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Common Knowledge 8.3 (2002) 595-607



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At Stake
Poetry in the Western World

Yves Bonnefoy
Translated by James Petterson


Rather than discuss particular aspects of European literary creation, I would like to pose the question of poetry more generally, in a way that addresses the essence of the poetic and seems urgently apt for the period we are now entering. For there is a crisis in this realm of human endeavor: a profound crisis, though perhaps not of the kind that we occasionally imagine. What is at stake is not really a weakening of the creative faculties. Nor is there an unusual rarefaction of the sensibility that enables poems to be written. Poetry has always been difficult, its authentic manifestations few; and major works have always been crowded by mediocre ones. Lengthy periods, the French classical era for instance, have only a fleeting acquaintance with poetry. A satisfactory moment can hardly be found, even in the nineteenth century until around 1860, when Baudelaire—the only major poet at a time when Vigny was getting on in years and Hugo was in exile—was reviled and insulted. After this, Mallarmé was mocked and Rimbaud reduced to sarcasm and revolt. In short, the golden ages of poetry are in our dreams. Our own time, though, has an inventive spirit and, perhaps more than any previous era, feels a need for radicalism and rigor. Meanwhile, the masterpieces of film in their own way show—as much as major narratives like Werther, René, and [End Page 595] Nadja—that poetic perception of the world survives (even if, as now, outside of books).

The crisis of poetry may not be so noticeable in the creation of poetry, but it is amply evident in the suspicious and hostile reception that many spectators of literature reserve for works of poetry (or, rather, for their propositions and worldview)—I am referring mainly to theorists and philosophers. More troubling is that the negative reception of poetry is almost as common among poets, perhaps because they experience rejection more acutely and are tempted to surrender what they most cherish. I would be among the first to take seriously the doubts—raised during the recent fin de siècle, at least in France—concerning the claims made for poetry. Objections that arise in the context of these doubts may be well-founded and should bring us to interrupt our traditional engagement with poetry at least long enough for serious reflection. A glorious past, after all, in no way guarantees the legitimacy of the present. Neither Baudelaire and Rimbaud, nor even Dante and Shakespeare, offer a priori proof that we ought not to turn the page—even were it the central page of a book we have been reading forever.

And so my effort here will be to see whether poetry should renounce its claims or reassert them at the price of reviving the idea of a "poetic essence," an idea more uncertain (hence, more readily contestable) than any of poetry's own works and intuitions. Let me begin by stating what appear to me poetry's right to exist, the reason for which it has existed for so long, and (this will be my hardly unexpected conclusion) why it must continue to exist. The reason for poetry resides in the most profound depths of language, both langage and parole. Understanding requires that we pay close attention to the way in which langage becomes parole—a process whose effects can be harmful to us, even without our noticing. When it comes to the mind, the greatest ills often go unnoticed.

There are, it seems to me, speech acts whose consequences are dangerous and alarming for poetry. Language, we know, is inhabited and articulated by webs of interrelated notions—by concepts. A child enters early on into adult language, essentially by acquiring concepts, and these conceptual systems are, it is obvious, immensely beneficial: they construct the world in whose midst human activity produces its goods and expands. These systems have discovered ways to drill through the bottomless layer of matter and harness...

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