Boris Vian. La vie contre. Biographie critique by Marc Lapprand (review)

202 LETTERS IN CANADA 1994 classicism among modern and contemporary poets. I have two minor reservations, however. I think the definition of neoclassicism would have been given a sharper edge if he had allowed description to become explicit assessment of the value of what he clearly admires. Except in a discussion which produces the judgment that Hope's 'literary worldliness [is] much less profound than we have in Auden or MacNeice,' there are few ventures into comparative evaluation, by means of which we can measure the strengths by knowing the weaknesses of neoclassical attitudes and procedures. My second, related reservation concerns Deane's scholarly 'good manners.' He is quietly firm and discriminating in defining his own position in relation to the opinions of other critics, yet so quiet that one must wonder if this is a matter of principle, a conception of literary history and academic seemliness that proscribes insistence. He is so aware of others' polemical exaggerations, so careful not to overstate his own claims, that, when he hopes that his study 'will contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of poetry in English in our century, one less centred in the modernist experiments of the twenties avantgarde ' (my emphases), he is in danger of underselling a strong case for what he calls - with a matching circumspection - 'the sober poetics of maturity.' I would have welcomed more open advocacy for the neoclassicisms here so ably distinguished and compared - and which he evidently esteems more highly than this latter formulation conveys. (My model of clear exposition and balanced judgment in co-operation with an intention to recommend classical virtues in modern literature is D.E.S. Maxwell's fine study of James Gould Cozzens.) A footnote. When a politician accuses a poet of being 'Bolshie,' he is not, as Deane assumes, imputing any sort of Communist ideology, even when the poet is Harrison. In colloquial usage at this end of the century, it means something like 'perversely, truculently, constitutionally anti the status quo.' This reviewer can remember the accusation on the lips of schoolmasters and university tutors. (MICHAEL KIRKHAM) Marc Lapprand, Boris Viano La vie contre. Biographie critique Ottawa, Les Presses de l'Universite d'Ottawa ret] Paris, Nizet, 1993, xIV-234 p. Tout avait-il ete dit sur l'auteur de L'ecume des jours? Dans Boris Viano La vie contre. Biographie critique, Marc Lapprand prouve qu'il est possible de jeter un eclairage biographique et critique nouveau sur un auteur qui pourtant n'a cesse d'etre sous les feux de la rampe. Le defi, certes, etait de taille, puisque Ie discours critique vianesque est une longue succession d'analyses biographisantes ou I'on jurerait que Ie structuralisme n'est jamais passe pour signer la mort de l'auteur... La periode consideree dans cet ouvrage s'etend de 1942 a1952 et plus precisement de 1948 a1951, ce fameux «premier tome» defini par Noel HUMANITIES 203 Arnaud et repris ici par Marc Lapprand. Ce dernier fait coincider la«naissance officielle de l'ecrivain Boris Vian » avec la parution des premiers romans. Precedee d'une epoque de production de contes et de poemes, accompagnee/suivie d'une phase marquee par les (pseudo-) traductions, cette courte periode, et en particulier l'annee 1947, est selon Lapprand «celle ou se noue Ia partie la plus riche et Ia plus representative» de I'CEuvre vianesque. L'analyse s'acheve ici au moment ou Vian met un point presque final (L'Automne aPekin sera reedite de son vivant en 1956) a sa production romanesque. C'est par un habile systeme de correspondance que Marc Lapprand en vient a cerner l'CEuvre de Viano Dans un premier temps, Ie chercheur s'attarde aux Cent sonnets, ce recueil produit sur Ie mode du pastiche OU, en pleine occupation de Ia France par l'Ailemagne, la guerre est pourtant soigneusement (joyeusement !) occultee. Dans ces premieres productions issues en droite ligne de I'entreprise ludique et futile des bouts-rimes, Lapprand repere l'amorce d'une entreprise hypertextuelle - que, selon lui, on a rattachee a tort a Ia production romanesque alors qu'il aurait fallu considerer a ce propos Ie travail de veritable traduction dans lequel s'engage Vian...