BY MARIE KRYSINSKA by Abigail Culpep

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ABSTRACT

TOWARDS AN ETHIC OF THE LYRIC: TAKING ON THE OTHER IN “LA MORT DE CLÉOPÂTRE” BY MARIE KRYSINSKA

by Abigail Culpepper

The unique efficacy of the lyric lies in its ability to describe moments that everyday language cannot, as seen in the popularity of love poems and elegies. Yet, such usage of poetic language overlooks the complex relationships between the self and other which make the signifying power of such language possible. In turn, how is one to understand the relationship to this other, and what are the ethical implications of such a connection? In response to this question, this project examines poetic signification, the relationship between the self and Other, and its ethics. To do so, the project offers an analysis of both the poem “La Mort de Cléopâtre” by nineteenth century Polish French poet, Marie Krysinska, and a line of theoretical arguments to elucidate the ethical relationship between self and other seen in the lyric. The analysis also turns to the works of; Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Blanchot, Roland Barthes, Adrianna Cavarero and Emmanuel Levinas to address the signifying nature of the lyric and the relationship between language, being, and otherness. As a result of this discussion, the project proposes a defense Krysinska’s style and an ethic of the lyric based on the interconnectivities of being.

TOWARDS AN ETHIC OF THE LYRIC: TAKING ON THE OTHER IN “LA MORT DE CLÉOPÂTRE” BY MARIE KRYSINSKA

A Thesis

Submitted to the

Faculty of Miami University

in partial fulfillment of

the requirements for the degree of

Master of Arts

Abigail Culpepper

Miami University

Oxford, Ohio

2019

Advisor: Jonathan Strauss

Reader: Audrey Wasser

Reader: Elisabeth Hodges

This Thesis titled

TOWARDS AN ETHIC OF THE LYRIC: TAKING ON THE OTHER IN “LA MORT DE CLÉOPÂTRE” BY MARIE KRYSINSKA

Abigail Culpepper

has been approved for publication by

The College of Arts and Science

and

Department of French & Italian

______Jonathan Strauss

______Audrey Wasser

______Elisabeth Hodges

Table of Contents

Introduction ...... 1 Chapter One: Marie Krysinska: Rebelle, Innovatrice, and Féministe ...... 4 Chapter Two: A Lyric, A Tragedy… A Lyric Tragedy? ...... 8 Chapter Three: What Does Mimesis Have to Do with It? ...... 11 Chapter Four: Une femme, une fleur, l’écriture : A Crisis in Poetic Representation ...... 32 Chapter Five: The Ethical Space of the Lyric: Approaching the Other ...... 45 Chapter Six: Il faut imaginer Cléopâtre heureuse… ...... 59 Conclusion ...... 63 Works Cited ...... 65

iii

Dedication

To all the women and femmes in my life, either in person or through text. Your presences dot the coastline of my existence and by that I chart my course.

Acknowledgements

In completing this project, I found myself surrounded by a supporting community of friends, family, and faculty who facilitated my labor. I would like to take a moment to recognize some of them.

First, I must extend my most sincere gratitude to the members of my thesis committee, Drs. Jonathan Strauss, Audrey Wasser, and Elisabeth Hodges, for their guidance, support, and feedback, throughout the various stages of this project. A special thanks to Dr. Strauss for his role in chairing my committee and helping me develop the project. I am similarly indebted to my committee, along with the rest of the faculty in the department of French & Italian at Miami University, for their crucial support and instruction these past four years as I have completed the B.A./M.A. program in French.

I would also like to extend my thanks to my colleagues, Sarah Agou and Caroline Godard, whose projects and enthusiasm inspired and informed my own, and whose friendship made the solitary task of thesis writing bearable. I must also thank my friend and former colleague, Logan A. Smith, whose advice, assurances, and wit kept me going.

Finally, I would like to thank my family for their support and for nurturing in me a love of literature and the unknown, which paired together leaves me with much left to explore.

Introduction C’est qu’en présence de quelque chose d’autre je deviens autre, mais pour cette raison plus décisive encore : c’est que cette chose autre […], dont je n’avais qu’une idée et que rien ne me permettait de connaître à l’avance, c’est justement moi-même devenu autre. (Blanchot 305) At its essence, language represents an attempt to reach out to others. Albeit, the initial utterances of most require a significant amount of interpretation. Nonetheless, in acquiring language we acquire a means through which to approach the world around us and make sense, not only of this exteriority, but of our own interiority. More advanced language allows for the expression of complex ideas and experiences. Yet, as our mastery of language grows, we find ourselves face to face with the faults in language—those moments which language fails to convey in their totality. In these instances, when language fails us, drops off, and retreats from our intentions, the reality of our own experience confronts us. Some such experiences are those of profound emotions, such as love or grief, yet they can also be as simple as the intense warmth of color and sensation that comes with being outside on a summer day. Making sense of these moments linguistically is a task which the lyric is apt to, after all poetry seeks to show what prose cannot tell us. This speaks to the popularity of love poems and elegies throughout time. Take for example, the lamentation found in Alphonse de Lamartine’s “Le lac” which articulates the loss of a loved one and a nostalgia for the time spent with them. Attempts such as these litter the lyric genre whose form speaks in moments where descriptive language misses the mark. As one of the longest standing literary genres, the lyric has long found a home in our language, filling in some of those moments where colloquial language slips away from us. The systematization of this association between the lyric and everyday language appears in the proliferation of idioms, metaphors, and clichés that weave their way through language. These poetic formulations endear themselves to us in part due to their iterability, and in part due to the way in which these forms offer a way of making sense of those moments when other language falters (Culler 120, 126). Case in point, how often have young English speakers quoted a Shakespearean sonnet before even learning of the bard’s existence? It is thus poetry, or lyric, that often serves as an alternative means of expression, bridging the faults in quotidian language. For the lyric to be incorporated into our language, requires individuals to produce works which can be widely circulated. There are a variety of individuals who have taken up this genre

and have produced works of critical acclaim. In writing, these poets touch a cord that resonates beyond their time. Some are heard sooner than others, while others are only heard faintly, if at all. Often poets whose work has been dampened by the passage of time are writing from positions less favorable than their peers whose genius has already been rung in. Still these ‘unheard’ poets bring to us works that speak to faults and cracks in the surface of the literary canon. They raise questions about the dominant model of literary expression, and in doing so provide a space from which to discuss its limits. With this in mind, this project will focus on the work of one such poet, Marie Krysinska, whose oeuvre warrants further exploration. Yet even those works which exist on the periphery of the literary canon do not escape the limitations of poetic language itself. There are still moments in poetic language in which produce an assortment of associations surrounding the poetic object. Even so, noncanonical works offer insights into both the limits of poetic language and the limits of the genre. The interaction between these two categories, those of the canon, and of the genre itself allows us to get to the heart of the issue. The overlap between the limits of poetic signification, and the edges of the canon force us to come to terms with ourselves, and our relationship(s) to poetic language, its object, and subject, in ways that highlight our own limitations. Even poetic language invokes something that itself is beyond language. As such, an analysis of a noncanonical poem serves to both illuminates the tendencies of more canonical work, while sharing in the same troubling semantic characteristics. Confronting a poem also involves facing a network of relationships, between ourselves, the poet, the poem, its contemporaries, subject matter and more. Such a network of connections raises the question of our obligation to recognize these relationships and their dynamics. Should poetry be held accountable for propagating essentialist associations between women and nature (as seen in Pierre de Ronsard’s insistence on comparing women to flowers)? If we only traffic in poems written by men, are we silencing other poetic voices? In turn, a study of the lyric brings up a variety of ethical dilemmas which concern the nature of representation, poetic signification, and our relationship to the world around us. This ethical aspect of the lyric is the point around which the project will orient itself. Here by ethical, we refer to a moral code or a set of obligations and expectations which come into play when in contact with an exterior being. It is important to address the ethical aspect of the lyric, since the efficacy of poetic language relies on our associations with the world around us. For similar reasons the project focuses on a noncanonical

work as it allows for a discussion of the associations which make their ways through the literary continuum. To this end, the project will follow two related line of lines of inquiry, one which examines the place of poet, Marie Krysinska, through an analysis of her dramatic poem “La Mort de Cléopâtre” and one which questions the function of poetic language and the relationships it establishes. By examining the work of Marie Krysinska, the project will address the ways in which a poet and their work can subvert literary norms of the time. This subversion makes clear that a complex network of relationships accompanies the creation of a literary work, and such networks are actively cultivated. The second line of questioning, which concerns poetic language abstractly, will suss out the mechanism of poetic signification, and the ways in which this mechanism implicates an ethic. Together these two lines of questioning seek to elucidate a theory of poetic language and its effects, and an ethical paradigm through which to navigate the subtle connections invoked by the lyric.

Chapter One: Marie Krysinska: Rebelle, Innovatrice, and Féministe From the perspective of the dominant genius discourse in nineteenth-century France, women could not create the “great works” later selected for the French literary canon. (Paliyenko 2) The creative productions of men dominate the French literary canon of the nineteenth century (and most other centuries), featuring literary juggernauts such as Charles Baudelaire, Gustave Flaubert, Honoré de Balzac, Victor Hugo and, by the end of the century, a community of experimental poets including Stéphane Mallarmé, Paul Verlaine, and Arthur Rimbaud, to name a few. Except for George Sand, and Colette in the beginning of the twentieth century, few women produced works of critical and commercial acclaim, and even fewer have made it into the canon. This occurred in spite of the literary works produced by women, whose projects were often ignored, or who only found success after publishing under masculine names, as is the case with George Sand. One victim of the masculinist trends of literary canonization and poetic production in France is the Polish-French poet Marie Krysinska, whose work has as its central fault one issue: female authorship.1 It is only in the latter half of the twentieth century, that her oeuvre began to receive critical attention. Unfortunately, there is little biographical precision about the origins of Krysinska, whose titles include that of poet, musician, novelist, theorist, and critic. According to her death certificate, Maria Anastazja Wincentyna Krysinska, was a (non-practicing) Jew, born in Warsaw on January 22, 1857 and died in Paris on September 16, 1908 (Whidden 1-2, Goulesque 49). Yet, the date of her birth is contested (Goulesque 49-50).2 It is generally accepted that early on in her life, around the age of sixteen, Krysinska left her native Poland to study music in Paris, potentially at the Conservatoire Nationale de Musique, but abandoned her studies shortly after her arrival in favor of partaking in the vibrant creative communities of Paris at the time. She joined literary and artistic groups such as the “Hirsutes,” the “Jemenfoutistes” and the “Zutistes,”

