Movement as Amplified “Phenomenal Flow”: Trains and Circulation in Jacques Réda’s Prose and Poetry

When is nomadism particularly energizing? How do literary works highlight travel from place to place as transformative? Do poets bring special qualities to literary genres that make movement through the world that much more “moving”? Can motifs of seemingly carefree circulation have broader relevance as exemplary trajectories? ever peripatetic, Jacques réda (b. 1929) implicitly raises such questions, as for example when asking, “et moi qu’est-ce que je suis venu faire, jamais là ni ailleurs, avec ma fenêtre portative?” (And what could i possibly be up to, never really in one place, me with my portable window?) (Aller aux mirabelles 50; my trans.). As whimsical as they can sound relative to broader themes of migration and immigration, this French writer’s views on movement open a richly nuanced window on our own lives and bear a strong relationship to theoretical frameworks regarding poetic circulation. As much has been said about Réda’s city wanderings, this essay addresses instead his love of trains, a critically underrepresented yet equally central component of his oeuvre.