Distributed for Seagull Books
Abysses
Prolific essayist, translator, and critic Pascal Quignard has described his Last Kingdom series as something unique. It consists, he says, “neither of philosophical argumentation, nor short learned essays, nor novelistic narration,” but comes, rather, from a phase of his work in which the very concept of genre has been allowed to fall away, leaving an entirely modern, secular, and abnormal vision of the world.
In Abysses, the newest addition to the series, Quignard brings us yet more of his troubling, questing characters—souls who are fascinated by what preceded and conceived them. He writes with a rich mix of anecdote and reflection, aphorism and quotation, offering enigmatic glimpses of the present, and confident, pointed borrowings from the past. But when he raids the murkier corners of the human record, he does so not as a historian but as an antiquarian. Quignard is most interested in the pursuit of those stories that repeat and echo across the seasons in their timelessness.
In Abysses, the newest addition to the series, Quignard brings us yet more of his troubling, questing characters—souls who are fascinated by what preceded and conceived them. He writes with a rich mix of anecdote and reflection, aphorism and quotation, offering enigmatic glimpses of the present, and confident, pointed borrowings from the past. But when he raids the murkier corners of the human record, he does so not as a historian but as an antiquarian. Quignard is most interested in the pursuit of those stories that repeat and echo across the seasons in their timelessness.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: (Jean de la Fontaine)
Chapter 2: (The Disconnected Telephone)
Chapter 3: (The Magnetic Poles of Time)
Chapter 4: Ut sol
Chapter 5: (Marthe)
Chapter 6: (Württemburg Landscape)
Chapter 7: The Seasons and the Sentences
Chapter 8: (The Antiquated)
Chapter 9: (On the Emperor Augustus)
Chapter 10: Treatise on Antiquaries
Chapter 11: Varro
Chapter 12: Nostalgia
Chapter 13: (Shakespeare)
Chapter 14: Low C
Chapter 15: (Fishing Expeditions at Bergheim)
Chapter 16: (On the Blackness of Night)
Chapter 17: Amaritudo
Chapter 18: (Leaving)
Chapter 19: (Pusan)
Chapter 20: (On the Century Collapsed into the Abyss)
Chapter 21: On Dead Time
Chapter 22: Pisgah
Chapter 23: (On Busoni)
Chapter 24: (M.)
Chapter 25: Crows
Chapter 26: Ovid’s Pulsio
Chapter 27: Treatise on the Sky
Chapter 28: Primal Radiation
Chapter 29: (Kant)
Chapter 30: The Snail
Chapter 31: (Yogindu)
Chapter 32: Piano
Chapter 33: The Solstitial Point
Chapter 34: (Ad finem)
Chapter 35: (Fons temporis)
Chapter 36: (Mercury)
Chapter 37: After the Event
Chapter 38: Praesentia
Chapter 39: Aunques es de noche
Chapter 40: Dreams
Chapter 41: On the Uffington White House
Chapter 42: On Assuetude
Chapter 43: The Countess of Flahaut
Chapter 44: The Handkerchief of Joy
Chapter 45: Story of the Woman Called the Grey One
Chapter 46: (Fountainhead Men)
Chapter 47: (The Round-dance)
Chapter 48: On the Happy Ending
Chapter 49: On Palaeolithic Guilt
Chapter 50: Urvashi
Chapter 51: (White Simca)
Chapter 52: (Borders)
Chapter 53: On ‘Backwards’
Chapter 54: Animals
Chapter 55: On Force
Chapter 56: The Unthinking Coming Through
Chapter 57: The Fear of Forebears
Chapter 58: (Invisible Cyclone)
Chapter 59: Orpheus (1), Son of Oeagrus
Chapter 60: Orpheus (2) Aornos
Chapter 61: Orpheus (3) Recapitulatio
Chapter 62: The Seven Circles of Zenchiku
Chapter 63: Eos
