Chambre sourde: L'antiesthétique de Malraux (review)

Book Reviews cations coming about within traditional prosody; secondly on newly developing form (l'impair, free verse, stanzaic change, rhyme); and finally on die merging of prose and poetry, as well as die increased focus on significance and typography. There are purposeful and plentiful examples diroughout and, if it is perhaps bom regrettable and understandable diat no reference is made to excellent pertinent scholarship by British and American critics, good reference is made to pronouncements at once by French scholars and poets diemselves. Altogether, die work is most welcome , especially at its relatively modest price. Laurent Fourcaut's Lectures de la poésie française moderne et contemporaine possesses, equally, many worthy qualities and is, largely, very conscious of what it does not accomplish. "Ni une histoire de la poésie française, même succincte, ni un tableau des grands courants qui la traversent , ni un inventaire systématique des ses mêmes. Pas davantage de mises au point tiiéoriques sur la versification, la musique du vers ou la sémiologie de l'image." Rather, Fourcaut claims to examine, via a series of textual analyses of individual poems—Michaux's "La cordillera de Los Andes," Char's "Évadné," Prévert's "Promenade de Picasso," Bonnefoy's "Vrai corps," Jaccottet 's "On peut nommer cela horreur," an excerpt from Claude Royet-Journoud's Les Objets contiennent l'infini, and, finally, what is termed an extract (but is in fact a suite of individual texts) from Esmer Tellermann's Distance de fuite—what he calls the poeticity of each selected text: "cette résultante encore mal élucidée de toutes les spécificités du texte poétique." Such poeticity is broadly, but well, mapped out in an introductory "reader's guide": its elements range from "sound effects," rhythm, poetic ends, relationship of text to page, lexicality, intertextuality, myth, and so on, including die imbrication of poetry and die sacred. As can be seen, Fourcaut's book is by no means merely formalistic in its orientation. The conceptual dimension of poeticity has, perhaps surprisingly for some, but most appropriately, a significant role to play in analyses that yet remain happily anchored textually. It is good to see Prévert given a place so often denied him, and good, too, mat Esther Tellermann is chosen to "represent"—without really any banner being flown—a younger generation rife wim talent, new and challenging perceptions of the poetic. If, again, as with Aquien's/Honoré's book, it would have been good to see included, at least in the bibliography, some recognition of excellent criticism in English, Fourcaut's accomplishments remain insightful, eloquent and eminenüy worth the 49 francs. Michael Bishop Dalhousie University Jean-François Lyotard. Chambre sourde: VAntiesthétique de Malraux. Paris: Galilée, 1998. Pp. 113. Revising mis review, I hear of Jean-François Lyotard's death. I would like to dedicate tiiis short text to his memory, and to his friends and students, henceforth Ien alone wim the echoes of his silent, questioning laughter. It is tempting to reduce die work of André Malraux to an impatient fantasy of authorship and self-monumentalization. The transfer of his ashes to the Panméon seems a metaphysical and political undertaking of literary apotheosis. Yet, in challenging mat national-aesthetic reduction, Lyotard's Chambre sourde gives me autfior of Antimémoires another chance, and shows diat writing undermines any ideological project. Chambre sourde, so titled as a discreet homage to Bardies' Chambre claire, is Lyotard's second unforeseeable encounter witii Malraux. What in De Gaulle's minister of culture seduces die philosopher of "post-modernity" and die "différend," die former militant of "Socialisme ou barbarie"? Lyotard perceives a writer who participates in me "désœuvrement nauséeux" affecting post-war literature, and thus radically displaces the common reception of Malraux, re-placing him in die company of Céline, Bataille, Artaud, and Camus. In 1945, God is more dead man ever, and so is humanism, buried beneadi the ashes of Auschwitz. What's next? Nothing, an "ontologie du Vol. XXXVIII, No. 3 99 L'Esprit Créateur néant." We hear Bataille's phrase: "La souveraineté n'est...