Cosmicomics — Without Color

Excerpt for Analysis:

She was lying, colorless, overcome with sleep, on the colorless sand. I sat down nearby. It was the season — as I know now — when the ultraviolet era was approaching its end on our planet; a way of life about to finish was displaying its supreme peak of beauty. Nothing so beautiful had ever run over the Earth, as the creature I had before my eyes.

Ayl opened her eyes. She saw me. At first I believe she couldn’t distinguish me — as had happened to me, with her — from the rest of that sandy world; then she seemed to recognize in me the unknown presence that had pursued her and she was frightened. But in the end she became aware of our common substance and there was a half-timid, halfsmiling palpitation in the look she gave me, which caused me to emit a silent whimper of happiness.

I started conversing, all in gestures. “Sand. Not-sand,” I said, first pointing to our surroundings, then to the two of us.

She nodded yes, she had understood.

***

As the world around Qfwfq, the main character of Cosmicomics, changes and the atmosphere develops, colors start to emerge. The grey scale tips gradients and pigments, and shifts to allow color to seep through the protagonist’s reality. As he handles this physical change, he finds another being with whom he falls in love. While this excerpt has some moments of truly Oulipo components, there are similarities with Romanticism and Futurism. It is speedy, romantic, and technical. Calvino is incorporating a number of movements to bring about a primitive feeling. This attraction to Ayl and the world around him, Qfwfq is experimenting with the basics of life: love and color.

In some ways, it is a genesis of the self. These two are discovering themselves amidst a changing world. Qfwfq is showing Ayl the difference through primitive speech and gesture. It is not intentionally passionate, but by circumstance, they develop emotion on top of developing a sense of self versus the world. I thought of Anthem by Ayn Rand, where Prometheus rebels against the totalitarian society and opens the eyes of the woman he love, Gaea. He shows her how to understand herself outside the society they live in. While Qfwfq and Ayl aren’t breaking out of a society, they are doing similar things as Prometheus and the Gaea by discovering the self.

I also noted the name of the protagonist and it took until this post for me to recognize his name as palindrome of chaotic consonants. But when I looked at the keyboard, the letters are relatively close together, which makes it seem more like a typing error. Also, since it does not have appropriate vowels, I assume it is a primitive name of just sounds, no real connection other than noise. This could be perceived as Oulipo for the technical construction of his name.

And I thought this was a very lovely way of discovering the world around you!

***

Here is the link for “Without Color.”