Poetry and Radical Politics in fin de siècle France: From Anarchism to ‘Action française’ by Patrick McGuinness (review)

Studies of poetry’s relationship with politics in late-nineteenth-century France have tended to focus on how poets refer to political events or ideologies within their poetry. Patrick McGuinness offers a different approach, examining the covertly political through intricate analyses of poetry whose content seems, at first glance, to have very little to do with politics. His argument hinges on the fact that politics is not just action, but also language. He opens the book by teasing out the political implications and legacy of the Romantic era, offering playful analyses of well-known texts such as Gautier’s preface to Émaux et camées and Hugo’s ‘Réponse à un acte d’accusation’. McGuinness then interrogates what happens in the next generation of poetic writing, exploring the complex relationships between poetry and radical politics in Symbolism, Decadence, and the école romane. His selection of authors balances familiar poets such as Mallarmé with the lesser known, such as the radically anarchic and leftist poets Gustave Kahn or Pierre Quillard, and the reactionary and conservative poets Jean Moréas or Charles Maurras. The central chapters of the book explore the complex relationship between (symbolist) poetry and (literary) anarchism, with Pierre Quillard emerging as a key (but now forgotten) figure who negotiates ‘the aporia between politics and poetry’ (p. 116). This aporia — which features in poetic writings from different sides of the political spectrum — is particularly marked in Symbolist writers, who shunned politics in their poetry but were explicit about their political views in their prose texts. Quillard’s 1896 poem ‘L’Errante’, for example, makes no mention of contemporary political struggle, and yet Quillard made clear political interventions in prose texts, such as his 1899 Le Monument Henry in which he clearly sets out his Dreyfusard position. McGuinness identifies the poetic in Quillard’s prose, suggesting that it is as literary as it is political because, precisely, of the way Quillard interrogates the language of race-hate and the discourse of anti-Semitism. This focus on the power of language to be both poetic and political is significant to McGuinness’s approach. One of the most fascinating aspects of McGuinness’s book is his own engaging style, replete with powerful metaphors and similes that serve to enhance the analysis, drawing out analogies between poetry and pyramid schemes, unclaimed baggage on a carousel, kite-strings, and fringe-festival fire-eaters. In so doing, he brings the main argument of the book into sharper relief. As McGuinness himself puts it, ‘we assume that politics is action. But politics is also, and perhaps more so, language: manifesto, declaration, exhortation, persuasion, assertion’ (p. 19). But McGuinness’s book is also timely in ways he may not have anticipated. Reading about how ‘the école romane’s poetry and cultural values play a role in the pre-history of the French far right’ (p. 269) seems ominously prescient, foreshadowing the current resurgence of far-right politics. If McGuinness argues that radical politics is hidden in plain sight in fin-de-siècle French poetry, we might then start to look more carefully at other, more recent poetries, to see what implications they may have for politics today.