Le Corps cosmos (review)

In this fascinating little volume Michel Collot engages with the subject of the human body as reflected in modern and contemporary French poetry. He sees the body as a crucial cultural feature, one that has produced a multiplicity of different reactions from thinkers and writers. In terms of the poetic word, Collot contends that the body has generated two conflicting approaches. In the first school we have the traditional opposition of body and spirit, and this is allied to a sense of the physically disgusting, as opposed to ideas of spiritual beauty. The second approach, more daring and more innovative, sees the body as a point of intersection between matter and spirit, between our awareness and the cosmos. Collot celebrates the corps cosmos, drawing on famous examples from modern French poetry (Rimbaud, Valéry) as well as on his own poetic practice. In this optic the body is the dwelling place of the spirit and it takes life in the poetic word. 'Le corps est un carrefour où se rencontrent le moi, le monde et les mots' (p. 10), writes Collot in his Avant-propos, and this is the basis for his notion of a poetics of incarnation whereby the body links the microcosm with the macrocosm. Thus the first part of his study elaborates two interpretations of the body, the first of which opposes body and soul, an opposition that Collot instantly refutes. He is interested in a 'valorisation du corps' (p. 16), which involves a new link between body and cosmos as exemplified in poetry but also in painting and sculpture. He traces this process back to Rimbaud and sees its genealogy in Mallarmé, Claudel, Valéry, Artaud, and the Surrealists. A reference to Rimbaud's 'Vénus anadyomène' in which the poet prioritizes the ugly over traditional concepts of beauty sets Collot on his way. He restores la chair to its rightful position, freeing it from its subordination to soul and seeing it as a means of contacting the world and reality. Rimbaud's 'Génie' in the Illuminations is cited as an illustration of this new thinking about the importance of the flesh, and Claudel, Césaire, and Michaux are cited in quick succession as highly distinctive witnesses to this phenomenon. Collot's knowledge not only of French poetry but of European poetry in general is manifest throughout. Turning his attention to 'un verbe incarné' (p. 45), he proceeds to explore the implications of his ideas for an 'écriture du corps' (p. 49). Here, while discussing Mallarmé, he talks of 'le corps sonore du poème' (p. 62) and 'les propriétés physiques de la parole' (p. 64). Analysis of Ponge and comments on typography and the physical appearance of the poem on the page enhance the discussion. A further section focuses on the links between the poetic word and sensation, while a concluding part deals with how to 'écrire la nudité' (p. 102). Ultimately, argues Collot, the challenge for everyone is to 'mettre au monde un corps cosmos' (p. 110), a task that he joyously sums up by quoting the closing lines of Rimbaud's 'Génie'.