Raymond Russell
About This Novel
In this book, Foucault provides a detailed interpretation of metaphors, silences, and puns in the works of French writer Raymond Roussel. Raymond Roussel was a French poet, novelist, and playwright. He was a contemporary of Proust, another great French writer, and had contacts with the latter. He had a great influence on French literature in the 20th century, including Andre Breton of the Surrealist movement, Georges Perec of Oulibeau, and Alain Robbe-Grillet of the New Novel School. Russell's works are always full of language games. He was not well-known during his lifetime and his works were not well received. In 1933, he was found dead in his hotel room. Through his interpretation of Raymond Russell's works, Foucault reveals to us the relationship between language and death. He believes that the real task of literature is not to express or reflect the reality of "things", but to show the process of its flash and diffusion, creating a "blank" that language is eager to enter. In other words, if we look at literature from the opposite direction, that is, using the method of Raymond Russell, we will find that language actually expresses nothing at all. Language just keeps itself a "hole". In this sense, language has been sentenced to "death". It is language itself that has sentenced itself to death. Russell not only reveals the "emptiness" of language, but also the "emptiness" of the "things" spoken of by language. In Foucault's mind, this is the core of Raymond Russell's literary creation. He invented a language machine, but this machine has no secrets. There is only a relationship between language and death that language tries to maintain, unravel or re-establish, or repeats endlessly.
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