Between Baudelaire and Mallarmé. Voice, Conversation and Music (review)

The book examines the medium of voice in Baudelaire and Mallarmé in the context of the rise of music at the end of the nineteenth-century. The concept of voice is explored from a variety of perspectives including "rhetoric," the "human body," and "exchange." The author seeks to demonstrate how the poets exploit its manifestation to create a new poetic æsthetic. The book is divided into four parts that investigate the different dimensions and ramifications of voice for poetry, music, and literature. It includes several tables and poetic translations that analyze and illustrate the rhetorical, sensational, and musical expression of voice.

According to Helen Abbot, voice incorporates a complex range of physical, textual and symbolic ideas. It sparks in poetry "interactions, resonances and exchanges." The renewed focus on the notion of voice "as an important æsthetic principle" corresponds historically with a shift "from seemingly representational language to more elusive, indirect, suggestive language" in poetry (3). The author also situates the theoretical realm of her study in fields as diverse as the philosophy of language, linguistics, post-structuralism, phenomenology and deconstruction, including the works of Clive Scott, Barbara Johnson, Roland Barthes, Gérard Genette, and Jacques Rancière: "I seek to break down the distinction between voice and writing and aim to avoid metaphorical readings of 'voice' in my analysis since my approach addresses 'voice' as a dynamic process rather than a symbolic image" (11). From this perspective, voice is not conceived as the organ of soul or thought, as a pre-utterance prior to either speech or writing: "In my exploration of different possible performance scenarios for poetry, theories of 'performativity' will influence my analysis of how voice can be both internal and external, and both written and spoken" (13).

Focusing on rhetoric, Part i explores the governing principles which underlie the poets' theoretical framework and the æsthetic outcomes of the concept of voice. It addresses questions relating to the "performance practice" of poetry and the conventions underpinning the poets' use of language. As a process of exchange, voice in poetry is defined by æsthetic concerns that the author explores beyond the "elocution" (poetic composition) through the "actio" or "immediacy of effect," and the "memoria" or "longevity of effect" (20).

One of Part II's focal points includes the dynamics of voice and provides anecdotal accounts of Baudelaire and Mallarmé "bringing their poetry to voice." Using several examples, the author shows how the vocal enactments and impulses of the body lead the reader to react physically to the poets' performance. The concept of voice sums up in this instance an "interaction between corporeal and abstract properties." From the perspective of "vocal resonance," Helen Abbot examines how Mallarmé seeks to "enable language to resonate [...] between possible meaning of interpretations [and] begins to privilege the notion of 'sensation' above both sound and meaning around the time of his 'crise' period" (85).

Part III centers on the process of exchanging voices in both poets' works. Baudelaire's conversations and "conflicts with the crowd" (130) and Mallarmé's concept of the crowd which "is not simply a body of individuals, but also a body of text, words and language" (133) become central to understanding the æsthetic effects of using "voice" in poetry. The different voices in Baudelaire and Mallarmé have resonances that reach beyond the written page. In the section that follows entitled "Voix étranges," the author analyzes how the poets use strangeness and enigma to overcome subjugation and mortality: "The more strange, foreign, or abstract the poetic voices, the greater the potential for more profound explorations of possible past meanings" (179).

Creating a resonance that is foreign, strange and/or abstract, the two poets' process of using voice approached the language of music. From this viewpoint, Part iv explores the interaction between poetic and musical voices in song settings of poems by Baudelaire and Mallarmé. In conclusion, the author investigates the different ways in which the two poets "refine what 'voice' can...