Strands of Utopia: Spaces of Poetic Work in Twentieth Century France

280 Pages·2017·12.143 MB·English

by  Kelly, Michael G

Strands of Utopia
Spaces of Poetic Work in Twentieth-Century France
legenda
eenda, founded in 1995 by the european Humanities Research Centre of
the University of Oxford, is now a joint imprint of the Modern
Humanities Research association and Routledge. Titles range from medieval
texts to contemporary cinema and form a widely comparative view of the
modern humanities, including works on arabic, Catalan, english, French,
german, greek, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Yiddish literature. an
editorial Board of distinguished academic specialists works in collaboration
with leading scholarly bodies such as the Society for French Studies and the British
Comparative literature association.
The Modern Humanities Research association (hra) encourages and promotes
advanced study and research in the field of the modern humanities, especially modern
european languages and literature, including english, and also cinema. It also aims
to break down the barriers between scholars working in different disciplines and to
maintain the unity of humanistic scholarship in the face of increasing specialization.
The association fulfils this purpose primarily through the publication of journals,
bibliographies, monographs and other aids to research.
Routledge is a global publisher of academic books, journals and online resources in the
humanities and social sciences. Founded in 1836, it has published many of the greatest
thinkers and scholars of the last hundred years, including Adorno, Einstein, Russell,
Popper, Wittgenstein, Jung, Bohm, Hayek, McLuhan, Marcuse and Sartre. Today
Routledge is one of the world’s leading academic publishers in the Humanities
and Social Sciences. It publishes thousands of books and journals each year, serving
scholars, instructors, and professional communities worldwide.
www.routledge.com
edITORIal BOaRd
Chairman
Professor Martin Mclaughlin, Magdalen College, Oxford
Professor John Batchelor, University of newcastle (english)
Professor Malcolm Cook, University of exeter (French)
Professor Colin davis, Royal Holloway University of london
(Modern literature, Film and Theory)
Professor Robin Fiddian, Wadham College, Oxford (Spanish)
Professor Paul garner, University of leeds (Spanish)
Professor Marian Hobson Jeanneret,
Queen Mary University of london (French)
Professor Catriona Kelly, new College, Oxford (Russian)
Professor Martin Maiden, Trinity College, Oxford (linguistics)
Professor Peter Matthews, St John’s College, Cambridge (linguistics)
dr Stephen Parkinson, linacre College, Oxford (Portuguese)
Professor Ritchie Robertson, St John’s College, Oxford (german)
Professor lesley Sharpe, University of exeter (german)
Professor david Shepherd, University of Sheffield (Russian)
Professor alison Sinclair, Clare College, Cambridge (Spanish)
Professor david Treece, King’s College london (Portuguese)
Professor diego Zancani, Balliol College, Oxford (Italian)
Managing Editor
dr graham nelson
41 Wellington Square, Oxford ox1 2jf, UK

