Alexander Trocchi

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Alexander Trocchi (born July 30, 1925 in Glasgow , † April 15, 1984 in London ) was a Scottish writer and an important member of the Situationist International . His main contribution consisted in the proclamation of "spontaneous universities" and the establishment of the network project Sigma , a mental anticipation of the Internet.

Life

origin

Alexander Trocchi was the child of a Scottish mother and an Italian father named Alfredo Trocchi, a band leader. From 1942 to 1943 he studied English and philosophy at the University of Glasgow . Since Britain was at war with Nazi Germany, Trocchi enlisted in the Royal Navy in 1943 , where he served until 1946. After the war he continued his philosophy studies at the University of Glasgow.

Paris time

At the end of the 1940s, Alexander Trocchi moved to Paris on a scholarship, where he edited the literary journal Merlin . In it he published many well-known authors, including Henry Miller , Samuel Beckett , Christopher Logue and Pablo Neruda . According to him, the magazine died when the US State Department canceled all of its subscriptions in protest of an article by Jean-Paul Sartre . To earn a living, he wrote pornographic stories for the English-language imprint Olympia Press , for example Helen and Desire (1954).

In October 1955 he came into contact with the Lettrist International , and subsequently with the Situationist International , as a member of which he then wrote numerous texts, such as " Invisible Insurrection of a Million Minds " or " Techniques of the World Coup ”( Technique du Coup du Monde , in the magazine Internationale Situationniste No. 8). He propagated an international spontaneous university as a cultural counter-power. With his Sigma project he was a co-founder of the underground in Great Britain. Allegedly, Jean Cocteau introduced him to opiates , on which he remained dependent for a lifetime.

Stay in USA

He left Paris in 1956 addicted to heroin and lived in Venice and Taos , New Mexico , USA for a while before settling in New York. Here he had contact with the Beat Generation and William S. Burroughs . He wrote down his experiences and thoughts in the book Cain's Book . The book became a scandal when it was published in London in 1963, and there were also book burnings by outraged opponents who accused it, among other things, of glorifying drugs .

In Greenwich Village Trocchi made the acquaintance of the song poet Leonard Cohen . Trocchi had administered heroin to a sixteen-year-old girl in the spring of 1961 and was arrested for it. Cohen helped Trocchi to escape across the Canadian border and hid him in his apartment in Montreal, where the opium he had brought with him was boiled on the stove . “After he had finished it himself, he handed Leonard the pot with the leftovers, but had apparently left a little too much: when they set off on foot to go out to eat, Leonard collapsed. He couldn't see anything anymore. Trocchi dragged him to the sidewalk before a car ran him over. ”Cohen gradually recovered and housed the junkie for the next four days. Then Trocchi had the forged papers together for the crossing to his native Scotland and then traveled on to London, where he registered as a heroin patient in order to get the drug legally. Leonard Cohen dedicated the poem Alexander Trocchi, Public Junkie, Priez Pour Nous to him , published in his third volume of poems Flowers for Hitler .

International Poetry Incarnation

In addition to Allen Ginsberg , Harry Fainlight , Lawrence Ferlinghetti , Michael Horovitz and the activist John "Hoppy" Hopkins , Alexander Trocchi was an important participant in the International Poetry Incarnation , which he himself had conceived and organized just a few days earlier with Michael Horovitz. Michael Horovitz commented on the preliminary work as follows: "We sat in Alex Trocchi's sordid flat - there were heroin needles on the floor - and took it in turns to speak lines that Ginsberg wrote down." (Roughly: "We sat in Trocchi's run-down apartment - Heroin syringes were lying on the floor - and alternately reciting lines that Ginsberg had written. ")

death

In the 1960s and 1970s he published very little and was active a. a. as a book and drug dealer. After the death of his wife, Lyn Hicks, in 1972, he took care of his sons Mark and Nick as a single parent, heavily dependent on cocaine and heroin .

Alexander Trocchi's remains were cremated in the crematorium in London-Mortlake , and the ashes were kept on the mantelpiece at home, where they were, however, stolen by strangers. After his death, a fire destroyed Trocchi's apartment and many of the documents he had left behind.

reception

In the 1990s his work was rediscovered by a new generation of young Scottish writers, including Irvine Welsh . His novel Watercourses was filmed under the title Young Adam by David Mackenzie with Ewan McGregor and Tilda Swinton in the leading roles.

Quotes

  • “In early life, things meet with the magic of their existence. The creative moment comes from the past and has something of this unbroken magic; if the attitude is willing to compromise, it is impossible to get involved ”.
  • “Many of the poets and painters in Paris played pinball in the early 1950s; only a few, unfortunately, without feeling guilty. "
  • "Unconnected parts, things out of context, shifts nachtmarische trips, city where you arrive, you leave behind, encounters, desertion, betrayal, all possible associations, adulteries, triumphs, defeats ... these are the facts." ( Cain's book, 1960)

Works

Novels

  • Helen and Desire (1954): Helène or: Die Begierde , Olympia-Press-Buchclub, Darmstadt 1969, ISBN 978-3-942474-02-3 .
  • Carnal Days of Helen Seferis (1954)
  • White Thighs (1955)
  • School for Wives (1955)
  • Thongs (1955)
  • Young Adam (1957); Watercourses , translated from the English by Ulrike Beck and Marie Rahn, Berlin 1997.
  • My Life and Loves: Fifth Volume (1954); What Frank Harris did not know , Olympia Press, Darmstadt 1969.
  • I, Sappho of Lesbos (1960)
  • School for Sin (1960)
  • Cain's Book (1960); The children of Kain , Suhrkamp 1982.

Poetry

Founding manifestos

  • A Revolutionary Proposal: The Invisible Insurrection of a Million Minds ( online )
  • Sigma: A Tactical Blueprint ( online )

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ McKenzie Wark: Alexander Trocchi and Project Sigma , excerpt from The Beach Beneath the Street: The Everyday Life and Glorious Times of the Situationist International .
  2. ↑ Tim Cumming: Mean streets In: The Guardian, August 8, 2003.
  3. ↑ Writing Scotland: Alexander Trocchi on BBC Two.
  4. ↑ Tim Cumming: Mean streets In: The Guardian, August 8, 2003.
  5. ^ Sylvie Simmons: I'm Your Man. The life of Leonard Cohen , Munich 2014, ISBN 978-3-442-74289-9 , pp. 142–143.
  6. ↑ Peter Watts: Allen Ginsberg, LSD poetry and sacrificing chickens: the birth of the '60s hippie underground revealed in: Uncut of May 29, 2015.
  7. ^ Snapshot: Allen Ginsberg at the Albert Hall in: The Guardian of June 13, 2005.
  8. ↑ Tim Cumming: Mean streets In: The Guardian, August 8, 2003.
  9. ↑ Tim Cumming: Mean streets In: The Guardian, August 8, 2003.
  10. ↑ Nathalie Mispagel: An existence in the blur .
  11. ↑ also the motto for Giles Foden : The Last King of Scotland , Roman, Berlin 2001, ISBN 978-3-7466-2337-5 .
personal data
SURNAME Trocchi, Alexander
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Scottish writer
DATE OF BIRTH July 30, 1925
PLACE OF BIRTH Glasgow
DATE OF DEATH April 15, 1984
Place of death London