1 “Le grand tort de Marie Krysinska fut d’écrire et de publier dans un pays peu enclin à admettre des femmes poètes, et dans un moment de l’histoire de la poésie peu favorable” (Planté 28). 2 Florence Goulesque notes that while several sources claim Krysinska is born in 1857, “toutes les autres sources” state she was born in 1864 (Goulesque leaves these other sources unspecified with the exception of the reports of Eugène Ledrain). If Krysinska left for Paris at around age sixteen, per the popular consensus, she would have first moved to Paris around 1873. If she was born in 1864, she would have arrived in Paris around 1880 which coincides with the formation of many literary groups she participated with (Goulesque 49-50). For this reason, Goulesque prefers the 1864 date; however, Seth Whidden prefers the 1857 date as it is the one indicated on her marriage certificate, US immigration records, and death certificate. Yet, the death certificate alleges she was both sixty-one years old at her time of death in 1908 and born in 1857 which is mathematically impossible (Whidden 2). 4

in addition to being admitted as the sole woman member of the “Hydropathes.” In 1881, upon the opening of the now renowned cabaret “Le Chat Noir,” Marie Krysinska joined many others in making the cabaret a bustling artistic space. She participated in the cabaret as a pianist where she put existing poems to song and soon began performing poems and songs of her own composition (Whidden 3). In the same year, she published her first poem in vers libre “Symphonie des parfums” in La Chronique parisienne, followed by “Symphonie en gris” in Le Chat noir in 1882, and “Le Hibou” in La Vie Moderne in 1883, all of which were featured in her first collection of poetry published in 1890 (Whidden 115, 120; Krysinska “De la nouvelle école” 266; Krysinska Rythmes Pittoresques 39, 54, 57). These poems are the first poems published in free verse in the history of French poetry, yet the men of the symbolist tradition are credited with its innovation. In fact, Gustave Kahn deliberately excluded Marie Krysinska from the ‘advent’ of free verse announced by the dual publication of the Symbolist manifesto by Jean Moréas and Kahn’s own work written en vers libre in 1886 (Paliyenko 232). The declaration conveniently occurred while the poetess was in the United States with her husband, the painter Georges Bellenger. Krysinska recognized this slight: “Aussi mon nom fut-il scrupuleusement omis dans les manifestes faits en faveur de la nouvelle formule et les réciproques congratulations que s’adressaient les novateurs” (Krysinska qtd in. Paliyenko 232). This was only the beginning of the conflict between Krysinska and her contemporaries. To add insult to injury, Kahn went on to accuse Krysinska of plagiarizing his (unpublished) work while he was completing military service in Tunisia, although he refused to dignify Krysinska by addressing her by name (Whidden 11-12).3 Undeterred, Krysinska identified herself as the object of Kahn’s accusations in the prologue to her third poetry collection, Intermèdes, emphasizing Kahn’s usage of the feminine ‘une personne’ and noting that at the time her poem “Le Hibou” was the only poem in free verse to be published in La Vie moderne, the publication referenced by Kahn (Krysinska, Intermèdes xxxiii-xxxiv). As for the claim of plagiarism, Krysinska acerbically retorted, “Heureux climat africain et heureux âge où l’on peut faire école avant d’avoir fait imprimer une seule ligne révélatrice de son

3 “Je regardais la feuille et j’y vis un poème en vers libre, ou typographié tel, poème en prose ou en vers libres, selon le gré, très directement ressemblant à mes essais. Il était signé d’une personne qui me connaissait bien, et voulait bien, moi absent, se conformer étroitement à mon esthétique ; je faisais école” (Kahn qtd. in Whidden 11-12). 5

esthétique !”(Krysinska, Intermèdes xxxiv). Yet Krysinska did not reserve her attacks to Kahn alone. In 1891, she further asserted her place within the history of vers libre by penning a letter in response to Anatole France’s article on Jean Moréas in La Revue indépendante. Within this letter, Krysinska attacks members of the symbolist movement for their lack of originality and authenticity (with a particular focus on Kahn and Moréas), while warning journalists to better inform themselves of the true originators of literary innovation: Quant aux libertés définitives prises avec le mètre et la rime, effort tendant à constituer un nouveau mode prosodique, et quant à l’initiative de réaction— par le retour vers un symbolisme impressionnel—contre le réalisme et le souromantisme qui sévissaient en poésie, je me vois forcé4 à en réclamer pour moi-même la priorité de date; ayant dès 1881 publié dans la Vie Moderne et le Chat Noir, les premières pièces des Rythmes pittoresques où l’on retrouvera aussi les recherches de tels effets musicaux, des retours de phrases identiques ou renversées, qui eurent l’honneur d’être adoptées par les Christophe Colombs du Symbolisme. (Krysinska, “De la nouvelle école” 266) This stark defense of her own position as an innovatrice du vers libre is magnified by her final retort associating the symbolist poets who have taken up the mantel of free verse with Christopher Columbus, whose claims of discovering the ‘New World’ were undermined by the fact that this world was already inhabited. In doing so, Krysinska aligns herself and her work with that of the colonized, whose histories and cultures are erased in the name of discovery and progress. Nonetheless, despite her best protests, Marie Krysinska was unsuccessful in garnering the acceptance of her peers, or the critical acclaim her pioneering work deserved. It is not that her work was unilaterally rejected. She did receive some favorable reviews, but as André Salmon noted “Peu de femmes d’aucun temps auront été publiquement diffamées, insultées autant que Marie Krysinska” (qtd. in Whidden 7). Krysinska received a variety of names during her lifetime, some light-hearted, but others vulgar, misogynistic, and/or anti-Semitic (Paliyenko, Whidden and Schultz 14). In September 1908, she died destitute and alone, interred in the common grave at Saint-Ouen as there was no one to pay for her burial (Whidden 5-6). It is only

4 Adrianna Paliyenko offers an interpretation of the masculine ending on ‘forcé’ in the above letter stating, “The masculine ending of the adjective ‘force’ does not agree with the pronoun subject ‘je.’ This could be merely an error by typesetters accustomed to printing male authors. Yet this grammatical ‘mistake,’ reflective of the male- dominated canon of poetry, represents the ways misinformed critics sidelined her voice” (243). 6

in the past several decades that her life and oeuvre have begun to receive the critical attention denied by her peers. The life of Marie Krysinska is that of a female immigrant with a spirit for artistic innovation, and the iconoclastic gall to create works which rethought female subjectivity and the dominant poetic and social model. In innovating free verse poetry as a woman, and producing works often focusing on historic or mythical female subjects, Krysinska challenged the dominant ideologies surrounding these figures in the cultural imagination and breathed a new sense of agency into the lyric genre. Thus, her significance goes far beyond her part in the innovation of free verse. Her poetic, literary, and critical works show a certain political engagement with the moment and attest to the possibility of female self-determination and new expressions of subjectivity which give proof to her own engagement in feminist ideals of the era (Paliyenko, Whidden and Schultz 22; Schultz 184). Krysinska’s work thus challenges us as readers and critics to reflect on our own role in literary consumption, and on her place as an author within a larger literary tradition. Moreover, her poetry foregrounds the essential subjectivity of language and our complicity in recognizing (or ignoring) the subject who reaches out to us. Krysinska achieves this through the explicit personalization of her poetry which often makes use of a first person singular and/or plural subject pronoun (je, nous), addresses a second person (vous, tu) and/or focuses on specific historical figures or objects.5 The issue of subjectivity is also evident in her poems which reprise mythical or historic characters, such as the dramatic poem “La Mort de Cléopâtre.” This poem features a Cleopatra who is historical, fictional, and present in a way that demands recognition. The words of Krysinska’s Cleopatra are animated not by the historical or poetic form of this character but by ourselves as we reproduce the poem with every rereading, reanimating words via repetition. That is to say, the reader of the lyric must be both speaker and listener, taking on the voice of the poem in order to listen to it. In this vein, our project will delve further into the relationships established through and by poetry, along with the implications of this connectivity.

5 For an example of a poem featuring the first person, see “Les Bijoux Faux” (Krysinska, Rythmes pittoresques 49). For an example of second person address, and the personification of an object see “Les Rocs” or “Le Hibou” (Krysinska, Rythmes pittoresques 42, 57). The focus of this project, “La Mort de Cléopâtre” serves as an example of one of the many poems in which Krysinska describes historical figures. This dynamic can also be seen in the poem “Judith” (Krysinska, Joies errantes 43). 7

Chapter Two: A Lyric, A Tragedy… A Lyric Tragedy? Le monde soumet toute entreprise à une alternative ; celle de la réussite ou de l’échec, de la victoire ou de la défaite […] Affronté à l’aventure (ce qui m’advient), je n’en sors ni vainqueur ni vaincu : je suis tragique. (Barthes, Fragments d’un discours amoureux 30). The question of genre takes precedence over the issues raised by the text, as genre frames our understanding of meaning and the literary traditions which pertain to the piece. “La Mort de Cléopâtre,” which describes the final moments of the Egyptian queen Cleopatra as shared with her servant Charmion, poses a challenge in this regard. It is the last work featured in Marie Krysinska’s second collection of poetry, Joies errantes, which would suggest it is a poem. However, the set-up of the work complicates this categorization as it takes the form of a drama in free-verse. Despite this complication the work still functions within the lyric tradition. This is evident from the use of symbolic language, unusual syntax, versification, and more. These elements fit within the qualifications of the lyric genre given by German theorist Eva Müller- Zettelmann: “(1) brevity, (2) a reduction of the fictional element, (3) more intense formal structuring, (4) greater aesthetic self-reference, (5) greater linguistic deviance, and (6) greater epistemological subjectivity” (qtd. in Culler 33). In this regard the work adheres to the standards of the lyric. Nevertheless, the dramatic qualities of “La Mort de Cléopâtre” are worth discussing. The poem progresses via dialogue and stage directions. Specifically, the dramatic story which unfolds in this poem is one of tragedy. To further this characterization of tragedy in the context of the lyric, it is prudent to go back to one of the original texts on the topic, Aristotle’s Poetics. In this work, Aristotle defines tragedy in the following terms: “Tragedy is a representation of an action of a superior kind—grand, and complete in itself—presented in embellished language, in distinct forms in different parts, performed by actors rather than told by a narrator, effecting, through pity and fear, the purification of such emotions” (23). He offers other qualifications; such as the unity of time, action, and place, along with six basic elements including mimesis (Aristotle 24). For this project, the most pertinent distinctions made by Aristotle on the topic of poetry is the one between the historian and the poet: The difference between a historian and a poet is not a matter of using verse or prose […] The difference is that the one relates what actually happened, and the other the kinds of