Chapter 64: (Nox)
Chapter 65: (The 200-Inch Hale Telescope)
Chapter 66: (The Earth)
Chapter 67: (The Imagination)
Chapter 68: Cur
Chapter 69: Endymion of Elis
Chapter 70: (Rogier van der Weyden)
Chapter 71: (The Night of the Ages)
Chapter 72: The Darkened
Chapter 73: (Fatherland)
Chapter 74: The One Whom Time Will Never Destroy
Chapter 75: God Becomes Past
Chapter 76: (Louis Cordesse)
Chapter 77: On the Depth of Time
Chapter 78: Chuang-Tzu’s Bird
Chapter 79: (The Pont de Neuilly)
Chapter 80: Modernity
Chapter 81: Quitilian the Grammarian
Chapter 82: (The Abyss of 1945)
Chapter 83: The Traces of the Erstwhile
Chapter 84: The Jagst
Chapter 85: Reading
Chapter 86: In Reading, the Eye Does Not See
Chapter 87: Antique Hunting
Chapter 88: Rhynia
Chapter 89: Rome
Chapter 90: Virgil
Chapter 91: Red
Translator’s Notes
Translator’s Acknowledgement
Chapter 2: (The Disconnected Telephone)
Chapter 3: (The Magnetic Poles of Time)
Chapter 4: Ut sol
Chapter 5: (Marthe)
Chapter 6: (Württemburg Landscape)
Chapter 7: The Seasons and the Sentences
Chapter 8: (The Antiquated)
Chapter 9: (On the Emperor Augustus)
Chapter 10: Treatise on Antiquaries
Chapter 11: Varro
Chapter 12: Nostalgia
Chapter 13: (Shakespeare)
Chapter 14: Low C
Chapter 15: (Fishing Expeditions at Bergheim)
Chapter 16: (On the Blackness of Night)
Chapter 17: Amaritudo
Chapter 18: (Leaving)
Chapter 19: (Pusan)
Chapter 20: (On the Century Collapsed into the Abyss)
Chapter 21: On Dead Time
Chapter 22: Pisgah
Chapter 23: (On Busoni)
Chapter 24: (M.)
Chapter 25: Crows
Chapter 26: Ovid’s Pulsio
Chapter 27: Treatise on the Sky
Chapter 28: Primal Radiation
Chapter 29: (Kant)
Chapter 30: The Snail
Chapter 31: (Yogindu)
Chapter 32: Piano
Chapter 33: The Solstitial Point
Chapter 34: (Ad finem)
Chapter 35: (Fons temporis)
Chapter 36: (Mercury)
Chapter 37: After the Event
Chapter 38: Praesentia
Chapter 39: Aunques es de noche
Chapter 40: Dreams
Chapter 41: On the Uffington White House
Chapter 42: On Assuetude
Chapter 43: The Countess of Flahaut
Chapter 44: The Handkerchief of Joy
Chapter 45: Story of the Woman Called the Grey One
Chapter 46: (Fountainhead Men)
Chapter 47: (The Round-dance)
Chapter 48: On the Happy Ending
Chapter 49: On Palaeolithic Guilt
Chapter 50: Urvashi
Chapter 51: (White Simca)
Chapter 52: (Borders)
Chapter 53: On ‘Backwards’
Chapter 54: Animals
Chapter 55: On Force
Chapter 56: The Unthinking Coming Through
Chapter 57: The Fear of Forebears
Chapter 58: (Invisible Cyclone)
Chapter 59: Orpheus (1), Son of Oeagrus
Chapter 60: Orpheus (2) Aornos
Chapter 61: Orpheus (3) Recapitulatio
Chapter 62: The Seven Circles of Zenchiku
Chapter 63: Eos
Chapter 64: (Nox)
Chapter 65: (The 200-Inch Hale Telescope)
Chapter 66: (The Earth)
Chapter 67: (The Imagination)
Chapter 68: Cur
Chapter 69: Endymion of Elis
Chapter 70: (Rogier van der Weyden)
Chapter 71: (The Night of the Ages)
Chapter 72: The Darkened
Chapter 73: (Fatherland)
Chapter 74: The One Whom Time Will Never Destroy
Chapter 75: God Becomes Past
Chapter 76: (Louis Cordesse)
Chapter 77: On the Depth of Time
Chapter 78: Chuang-Tzu’s Bird
Chapter 79: (The Pont de Neuilly)
Chapter 80: Modernity
Chapter 81: Quitilian the Grammarian
Chapter 82: (The Abyss of 1945)
Chapter 83: The Traces of the Erstwhile
Chapter 84: The Jagst
Chapter 85: Reading
Chapter 86: In Reading, the Eye Does Not See
Chapter 87: Antique Hunting
Chapter 88: Rhynia
Chapter 89: Rome
Chapter 90: Virgil
Chapter 91: Red
Translator’s Notes
Translator’s Acknowledgement