The Dilation of the Poem (Philippe Jaccottet)
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University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2016 The Dilation of the Poem (Philippe Jaccottet) Samuel Edward Martin University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the Other Languages, Societies, and Cultures Commons Recommended Citation Martin, Samuel Edward, "The Dilation of the Poem (Philippe Jaccottet)" (2016). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 1883. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1883 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1883 For more information, please contact [email protected]. The Dilation of the Poem (Philippe Jaccottet) Abstract This study of the works of Swiss poet Philippe Jaccottet (born in 1925) provides a broad overview of his writing, from his first published poems in the early 1940s ot his most recent volume of prose in 2015, and illustrates the various ways in which it emblematizes what could be called a poetics of dilation. My first chapter considers the influence on Jaccottet of the German poet Novalis, who at the turn of the 19th century had envisioned what he called die erweiterte Poësie (“expanded poetry”); via Jean-Christophe Bailly’s recent reflections on la poësie élargie (an adjective that can mean both “expanded” and “liberated”), I in turn derive the notion of dilated poetry, the polysemy of which term is especially suggestive where Jaccottet is concerned. On a formal level, past and present English definitions of dilation account both for the expansion of Jaccottet’s early poème-discours and the dispersal of the later poè`mes-instants as well as of the fragments gathered in the notebooks of La semaison. The second and third chapters further probe poetic experience: the former reexamines Jaccottet’s relationship to images and visibility (the dilation of the poem’s eye), while the latter explores the multivalent motif of blood that runs throughout his writing (the dilation of the poem’s veins). I set out to show that the poet’s encounter with the world is lived first of all as an interdiction, a temporary loss for words before the seemingly inexpressible, and is then brought into language as an entrediction that traces a path between silence and eloquence, music and speech, poet and reader. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Romance Languages First Advisor Philippe Met Keywords Jaccottet, poetry Subject Categories Other Languages, Societies, and Cultures This dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1883 THE DILATION OF THE POEM (PHILIPPE JACCOTTET) Samuel Martin A DISSERTATION in French for the Graduate Group in Romance Languages Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2016 Supervisor of Dissertation _______________________ Philippe Met Professor of Romance Languages Graduate Group Chairperson __________________________ Andrea Goulet, Associate Professor of Romance Languages Dissertation Committee Gerald Prince, Professor of Romance Languages Kevin Brownlee, Professor of Romance Languages THE DILATION OF THE POEM (PHILIPPE JACCOTTET) COPYRIGHT 2016 Samuel Edward Martin This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/ In memory of Dennis and Edna, Helen and John iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Far more people are owed sincere thanks for the completion of this dissertation than can be mentioned here. I’m very grateful to my advisor, Philippe Met, and to my committee members Gerald Prince and Kevin Brownlee, for their guidance and encouragement throughout my time in the French program at Penn. I’ve benefited from a wonderfully supportive community in and around the Romance Languages department, and would especially like to thank Lucy Swanson, George MacLeod, Clara Wagner, and Alison Howard for their kindness, patience, and shrewd suggestions as my text began to assume its final shape. Jean-Christophe Bailly was generous with his time and stimulating in his conversation; Philippe Jaccottet, meanwhile, replied thoughtfully to my letters, and gave me more of a lift than he can know. And I can’t begin to express my debt to Mélanie Péron, without whose extraordinary attentiveness and friendship none of this would have been possible. All love and thanks, lastly, to my parents and to JR, who’ve been with me at every step. iv ABSTRACT THE DILATION OF THE POEM (PHILIPPE JACCOTTET) Samuel Martin Philippe Met This study of the works of Swiss poet Philippe Jaccottet (born in 1925) provides a broad overview of his writing, from his first published poems in the early 1940s to his most recent volume of prose in 2015, and