events that would happen. For this reason, poetry is more philosophical and more serious than history; poetry utters universal truths, history particular statements. The universal truths concern what befits a person of a certain kind to say or do in accordance with probability and necessity—and that is the aim of poetry, even if it makes use of proper names (28). Here Aristotle introduces an ethical position into his conception of poetry. It is ethical because the distinction Aristotle makes between poetry and history is that history retells events as they happen, while poetry makes claims about what should happen. Poetry is a way to speak truth and in certain cases to retell history as to produces a particular moral. Otherwise said, poetry is the domain of consequence, while history is the domain of the consequential. Thus, Aristotelian poetry focuses on the motives that produce a particular outcome, while history is interested in reporting events in a series regardless of any interior ethical consistency between them. Another way to approach this distinction lies in the ironic injustice of history. People often do not ‘get their due.’ Sometimes the villains win. However, history has no authority to comment on the apparent injustice of such events. After all, what is ‘just’ is subjective. Poetry allows us to make sense of historic events in light of our desire for sensibility. Take for example the epic French poem, La Chanson de Roland which recounts the historic event of the Battle of Roncevaux Pass. The ways in which Roland’s death is heroized, creates a mythic history for France which asserts a certain ethical position, one which values loyalty to the King, bravery, and chivalry. This moral proposition is possible in poetry, but not in history. Therefore, in turning to “La Mort de Cléopâtre” which itself deals with a historical subject, it would appear that Krysinska’s work adheres to Aristotle’s conception of poetry, since the work goes beyond retelling the event in favor offering an account of what should have happened. On the topic of genre, “La Mort de Cléopâtre” functions within both the lyric and dramatic genres. Yet, there are ways in which the poem is resisting them both. First, by producing a dramatic poem, she creates a lyric that moves beyond the genre and forces us to reflect on the limits of the lyrical. Her poem has defined speakers and offers us an explicit subject position. It is likewise written in free verse which is a break from the lyric tradition up to that point. Her work resists the Aristotelian tradition of tragedy. The poem begins with the word “Mourir” which gives away the ultimate end of the tragedy, completely disavowing the initial stages of a tragedy as described by Aristotle (Krysinska, Joies errantes 123, Aristotle 24).

Likewise, the lyrical aspects of the work, most evident in Cleopatra’s monologues, often obscure meaning and thus the full progression of the drama. Take for example the following verses spoken as Cleopatra faces the sea: “Ce lit bleu tout entire berça mes songes / De formidable amoureuse ; Et, jusqu’aux confins du ciel, / Ces flots furent mon domaine asservi” (Krysinska, Joies errantes 124). Here the sea is described metaphorically, and one must take time to work through the different descriptions of the sea, as both a cherished resting place and Cleopatra’s domain. The lyric elements take priority over the progression of a tragic narrative. Even though there are some tensions between the lyrical and dramatic aspects of “La Mort de Cléopâtre” the work can be described as lyric tragedy or a dramatic poem. This categorization is significant as it allows us to discuss the ways in which the poem interacts with characteristics of the genres. One of these characteristics, noted by Aristotle, is mimesis (also understood as representation or imitation) (17, 20). The following discussion of the poem will focus on this aspect of mimesis, and the ways in which Marie Krysinska’s poem generates meaning through imitation.

Chapter Three: What Does Mimesis Have to Do with It? La peinture, elle, peut feindre la réalité sans l’avoir vue. Le discours combine des signes qui ont certes des référents, mais ces référents peuvent être et sont le plus souvent des “chimères.” (Barthes, La chambre claire 120) The dramatic poem, “La Mort de Cléopâtre” features a variety of familiar structures, persons, and places and incorporates imitations and representations of historical moments, real speech acts, and even other literary works. However, closer inspection reveals that Krysinska’s work cannot be taken as an exact replication of real entities and/or texts, but rather hinges upon being mistaken as such. Its efficacy lies in the difference between the real entity, the imitation, and the reality of the lyric as an entity in itself. For this reason, our analysis will make use of the word mimesis to refer to the Aristotelean description of poetry, but also to the act of mimicry— pretending to be something else and thus disguising the divergences in the imitation. This chapter will explore several different iterations of quasi-mimesis found within the text, namely historical, intertextual, and locutionary imitations. Historical Mimesis At the opening of “La Mort de Cléopâtre,” the stage is set by directions which describe the location, scenery, and positioning of those involved. The characters take on the names of historical figures: the Egyptian queen, Cleopatra, and her servant, Charmion. The poem appears to be an act of historical replication, a mimesis, as the title indicates, of ‘The Death of Cleopatra.’ Furthermore, a naïve reading of the poem would suggest it adheres to its historical model. Krysinska’s Cleopatra kills herself by means of a ‘reptile’ bite, smuggled into her chamber in a fruit basket after she loses a war with the Romans, as is consistent with Plutarchian tradition (Krysinska 130; Plutarch 387). Only after a review of the historical accounts of Cleopatra’s death, are the differences between the two revealed. As such, a review of the historical accounts of Cleopatra is necessary. … As one of the most famous women in Western history, Cleopatra’s renown and infamy have only grown since her death. She is one of the few women to have significantly influenced political events of her time, and even did so through her death, which served as a link between Hellenistic and Roman traditions (Chauveau 7). The young Ptolemaic queen, known then as Cleopatra VII, ruled Egypt from 51 B.C.E, after ascending to the throne at the age of seventeen

following the death of her father, until her own death in 30 B.C.E. (Hawass and Goddio 12, 174, 177).6 Early on in her reign, Cleopatra aligned herself with Julius Caesar to ward off threats to her power from her younger brother, Ptolemy XIII.7 Cleopatra went on to meet Mark Antony, who had recently received control over the eastern half of the Roman empire, including Egypt. Under this alliance, Egyptian rule expanded greatly, but ultimately did not last as Antony and Cleopatra waged and lost a war against the Roman leader Octavian. The war concluded with Cleopatra’s suicide and the end of her reign in 30 B.C.E (Hawass and Goddio 177). Beyond the existence of Egyptian artifacts, which have only been uncovered in the last couple decades, much of what is known about the life of Cleopatra comes from the works of the Greco-Roman biographer Plutarch. In fact, all the modern biographic works cited here return to Plutarch’s version of events, albeit with varying degrees of skepticism. Plutarch’s biographies of Julius Caesar and Mark Anthony house his descriptions of Cleopatra. According to these accounts she is a manipulative seductress who spells ruin for the Roman empire. As such, most historical accounts of Cleopatra emphasize that the military and political alliances produced children (Hawass and Goddio 175; Chauveau 39-40, 48; Plutarch 349). Since Plutarch’s records are the most ‘complete’ account of Cleopatra’s life that survived, his characterization of Cleopatra, as a femme fatale, has dominated Western culture and literature.8 Modern French biographer, Michel Chauveau, notes, that even as ‘true’ biographies about her life began appearing in the nineteenth century: Nous ne disposons en effet d’aucun récit ancien de son règne, pas même d’une simple notice biographique ! […] Ainsi, du point de vue purement historique, Cléopâtre n’est- elle qu’une figure en creux, sans existence propre, partenaire privilégiée mais toujours subordonnée dans la vie de ses contemporains: Jules César, Marc Antoine, Octave, voire même Hérode, le roi des Juifs. (Chauveau 8-9) For most of Western history, the story of Cleopatra has been written by men who knew little about the queen and whose focus was on her political and romantic partners. In the two times

6 Hawass and Goddio note that while little is known of Cleopatra’s mother, “we do know that she came from a long line of fearless Ptolemaic females who often participated in public affairs” (174). 7 It was during this time that Julius Caesar visited Alexandria, and Cleopatra supposedly gained an audience with him, by which to plead her case, by wrapping herself up in some type of bedding or carpet which a soldier then presented to the Roman ruler (Hawass and Goddio 175, Plutarch 304). 8 These literary references have in turn influenced biographically descriptions of Cleopatra. Hawass and Goddio notably cite Shakespeare’s play Antony and Cleopatra, in addition to devoting an entire section of their work to popular representations of the queen (Hawass and Goddio 176, 230-242). 12

Cleopatra appears in Plutarch she is introduced as an enchanting seductress who corrupts otherwise infallible military leaders (Plutarch 304, 339). This is exemplified by the description found in Antony’s biography, which describes how Cleopatra supposedly ensnared the young leader: Such being his temper, the last and crowning mischief that could befall him came in the love of Cleopatra, to awaken and kindle to fury passions that as yet lay still and dormant in his nature, and to stifle and finally corrupt any elements that yet made resistance in him, of goodness and a sound judgement. He fell into the snare thus. (Plutarch 339) Here Plutarch specifies that Cleopatra is the antithesis of the respectful, upright, and rational Mark Antony. It is only under the corrupting influence of the Egyptian queen that he turns away from these values. In all, Plutarch paints Cleopatra as a conniving, jealous, duplicitous, and unnatural temptress. This representation serves as inspiration for a variety of literary, artistic, and other works (see the following section Intertextual Mimesis). Moreover, Plutarch makes it clear that Cleopatra’s appeal has an aura of the supernatural but in malicious sense. She does not win over these great military leaders by the normal, or good, feminine way—that of beauty. Instead there is something about her person that charms men indiscriminately and unnaturally. As Plutarch writes, For her actual beauty, it is said, was not in itself so remarkable that none could be compared with her, or that no one could see her without being struck by it, but the contact of her presence, if you lived with her, was irresistible; the attraction of her person, joining with the charm of her conversation, and the character that attended all she said or did, was something bewitching. (341) This ‘something bewitching’ alerts us to the unnatural and uncanny nature ascribed to Cleopatra, which allows for her demonization within the Western tradition. Cleopatra becomes known as the emasculating seductress who nearly brought ruin to the Roman empire. Yet, this feat was accomplished due to the preternatural nature of her seduction, and thus came at no fault of the men she seduced. They were merely victims of her power. In fact, Plutarch continues with this depiction as he describes the beginning of the Final War of the Roman Republic, in which Caesar (Octavian, later known as Augustus) declares war on Cleopatra and not Antony. Octavian

claims that Cleopatra has deprived Antony of his senses and authority and even goes so far as to joke that Cleopatra’s domestic entourage would serve as the generals in this war (Plutarch 368).9 Despite these descriptions of Cleopatra’s power and influence, Plutarch’s account of the civil war does little to acknowledge her military participation, despite Ptolemaic Egypt and Cleopatra playing a significant role (Chauveau 70-78). His main focus is on the foreshadowing of her death, seen in the lengthy description given of the way in which Cleopatra tested out a variety of poisons and venoms on prisoners sentenced to death. Plutarch concludes this experiment determined the quickest and least painful death for the queen—the bite of an asp (Plutarch 378). Thus, Plutarch represents the Egyptian Queen in a way that is sexualized (as seen in the focus on her liaisons, and physicality) and villainized, while downplaying, if not altogether erasing, her real power and aptitude as a political and military leader. In Plutarch’s record, as the war rages on and the chances of victory for Antony and Cleopatra dwindle, she appears to abandon Antony, faking her own death which prompts the young leader to a botched suicide. The two are eventually reunited, rather dramatically, in Antony’s last moments (Plutarch 380-381). These final scenes of Antony and Cleopatra are of the most importance for our current project, which takes them as its object. The dying Antony is brought to Cleopatra who, refusing to leave her chambers, hoists his body up to her room with great difficulty. Once Antony is inside, the scene that follows is emblematic of a standard tragedy (and rather inconsistent with Plutarch’s previous demonization of Cleopatra): When she had got him up, she laid him on the bed, tearing all her clothes, which she spread upon him; and beating her own breasts with her hands, lacerating herself, and disfiguring her own face with the blood from his wounds, she called him her lord, her husband, her emperor, and seemed to have pretty nearly forgotten all her own evils, she was so intent upon his misfortunes. Antony, stopping her lamentations as well as he could, called for wine to drink, either that he was thirsty, or that he imagined that it might put him the sooner out of pain. (Plutarch 382)

9 “As soon as Caesar had completed his preparations, he had a decree made, declaring war on Cleopatra, and depriving Antony of the authority which he had let a woman exercises in his place. Caesar added that he had drunk potions that had bereaved him of his senses, and that the generals they would have to fight with would be Mardion the eunuch, Pothinus, Iras, Cleopatra’s hair-dressing girl, and Charmion, who were Antony’s chief state-councilors” (Plutarch 368).

