Researching the Eyefull Tower

A blog by Anastasia Eremeeva, placement student, BA Art History.

First experiences with the archive offer no immediate instruction on a research method, forcing the researcher to invent one in real time. Inventing it becomes a creative process itself. My aim is to reflect on this experience through the journey of researching The Eiffel Tower made by dom sylvester houédard (dsh) which I came across whilst exploring The John Rylands Library Special Collections – and to share the outcomes of this research (Fig.1).

What attracted me to dsh was the complexity of his persona, which I found paradoxical. How could Catholicism, Buddhism and avant-garde art exist together? As I found out later through conversations with Jessica, the collection’s curator, the Catholic Church did not fully approve of dsh’s avant-garde practice. His archive was transferred to The Rylands from Prinknash Abbey in the early 1990s, shortly following dsh’s death. The library was a centre for research in both counterculture art and theology – both of which feature heavily in the collection. Some of the materials were requested back by the Abbey and never returned.

The first step of research involved reviewing the collection’s, which are available to view by request. Among the listed works, The Eiffel Tower (Acc 2, Box 125B, Item 13) instantly captured my attention. The piece, constructed from a seemingly chaotic arrangement of words and letters, forms the distinctive Eiffel Tower. This item proved to be illustrative of houédard’s statement that ‘typestracts’ convey ‘rhythms of typing’ turning it into action poetry – ‘as words grow on paper to see language grow’.¹ Typestract, a term coined by Edwin Morgan, blending ‘typewriter’ and ‘abstract’, precisely characterises The Eiffel Tower, which dsh created using a typewriter.²

This combination of typography and the visual arrangement made me question the hierarchy between content and form. In the archive this large item is stored horizontally, lying in a folder (Fig.2). But was it meant for a wall display like a painting or vocal performance as a poem? According to R.P. Draper, concrete poetry is ‘the creation of verbal artefacts which exploit the possibilities, not only of sound, sense and rhythm – the traditional fields of poetry – but also of space.’³ A very avant-garde idea of the rejection of medium frames and hierarchies, meaning that content and form become equally important.

The size and overlaying of the letters makes the work difficult to read without a magnifying glass. The Rylands catalogue noted its creation for John Furnival’s Opening Press. Online, johnfurnival.com revealed a photo of the original poem made in 1966 and titled The Eiffel (Eyeful) Tower. Reading the poem from top to bottom, as if ascending its structure, started to uncover the meaning. The first line reads ‘EYE FALL… EYE FULL? THEN JUMP! PAD-AYE-OO’ onomatopoeically twisting Eiffel into ‘I fell’ (English), I am falling (Russian transliteration, ‘padayu’) (Fig. 3). As Houédard stated in Between Poetry and Painting, ‘dictionary (convention) as language-coffin – this word/poem means the WAY we use it – we (not them) convene its meaning’.⁴

This word play escalates downward, weaving etymology, historical context and critique. The Eiffel Tower itself, a symbol of modernity and the Industrial Revolution, was a project that sparked public controversy including protests in 1887. The scale of the tower was quite literally making the eye full. dsh, however, subverts this context of modernity as the next lines mention the ‘ghost of Delauney’, referring to Sonia Delaunay, Ukrainian-born Parisian artist and goes on into discussion of eyes and their spiritual meaning (Fig.3).

Also ‘BISTRO!’ and ‘БЫСТРО!’ which is a nod to folk etymology, tying the term to Russian troops saying ‘quick!’ after the 1814 Battle of Paris (Fig. 4). dsh also uses the word ‘SUNRAY,’ which is a British military radio voice procedure term (call sign) which refers to the formation or unit commander and serves as a synonym of ‘leader’ (Fig.5).

Near the base, political message sharpens: ‘The Vietnam Question? Well if I knew the answer to that one, I’d be along at the White House right now with it’ (Fig. 6).

Humour and the playful spirit of the poem become critique, making the viewer rethink not just the first impression but also the act of looking. The Eiffel (Eyefull) Tower forces you to slow down and go through each line and letter. It challenges the viewer to find connections between words, languages, contexts and to embody the spirit which unites it all together. After my research, I see this piece as a symbol of modernity, which did not lose spirituality and adopted the courage of the French Revolution to speak out about societal problems. I encourage anyone interested in concrete poetry, avant-garde art, Buddhism or Catholicism to explore dsh’s archive; his works held at The John Rylands Library are available to view by request.

1. I.C.A catalogue, Between Poetry and Painting, 55 ↩︎
2. Concrete Poetry A 21st Century Anthology, Edited by Nancy Perloff, Peaktion Books Ltd, 2021, 39 ↩︎
3. R.P. Draper, Concrete Poetry, 1971, 329 ↩︎
4. I.C.A catalogue, Between Poetry and Painting, 55 ↩︎

Bibliography:

Draper, R. P. “Concrete Poetry.” New Literary History 2, no. 2 (Winter 1971): 329–342.

Gold, David L. (2009). The Alleged Russian Origin of French Bistro – Bistrot. In David L. Gold; Antonio Lillo Buades; Félix Rodríquez González (eds.). Studies in Etymology and Etiology. Alicante: Universidad de Alicante

Houédard, Dom Sylvester. Between Poetry and Painting. London: Institute of Contemporary Arts, n.d., 55.

Perloff, Nancy, ed. Concrete Poetry: A 21st-Century Anthology. London: Reaktion Books, 2021