Verlaine a la loupe: Colloque de Cerisy, 11-18 juillet 1996 (review)

Gouvard, Jean-Michel, and Steve Murphy, eds. Verlaine à la loupe: Colloque de Cerisy. 11-18 juillet. 1996. Paris: Champion, 2000. Pp. 504. ISBN 2-7453-0277-9

In his remarks that open Verlaine à la loupe, Steve Murphy explains that this col-lection of studies presents the "tendances actuelles de la recherche verlainienne" (8). The Cerisy colloquium out of which this volume grew was originally supposed to take place in 1994, but it was set back due to the sudden death of its co-organizer Jean-Paul Corsetti, author of Essais sur Rimbaud (Musée-bibliothèque Arthur Rimbaud, 1994), co-editor with Jean-Pierre Giusto of Verlaine's Femmes and Hombres (Terrain vague, 1990), and co-director of two other important colloquia: Malédiction ou révolution poétique: Lautréamont/Rimbaud with Steve Murphy (PU de Valenciennes, 1990); and Rimbaud multiple with Alain Borer (D. Bedou, 1985). As the groupings of the contributions in this volume demonstrate, a heightened attention to poetics and rhetoric was the result of the choice of Corsetti's replacement, Jean-Michel Gouvard (author of Critique du vers [Champion, 2000]; La versification [PUF, 1999]; and La pragmatique: outils pour l'analyse littéraire [Armand Colin, 1998]).

After Murphy's "Avant-propos," a poem by Guy Goffette, and a short essay by Salah Stétié, come five contributions under the heading "Voies de Verlaine." In this group, some of the more interesting work comes from Thierry Chaucheyras in "Chant, motif, désir: la persuasion lyrique chez Verlaine" (19-47), particularly in his discussion of what he calls the "brouillage des limites Je/Tu, de l'opposition locuteur/non-locuteur" (23), from Anne Berger's presentation of "l'envie du pauvre" (81-106), and in Charles Ammirati's convincing study of the notion of sincerity in Verlaine's poetry towards the end of the poet's life (107-35). Next come the six articles that fall under the category "Poétique, rhétorique, métrique." Jean-Pierre Bobillot's study - one that marks an important contribution to Verlaine studies - is wholly justified in reexamining the linguistic and stylistic theory of figures in the hopes of correcting the way they are too often treated "de façon partielle" (137). Gouvard's "Poétiques des noms propres" (159-84) and Sanchez's "Flou et forces des représ-entations dans les Romances sans paroles" (201-24) also hold their own alongside that of Benoît de Cornulier, whose work on the invention of the "décasyllabe" by the decadent Verlaine (243-89) is just another example of the thorough metrical analysis for which he has become known.

The last section of this volume, perhaps more than the other two, represents the current state of Verlaine studies. Its very title: "Histoire, genèse, intertextualité, réception" casts an extremely wide net and shows the numerous directions in which current studies on Verlaine take us. Among the most enjoyable to read in this group is certainly that of Michael Pakenham (343-55), whose account of the research he pursued that ended in the discovery of Nos murailles littéraires (L'Echoppe, 1997) is nothing short of inspirational for anyone who has performed research at the Bib-liothèque nationale de France. In addition, co-editor Murphy's contribution serves as a roadmap - complete with preferred routes and pitfalls to avoid - for those who take on the task of editing Verlaine's poetry in the future. Much like Murphy's own multi-volume Rimbaud edition (Poésies was published by Champion in 1999, with two more volumes forthcoming), the article is as thorough as is humanly possible.

Despite the strengths of the studies in this volume, two important shortcomings should be noted. The first is one that is not unique to Verlaine studies, but seems to be more prominent when the writer's vie is as interesting as his œuvre (Rimbaud, Ver-laine...