Antony dies shortly afterward. Yet, what is particularly remarkable is the way in which Plutarch reduces the reigning queen of Egypt to this deferential, submissive, and self-mutilating form. Even though Plutarch clarified that her charms were not wholly physical in nature, this scene acts as a symbolic capitulation in which Cleopatra, disfiguring herself (most noticeably her breasts and face, which are imbued with sexual connotations), mars her primary power. In Plutarch’s rendition, Cleopatra without Antony is nothing and nobody. She is captured by the Romans, and ultimately kills herself by means of some poison. Plutarch initially claims her death to be the result of an asp smuggled in a bowl of figs, but then notes that it actually could have been poisoning by a variety of ways (387). It is through death that Cleopatra regains her lost dignity and enters into the ranks of the long line of kings (not queens) who preceded her, as Charmion recounts with her final breath, “as became the descendant of so many kings” (Plutarch 387). … “La Mort de Cléopâtre” builds on this historical account of the Egyptian queen. The stage directions which set the scene appear representative of the appropriate historical context. Cleopatra is even accompanied by her faithful servant Charmion. However, there are several key narrative differences between Krysinska’s and Plutarch’s accounts. First, in the poem, Cleopatra seeks out her death, commanding Charmion to bring forth the basket of fruit which conceals the reptile before plunging (ayant plongé) her hand in, actively reaching for the snake (Krysinska, Joies errantes 130). Plutarch’s Cleopatra shows much less resolve, hoping “that it [the asp] might settle on her before she knew, but when she took away some of the figs and saw it, she said, ‘So here it is,’ and held out her bare arm to be bitten” (387). Krysinska’s Cleopatra is, in fact, an active inversion of Plutarch’s (and thus history’s) model of Cleopatra. Yet, by maintaining the general structure of events, ‘Cleopatra is bitten by a reptile hidden in a fruit basket’ she allows this subversion to work on the level of Cleopatra’s own subjectivity rather than on the level of historical fact. The two versions also diverge in their depictions of Antony. In Plutarch, it is the realization of Antony’s impending death which strips Cleopatra’s life of meaning. Krysinska’s Cleopatra is rather defined by her own status as queen than as partner to Antony. Her decision to kill herself is what begins the scene, and is motivated not by the loss of Antony but by a desire to add to her own glory: “Rien ne pourra donc plus ajouter à ma gloire? / Non, cela est impossible, ô Reine ! / A moins que la mort elle-même ne vienne / Abdiquer sa puissance à tes pieds”

(Krysinska, Joies errantes 128). In fact, throughout the poem, Cleopatra refuses to hear any news of the battle, and her concerns for Antony are limited to imagining his reaction upon seeing her corpse (Krysinska, Joies errantes 129, 130-131). The queen dies before the news of Antony’s own death even reaches her (Krysinska, Joies errantes 132). Krysinska reorients the power dynamics surrounding the suicide and reallocates to Cleopatra the authority and agency her position as queen and individual merit. Furthermore, Krysinska goes beyond changing the motive of Cleopatra’s suicide. She refuses to even figure a male presence on stage until the final lines of the play, distorting previous characterizations of Cleopatra as an accessory to the lives of men. Charmion announces the male messenger’s arrival but he is barred entry into the scene until after the action is over (Krysinska, Joies errantes 129). Antony is only referenced twice and never featured on stage. His second and final reference announces both his death and the loss of the battle (Krysinska, Joies errantes 132). In response, in the final line of the poem, Charmion indicates that only the second piece of information is of any significance, “Tu ignoreras cette défaite, heureuse Cléopâtre !” (Krysinska, Joies errantes 132, my emphasis). In death, Cleopatra is able to avoid the military defeat and the conquest which in the Plutarchian tradition strip her of power and dignity. Likewise, she is not reduced to the figure of a hysterical woman in mourning; rather this version of the Egyptian queen maintains not only her dignity but also evades capture by enemy forces. Thus, Krysinska’s dramatic poem engages in mimesis that lures the audience into a false sense of familiarity with the historical narrative, only to twist this narrative in the ways that distort the masculinist appropriation of Cleopatra’s life. However, it would be more accurate to say that the imitation seen in “La Mort de Cléopâtre” is not one which distorts, but rather one which reveals. Perhaps Kathleen Gilje’s 1998 work, Susanna and the Elders, Restored – X-Ray, can serve as an anachronistic model of this revealing. The painting, by mimicking the historical and formal aspects of Artemisia Gentileschi’s art, reveals a narrative that would otherwise be hidden, but whose efficacy exists in masquerading this subversion within the traditional narrative (Gilje).10 So Krysinska, a century before Gilje, offers to us as readers the possibility of a

10 For those unfamiliar with the original artwork: Susanna and the Elders is a painting by Artemisia Gentileschi which depicts a biblical scene in which a young woman, Susanna, is seen bathing by two lecherous old men, the Elders, who in turn attempt to blackmail her into having sex with them. Susanna refuses, and is about to be put to death until Daniel intervenes and is able to prove that the Elders are lying. The original painting was completed 16

different Cleopatra than the one of historical record. The account found in “La Mort de Cléopâtre” not only shows Cleopatra as a proud, independent, and strong military leader, but does so in a way which makes allusions to her previous depictions. In doing so, Krysinska’s work is deftly refuting those characterizations of Cleopatra and instead affirms her agency and subjectivity. Intertextual Mimesis The Plutarchian depiction of Cleopatra serves as the foundation for a whole collection of literary and artistic works featuring the Egyptian queen. Yet, each of these new iterations takes different liberties with the history of Cleopatra. For this reason, it is worthwhile to compare the connections between these texts, and the ways in which they popularized Cleopatra’s story. As such, the following section will concentrate on depictions of Cleopatra in modern literature, with a focus on the nineteenth century. In doing so, we will tease out the intertextual relationships between “La Mort de Cléopâtre” and its literary peers and see how Krysinska is responding to popular literature of the time. These intertextual associations are referred to as intertextual mimesis since they build off the concept of intertextuality, but as seen in our discussion of historical mimesis, the efficacy of these connections lies in the ways in which the associations are manipulated to create a slightly different meaning. Narrative Mimesis As previously mentioned (see Historical Mimesis), the works of Plutarch served as inspiration for a variety of literary representations of Cleopatra which were to follow, most famously, the Shakespearean tragedy Anthony and Cleopatra.11 In this work, Shakespeare presents a Cleopatra who is duplicitous, shallow, malicious, and devious, yet still defined by her relationships to men (Raffel xxix-xxx; Shakespeare 16-17, 21-23, 66, 89-91, 116). The play made its way into France and bolsters the Plutarchian conception of Cleopatra. In the scene depicting her death, Cleopatra claims to hear Antony himself calling her to suicide, “Methinks I hear Antony call. I see him rouse himself / To praise my noble act” (Shakespeare 194). In a

around the same time period in which Artemisia Gentileschi herself was undergoing a trial, brought to court by her father, for her own rape by Agostino Tassi. The work by Kathleen Gilje, which plays with the usage of X-Ray technology in art restoration, is a mimicry of the painting, but features an underpainting of Susanna and the Elders, in which Susanna is being assaulted but is attempting to fight off her assailants with a knife, mirroring Gentileschi’s own attempt at self-defense during her own assault. 11 The version of Plutarch Shakespeare referenced in writing this play was Sir Thomas North’s translation which was itself translated from an existing French translation rather than from the original Greek (Raffel xx). 17

slight diversion from the Plutarchian description, when Shakespeare’s queen goes to kill herself, she applies the asp to her breast, as if it is suckling the life from her (Shakespeare 195). This imagery has inspired a variety of erotic artworks, mostly in the form of history paintings, which depict Cleopatra’s death in this manner.12 Moving on to the nineteenth century in France, there are a proliferation of artistic and literary works which represent the last Ptolemaic queen. Throughout the century, Cleopatra becomes the object of academic art of the time in its production of Orientalist painting.13 Her story is also recreated in a variety of literary works such as Theophile Gautier’s novel, Une Nuit de Cléopâtre, published as a roman-feuilleton in La Presse 1839, and which was turned into an opera by M. P. J. Barbier and Victor Massé in 1885 (Gautier “Une Nuit de Cléopâtre”; France xix). Anatole France, to whom Krysinska responded rather forcibly in 1891, wrote an illuminating introduction to the 1894 reprint of the serial novel. France claims that in addition to ruining the lives of both Mark Antony and Julius Caesar; “Cléopâtre n’était pas très belle […] Cléopâtre était une femme dangereuse […] la reine courtisane, meretrix regina” (France i, iii). Here France describes a threatening and despicable queen, who is dangerous, unattractive, and, as he emphasizes in Latin, lascivious (“Meretrix”). He even goes on to dehumanize this Greek- born queen, noting “Elle était reine et reine orientale, c'est-à-dire un monstre […] Faite pour les arts secrets du désir et de l'amour, amante et reine, à la fois dans la nature et dans la monstruosité, c'était une Chloé qui n'était point bergère” (France ix).14 For France, Gautier succeeds in giving us a barbarous Cleopatra, whose only appeal is as a foreign succubus. Théophile Gautier’s novel depicts an ephemeral romance between Cleopatra and a lion hunter, Meïamoun, to whom she offers one night of extravagance with her in exchange for his life. Enamored by the young queen, who herself laments of her boredom with royal responsibilities, the hero accepts (Gautier 15-16, 63-65). Gautier’s Cleopatra, contrary to France’s introduction, possesses an otherworldly beauty, taking great pains to describe in detail

