The Hashish Films of Customs Officer Henri Rousseau and Tatyana Joukof Shuffles the Cards

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The Hashish Films of
Customs Officer Henri Rousseau
and Tatyana Joukof
Shuffles the Cards

by
Emil Szittya

general information | our review | links | about the author

Title:	The Hashish Films of Customs Officer Henri Rousseau and Tatyana Joukof Shuffles the Cards
Author:	Emil Szittya
Genre:	Novel
Written:	1916 (Eng. 2025)
Length:	62 pages
Original in:	German
Availability:	The Hashish Films of [...] - US
	The Hashish Films of [...] - UK
	The Hashish Films of [...] - Canada
	in: Ahasver Traumreiter - Deutschland

	from: Bookshop.org (US)

(A Novel against Psicho-Analise)
German title: Die Haschischfilms des Zöllners Henri Rousseau und Tatjana Joukoff mischt die Karten
Translated and with an Introduction by W.C.Bamberger

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Our Assessment:

B : fascinating oddity

See our review for fuller assessment.

The complete review's Review:

       The subtitle -- (A Novel against Psicho-Analise) -- claims this is a novel, but as the title itself -- The Hashish Films of Customs Officer Henri Rousseau and Tatyana Joukof Shuffles the Cards -- suggests, this is anything but a traditional novel. For all its claim of (presumably) presenting 'hashish films' this work from the early era of cinema -- it was first published in 1915 or 1916 -- is not particularly cinematic, either. (Henri Rousseau -- who, yes, was also a douanier in his time ... -- does, however, rate some mentions, as does Szittya-friend Blaise Cendrars (lauded as: "the only poet now living").)
       There are seventeen chapters or sections to the 'novel', and most consist of numbered bits -- often just a single paragraph or sentence --, mostly half a dozen or so (though 'The Paintings' does extend for eighteen); a few pieces do without numbering. Many come with dedications and some with descriptions -- or both: 'An Indian Journey Pondered in Summer' is presented, parenthetically, as: "A Song for Emy Henings" (read: Emmy Hennings).
       In his Introduction, translator Bamberger suggests: "there is something of the feel of "automatic writing" in Die Haschischfilms" and much here certainly is very free-flowing. At one point Szittya writes: "Now I cavort with visions", which can well be said to sum up his approach in much of this collection -- generally personal (the "I" is prominent throughout) and certainly fantastical, in the broadest sense (and, yes, one might feel much here is drug-induced -- with Szittya addressing at least some of its use in the section titled 'Gabriele's Opinion of my Hashish Hours'). More fundamentally, as Szittya notes in one piece: "I want to disperse boredom in metamorphosing-style formulas"; he certainly seems to give that a good go .....
       There is little story here, yet much still is compelling -- from the very first piece, the opening of 'Sometimes':

Around 9 o'clock. An asylum in which, through no fault of my own, I lost Verlaine. A red-letter day. And Cendrars, in a drunken state, recounts tales of Russian monks, of women under bridges, of farmer Gaborwiegh. I just lie far below and look at the noses of Baudelaire and Villon. Some believe that we met out of love.

There is considerable personal reflection -- notably in 'Envy', in which he resignedly already finds: "And I am already so old" (despite not having yet reached thirty ...) and complains that: "Nothing has happened to me that was truly an experience" -- indeed, that: "I have never experienced most of my journey". (Amusingly, too, he notes here: "my big mistake was that I had too many professor friends".)
The reaches in the writing suggest the elusiveness of the 'experience' he seeks

Reestablish slavery ! The world should become a huge field where only poppies grow. Shatter every mirror ! -- In Nirvana the souls of the deceased become black birds. The snake is dead and the clocks and cars have broken down. And the wings of the eagles reek of manure piles.

       He writes much of traveling far and wide, but there are no destinations that can deliver what he seeks; as he notes in 'Gabriele's Opinion of my Hashish Hours': "We seek Paris in vain" (even as he writes from and about there several times).
       The subtitle suggests also a specific purpose to this work (and, presumably, approach) -- with Bamberger citing Walter Fähnders going so far as to say (in an Afterword to a collection of Szittya's writings) it is: "like a double-insult: not only aimed at psychoanalysis, but at 'the novel' as well". If insult aimed at 'the novel', it is curiously phrased; perhaps instead the focus should be on Szittya's insistence on calling it 'a novel' (and hence that it be read and considered as such). There is some structure here -- notably in the various pieces -- and some sense of a whole, but the form is very much Szittya's own, a far cry from most things novelistic. Self-reflection, in its various shades, dominates the work -- arguably as Szittya's own attempt at understanding and presenting (his) self, in determined opposition (or denial) of a psychoanalytic approach, most obviously in 'The Bordello', with its seven sections, each of which closes with the refrain: "I've already made my mother cry many times". (Elsewhere he admits: "And sometimes the nervous-sad eyes of my mother emerge from my dreams, like the autumnal image of a hospital"; one imagines that (especially) for all his protestations, psychoanalysts would have loved to have him on their couch.....)
       Even as he reports here that: "now I have women and flowers and money", 'The Bordello' is a litany of disappointment -- though notably he also writes: "And I still dream poetry" (not least: rather, presumably, than dreaming Freudian dreamscapes). Not yet thirty, his isn't the usual youthful world-weariness, but he is physically worn out: "I am very, very tired", he notes, and: "I already have dull eyes and flabby arms" -- and:

I am already bent over, and I have never been satisfied by love. And my ankles hurt. And I know I am on my way to getting fat and having gout, and sometimes I get so weak that many tear the mask from my face. I still have only the idea of the desire for grass.

And, as he also notes: "And also, I no longer have a personal desire".
There are flights of grand personal fantasy, but even in these he is brought back down to earth and reality, as in the closing piece in 'Portrait of Jacques the Belly Slicer and an Evening in the Boudoir of Frau Dr. Geller':

And I am delighted that I am the act of negation. The first prostitute in Greece. Aretino's unpublished writings. The pills with which de Sade spiced his festivals. I took Lautréamont to the madhouse. I have created Paris, Rome, and the Balkan brothels. I hate the giving that God put in us as a curse. I have created the fairy tale 1001 Nights. It takes only a moment for me to make the women beautiful in love's frenzy. And at daybreak I sit broken in my room and play cards with my servant.

A nice summing-up comes in 'Morning', in the piece that reads:

I have stolen myself from a film. Now I am strolling along the ocean shore. And I still have not spliced my paragraphs into the proper order.

The disorder remains -- but then traditional order would have required and resulted in a very different kind of work.
Szittya returns to the cinematic identification later, as well, writing in 'Symptoms of a Nervous Shock':

I was the films in a suburban cinema somewhere behind the Bastille; sometimes young girls even tell me so in their sentimental and banal poems; and somehow I already must have been in all the charity wards of the world.

The Hashish Films of Customs Officer Henri Rousseau and Tatyana Joukof Shuffles the Cards is a very loose, odd collection(-cum-novel), of reflection and wondering, very much grounded in personal experience yet only so revealing. Szittya suggests: "The world is only beautiful when it has no purpose", and there seems to be a striving for that here. It's not the sort of thing all readers will have the patience for, but at barely more than fifty pages it is an unusual trip worth taking.

- M.A.Orthofer, 26 February 2025

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Links:

The Hashish Films of Customs Officer Henri Rousseau and Tatyana Joukof Shuffles the Cards:

Wakefield Press publicity page

Other books of interest under review:

See Index of German literature
See Index of Books Written Between 1900 and 1945
Other books from Wakefield Press under review

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About the Author:

Emil Szittya lived 1886 to 1964.

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