The Review of Contemporary Fiction

Bayamus and Cardinal Pölätüo by Stefan Themerson
David Ian Paddy

Stefan Themerson. Bayamus & Cardinal Pölätüo. Intro. Keith Waldrop. Exact Change, 1997. 242 pp. $15.95.

Stefan Themerson (1910-1988), a Polish emigrant and prominent member of the Polish avant-garde, moved to England in 1942 and established the Gaberbocchus Press with this wife Franciszka, eventually publishing such diverse voices as Alfred Jarry, Kurt Schwitters, Raymond Queneau, and Bertrand Russell. This jarring assembly aptly describes Themerson’s own motley writing. In his books we encounter philosophical parodies prosaically transcribed by a startling avant-garde sensibility. Imagine, if you can, a comic philosophical treatise composed by an utterly serious dadaist.
The two novels published in this volume provide a great introduction to Themerson’s innovative style and thought. In Bayamus the narrator follows a man with three legs to the Theatre of Anatomy and the Theatre of Semantic Poetry. The latter is the novel’s true destination, where its real concern is explored. Semantic poets insist on clear thinking and the need to free poetic words of vague and multiple associations. To do this the poet must replace each questionable word with the more precise phrasing of a dictionary definition. This method of substitution feels notably Oulipian, and, fittingly enough, Themerson’s semantic rendition of “Taffy was a Welshman” has been included in Mathews and Brotchie’s Oulipo Compendium.
Cardinal Pölätüo, while possibly even more absurd, is also more striking in its philosophical satire. The Cardinal composes a 6,940-page “Philosophy of Pölätüomism,” which attempts to prove that far from undermining the Church’s tenets, science is a subset and further proof of the validity of religious belief. Pölätüo is equally set on disclaiming Russell’s logical positivism and on destroying that great enemy of his faith, poetry. Unfortunately, this also entails ridding the world of his eighteen-year-old, in-utero poet son, Guillaume Apollinaire.
Presented in one of Exact Change’s always-elegant editions, this volume is a wonderful way to be introduced to the twisted and hilarious world of Stefan Themerson. [David Ian Paddy]