12 For example, see Giampietro Death of Cleopatra ca. 1500, Guido Reni Death of Cleopatra 1639, Claude Vignon Cléopâtre se donnant la mort 1645, Guido Cagnacci The Death of Cleopatra 1645-55, Antoine Rivalz La Mort de Cléopâtre 1700-15, Arnold Böcklin The Death of Cleopatra 1872, Hans Makart The Death of Cleopatra 1875, Reginald Arthur The Death of Cleopatra 1892. 13 A sampling of such representations of Cleopatra by French painters can be seen in the following works: Jean- Léon Gérôme Cléopâtre et César 1866, Alexandre Cabanel Cléopâtre essayant des poisons sur des condamnés à mort 1887, Gustave Moreau Cléopâtre 1877. 14 This reference to Chloé takes on an additional significance, as Krysinska herself makes a rather enigmatic reference to Chloë in “La Mort de Cléopâtre” (Krysinska, Joies errantes 125). 18

her clothing and beautiful black hair (Gautier 10-11). However, in an unexpected development, the young queen is divorced from her own femininity as she exclaims, “Une reine […] Ce n'est plus une femme, c'est une figure auguste et sacrée qui n'a point de sexe, et que l'on adore à genoux sans l'aimer, comme la statue d'une déesse” (Gautier 23). Here, Cleopatra laments not only her own isolation from others, but a radical isolation from her own sense of self and embodiment. As a queen, she is no longer a woman, rather her existence is like that of a marble statue. The relevance of this isolation returns in a final scene of the novel which is reminiscent of the dance of Salome. Cleopatra takes off her crown (symbolically dethroning herself) and erotically dances before Meïamoun: Cléopatre elle-même se leva de son trône, rejeta son manteau royal, remplaça son diadème sidéral par une couronne de fleurs, ajusta des crotales d'or à ses mains d'albâtre, et se mit à danser devant Meïamoun éperdu de ravissement. Ses beaux bras arrondis comme les anses d'un vase de marbre, secouaient au-dessus de sa tête des grappes de notes étincelantes, et ses crotales babillaient avec une volubilité toujours croissante. Debout sur la pointe vermeille de ses petits pieds, elle avançait rapidement et venait effleurer d'un baiser le front de Meïamoun, puis elle recommençait son manège et voltigeait autour de lui, tantôt se cambrant en arrière, la tête renversée, l'œil demi-clos, les bras pâmés et morts, les cheveux débouclés et pendants comme une bacchante du mont Ménale agitée par son dieu ; tantôt leste, vive, rieuse, papillonnante, infatigable et plus capricieuse en ses méandres que l'abeille qui butine. L'amour du cœur, la volupté des sens, la passion ardente, la jeunesse inépuisable et fraîche, la promesse du bonheur prochain, elle exprimait tout (Gautier 79-80). In this scene, Cleopatra, already isolated from her sense of self, is reduced to an erotic object. She is stripped of her title as queen and performs the role of the fetishized Orientalized other, replacing the dancing slave girls who previously populated the scene (Gautier 78). This moment closely resembles the dance of Salome, another woman whose sexuality brings death (that of Saint John the Baptist) and who is also depicted frequently in orientalist art of the nineteenth century.15 According to the biblical account, Salome seductively dances in front of her uncle Herod and as a reward is promised whatever she desires. Upon her mother’s

15 The symbolist painter Gustave Moreau depicts both women in paintings completed within a year of each other, Salomé dansant devant Hérode 1876 and Cléopâtre 1877. 19

counsel, the young princess asks for the head of John the Baptist (Matthew 14: 3-12, Mark 6: 14- 29). Gautier’s depiction of Cleopatra resonates with Gustave Flaubert’s representation of Salome in Trois contes. In Trois contes, the dance of Salome is similarly rapturous and captivating with bodily contortions that seem inhuman (Flaubert 180-182). In both accounts, the women contort themselves and move across the space like insects—bees, butterflies, beetles, or even a scorpion. Salome is also the object of the celebrated poem “Hérodiade” by Stéphane Mallarmé to which Krysinska clearly references in “La Mort de Cléopâtre” and which will soon be discussed at length. After the dance, Meïamoun’s night of pleasure comes to an end and as promised he meets his death. As the lion hunter expels his last breath, Mark Antony enters the scene. Cleopatra coldly disavows her night with Meïamoun, and invites Antony to sit, claiming the dead man in her presence is simply the victim of one of the experiments described by Plutarch (Gautier 81- 82; Plutarch 378). In this story, Cleopatra lacks power and is reduced to her desirability as a sexual object. Yet, she cannot even own her sexuality, as her role as queen isolates her from her own body (Gautier 23). Moreover, she passes from man to man. As one man dies and leaves her life, another enters and takes his seat beside her on the throne. Thus, her power is constantly being moderated by a male presence, and any desire she is allowed is limited to physical pleasure. Given the reprinting of this novel in 1894, and its reproduction on stage at the Opéra- Comique in 1885, it is evident that the figure of Cleopatra was particularly captivating in Paris at the time (“Premières representations…”). Yet, Cleopatra’s story was not exclusively being rewritten by men during the nineteenth century. In 1886, Alice Durand, who wrote under the name Henry Gréville, published the novel Cléopâtre which recasts Cleopatra as a young, white, ambitious Russian aristocrat (a departure from the previous Orientalizing depictions of the queen). Gréville’s account of Cleopatra is slightly more sympathetic, maintaining the heroine’s intelligence and beauty (Gréville 8-9). However, Gréville’s Cleopatra retains the ambition of the Plutarchian tradition and her essential connection to men. In the novel’s exposition, the young heroine describes her resistance to romantic marriage, instead explaining her desire to marry for power, and enter into the ranks of history: “Mieux que princesse... Il y a des femmes qui montent si haut, si haut qu'elles ne peuvent plus redescendre, ni dans la vie, ni dans l'éternité...Elles ont une place dans l'histoire”

(Gréville 14). Here, Cleopatra dreams of escaping not only her current social rank but life itself, entering into a space of historicalized immortality. Perhaps this utterance is as an affirmation of Cleopatra’s own place in the historic tradition; however, paired with the negation of life it describes a dissociation with the self. There is a similarly troubling moment in the comment by Cleopatra, that only ‘some women’ achieve historical status. Our reflection on the historical records of Cleopatra show, many others have made it into the ‘ranks of history.’ These others, however, are predominately men. Perhaps a more accurate reading of this utterance would be a desire by Gréville’s Cleopatra to enter into the ranks of men, and the immortality awarded to them. According to this reading, the utterance is not only a negation of life, but also of the female subject position Cleopatra holds. In contrast to this desire, Krysinska’s Cleopatra does not desire immortality, but rather she recognizes it as a fact, reflecting on her own legacy, “Le nom de Cléopâtre sera, lui aussi, / Comme un beau Navire impérissable, / Qui flottera sur les Mers futures” (Joies errantes 124). Here it is worth noting the specific capitalization of the word ‘mers’ which in French has homophonic associations with the word ‘mère,’ meaning ‘mother.’ Thus, it is as if the name of Cleopatra will live on in a matrilineal tradition, passed down to ‘les mères futures.’ Returning to the story in Gréville’s novel, by the end of the book Cleopatra has, as in the Plutarchian tradition, capitulated and ‘happily’ married, or so she claims (Gréville 297). However, as the final scene unfurls it becomes clear that there is some irony in Cleopatra’s claims of happiness: “Vois-tu, lui dit-elle, en prenant la main de son mari, tu avais raison. Je ne pouvais être heureuse que dans le mariage. Qui m'eût dit autrefois que j'aimerais ainsi, que je ne pourrais pas vivre sans toi ! Je me figurais que l'amour est une faiblesse !” (Gréville 298) Cleopatra begins to embrace her husband, Ulric, demanding to be kissed while also exclaiming that said kisses are suffocating, so much so that they may stop her heart. As the scene continues, this is precisely what happens. While embracing his new wife, Ulric feels her body go limp and finds she has collapsed, dead (Gréville 300). Reflecting on her death, the Grand-Duc Boris states, “Elle ne se croyait pas faite pour l'amour... elle avait raison, car l'amour l'a tuée” (Gréville 302). Here Gréville reaffirms the Plutarchian tradition which ties Cleopatra’s death to her love life, leaving her vanquished by romantic rather than military conquest. Although her representation of Cleopatra is more sympathetic than those written by men at the time, she has not freed Cleopatra from the downfall to which Plutarch has written her.

These texts written in the mid to late nineteenth century are those to which Marie Krysinska is engaging with when she wrote “La Mort de Cléopâtre.” It is perhaps equally noteworthy to return to the fact that Anatole France, who writes the rather damning introduction to Theophile Gautier’s work, is also actively called out by Krysinska in her letter to La Revue indépendante for excluding her in his review of Jean Moréas, and the symbolist invention of free verse (Krysinska, “De la nouvelle école” 265-267). Thus, perhaps the similarities to and refutations of France and Gautier’s rhetoric in Krysinska’s work may be taken as a way of rewriting the history of Cleopatra, and as an indictment of those critics and writers who were undermining and rejecting Krysinska’s own autonomy and agency. Krysinska achieves this indictment through intertextual mimesis. In responding to France, who began his introduction with an assertion of Cleopatra’s lack of beauty and goes on to describe her monstrosity, Krysinska opens her poem in affirmation of Cleopatra’s beauty, humanity, and power (Krysinska, Joies errantes 123-124). Furthermore, while Gautier describes Cleopatra as a superficial, uninvolved queen divorced from her own femininity, Krysinska’s Cleopatra is not only a queen, but a political leader in her own right, and a woman who commands her own embodiment. This power held by Krysinska’s Cleopatra can be seen in both the ways she makes demands of Charmion, (“Obéis-moi, Charmion”) and approaches her own death, (“Rien ne pourra donc plus ajouter à ma gloire? / Non, cela est impossible, ô Reine ! / A moins que la mort elle-même ne vienne / Abdiquer sa puissance à tes pieds”) (Krysinska, Joies errantes 130, 128). Krysinska departs from the tradition espoused by her peers. From Plutarch and Shakespeare, to those works of the nineteenth century, Cleopatra’s downfall is depicted as wrapped up in her love of Mark Antony. “La Mort de Cléopâtre” not only rejects this narrative but does so radically. Neither Antony nor any other man is ever featured on stage while Cleopatra lives. The dialogue of the poem alludes to the impending military loss, but Cleopatra has no knowledge of it. Instead, it is the pursuit of glory, not the fear of military defeat motivates the queen to seek death in a fruit basket (Krysinska, Joies errantes 128). As she lies dying, she does imagine her lover, but imagines only his reaction to her own death. She has no knowledge, as would follow the Plutarchian tradition, that Antony himself is already dead. Even then, this reflection on Antony, returns to a reflection on herself, “Que diras-tu, Antoine, mon lamentable amant, / A qui j’ai couté le courage et l’honneur; / Que diras-tu, en voyant / Eclose à jamais […] / ces merveilleuses prunelles ” (Krysinska, Joies errantes 130-131)? Here the imagined gaze of

