The Many Faces of Raymond Roussel

A Found Poem

1 Rousell age three, on a swan.

2 In Turkish costume, pretending to smoke a pipe.

3 Dressed as a chambermaid.

4 As an eighteenth-century Marquis.

5 Aged nineteen, in the grip of la gloise.

6 In 1900, in the uniform of the Versailles Engineers.

7 In gleaming spats, amusing a tiny dog.

8 With Charlotte Dufrene.

9 Aboard the Barbarossa, outward bound for India.

10 With his mother and an elephant on the shores of Lake Kandy.

11 With his mother and a Pekinese in Monte Carlo.

12 On stage as a matelot in Impressions d’Afrique.

13 In a Basque beret.

14 With a miner’s pickaxe and lantern in Berchtesgaden.

15 In Tahiti at the grave of one of Rarahu’s children.

16 With the descendants of Queen Pomare.

17 The roulette.

18 In 1927, outside a mosque in Damascus.

(Source: The list of illustrations in Raymond Rousell and the Republic of Dreams by Mark Ford, 2000.)