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Aragon's Unconscious Mind - Paris Peasant

 After reading the first couple of pages of Louis Aragon's Paris Peasant, I did not understand what I was reading at all. All the previous texts I have read are novels. My first initial thought is to try and highlight words to understand the reasoning behind the author and their story. With Paris Peasant, this got me nowhere, and after watching the lecture and searching some things up about this text, I realized that the way I was reading and analyzing the book was all wrong. Even though I still don't fully understand it, Surrealism is a way of releasing our unconscious minds. Louis takes us on a journey of his small peasant town in pairs, describing the architecture, the types of people it draws and how we always have a perceived notion or underlying feeling about these places or things. One of the questions that Jon wanted us to think about was the notion of time in Aragon's text. I feel like the sense of time is lost and moving so fast before anyone can realize it's passing by. The way Louis jumps from building to building or random facts about how he loves blondes to talking about the importance of error without evidence makes me think this. One of my favourite parts was when he talked about baths and how "man" perceives that baths pertain to sensual pleasure instead of just a way to clean ourselves. I never thought of thinking in this way. Everything we see in reality has a feeling associated with it in our unconscious mind. After I realized this, I started to understand how this text was written. I'm not going to lie, some parts still confused me a lot, but I began to sit back and simply enjoy the words. I let my own mind take over and just absorb the beautiful details of scenery and how passionate Louis was about this little town. In the beginning, I remember him mentioning how they were trying to change the roads in his city to make it more open and that he was scared and wasn't open to the idea of modernization. I agree with Louis; this small town holds the passages that its inhibitors walk on and venture down. It may seem like a dull reality above but hidden underneath are the dark, twisty unconscious minds that dare to dream of coming above the surface. Instead of being in the present moment with this book, I felt disconnected. I didn't feel like Louis walking through the town, I felt as if I was watching Louis stroll through the town instead. I didn't feel present in the story, like when I have those days where I feel so tired and disconnected in the world that I don't feel like myself. I think that's what Louis was trying to grasp, though, the difference between reality and dreaming. Surrealism.  

This leaves me with one question,

Do authors have a certain way they want you to read their book? / how does this impact what the reader gets out of the text? 

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Comments

  1. Xiang LiJanuary 25, 2022 at 9:21 AM


    Hi Alyssa! When I read Aragon's article, I kept trying to understand the author's relatively obscure description through repeated reading. Still, I received part of the author's feelings when I understood it a little. In the reading process, I think the author's behaviour of inserting small notices into the text is very interesting. It is a behaviour that the author wants to make readers participate in the reading. —Xiang Li

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  2. UnknownJanuary 27, 2022 at 1:14 PM

    Hi Alyssa, just like you I was very confused when I first started reading the text. I think I also was reading with the expectation that this would be like novels I have read in the past. I think you captured the meaning of the book in the end though and I found your post very insightful! Thank you for sharing.

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