Arthur Rimbaud et le foutoir zutique by Bernard Teyssédre (review)

“bewilderments of fiction” begins while researching the manuscripts of Queneau’s novel in Belgium, as he stumbles across numerous scenarios and events that never ended up in the final version of the work. Stump describes this experience as one of encountering “a world we think we know and finding it changed, unfamiliar, somewhat unsettling” (2). How, he wonders, can the characters and places known to any reader of Queneau’s novel exist otherwise? Quickly abandoning his initial scholarly task, Stump narrates how this unsettling difference between the novel and its manuscript led him to consider some fundamental questions about reading and the nature of literature as such. How does Le chiendent exist and where does it lie? Stump quickly realizes that these same thorny ontological questions become posed by the existence of translations and critical editions of works, and that they even inhabit the simple fact that when one reads a copy of a novel, one is strangely still not reading that novel itself. “The book itself,” as he eventually defines it, “is the text of which the manuscript and the translation are different versions, and which the critical edition reproduces amid the supplementary material it offers” (8). And so the present study begins, as Stump sets out to define just what the various forms of that book itself are. The other book of his study’s title “is the version of the book itself, a manifestation of the book itself—its alter ego, perhaps, or its dizygotic twin” (8). Stump then proceeds to analyze, in sometimes exhaustive detail, the theoretical , hermeneutic, and ontological ramifications of each of these other books: the copy, the manuscript, the translation, and the critical edition. His discussions are often lucid and are always admirably rigorous—the opening chapter’s discussion of the ways in which a novel’s copies lead him to the conclusion that “the being of a novel eludes definition and delimitation” (60) is particularly engaging and thought-provoking. At times, however, his argument can become so focused on the logical oddities of fiction’s modes of being, that it can become hard to see the forest for the trees. When he pauses at one point with a defensive “I don’t believe I’m splitting hairs here” (35), the reader might beg to differ. If his almost childlike way of consistently taking the utter strangeness of fiction’s existence at face value can be oftentimes maddening, then at least he introduces a number of pressing questions that are hard to ignore. Baffling, odd, and not just a little exhausting, The Other Book is still a work to which I will return many times in the future. Towson University (MD) Jacob Hovind TEYSSÈDRE, BERNARD. Arthur Rimbaud et le foutoir zutique. Paris: Léo Scheer, 2011. ISBN 978-2-7561-0289-4. Pp. 784. 25 a. Par son titre choc, cette étude remet au goût du jour L’album zutique, un recueil de poèmes facétieux, voire obscènes, qui, sans se prendre au sérieux, se moquent de tout, de la poésie y compris, et de la politique surtout. L’album, dans un avant-propos rédigé par Lefrère, est présenté comme “les échantillons d’une poésie subversive et cynique qui a survécu à celle qu’elle parodiait!” (14). L’ouvrage colossal de Teyssèdre dissèque, explore et interprète les contributions du cercle zutique—celles de Rimbaud en particulier. C’est à l’univers de la conception d’un tel foutoir que l’auteur s’attaque avec entrain et minutie. L’étude propose non seulement une analyse des poèmes atypiques, mais encore les situe dans un contexte historique et culturel très amplement détaillé. Reviews 835 L’ouvrage couvre largement—trop largement à certains égards—les événements qui gravitent autour du fameux album. Divisé en trois parties, l’étude est tout d’abord consacrée à l’arrivée du poète à Paris, à sa rencontre avec Verlaine et Cros, et à son intronisation au sein des Vilains-Bonshommes. On retrouve les frères Cros réunis autour du mot “zut!” et la fiche signalétique de douze membres du cercle zutique. La seconde partie...