Antony centers Cleopatra in her own thoughts. Her concern is with what his reaction will be to the sight of her own corpse. As such, even her thoughts of Antony are at least in part, thoughts of herself. Moreover, the only male presence on the scene while she is alive, is a messenger who arrives but is barred entry from the stage. He brings news of the battle, fought amongst men, and Cleopatra tells Charmion that he can wait. Men’s news has no place nor influence in the final moments of Cleopatra. In fact, when the messenger arrives, Cleopatra assures her servant that she would not desert her throne if it were threatened by defeat, “Cléopâtre ne déserte point en lâche / Un trône menacé. / Les nouvelles apportées par ce messager / Sont d’heureuses nouvelles, j’en suis sûre” (Krysinska, Joies errantes 129-130). It is only after her death that this messenger, who is never attributed a name, enters the stage and announces the death of Antony and the loss of the battle. Charmion only comments on the military loss. However, in a reversal of Plutarch’s own commentary, Cleopatra is not made unhappy by these losses, rather she is happy to be ignorant of this defeat (Krysinska, Joies errantes 132). In all, Marie Krysinska’s Cleopatra maintains the structure and content of many of these historic and literary narratives surrounding Cleopatra. Cleopatra is still the queen of Egypt, a lover of Antony, and meets her demise by the end of the work. Yet, through her mixture of explicit and covert references to the specific representations of Cleopatra found in other texts, Krysinska manages to situate her poem within the larger body of work concerning the Ptolemaic queen. Once inside, Krysinska’s poem disrupts these popular literary representations which subordinate Cleopatra to her position at the sides of powerful men. Krysinska’s Cleopatra is strong, beautiful, and a proud military leader, unhindered by the affairs of men in her final moments. Thus, through these imitations which are ultimately disavowed, Marie Krysinska is able to subvert the dominant intertextual literary model for representing the Egyptian Queen and breathe new life into her-story. Formal Mimesis In addition to narrative mimesis, Krysinska also uses formal or stylistic intertextual mimesis. Such mimesis functions within the same formalistic aspects of another work (genre, meter, imagery, etc.) as that which it seeks to emulate, as opposed to dealing with the same subject matter. In this case, Krysinska’s work “La Mort de Cléopâtre” mimics that of Stéphane Mallarmé’s “Hérodiade” and in doing so is taking on one of the most innovate and enigmatic poets of the time. Before delving into this comparison, we should note that both Krysinska and

Mallarmé produced works in the symbolist style (although Krysinska disavowed association with any particular school) and thus any similarities in style which are a result of the symbolist tendencies in their work should not be considered an aspect of formal mimesis. Mallarmé, one of the most renowned French symbolist poets, is remembered today for his pioneering role in modern poetry (Marchal xiii, xlv, lxiv). His chef d’oeuvre “Hérodiade” was left incomplete and dominated many of his active years. The dramatic poem was started in 1864, and only the central “Scène” was published in 1871 in the Parnasse contemporain (Marchal xlviii, li, lxiv). As Marie Krysinska likely would have read only this central portion of the work, that is all that will be discussed here, since we are concentrating on the tradition to which Krysinska was responding. “Hérodiade” is a tragedy turned poem which tells the story of a young princess, Salome, and her nurse. Salome is actually the daughter of the poem’s eponymous Hérodiade and is most well known for her dance which ultimately led to the death of Saint John the Baptist (Mallarmé, Correspondence 154). The “Scène” takes the form of a dialogue between Hérodiade (Salome) and her Nurse on the issue of her fading youth. Contrary to the desire of her Nurse, Hérodiade, perhaps narcissistically, decides to preserve her virtue for herself, and in doing so is condemned. However, to limit the sense of the poem to merely this narrative would do it a great injustice. These historical figures merely serve as a background, onto which the deeper significance of the poem is affixed. As a work of symbolist literature, the poem works symbolically to mediate the relationship between beauty (represented by Hérodiade) and nothingness (her death). Mallarmé himself admits to this symbolism in a letter, writing: …je te dirai que je suis depuis un mois dans les plus purs glaciers de l’Esthétique— qu’après avoir trouvé le Néant, j’ai trouvé le Beau,— et que tu ne peux t’imaginer dans quelles altitudes lucides je m’aventure. Il en sortira un cher poème auquel je travaille et, cet hiver (ou un autre) Hérodiade…16 (Mallarmé, Correspondence 220) Thus, “Herodiade” is not simply a historical narrative, but a meditation on the discovery of beauty through negation. In the work, Mallarme evokes this relationship between beauty and nothingness, through symbols of ‘dying beauty’, specifically through the symbols of a swan

16 “…où je m’étais mis tout entier sans le savoir, d’où mes doutes et mes malaises, et dont j’ai enfin trouvé le fin mot, ce qui me raffermit et me facilitera le labeur”(Mallarmé, Correspondence 220) 24

hiding in its plumage, a dying star, and jewels, all of which are symbolic of the young princess.17 Hérodiade’s beauty becomes inextricably tied to death, making her beauty a sort of death sentence.18 She is the victim of her own youth and beauty—a falling star (Mallarmé, Œuvres Complètes v. 2 17, 19-20). The nurse reminds Hérodiade that she has the option of saving herself from this fate by sharing her beauty (and forfeiting her virginity). Yet despite the association, Hérodiade actively accepts her death reserving the pleasure of her beauty for herself. As she states in one of the final monologues of the poem, “Oui, c’est pour moi, pour moi, que je fleuris, déserte ! / … / Je meurs ! / J’aime l’horreur d’être vierge et je veux / Vivre parmi l’effroi que me font mes cheveux” (Mallarmé, Œuvres Complètes v. 2 21). It is this symbolic meaning that Marie Krysinska is engaging with when she writes “La Mort de Cléopâtre” published in Joies errantes in 1894. It is by no mistake that she picks a similar format: a dramatic poem with a tragic story, featuring a young woman of royal status and her servant. The figure of Cleopatra, much like Hérodiade (Salome), is imbued with a sense of destructive sexuality and beauty. As described in the opening of “La Mort de Cléopâtre,” “Mourir dans sa beauté… / Mourir, Reine ! Reine — non point seulement par ce vain diadème, / Mais Reine — par la despotique domination / Sur les coeurs des hommes” (Krysinska, Joies errantes 123). As previously mentioned, Théophile Gautier’s novel illustrates clear iconographic connections between the two women. It is difficult to read the scene in which Cleopatra dances seductively in front of Meïamoun without being reminded of Salome dancing before Herod (Gautier 79-80). Furthermore, both women’s deaths are announced by the end of the poems; although, Hérodiade’s death is implied, while Cleopatra’s death is explicitly described. Thus, Krysinska maintains the association with death set up by Mallarmé. However, it is not simply the similar content of these poems which establishes their connection. Rather, it is the way in which Marie Krysinska engages with and manipulates Mallarmé’s verse which makes her work compelling.

17 One should note that most of these more explicit symbols are found primarily in the “Ouverture ancienne” which was not published until after Mallarmé’s death (Mallarmé, Œuvres Complètes v.1 135-139). 18 See the following verses which serve as examples of the causal relationship between beauty and death in the poem: “Si la beauté n’était la mort..” (v. 8), "Un astre, en vérité : / Mais cette tresse tombe..” (v. 53), “Madame, allez-vous donc mourir ? / […] Aideu.” (v. 118, 128). 25

These moments of stylistic mimesis serve as subtle anchors, tying the two works together. To begin, we turn to an initial section of “Hérodiade” which features a description of Hérodiade’s hair, alongside its parallel in “La Mort de Cléopâtre”:19 H. : Reculez. C. : Ma chevelure me pèse et m’obsède. Le blond torrent de mes cheveux immaculés, Fais la crouler libre sous tes doigts habiles. Quand il baigne mon corps solitaire le glace CH. : Ta chevelure, Ô Reine ! est comme la D’horreur, et mes cheveux que la lumière [tendre Nuit. [enlace La Nuit endormeuse de tristesses. Sont immortels. Ô femme, un baiser me tûrait Elle est—ta chevelure—comme une mer de Si la beauté n’était la mort […] [ténèbres parfumées, Viens et ma chevelure imitant les manières Où, parmi les flots tumultueux, Trop farouches qui font peur des crinières, Roulent les clameurs des cœurs en détresse, Aide-moi, puisqu’ainsi tu n’oses plus me voir, Où, parmi les flots alourdis d’épaves, À me peigner nonchalamment dans un miroir. Vogue, victorieux navire, L’Extase divine. (H v. 4-8, 25-28) (LMC v. 62-70) In the monologue from “Hérodiade”, Mallarmé depicts the young woman’s hair with an oppressive weight, literally and symbolically. The usage of the word ‘torrent’ invokes an overwhelming volume which falls and thus presses down on the young woman. In the initial four lines, the imagery makes it seem like Hérodiade’s hair is freezing around her body, in a sort of eternal prison of her own beauty which is both immaculate and horrifying. Enclosed in her own body, the young princess not only shuns physical contact (“Reculez”) but also speculates that it would kill her (“un baiser me tûrait”). By the end of the monologue, with a request fit of a Gorgon, Hérodiade asks her Nurse to hold up a mirror to help her comb her hair, since the nurse can no longer bear to look at her. Krysinska reprises this monologue in her own poem, but explicates some of the Mallarméan verse, while also changing the symbolism of the hair. The first two lines spoken by Cleopatra take on the oppressive weight and fascination of Hérodiade with her own hair. Yet unlike Hérodiade, Cleopatra does not shun human contact; rather, she demands it. In turn,

19 For the sake of brevity and precision, references to “Hérodiade” will be abbreviated ‘H’ and those to “La Mort de Cléopatre” will be abbreviated ‘LMC.’ Likewise, the characters will be abbreviated as follows: Hérodiade, H.; Nourrice, N.; Cléopatre, C.; Charmion, CH. 26

Krysinska begins manipulating Mallarmé’s symbolism from the liquidity of hair to the captivation of a reflection. Where Hérodiade’s hair seems to freeze and trap light, creating a space of sterility; Cleopatra’s is a vast and dark ocean upon which sails divine ecstasy. Krysinska’s poem uses stylistic imitation to enter into a dialogue with Mallarmé’s poem. She is responding in verse, using the same symbolic register used by Mallarmé. Like this, the work functions as formal mimesis, because Krysinska’s poem is reworking the lyric formulations of Mallarmé. Take for example this reformulation of another line from Hérodiade: “Nourrice, suis- je belle ? // Un astre, en vérité : / mais cette tresse tombe..” (H v. 52-53), which Krysinska transforms into, “ C. : N’est-ce pas, Charmion, que ma chevelure est belle ? // CH. : Elle est, ta chevelure, aussi belle / Que le repos de la Mort. / Et le vivant Opium” (C v. 71-73). In the initial line by Mallarmé, Hérodiade’s beauty is affirmed but at a price—her life, which is the symbolic meaning behind the idea of this hair which falls.20 Krysinska manipulates the meaning found in her own version. Cleopatra’s beauty is affirming, and instead of condemning her to death, her beauty rivals death and life.21 Again, Krysinska manipulates Mallarmé’s condemning symbolism, into affirmations of the female subject. These affirmations continue in the parallels found between the mirror scenes in both poems:

