated illusions made obsolete by the progress of science" (p 31). Daar is by hom "the conviction of the absolute futility of human aspiration. The universe is nothing but a furtive arrangement of elementary particles" (p 32). (Die oorspronklike titel van Atomised is: Les Particules Élémentaires.)
Volgens Lovecraft het die lewe geen betekenis nie; niks is sinvol nie. "Life is a hideous thing" (p 34). "He ... considered democracy to be an idiocy and progress to be an illusion" (p 39). "What we detest is simply change itself" (p 115). "There is nothing tranquil or discreet in his literature. Its impact on the reader's mind is savagely, frighteningly brutal, and dangerously slow to dissipate" (p 42). "None of Lovecraft's stories [is] introverted. Each is an open slice of howling fear" (p 53). Lovecraft: "Even death may die ... Abandon all hope, ye who enter here" (p 54). "My experience was wholly or partly an hallucination ... And yet, its realism was so hideous that I sometimes find hope impossible" (p 55).
In die hoofstuk met die opskrif, "Utter the great no to life without weakness", skryf Houellebecq: "Absolute hatred of the world in general, aggravated by an aversion to the modern world in particular. This summarizes Lovecraft's attitude fairly accurately ... For him, hatred of life precedes all literature ... The rejection of all forms of realism is a preliminary condition for entering his universe" (p 57). Volgens Lovecraft "a man is like a coral insect ... his only destiny is to 'build vast beautiful, mineral things for the moon to delight in after he is dead'" (p 65). Dit vind aansluiting by sy belangstelling in argitektuur, waarvoor hy darem waardering en selfs bewondering gehad het.
Vir enkele jare was Lovecraft getroud en het hy twee jaar lank in Brooklyn, New York City, gewoon. Toe sy vrou haar werk verloor, het hy noodgedwonge maar tevergeefs werk gesoek. Dit het hom met wrewel teenoor immigrante ("Italo-Semitico-Mongoloid", p 106) en die Amerikaanse "melting pot" vervul (p 102). "Squat, swarthy strangers with hardened faces and narrow eye[s], shrewd strangers without dreams and without kinship to the scenes about them, who could never mean aught to a blue-eyed man of the old folk with the love of fair green lanes and white New England village steeples in his heart" (p 101). Hy het homself as 'n outydse of konserwatiewe aristokraat en daarby as 'n Anglo-Saksiese Protestant (en veral as 'n Puritein) geposisioneer. "What amazed him about [Puritans] was that they 'hated life and scorned the platitude that it is worth living'" (p 117). Hy het gevrees "'sensitive persons' would be vanquished by 'greasy chimpanzees'" (p 113).
Lovecraft "did not consider it proper to make a profession of literature. As he writes, 'a gentleman shouldn't write all his images down for a plebian rabble to stare at'" (p 92). "Lovecraft serves as example to all who wish to learn how to fail in life" (p 91). "This man, who did not succeed at life, did indeed succeed at writing ... Every great passion, be it love or hate, will in the end generate an authentic work" (p 118). In Lovecraft se geval was dit "hate and fear" (p 118). "He succeeded in transforming his aversion for life into an effective hostility" (p 119). Terwyl hy die empiriese werklikheid ignoreer, was sy onbereikbare ideaal om 'n nuwe werklikheid te skep, dus "to make of life a work of art" (p 117).
Johannes Comestor
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