transition 23 was published in July 1935 and was edited by Eugene Jolas.

Carrying forward the journal-as-laboratory project to discover new literary forms, this issue develops the genre of the paramyth and the concept of the hypnologue. We also find a return to the Romantic fragment of Early German Romanticism as a medium seeking to express what language withholds in expression. As, for example, one finds in Thérèse Aubray’s untitled (English) poem: “That whisper in the night / It had a dying sound… / Dead hands, one in the other locked / A wistful garland for your brow.” (64)

Also included in this volume is the “Testimony Against Gertrude Stein” in which a number of contributors refute the many claims concerning them that were seriously misrepresented in Stein’s The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. One notable detail was that Elliot Paul was the original founder of transition - a point not taken lightly. The force of the denunciation in the “Testimony” rests in part in the fact that Stein had been, as readers of the journal will note, a regular and high-profile contributor to transition in its first iteration.

Cover art: Paul Klee’s “Hope and Destruction”.

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Contents of Issue 23

VERTIGRAL

Paramyths

Eugene Jolas - [Statement on] Paramyths - 7

— Wayne Andrews - The Evocative Treason of 449 Golden Doorknobs - 7

— Dorothy Boillotat - Sensing - 11

— Eugene Jolas - Paramyths from a Dreambook - 15

— Franz Kafka (trans. Eugene Jolas) - Fragment - 25

— Jean Paul - Walt’s Dream - 26

— Georges Pelorson - Le Moment de Parsifal - 27

— Hans Schless - Better than Oblivion - 31

— Margaret Shedd - My Uncle’s Shoes - 33

Little Mantic Almageste

Eugene Jolas - Statement on the fragments - 44

— William Blake - 44

— Jacob Boehme - 44

— Dionysius Areopagita - 45

— Emerson - 45

— G.TH. Fechner - 45

— Gnostic Hymn - 45

— Madame Guyon - 45

— Hamann, The Magus of the North - 46

— Herder - 46

— Hymn of Jesus - 46

— Sir. James Jeans - 46

— St. John of the Cross - 46

— Justinus Kerner - 47

— Søren Kierkegaard - 47

— Lao Tzu - 47

— Louis Claude Saint-Martin - 48

— Novalis - 48

— Pascal - 48

— Jean Paul - 49

— Philo - 49

— Max Piccard - 49

— Plotinus - 49

— Schelling (from System of Transcendental Idealism) - 49

— Swedenborg - 50

— St. Teresa of Avila - 50

— Vedenta - 50

— William James - 50

— C.G. Jung - 50

— Rudolf Kassner - 50

— Henri Bergson - 51

Four Primitive Documents

— Gustave Barroso - Astronomical Legend - 52

— Alejo Carpentier - Two Cuban Negro Prayers - 52

— Alejo Carpentier - Prayer to the Damned Soul - 53

— Leo Frobenius - Day and Night, A yoruba Folktale - 54

— Leo Frobenius - Texte Enfantin - 55

F.M. Huebner - Possession - 56

Lothar Mundan - Vertigral Poetry: The Third Eye - 60

Hypnologues

Marcel Brion (opening statement on Thérèse Aubray) - 63

Thérèse Aubray - 63

— The great believer of an unknown faith am I… - 63

— A face is burning into me… - 63

— You shall have to go to him and cling to him… - 63

— That whisper in the night… - 64

Arthur Cummins - Angelic Insurgents Fly Into Space - 64

Homer Jeffries - World End - 65

Eugene Jolas - Mots-Frontiere Polyvocables - 65

— Seraphic Ascension - 66

— Danse Tropicale, Cosmogramme - 67

