Une Femme poète symboliste: Marie Krysinska, la Calliope du Chat Noir by Florence R.J. Goulesque (review)

Book Reviews1 19 Florence R.J. Goulesque. Une Femme poète symboliste: Marie Krysinska, la Calliope du Chat Noir. Paris: Honoré Champion, 2001. ISBN: 2-7453-0377-5. Pp. 221. 280FF. Recent scholarship on the history and reception of nineteenth-century women's writing (Finch, Holmes) squarely places Marie Krysinska in the development of vers libre in nineteenth-century French literary culture. A critical corpus on Krysinska's prefaces and treatment of the body (Whidden) and the relation of her vers libre with both alienated feminine subjectivity (Schulz) and poetic revisionism (Paliyenko) has advanced ideological and theoretical implications ofKrysinska's creative legacy. Florence Goulesque's revised dissertation now provides an important resource for situating Krysinska's texts in the context of'thefin-de-siècle and raises issues of artistic relations and biculturalism worthy of further critical consideration. Close readings of Marie Krysinska's poetic production from 1 890 to 1903, wed to principal themes of her work frame and organize the three chapters ofthis study. Goulesque's textual analysis draws on various theories inflected with a feminist sensibility, among them, theories ofthe avant-garde, cultural biography, literary biculturalism, vers libre, and "la correspondance des arts et des théories de Krysinska elle-même" (12). This rich diversity of theoretical concepts appropriately suggests the complex cultural moment in which Krysinska emerged as an original thinker and writer. The reader unfamiliar with the advent and development ofthe decadent and symbolist movements , however, will have difficulty following the multiple perspectives from which Goulesque attempts to position Krysinska's œuvre. Introductory remarks serve to explain decadent and symbolist aesthetics, and the idea that from the standpoint of the literary canon, Krysinska was marginalized both as a woman and as a member of the avant-garde (17-18). It is noteworthy that Krysinska herselfrefused "d'appartenir à tout mouvement" because she believed that "chaque individualité pouvait créer un style" (27). For Goulesque, "par la musicalité et l'impressionnisme de sa poésie, par sa tentative de révéler une autre réalité derrière les apparences matérielles, sa recherche d'une union de tous les arts, son expression du spleen et des thèmes décadents, [Marie Krysinska] a adhéré à l'esthéthique décadente et symboliste" (37). Her place among the avant-garde of the late nineteenth century, however , is ambiguous, continues Goulesque, "ce qui était dû à ses conditions particulières: femme hydropathe, étrangère et biculturelle, vers libriste . . . musicienne et compositrice" (37). Both Krysinska's poetic principles and practice highlighted in subsequent chapters aims to shed "une lumière nouvelle sur notre conception de ce mouvement" (37). Chapter One, "Une Femme 'Hydropathe' dans les cabarets masculins fin de siècle: 'Pleine mer,' modes majeurs et mineurs" elaborates at length the imbrications of the material world and aesthetic preoccupations, where "Ie besoin d'échapper à la réalité bourgeoise dans le cabaret chahuteur et fertile en idées peut être mis en parallèle avec la recherche des poètes d'un Idéal audel à de la réalité tangible" (40). Krysinska's textual production is read to 120Women in French Studies reflect her iconoclastic cabaret culture and her artistic relations, a milieu carefully recreated by Goulesque. Biography and text, both poetic and prose, overlap in the thematic evocation of a unique mental universe, which for Goulesque shows that "[Krysinska] était, physiquement, dans son style de vie et dans son art, comme ses 'Rythmes' pittoresques," (59), in a class of her own making (107). Chapter Two, "Une femme voyageuse dans les flous artistiques symbolistes: 'Devant le Miroir,' trio pour vers, prose, et vers libre métissé," brings the notion of cultural exile (1 17) to bear on Krysinska's construction of (poetic) identity. The use of an ambiguous poetic form and a hybrid language that blurs boundaries between the senses reflects Krysinska's poetic dwelling between cultures, and at the same time, enables her to explode binary oppositions that situate her voice always anew "dans le flou" (118). As Goulesque puts it, "L'ultime patrie pour Krysinska, comme pour les Symbolistes, ce fut donc l'Idéal, où les notions de temps et d'espace, de stabilité, de définition...