illustrates the various ways in which it emblematizes what could be called a poetics of dilation. My first chapter considers the influence on Jaccottet of the German poet Novalis, who at the turn of the 19th century had envisioned what he called die erweiterte Poësie (“expanded poetry”); via Jean-Christophe Bailly’s recent reflections on la poésie élargie (an adjective that can mean both “expanded” and “liberated”), I in turn derive the notion of dilated poetry, the polysemy of which term is especially suggestive where Jaccottet is concerned. On a formal level, past and present English definitions of dilation account both for the expansion of Jaccottet’s early poème-discours and the dispersal of the later poèmes-instants as well as of the fragments gathered in the notebooks of La semaison. The second and third chapters further probe poetic experience: the former reexamines Jaccottet’s relationship to images and visibility (the dilation of the poem’s eye), while the latter explores the multivalent motif of blood that runs throughout his writing (the dilation of the poem’s veins). I set out to show that the poet’s encounter with the world is lived first of all as an interdiction, a temporary loss for words before the seemingly inexpressible, and is then brought into language as an entrediction that traces a path between silence and eloquence, music and speech, poet and reader. v Samuel Martin Ph.D. Dissertation Department of French and Francophone Studies University of Pennsylvania April 29, 2016 TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS………………………………………………………………..iv ABSTRACT………………………………………………………………………………..v CHAPTER 1 THE DILATION OF THE POEM……………………………………………………….1 CHAPTER 2 ET, NÉANMOINS, DES IMAGES……………………………………………………...27 CHAPTER 3 TACHES DE SANG, TÂCHES DU POÈTE…………………………………………....67 APPENDIX INTERVIEW WITH JEAN-CHRISTOPHE BAILLY…………………………………...91 BIBLIOGRAPHY……………………………………………………………………….107 vi CHAPTER 1 The Dilation of the Poem With the publication in 2001 of a slim volume of lyrical prose, Et, néanmoins, Philippe Jaccottet effectively became a poet of the new millennium. The extent to which he had ever been a representative poet of the preceding half-century of French letters is less straightforward than it may seem at first; every sign appearing to show him as a consecrated establishment figure is counterbalanced by another sign of his unorthodoxy. A stalwart of France’s most prestigious publishing house, Gallimard, Jaccottet has nevertheless always professed his attachment to the Swiss literary milieu in which he grew up, and in the early 1950s shunned the noisy ostentation of the Parisian scene in favor of the Provençal countryside where he has lived ever since. Maintaining close ties of friendship – and even writerly affinity – with major poets in the capital over the years, from Francis Ponge to Yves Bonnefoy, has not stopped him keeping his distance from anything resembling a movement or a circle; likewise, despite what is often said to be the philosophical current running through his work, Jaccottet could not be further removed from any intellectual dogma. His books are among the most extensively studied of any contemporary poet’s, yet he remains as wary of academic commentary as he is grateful for his readers’ attentiveness. Not that he has ever set out to be a special case. Jaccottet’s singularity lies exactly, one might say, in his not having sought it in the first place. His writing is never more recognizably his own than when he is striving to translate the crux of everyday experience in the most transparent manner possible. As he avowed in a recent interview on the cusp of his 90th year, “Je n’ai jamais cherché à renouveler la poésie. Il y a, au fond, peu d’écrivains et peu de poètes qui aient 1 consacré autant de pages à ce sens qu’on pouvait peut-être donner au sentiment de la beauté dans la nature.”1 Et, néanmoins. With its implied sense of continuity, the title serves as a bridge between two centuries; it emblematizes the evenness of the path Philippe Jaccottet’s writing has taken. Yet the phrase is also a reactive one, a gesture of linguistic resistance, even ontological resilience: even so, it says.2 When, as in this instance, the expression is taken on its own, the conjunction et finds itself connecting two néants: phonetically, that of néanmoins on the one hand, and on the other, that of the silent emptiness preceding it, to which it offers itself as a corrective. The Petit Robert defines néanmoins, meanwhile, as “malgré ce qui vient d’être dit”3 – although here, nothing (and certainly not everything) has yet been said.4 This simple two- word phrase,