Mémoire d’un fou d’Emma by Alain Ferry (review)

Blonde, Janis Joplin. Just as important are the poetic grist and grime, Emaz’s remarks on his images without flash which court banality and keep his head well below the lyrical stratosphere. Among past poets, Mallarmé, Claudel, Perse, Valéry do not help him thrive, nor do Ponge, Artaud, Rimbaud: “Je mène une existence banale, commune, moyenne ... donc je creuse, écris là” (54, 117). Alive in his affective pantheon, however, are Baudelaire, Nerval (but not Proust), Reverdy (cited intensely, surprisingly, and subtly), Michaux, Follain, and Du Bouchet. They gathered force, as does he, by digging into the here and now: “L’azur mallarméen, pour lui oui, pour moi non. Je suis persuadé qu’il n’y a rien d’autre à partager que la vie basse, la vue basse, le ras de terre, et puis creuser jusqu’à lui donner une profondeur” (117). The first phase of Emaz’s creative process, a patient waiting which reminds one of the 1999 poetry collection, Soirs, ushers in another connotation of “cambouis”: “Toujours cette attente, ou en deçà de langue, ce vide. Pas d’angoisse de la page blanche, c’est très calme, j’attends un poème ou même un vers, un début de phrase sur quoi prendre appui pour continuer” (208). But attention! The calm wait is oil-dirtied so that poetry’s axles can turn. Once he discovers “pas tant le premier vers qu’un angle d’attaque de vivre” (193), then he begins to write, building an “espace médian, en prise directe avec une émotion simple” (154). The carnets are “pages d’inutilités” (80), dross he writes while awaiting another angle to live for. A good start can turn bad: “Le vrai risque implique que l’on ne peut gagner à tout coup” (25). Hence a further twist of the title, failed poems thrown on workroom floor, without regret or tragedy: “On corrige ou on jette” (83). This rehearsal of Emaz’s title suggests the richness of this book, which embraces the poet’s work, contemporary poetics, and poetry’s relationship to daily life: “Penser qu’un poème n’est jamais qu’un moment de vie [...] il doit amener à une plus grande intensité d’être” (28). Early in Cambouis, he outlines the community he wants to create: “Travailler le banal, au contraire, c’est consciemment poser un dénominateur commun de vivre, créer une fraternité grise avec le lecteur, une sorte de communauté pauvre” (11). This is not featureless poetry, but it demands one listen more finely to Emaz’s diction which brings simple, essential emotions together, tightly yet unobtrusively: “Pas un mot plus haut que l’autre” (179), “Se décharner [...] réduire jusqu’à ce qui rejoint” (41). Emaz flaunts his “côté soutier”: “J’aime mieux les idées basses et les mains au charbon” (185). Cambouis, a corrective, exhibits the grit and daily work that enable poems: “On idéalise trop l’écrivain [...] C’est méconnaître trop tout le côté cambouis ou cuisine de cette activité. Il suffirait, pour corriger le tir, de lire, les carnets, journaux, correspondances” (23). To test Emaz’s assertion, I proceeded to read his poems entitled “Sous-sol,” in the review Scherzo (2001), and his poetry collection K.O. (2004). The groundwork of the carnets had indeed opened my mind and ear to the poetry’s tensions, many of which I had not noticed when I first read (ethereally) Soirs, a book that nevertheless pleased me much, as does Cambouis. University of Kansas Van Kelly FERRY, ALAIN. Mémoire d’un fou d’Emma. Paris: Seuil, 2009. ISBN 978-2-02-094510-3. Pp. 266. 21 a. Alain Ferry’s prospective reader should assume Flaubert’s Madame Bovary (1857) as this book’s palimpsest. Before enjoying this series of seventy numbered Reviews 197 and subtitled reflections about the pertinence of Emma Rouault/Bovary, a recent reading of Madame Bovary on active recall would be enabling. This Emma leads Ferry’s narrator to observe adultery both internally and externally. The narrator’s wife, Eva, has left him, after fourteen years of marriage, for a naval captain. In order to mourn the loss of...