20 The association of death and a ‘star’ is also a symbol used in “Hérodiade” to allude to death (“d’une étoile, étiente, et qui ne brillera plus”) but which is seen in the “Ouverture Ancienne” which was written, but not yet published at the time (Mallarmé 135, 137, v. 96). 21 The usage of “le vivant Opium” is particularly opaque here. During the nineteenth century, Opium and opium dens were feature of nineteenth century Europe and France but as a depressant, Opium is not a drug that would render one ‘vivant’ or living. If one takes the phrase ‘le vivant Opium’ to refer to the living Opium plant before harvest, which was plentiful in Egypt during the time of Cleopatra, then the image becomes one of life and growth. Yet, if we return to the phrase, “L’Extase divine” which precedes “le vivant Opium” by two lines we may conclude that the reference to Opium is meant to refer to the ocean as a space of deadly pleasure. 27

H. : Assez ! Tiens devant moi ce miroir. C. : Donne-moi mon miroir. Ô miroir ! CH. : Si tu voulais, Ô Reine ! Eau froide par l’ennui dans ton cadre gelé Te mirer au clair ciel du matin Que de fois et pendant les heures, désolée Où les ors et les incarnats de l’aube Des songes et cherchant mes souvenirs qui sont Se fondent en miraculeuses harmonies Comme des feuilles sous ta glace au trou profond, Au sien des nuées nouvelles écloses Je m’apparus en toi comme une ombre lointaine Tu reverrais l'apparence de ton visage Mais, horreur ! des soirs, dans ta sévère fontaine, Où le charme des fleurs s'allie J’ai de mon rêve épars connu la nudité ! À l'éclat des trophées. (H v. 44-45, 49-51) (LMC v. 78-86)

In “Hérodiade,” Mallarmé offers several layers of symbolism around the role of reflections, beauty, and captivity. Here, the mirror is transformed into a frozen lake or pond which reflects but also entraps the image and memories of Hérodiade, much like the captivating reflection of Narcissus, which also leads to his own death. It is within this icy frame that Hérodiade sees herself, in a way so revealing she is horrified. In a complete reversal (perhaps a mirror image), Cleopatra’s mirror is clear and bright like the morning sky, not obscure like night. In fact, with the line, “Où les ors et les incarnats de l’aube / Se fondent en miraculeuses harmonies” it is as if the mirror of Cleopatra is the melted mirror of Hérodiade, which unthaws in the morning light. Krysinska inverts Mallarmé’s ice symbolism which entraps and fragments Hérodiade in her own image, instead, Cleopatra’s reflection frees and opens up (“écloses”) with images of radiance, unity, and triumph. Although these symbolic changes may be slight, they have a significant impact on the meaning of Krysinska’s poem. First, they put her work in dialogue with Mallarmé, creatively asserting her place as one of his peers. Second, by reformulating verses and symbols in “Hérodiade,” the poem invokes a sort of double meaning; asking readers to think not only of the utterances of Cleopatra, but also the ways in which they diverge from their counterparts uttered by Hérodiade. It is in this space of divergence that Krysinska is able to communicate a position about Mallarmé’s work from within her own. The heroine of his dramatic poem is condemned for and by her youth, beauty, and virginity. Through her imitations of Mallarmean verse,

Krysinska posits that the female subject need not be entrapped by their own embodiment, rather that embodiment can be liberating and powerful. Finally, these moments which emphasize the independence and powerful agency of Cleopatra, affirm her suicide as a dignified choice rather than as a drastic and hysterical measure. As seen in the following verses, “Charmion, apporte cette corbeille de fruits / Où dort la Mort… / Cléopâtre veut mourir dans sa beauté / Et dans sa gloire” (Krysinska, Joies errantes 128). Krysinska’s Cleopatra does not fear death, because death is not a symbolic trap or space of separation as is the case in Mallarmé’s “Hérodiade.” Rather, it is a dark and radiant sea, where one goes to rest, “Qu’elles sont froides, tes pâles mains, ô Mort ! / Tes pâles mains sur mes yeux et sur mon coeur, / Cruelle Berceuse ! Sur tes genoux de pierre — plus houleux / Que la grande mer en courroux” (Krysinska, Joies errantes 130). The act of dying is cruel and cold, but it is a cruelty worth suffering to further her glory. Formal mimesis allows Marie Krysinska to instill her poem with a new depth of meaning and situate it in response to one of the most prominent poems of her time. By doing so on the formal level, Krysinska affirms her skill as a poet while also actively making use of the ways in which lyric creates meaning, and the associations such meaning entails. A new Cleopatra emerges from within this space of imitation and reflection, one who has seen all her bad copies, and through lyric monologue, enlightens us with her radiant subjectivity.22 The Mimesis of Speech Thus far our analysis has focused on the object of the poem, and its historical counterpart, in turn neglecting the more nuanced lyrical aspects of the work. We accepted that Cleopatra is the one whose speech and death are being represented because the conventions of dialogue lead us to believe so, and such assumptions are standard practice in literary criticism (Culler 109). If the figure speaking is not meant to be Cleopatra, the only other logical conclusion, barring some external information (such as the detail that Hérodiade is actually Salomé), is that the speaker is the poet. However, as the play is set up in the form of dialogue, the assertion that the speaker is purely the poet makes little sense, or at the least is hard to reason through coherently. What interests us now is the role the format of the dramatic poem plays. Why write a poem that presents itself as the replication of speech? What does this imitation of speech do?

22 Radiance is a descriptor which Krysinska frequently associates with female protagonists in affirmation of their legacy, as seen in the refrain of her poem “Héroines” which contains a verse on Cléopâtre, “Comme l'or des missels enluminés, / Commes des diamants que dans l'ombre on devine, / Commes les astres au ciel essaimés / Brille le renom des Héroines” (Krysinska, Intermèdes 34). 29

First let us test the validity of such questions. “La Mort de Cléopâtre,” masquerades as speech, but the poem still comes across as lyric. Or as Jonathan Culler explains in Theory of a Lyric, on the issue of lyrical discourse, “…we respond to something more than an imitation speech act: we respond to all those elements in the poem that distinguish it from nonliterary discourse” (Culler 114). It is this ‘something more’ of the lyric that escapes locutionary mimesis. The position forwarded in previous sections that the poem was a mimicry of history or of other texts was not unfounded, but in practice is not wholly accurate. The lyric may be able to make reference to a historical event or other literary text, but the work of the lyric is ultimately a work that is done in the present (Culler 37). Previous sections described the poem as dramatic discourse but doing so overlooks the lyrical aspect of the poem. As Jonathan Culler continues, “It implicitly denies three dimensions of lyric: the effects of the presentness of lyric utterance, the materiality of lyric language that makes itself felt as something other than signs of a character and plot, and the rich texture of intertextual relations that relates it to other poems rather than to worldly events” (Culler 119). Although the lyrical facets of “La Mort de Cléopâtre” allow for the intertextual poetic relationship with Mallarmé, there are other poetic aspects which have gone overlooked. That is not to say that the previous discussions were irrelevant. The work done by Krysinska to situate her representation of Cleopatra amongst the corresponding historical and literary accounts adds to the overall meaning of the poem. However, the efficacy of the poem is not limited to its representational value. Her work makes a real change in our understanding of Cleopatra by creating a divergent depiction of the queen within a lyric work whose language is persuasive without being explicitly argumentative. Culler again theorizes that this is the product of epideictic discourse in lyric or “public poetic discourse about values in this world rather than a fictional world […] discourse conceived as an act, aiming to persuade, to move, to innovate” (115, 130). As such, “La Mort de Cléopâtre” contributes to the Egyptian queen’s mythical legacy and forces us to rethink the ways in which language establishes relationships through representation. Yet why rethink the figure of Cleopatra? What is at stake in writing a poem which disrupts the representations of a historic figure? These questions lead us back to our initial discussion about the interconnectivity of the lyric. Much like Krysinska’s work in innovating free verse poetry, her poems forward a certain perspective which puts into question many latent assumptions. For example, her poem “Éve” disrupts the idea that Eve actively committed the

first sin (Krysinska, Rythmes Pittoresques 53-55). “La Mort de Cléopâtre” similarly challenges the subjectivity allotted to Cleopatra. In this manner, Krysinska raises questions concerning the ethics of representation and makes a case for the ability of the lyric to emphasize issues in existing works. As such, the lyric again acts as a space of ethical deliberation in which we are forced to question our relationship to the poet and the poetic object. Thus, the issue of ethics returns. This chapter forwarded an underlying assertion that in some way the approach taken by Krysinska is representative of a certain relationship with the subject matter which is different from previous formulations. The approach taken by Krysinska is one that affirms the subjectivity of Cleopatra, in contrast to other texts and historical accounts. However, to frame this question of subjectivity within the realm of ethics is another issue entirely. Why would the subjectivity of, what is for all intents and purposes, a poetic object be an ethical issue? What is the harm in refusing agency to something that is merely a representation? To address these questions, the following chapter will address the issue of poetic signification on a theoretical level in order to discuss how the unique signifying process of the lyric establishes ethical relationships, and how such an ethics extends beyond the literary sphere.

