In this 1hr video, Marion Benkaiouche interviews James Felton about his life collecting Canadian literary periodicals, zines and poetry. At 54:28, James selects a poem to read from each of his two main literary influences: PK Page and Susan Musgrave. Throughout the interview, Jame speaks about many Can Lit figures such as Bill Bissett, Robin Skelton, Michael Ondaatje and Margaret Atwood.
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James Felton has been collecting Canadian poetry and literary periodicals for most of his life; it started with a university honours essay on PK Page. PK, a mysterious figure, follows him throughout his life, like Beatrice guiding Dante through Paradise.
In August 2024, a local bookseller and publisher, Rolf Maurer, asked around the Vancouver publishing network whether anybody had any interest, or time, to catalogue James’s library ahead of its move to a new home. After years of careful collecting and appreciation, James was moving abroad permanently and donating his collection to Rolf.
I have longed meditated over the personal library - as a place of refuge, as a representation and presentation of the self, the dialogues between tomes, however cheap or popular, which occupy our shelves and the spaces within our homes. A library is a person’s past, present and future.
Over the month of September, I catalogued James’s extensive collection of Canadian literary periodicals. At the end of the month, we did a Tarot reading for James.
- Marion Benkaiouche, November, 2024.
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OPENING TEXT:
In a March 1933 lecture on the symbolism of the hermaphrodite, Carl Jung articulated the origins of the Tarot. The Tarot, he said,
"in itself is an attempt at representing the constituents of the flow of the unconscious, and therefore it is applicable for an intuitive method that has the purpose of understanding the flow of life, possibly even predicting future events, at all events lending itself to the reading of the conditions of the present moment. It is in that way analogous to the I Ching, the Chinese divination method that allows at least a reading of the present conditions. You see, man always felt the need of finding an access through the unconscious to the meaning of an actual condition, because there is a sort of correspondence or a likeness between the prevailing condition and the condition of the collective unconscious."*
QUOTE at 7:19 [in video]:
"The original cards of the Tarot consist of the ordinary cards, the king, the queen, the knight, the ace, etc., only the figures are somewhat different, and besides, there are twenty-one [additional] cards upon which are symbols, or pictures of symbolical situations. For example, the symbol of the sun, or the symbol of the man hung up by the feet, or the tower struck by lightning, or the wheel of fortune, and so on. Those are sort of archetypal ideas, of a differentiated nature, which mingle with the ordinary constituents of the flow of the unconscious, and therefore it is applicable for an intuitive method that has the purpose of understanding the flow of life, possibly even predicting future events, at all events lending itself to the reading of the conditions of the present moment."*
*From: Visions: Notes of the Seminar given in 1930-1934 by C. G. Jung, edited by Claire Douglas. Vol. 2. (Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, Bollingen Series XCIX, 1997), p. 923.
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Produced by Thomas Hoeller and Terrestrial Sound Studios, with help from Cary Campbell.
