Battement by Jacques Réda, Battues by Jacques Réda (review)

RÉDA, JACQUES. Battement. Saint-Clément: Fata Morgana, 2009. ISBN 978-2-85194-7338 . Pp. 84. 16 a. . Battues. Saint-Clément: Fata Morgana, 2009. ISBN 978-2-85194-734-5. Pp. 104. 17 a. Published simultaneously, Battement and Battues share views on how writing extends our relationship with time and space. In a reflective, conversational, at times humorous tone, both of them consider directions Jacques Réda’s œuvre has taken and provide fresh glimpses into recurring topoi such as cityscapes, jazz music, and sensory perception. The title Battement, which borrows from the English word beat (73), refers to the constant, reciprocal exchange between Being and Non-Being, presence and disappearance, Energy and Rhythm, an exchange that produces intervals of time and space experienced as especially rich and full. Aware of his subject’s abstraction, Réda explains it in three distinct prose sections , each with examples and short endnotes: “Un Présocratique en Meurthe-etMoselle ,” “Battue,” and “Note disjointe (pour une théorie du swing).” The first pages relate anecdotes concerning early intuitions of “le battement,” in terms of feeling fully present to the world and yet suddenly, almost simultaneously, also absent from it (18). To an extent, he explains, these intuitions led him to writing, as a means of looking into the internal “mirror” of memory and exploring, perhaps even overcoming, such contradictions. Above all, Réda conveys his overarching recognition of a thrilling, exhilarating unity one can notice in the oscillation between Being and Not-Being, as reversible elements joined by the dynamic third term of the “liaison-bascule du tiret.” Together, all three form a triplet rhythm that makes “l’Un” actually dance. Useful everyday examples of “le battement” follow : it is like “le frémissement d’une cymbale [qui] accélère à mesure qu’elle revient vers l’immobilité où, au lieu de s’interrompre, la vibration se repropagerait en sens inverse dans le cuivre” (36); the “point d’oscillation qui fait que chaque pas précède l’autre et lui succède, si bien que la marche devient à la fois progression et suspens, et semble nous délivrer du temps” (37); the “syncope motrice” (44) within the human heart and “le tocotoc qui est le mode ferroviaire du battement” (42). Réda encourages us to imitate “le battement” by dancing through life in turn, and, as in the final essays reprinted from Jazz Magazine that echo Celle qui vient à pas légers (1985) and L’Improviste (1990), to appreciate swing as the ultimate musical expression of this “suspens en progrès” (74). Réda states in Battement that he generally seeks out “l’élémentaire” and lends himself to its “eloquence” (72). This maxim applies to Battues, which surprises and delights as a kind of travaux pratiques extension of its twin’s cours magistral, “débusqu[ant] le battement à l’état sauvage dans le maquis des jours, des formes, affects, songes et perceptions” (inside cover). The three sections here feature poems and poetic prose texts that explore urban and suburban zones (in an untitled part one) while also theorizing about exploration and perception (“Théories”) and about writing and reading as magical yet also peculiar, confounding pursuits (“Quatre études”). Highlights in this volume include the speaker’s contact with crowds in and around Paris (“On y va,” “Botanique”); evocation of a Seine that “ne semble / condescendre à l’effort de couler” (“Vers la Grande-Jatte,” 21); the suggestion that a “Bureau Central” may well exist “où s’archivent en permanence mémoire et conscience de la ville et de ses habitants et passants” (“Rue Clavel,” 72); and an encomium to words’ human qualities such as an inherent “curiosité” that attracts them to us (“Babil,” 80). One often feels time and space expanding through the singular perspectives, striking images, playful intertextual references, Reviews 209 and inviting poetic and rhetorical structures. Readers who have followed Réda’s career over the last fifty years will appreciate the formal experimentation that has become a hallmark of his, particularly the shifting boundaries between poetry and prose, while those newer to his work will find an enjoyable array of texts, some of which merit a place in...