Voix et mémoire: lectures de Rousseau par Anne-Marie Mercier-Faivre, Michael O’Dea (review)

Reviews 219 produces an event free from any signifying intent, that his poems are “le lieu d’un événement sans signe”(99), and that they have passed through linguistic intentionality “jusqu’à épuisement des signes” (99). One could argue, however that what recurs throughout du Bouchet’s poetry is actually the poem’s “inexhaustion,” producing a world that remains the unending crossing—“le terme atteint se traverse” writes du Bouchet—of signs.Yet, for Martinez, by exhausting the signifying system of language, the poem can reveal “the power of the world.” While it is significant that Martinez’s goal is “to get around a theory of the poem founded on the sign,” his discussion of “intonation”and of the“deictic dimension”(151) of poetry is insufficiently developed to make his case. Instead, Martinez evokes a poetry in which“ni le monde, ni le poème, ni la présence n’ont de signe déterminé”; a poetry that occupies a place where language is“sans emploi”(135) at an“a-semiotic or de-intentionalized level”(103), and“à l’écart des sémiotiques et des herméneutiques”(136).Here,again,Martinez comes uncomfortably close to Sartre’s reading of poetry (of which du Bouchet was so leary) as thriving only “à l’écart de la grande fête sociale.” In the end, Martinez leaves the reader to grapple with“les signes dépris de leur sens, redevenus matière”(157), whereas, for du Bouchet, this also could be the earth, in its becoming world, endlessly freeing itself from its own materiality. Wellesley College (MA) James Petterson Mercier-Faivre, Anne-Marie, et Michael O’Dea, éd. Voix et mémoire: lectures de Rousseau. Lyon: PU de Lyon, 2012. ISBN 978-2-7297-0855-9. Pp. 377. 24 a. Reflecting the evolution of Rousseau studies over the last two decades, this volume gathers articles by scholars from the CNRS, the universities Lumière Lyon 2, Stendhal Grenoble 3, Jean Monnet-Saint-Étienne, and the École Normale de Lyon. It is a sophisticated work that illuminates nuances of Rousseau’s often-studied autobiographical works and fiction while bringing to the fore unsuspected riches in his less frequently examined correspondence and writings on music. Ten scholars each contribute a voice to the tradition—or memory—of Rousseau scholarship. Their contributions (all of them out-of-print or otherwise hard-to-find) focus on Rousseau’s preoccupation with the intertwined phenomena of the human voice (as sound, word, song) and affective memory (as creative force). Accordingly, this collection has a double structure. Part one,“Mémoire: la matière de la création,” explores Rousseau’s imaginative processes, their substrata, their modalities, and their effects. Part two, “Les voix, l’accent: chant et échanges,”analyzes Rousseau’s usage of language, style, and eloquence to construct meaning, reality, and moral truth. The two parts are given equal weight, each one containing nine articles. Together the parts present an eloquent demonstration of the profound unity of Rousseau’s work. As the studies of part one point out, Rousseau’s fictive creations, autobiographical writings, and personal correspondence converge around the ways in which space and time work together to configure memory. Jean Sgard opens the volume by exploring the interactions between external and subjective worlds that shape happiness as reminiscence in La nouvelle Héloïse and the Confessions. Taking as point of departure Rousseau’s fascination with time distilled into instants or turning points that forever alter the course of events, Claude Labrosse’s six articles on La nouvelle Héloïse show the intricacy of Rousseau’s use of writing to master time, subtly modifying it to produce pleasurable emotional effects for his readers and for his own recollection. Pierre Rétat and Jean-François Perrin extend to the Confessions and Rêveries analyses of Rousseau’s strategic structuring of time and thereby of personal, ethical memory anchored in conscience. Contributors to part two include JeanFran çois Perrin, Michael O’Dea, Pierre Saby, Christophe Cave, Anne-Marie MercierFaivre ,Yves Citton, and Denis Reynaud. Their studies of the Confessions, the Rêveries, Rousseau juge de Jean-Jacques, Le devin du Village, Émile, the Lettres écrites de la Montagne...