[email protected]
www.legenda.mhra.org.uk
C\
Taylor & Francis
~
Taylor & Francis Group
http://taylora n dfra ncis.com
Strands of Utopia
Spaces of Poetic Work in Twentieth-Century France
❖
Michae g. Key
Modern Humanities Research association and Routledge
2008
First published 2008
Published by the
Modern Humanities Research Association and Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA
LEGENDA is an imprint of the
Modern Humanities Research Association and Routledge
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© Modern Humanities Research Association and Taylor & Francis 2008
The poems ‘Vérité’, ‘Une voix’, ‘Le mot ronce, dis-tu?’ and ‘Le pays du sommet des arbres’
by Yves Bonnefoy are © Mercure de France and appear by kind permission
ISBN 9-781-905981-14-4 (hbk)
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, including photocopying,
recordings, fax or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner and the
publisher.
Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for
identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
Cover:875 Design
Copy-Editor:Nigel Hope
Contents
❖
Preface ix
Introduction: Towards a Utopian Space of Poetic Work 1
PaRT I: LIEU CoMMUN
POeTIC FOUndaTIOn and THe lIMIT OF COMMUnITY
1 The Common Object of Poetic Work 32
2 Pragmatics of the Common Object 46
3 Between Order and Origin: Victor Segalen 60
4 Silent Community and Revolutionary Speech: René daumal 76
5 Poetic Foundation in the Opening of language: Yves Bonnefoy 92
PaRT II: HAUT LIEU
(dIS)PlaCIng THe SCene OF POeTIC exPeRIenCe
6 experience and the Scene of experience 110
7 Poetic Placements 122
8 Segalen outside the Forbidden City 134
9 daumal on the Slopes of Mont analogue 145
10 Bonnefoy in the Arrière-pays 157
PaRT III: NoN-LIEU
FORMaTIVe and TRanSFORMaTIOnal aTTRIBUTeS OF
POeTIC TexTUalITY
11 emergence of the Poetic Text as Non-lieu 172
12 ambivalence of a Spatial logic in the Non-lieu 185
13 Segalen: Metamorphoses of the Non-lieu 199
14 daumal: The Lieu of the Non and the Imaginary of a Poetic affirmation 216
15 Bonnefoy: The Poetic Non-lieu and the Practice of Hope 231
Conclusion: Within disenchantment 249
Select Bibliography 257
Index 266
C\
Taylor & Francis
~
Taylor & Francis Group
http://taylora n dfra ncis.com
PrefaCe
❖
This study is an attempt to come to terms with a significant cultural reality across a
broad diachronic canvas. It postulates a thinkable, evolving continuity of French poetic
practice throughout the twentieth century as one cognizant of its lateness, attentive to
the world it must inhabit, but abidingly committed to the principle and significance
of its own difference. In structuring and pursuing that attempt it draws heavily upon
the multidimensional theoretical resource of utopia. Utopia designates a complex
tension within the creative endeavour (here that of poetic work) between the energies
of realization, construction, imposition and those of de-realization, negation, escape.
It inaugurates three kinds of space — social, physical and textual. The organizational
principle of the study is therefore that of the division of space into these three orders
— which read together form a fourth, that of a fully social practice (lefebvre).
The general parts into which the study is divided correspond to these three
distinct ‘strands of utopia’. arguing in the first two chapters of each part for the
pertinence of the space in question to the problem of the poetic, the study develops
its argument in the three subsequent chapters of each part with reference to three
major oeuvres by writers generally classified as poets: Victor Segalen (1878–1919),
René daumal (1908–1944), and Yves Bonnefoy (b. 1923). The character of poetry as
in continuous renewal and re-beginning is argued to exemplify a utopian dynamic
— a vectoral addition to the conventionally static, figure-bound ‘utopia’ — variably
traceable across the century. Just as the utopian complex illuminates the poetic, so
too does the poetic detour have important implications for attempts to reflect upon
the ‘spirit of utopia’ (Bloch). The study argues in conclusion for the richness of an
idea of utopia as a form of creative hope, a leavening energy within a context of
disenchantment, and attempts to relate a durable modern practice of poetic writing
to this disposition as that practice evolves within a new century.
Faced with the fundamental difficulty of constructing an affirmative discourse
in the face of texts that challenge the very workings of affirmation, both in
the writing subject in question and in their subsequent reception, the following
discussion does not ally itself with a particular critical discourse. Rather, through
the theoretical resource of utopia and the spatial divisions to which it gives rise,
it attempts to do justice to the idea that the poetic text is validly open to many
approaches (phenomenological, psychoanalytic, sociological, onto-philosophical
among others). These, rather than disqualifying one another, potentially constitute
sources of both mutual enrichment and qualification. none ultimately abolishes
the utopian aspect of the poetic. The resistance of poetic work to appropriative
discourses requires the reader of poetry to assume responsibility for all such
discursive projections, and hence for his or her own limitations in the face of an
ultimately unrecuperable utterance.