Graphomania, Kitsch, and Kundera

January 8, 1997

I wanted to weigh in on the "graphomania/kitsch" thing now that I'm caught up on reading other journals and fixing the inexplicable problems with my own. Problems:

1. I don't understand what many of the words in Todd Napolitano's essay mean.
2. The term "women's writing" makes me see red.
3. The term postfeminism (used and defined in the introduction to the e-zine issue on Postfeminist Writing in which Mr. Napolitano's essay appears) makes me choke.

Therefore, I can't write an objective critical essay. So I thought I'd simply explore the words.

Graphomania

The dictionary yielded:

• grapho- : "a combining form meaning writing,drawing, as in graphology".
• -mania: "a combining form meaning an excessive or persistent enthusiasm , craving, or liking for, obsession with, or craze for a specified thing, as in bibliomania"

So far so good.

Having no desire to spend the next several months reading the entire works of Milan Kundera to find the reference cited I turned to the web. A search on "graphomania" +"Milan Kundera" turned up only Todd Napolitano's essay. Bummer. I was hoping to put some context around Kundera's definition.

Still curious about Mr. Napolitano's usage of the term, I searched on graphomania alone turning up:

• Jorge Luis Borges uses the term re a Moroccan gardener with a compulsion to do calligraphy on everything in sight.
• A Russian scientist, Alexander V. Parfenov, has a "Graphomania" Page.
• Miran Hladnik lists articles about graphomania in the work of certain Slovene authors in his Curriculum vitae. Since his resume is in Slovene, I didn't bother capturing the link.
• David Hawkes refers to his own compulsive news group posting as graphomania in Acting Like a Professor.
• Diego De Cesaris refers to his drawing of comics.
• A review of a recent Russian novel, Omon Ra, in Salon quotes Victor Erofeyev re Soviet era fiction: "a literature of lies and ignominy graced by piles of gibberish and graphomania that are unsurpassed examples of kitsch." - Wow, graphomania and kitsch!
• Pillowbook-- used in a movie review, also refers to graphoerotomania.
• Roget's Thesaurus: Entry 590 (Writing) lists: graphomania[obs] as a synonym for writing.

The rest of the hits were pages in Russian or other Slavic languages. Not having Cyrillic fonts on my Mac here I couldn't make heads nor tales of them. These seem like clues. Is graphomania a particular problem in writing by Slavic authors (and Moroccan gardeners)? Somebody could get a dissertation out of that I'll bet.

Kitsch

Again the dictionary: kitsch: "gaudy trash; specifically art, writing, etc. of a pretentious but shallow kind, calculated to have popular appeal". - Webster's New World Dictionary 1957

kitsch: "Art or artwork marked by sentimental, often pretentious bad taste" -The American Heritage Dictionary - 1992

A search on kitsch yields 4000 hits. The first 10 yield nothing of interest so I give up and do +kitsch +Slavic, which yields more hits than I would've expected, including a specific reference to Slavic kitsch as well as to a reference to "Communist kitsch" in the program for a scholarly convocation listing a presentation on a movie called I Am Cuba. A theme is developing.

Lo and behold, another reference to that same movie:

I AM CUBA - Mikhail Kalatozov. Started only a week after the Cuban missile crisis, I AM CUBA feverishly explores the seductive, decadent (and deliriously photogenic) world of Batista's Cuba. It's a wildly schizophrenic celebration of Communist kitsch, mixing Slavic solemnity with Latin sensuality. From the director of The Cranes Are Flying. (Cuba/USSR, 1964)

We've got a theme going now!

The library of Congress has a special classification for kitsch in the aesthetics classification: 301.K5, right between
irony and landscape.

BE Aesthetics
301 Special topics A - Z
.A7 Art for art's sake
.A94 Avant-garde
.C4 Charm
.C6 Color
.C7 The comic
.C84 Creation
.D5 Dilettantism
.E8 Experience
.F3 Fantastic
.F6 Form
.G7 Grace
.G74 Grotesque
.H3 Harmony
.I3 The heroic
.I7 Imitation
.I8 Irony
.K5 Kitsch
.L3 Landscape
.M4 Metaphor
.M54 Modernism
.M6 Movement
.M9 Myth
.N3 Nature
.O24 Object
.O35 Odors
.P3 Particularity
.P78 Psychological Aspects
.R5 Rhythm
.S4 Sea. Ocean.
.S5 Situation
.S65 Space
.S7 The sublime
.S8 Symbolism
.S9 Symmetry
.T7 The tragic
.U5 Ugliness.

I try +kitsch +Kundera. Bingo! Milan Kundera's essay on kitsch is mentioned on some modernism page. I feel like I've found the holy grail. The only thing is, as I read the essay I am more and more confused as to what Kundera means by kitsch. The "denial of shit" means nothing to me. I do notice he uses the phrase "Communist kitsch" too. Aha! Now we are onto something. A theme! A theme! And I read further. There can be other "kitsches" including -TahDah!- feminist kitsch! There's a meaning buried here somewhere.

l'art pacotilliste

Glad I had my trusty ancient water-damaged Petit Larousse on hand for this one:
pacotille: "Marchandise, ne payant pas de fret, que peuvent embarquer les gens d'equipage ou les passagers d'un navire, afin de commercer pour leur propre compte" Par denigre: "Marchandise de qualite inferieure". - Petit Larousse - 1959.

the rest of the story

Well, I don't have a German dictionary and I'm getting tired... maybe more of this game later...

I haven't even gotten to feminism or postfeminism yet.

The proof is left to the reader...

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