— Le Sujobjet à 15 heures - 69

— Hypnologues - 70

— Weltangst en chevauchant une frontière - 72

— Description of the Demons - 73

John Fredrick Means - The Apocalyptic Hour - 74

Georges Pelorson - Ontogrammes connaissance - 74

— Semence - 76

Theo Rutra - Prayer - 78

Camille Schuwer - Metaphonèmes - 79

James J. Sweeney - Saxifrage - 81

— Visit - 83

— Decayed Are Mine Eyes - 83

Three Romantic-Mystic Texts

Eugene Jolas - [Introductory Statement] - 85

— Franz von Baader - from Extasis as Metastasis - 85

— Hugo Ball - Gnostic Magic - 86

— Franz Werfel - From a Discourse on the Religious Experience - 87

Stuart Gilbert - Algernon Blackwood: Novelist and Mystic - 89

Eugene Jolas - Workshop - 97

— Transmutation Vertigraliste - 107

JAMES JOYCE AND HIS NEW WORK

James Joyce - Work in Progress: Opening and Closing Pages, Part II: Section II - 110

Léon-Paul Fargue (trans. Eugene Jolas) - The Alchemist - 130

Armand M. Petitjean (trans. Maria McDonald Jolas) - Joyce and Mythology: Mythology and Joyce - 133

LABORATORY OF THE WORD

Eugene Jolas - Inquiry About the Malady of Language - 144 (responses to the question below)

— Gottfried Benn - 145

— Joe Bousquet - 146

— Marcel Brion - 147

— Henry S. Canby - 148

— Malcolm Cowley - 148

— Luc Durtain - 149

— Norman Foerster - 149

— Ivan Goll - 149

— Philippe Lamour - 150

— H.L. Mencken - 150

— Francis de Miomandre - 151

— Emmanuel Mounier - 152

— Gorham Munson - 152

— C.K. Ogden - 152

— A.R. Orage - 153

— P.D. Ouspensky - 153

— Georges Pelorson - 155

— Armand M. Petitjean - 158

— Léon Pierre-Quint - 159

— Raja Rao - 160

— Theo Rutra - 165

— Jack Sanford - 166

— Camille Schuwer - 166

— Philippe Soupault - 168

— Louis Untermeyer - 168

— Laurence Vail - 168

— Edmond Vandercammen - 171

— Jean Wahl - 172

— Lansing Warren - 173

Malady of Language

Eugene Jolas - Statement on selection of texts concerning “Malady of Language” - 175

— Johann Ludwig Tieck - 175

— Novalis - 175

— Joseph Goerres - 175

— Emerson - 176

— Edgar Allan Poe - 176

— Friedrich Nietzsche - from Richard Wagner in Bayreuth - 178

— Sir Walter Raleigh - 179

— Hugo von Hoffmannsthal - 179

— P.D. Ouspensky - Tertium Organum - 180

Experiments in Language Mutation

Henri Michaux - Rencontre dans la forêt - 181

— Dimanche à la compagne

Georges Pelorson - 3 RYTMESES

Eugene Jolas - Old Century Pt. 27 Takes a Vacation - 183

— Logocinéma of the Frontierman - 187

— Nuitade - 191

Camille Schuwer - Trois Chansons Pour les Deux Ans de Filippe - 192

Louis Lerman - I Am Talking to You: You Are Talking to Me or an Introspective Analysis of Language - 193

THE PLASTIC SUBOBJECT OF NIGHT

Carola Giedion-Welcker (trans. Eugene Jolas) - New Roads in Modern Sculpture - 198

Transition and its Contemporaries (Some extracts from Intercontinental Reviews during 1933 and 1934) - 202

Photographs of Sculptures by:

— N. Gabo

— H. Laurens

— Umberto Boccioni

— G. Gonzales

— Alberto Giacometti

— Konstantin Brancusi

— Hans Arp

— R. Duchamp-Villon

— J. Lipschitz

Supplement: Testimony Against Gertrude Stein [transition Pamphlet no. 1]

Eugene Jolas - Testimony Against Gertrude Stein [opening statement] - 2

Henri Matisse - 3

Maria Jolas - 8

Tristan Tzara - 12

Georges Braque - 13

André Salmon - 14