Poetry, Politics, and the Body in Rimbaud: Lyrical Material

284 Pages·2018·8.89 MB·English

by  Robert St. Clair

POETRY, POLITICS, AND
THE BODY IN RIMBAUD

Poetry, Politics, and
the Body in Rimbaud
Lyrical Material
ROBERT ST. CLAIR
1
3
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First Edition published in 2018
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For Ross Chambers (1932–2017)

Acknowledgments
This book is the product of many years of reading, reflecting on, and discussing
Rimbaud’s poetry with a long list of mentors and teachers, students and colleagues,
peers, friends, and family members. For their steadfast moral and intellectual
support at crucial moments, as well as for the patient willingness of many named
here to read countless early and chaotic drafts of this work at a moment’s notice
and to share critical insights or recommendations which have helped foster, shape,
and sustain this work, I gladly acknowledge my debt and thanks to: Césare Akuetey,
Mária Minich Brewer, Bruno Chaouat, John Mowitt, Eileen Sivert, James and
Susanne St. Clair, Sophie, Caroline and Luc Cazanave, Audrey Evrard, Andrea
Gyenge, Christian Haines, Steve Jaksa, Ross Kelly, Magali Compan, Rob Leventhal,
Silvia Tandeciarz, Sara Pappas, David Evans (along with Emma, Nia, and FJM),
Benoît de Cornulier, Philippe Rocher, Nathalie Ravonneaux, Denis Saint-Amand
(inestimable comrade-in-editorial-arms), Anna Lambdin, E.S. Burt, Katherine
Hornstein, Elissa Marder, Maria Scott, Brian Reilly, Jessica Tanner, Alain Vaillant,
and Marina van Zuylen. For their kind invitations to share early versions of this
work with students, colleagues and readers, I thank Dana Lindaman, Joseph
Acquisto, Adrianna Paliyenko, and Catherine Witt, Andrew Clark at Fordham
University (with friendly apologies again for never sticking to the plan), and
Jonathan Strauss at Miami University. Finally, the way we read Rimbaud (to stick
to him) simply would not be what it is today were it not for Steve Murphy’s work
in nineteenth-century French poetry and cultural history over the past three decades.
For the hermeneutic revolution that he was instrumental in ushering in, as well as for
his ebullient sense of solidarity and unfaltering commitment to helping new schol-
arly voices reach a critical audience, he has my enduring gratitude and thanks. I place
Seth Whidden, an inspiring intellectual interlocutor and generous reader whose
advice and encouragement have proved invaluable over the years, in a similar category
of people it would be preposterously difficult to thank sufficiently here.
I am especially grateful to my colleagues in the Department of French and Italian
and the Associate Dean of Arts and Sciences at Dartmouth College. It is no exag-
geration to say that their unflagging institutional and personal support made it
possible for me to write this book. I extend earnest and enduring thanks to: Faith
Beasely, yasser elhariry, for his writerly solidarity as this book first went out the
door, Lucas Hollister, who read and commented on drafts of individual chapters
with his customary mix of good humor, patience, and perspicacity, Lynn Higgins,
for her well-timed encouragement and indispensable counsel, Larry Kritzman, for
his inimitable friendship and collegiality, as well as for the 2007 summer institute
at Dartmouth that helped to mold me—like scores of scholars before and after—
into the thinker and reader I am today, David LaGuardia, Scott Sanders, Andrea
Tarnowski, Roxana Verona, Keith Walker, from whose enthusiastic readiness to
converse about nineteenth-century French poetry at a moment’s notice I have so
viii Acknowledgments
regularly benefited, Kathleen Wine, Nancy Canepa, Laurence Hooper, Graziella
Parati, and Dean Barbara Will.
Special thanks are due to the two anonymous readers for Oxford whose incisive
critiques, helpful prodding, and percipient recommendations proved invaluable in
guiding and strengthening the book’s arguments and focus, as well as to Jacqueline
Norton for her vital and impeccable editorial advocacy in bringing this project
to fruition.
Parts or preliminary versions of Chapters 2 and 5 have appeared previously in
the Romanic Review, 104, nos. 1–2 (January–March 2013) [Copyright: Trustees of
Columbia University in the City of New York], Parade sauvage 25 (Classiques
Garnier, 2015), and in a collection entitled Poets and Readers in Nineteenth-Century
France: Critical Reflections (IMLR, 2015). They appear here by permission of the
publishers. Translations and excerpts from Wallace Fowlie’s Rimbaud: Complete
Works, Selected Letters: A Bilingual Edition are used with the kind permission of the
University of Chicago Press. Henri Fantin-Latour’s (two) Coin de table are repro-
duced with permission from Art Resource. Steven Monte’s translation of Hugo’s
“Souvenir de la nuit du 4” is partially reprinted here with permission from Taylor
and Francis.
Appropriately enough for a book that is largely about the sorts of relations that
poetry makes legible (or that make poetry readable, interpretable), I owe a consid-
erable debt to Ross Chambers, who first encouraged me to write this book some
five years ago and then continued strategically and tenderly to nudge it along all
the way. (“Be brave and be strong” were words he would sign off on when the pro-
ject seemed to hit one of any number of impasses on its way to publication.) Ross
Chambers was more than a universally admired scholar, a reader with a mind as
luminescent and as swift as a comet leaving in its wake a body of work which trans-
formed the fields of nineteenth-century French studies, comparative literature,
literary theory, and cultural studies. He was a profoundly kind and generous per-
son, one whose presence will be grievously missed by multitudes of scholars and
students, young and old. And though it pains me that he will not hold this book
in his hands, it is my hope that some infinitesimal yet material trace of his ideas
lingers in its pages, causing trouble—or occasions for pleasure—here and there.
I dedicate this book to his fond and cherished memory, and to Arthur for all that
is to come.
Contents
List of Illustrations xi
Introduction 1
1. (Departures). Natural Bodies: (Eco)Poetics and
the Politics of the Aesthetic: “Sensation” 26
2. (Diagnostic). Impoverished Bodies: “Les Effarés” and
the Misery of the Nineteenth-Century Lyric 72
3. (Prognosis). Happy Bodies, Happy Hours: “Au Cabaret-vert,
cinq heures du soir” 123
4. (Anamnesis). Revolting Bodies: “Le Forgeron” and
the Poetry of the Past 165
5. (Conclusion). Other Bodies: Rimbaud, Verlaine, and
L’Idole—Le Sonnet du trou du cul 209
Selected Bibliography 249
Index 265
General Index 266