Chapter Four: Une femme, une fleur, l’écriture : A Crisis in Poetic Representation Ser inmortal es baladí; menos el hombre, todas las criaturas lo son, pues ignoran la muerte; lo divino, lo terrible, lo incomprensible, es saberse inmortal. (Borges, El Aleph) Marie Krysinska’s work in innovating vers libre marks a period of French poetry concerned with exploring the limits of the lyric genre and poetic language itself. This development in the French lyric tradition is characterized by works that make use of highly reflexive language, often drawing attention to their own nature as signifying linguistic projects (Moréas 33). Since the ‘advent’ of such modern poetic language, poets and theorists have been attempting to define its limits, utility, and key features. As this project seeks to understand not only the ethical relationships established through nineteenth century poetry, but also the obligations and implications of those who produce and consume poetic language, this chapter is dedicated to reviewing the debates surrounding such language within the aforementioned historical context. To this end, the chapter focuses on the works of Stéphane Mallarmé, Jean- Paul Sartre, Maurice Blanchot, and Roland Barthes which address the question of poetic meaning. As these writers are engaged in conversation with each other, and seek to address the same issue, there is an internal coherence to their discussion which allows for an analysis of the issue at hand. Furthermore, these writers also represent prevalent schools of thought and criticism, and thus an analysis of their works will serve to highlight popular conceptions of poetic language. In revisiting these texts, we can ascertain what these theorists consider to be the stakes and potential implications of the production of modern poetic language. Poetic Language in Question With the rise of avant-garde and experimental poetry in the nineteenth century, poets and theorists returned to putting poetic language in question, asking themselves what the purpose of poetic language ought to be. Starting perhaps with Charles Baudelaire, and truly taking off with the symbolists at the end of the century, French poetry became home to the esoteric and abstract, taking a definitively more modern turn. French poetry up to this point followed strict formal requirements pertaining to rhyme, verse, meter, and even subjects as exemplified in Nicolas Boileau’s treatise on the topic L’Art Poétique, which even goes so far as to model these qualities. This is not to say that all poetic tradition was thrown out during the nineteenth century, rather the previous standards for poetic creation were gradually challenged. It should come as no surprise

that many of these poets, who found themselves questioning the representational value of their genre, would find friends amongst the avant-garde painters of the time, such as impressionists and later cubists. As for these poets, the ‘Symbolist Manifesto’ defines the goals of their approach to poetry, claiming their work gives representational form, that is to say symbols, to so- called primordial, or essential ideals. For symbolists, representational language is now a stand-in for something grander, and universal in meaning (Moréas 33-34). Yet this shift raises questions about the representational role of language, and the impact this sort of signifying displacement has on language and writing as historically understood. 23 In the context of nineteenth-century poetic language, this question is directly addressed by the essay “Crise de vers” by Stéphane Mallarmé, whose work was at the forefront of this innovative shift in poetry, and other later works inspired by Mallarmé such as Jean-Paul Sartre’s Qu’est-ce que la littérature ?, and Roland Barthes’s Le degré zero de l’écriture, which both offer theoretical responses to Mallarmé’s poetic approach to the theme. Mallarmé begins to describe in his highly poetic 1897 treatise a supposed fault in language— that there are many (Mallarmé, Œuvres complètes v.1-2 LXII, 208). In a description of linguistic singularity that invokes the mythic tower of Babel, Mallarmé imagines a perfect, singular language that would allow us to utter truth into being (Mallarmé, Œuvres complètes v.2 208). According to Mallarmé, the plurality of language limits utterances to specific entities and to our own understanding of the referent invoked by the word. Mallarmé closes the essay with what is one of his more provocative statements on the possibilities and efficacy of poetic language and its representation. He states that the poet in naming a flower is able to invoke an ideal flower, akin to a platonic form, which exists outside of any real iteration of a flower.24 Like this, he argues, poetic language is able to overcome the fault in language. Jean-Paul Sartre, the existentialist philosopher and author, in turn responds to this idea of a fault in language, however he describes it as a “crise poétique” a crisis in poetic language (22). For Sartre, poets are those who refuse to make use of language, and, in fact, he claims poets

23 Within this section displacement will have two meanings, the first is its more conventional meaning as a movement from one location to another in which something is replaced. The second is the technical linguistic definition in which displacement is the aspect of language which allows speakers to reference that which is not present. 24 “Je dis : une fleur ! et, hors d’oubli où ma voix relègue aucun contour, en tant que quelque chose d’autre que les calices sus, musicalement se lève, idée même et suave, l’absente de tous bouquets” (Mallarmé, Œuvres complètes v.2 213). 33

resist the act of naming altogether (17).25 When Sartre says poets refuse to use language, he means that the poet acts as if outside of language, and instead ‘comes to terms’ with entities as phenomenological experiences which only later have words associated with them. That is to say, the poet uses words as things or images rather than as signs (Sartre 18-19). For the poet, language becomes a mirror of the world they experience, one in which the poet becomes lost (Sartre 20, 22). In his conception of poetic language, Sartre insists that the signifying process is one of opaque, complex, and organic interconnectivities that coalesce into an object: Ainsi le mot poétique est un microcosme […] Et quand le poète joint ensemble plusieurs de ces microcosmes, il en est de lui comme des peintres quand ils assemblent leurs couleurs sur la toile ; on croirait qu’il compose une phrase, mais c’est une apparence : il crée un objet. Les mots-choses se groupent par associations magiques de convenance et de disconvenance, comme les couleurs et les sons, ils s’attirent, ils se repoussent, ils se brûlent… (Sartre 22) The poetic object arises out of these microcosms of poetic language, which for Sartre, seems to consume all its constituents, including the poet (22-24). This characterization of poetic language puts a significant amount of faith in the poetic process and in the possibility of experiencing the world outside of language. Although Sartre claims that poets do not name anything at all, to use written language requires a naming of things, that is, in a basic sense, an association of a signifier, or word, with a signified, that to which it refers. Likewise, his description of the ways in which poets come into language is rather idealistic and does not erase the existence of the associations between words and real entities in the world, which make possible the manipulation of these associations by poetic language. The only individuals who are capable of creating the poetic associations expressed here by Sartre are pre-linguistic infants, as they do not yet have a rigid system of naming. This conception of poetic language as a way to invoke semiotic associations, rather than symbolic ones, is also explored in Julia Kristeva’s work, La révolution du langage poétique. However, Sartre does not seem to be making the argument that Kristeva makes—that poetic language brings these semiotic

25 “Les poètes sont des hommes qui refusent d’utiliser le langage. […] Ils ne songent pas non plus à nommer le monde et, par le fait, ils ne nomment rien du tout, car la nomination implique un perpétuel sacrifice du nom à l’objet nommé ou pour parler comme Hegel, le nom s’y révèle l’inessentiel, en face de la chose qui est essentielle” (Sartre 17).

associations, that is prelinguistic, into the realm of the symbolic, or linguistic (Kristeva 60-61). Rather he asserts that the poet employs a unique approach to language, just as a cubist has a unique way of using a paintbrush. Roland Barthes takes a decidedly more critical perspective in reflecting on this idea of poetic language. For Barthes, poetic language is one that has been uprooted, in which words exist in totality, and explode any fixed sense of meaning. Poetic language acts as a sort of originating black hole: Chaque mot poétique est ainsi un objet inattendu, une boîte de Pandore d’où s’envolent toutes les virtualités du langage ; il est donc produit et consommé avec une curiosité particulière, une sorte de gourmandise sacrée. Cette Faim du Mot, commune à toute la poésie moderne, fait de la parole poétique une parole terrible et inhumaine. (Barthes 38) Barthes continues to describe poetic language as inhuman arguing that it destroys any type of human connection— “il n’y a pas d’humanisme poétique de la modernité” (39). Thus, for Barthes, poetic language annihilates interconnectivity and brings about a sort of violent isolation of the human, leaving it lost in the vacuous space of the pure word. From Mallarmé to Barthes, there is an interest and concern with the capacity of poetic language to move beyond the real. Sartre articulates this by discussing the way in which poetry no longer names what it refers to. Instead the poem impresses upon the reader a meaning cobbled together from an assortment of words whose referents have been left behind, inverted, or transformed into mirrors which reflect something else entirely. Yet, poetic language is not the purely poetic, it is still grounded in the realm of language, and thus is still tied to this question of naming—making reference to that which is real. With this issue in mind, we turn to naming. What’s in a name? In response to the works of Mallarmé and Sartre, author and theorist Maurice Blanchot in “La littérature et le droit à la mort” takes up, among other things, the issue of naming. Blanchot, like Sartre, returns to Georg Hegel’s argument in The Phenomenology of Spirit which contends that the act of naming is an act which separates the real being from the idea of itself. Blanchot does so in a reformulation which replaces Mallarmé’s ‘fleur’ for a ‘femme’:26

26 It is also possible that in replacing ‘une fleur’ for ‘une femme’ Blanchot is making reference to Sartre’s discussion of the plurality of meanings invoked by the word ‘Florence’ (Sartre 21). To continue in this line of associations, it is noteworthy that Agnès Varda’s film, Cléo de 5 à 7, takes the historic name of Cleopatra for its protagonist, but the real name of this character is revealed to be Florence. 35

Je dis : cette femme. Hölderlin, Mallarmé et, en général, tous ceux dont la poésie a pour thème l’essence de la poésie ont vu dans l’acte de nommer une merveille inquiétante. Le mot me donne ce qu’il signifie, mais d’abord il le supprime. Pour que je puisse dire : cette femme, il faut que d’une manière ou d’une autre je lui retire sa réalité d’os et de chair, la rendre absente et l’anéantisse. Le mot me donne l’être, mais il me donne le privé d’être. Il est l’absence de cet être, son néant, ce qui demeure de lui lorsqu’il a perdu l’être, c’est-à-dire le seul fait qu’il n’est pas. (Blanchot 312) Here Blanchot describes the referentiality of language as tied up with the erasure of the real. In making reference to a real woman, one annihilates all materiality of her embodiment. He associates this aspect of language with death itself, claiming that, “la mort réelle est annoncée et déjà présente dans mon langage; mon langage veut dire que cette personne-ci qui est là, maintenant, peut-être détachée d’elle-même […] et plongée soudain dans un néant d’existence et de présence” (Blanchot 313). Blanchot explains that death exists imminently in our language, acting as a constant barrier between us, and gives meaning to language. Without death everything would fall into absurdity (313). The foundation of Blanchot’s argument lies in the aforementioned argument made by Hegel, that naming something is the act of separating the real from the idea. Blanchot specifies that the existence of this concept as thing, is what acts as the negation of the thing itself because by definition no real iteration of the thing would live up to the idea. That is to say, there is no way in which a real and tangible being could achieve or embody the ‘true’ meaning of its signifier, as the signifier, by signifying, transforms the details of the being into universals. To return to Mallarmean terms, an individual flower can never grow into the ideal flower. It is as if naming invokes the inversion of that which is named, but which is not the real referent. For Blanchot, this other, is considered the non-thing, which is made possible through language (314). It is by invoking this non-thing, that we arrive at non-being, which Blanchot understands as death. It is this orientation towards death which interests us now. At the end of the chapter, Blanchot addresses the paradox of death, noting that it is point which defines mortality, but the completion of death is also the impossibility of death since the dead can no longer die (Blanchot 324-325). For Blanchot, it is out of this paradox that literature erupts, as it is encapsulated in and by language, the space in-between being and nonbeing, since language includes both being and the absence of being (327-331). However, throughout this

discussion of poetic language and the ability of language to generate meaning, the aforementioned texts circulated not around death but around these ideals which might be invoked, specifically that of a flower or a woman. It is only after articulating the possibilities allowed by reference to this flower/woman that these texts make a shift towards the possibilities of poetic language, and/or its disruptive signifying power and subsequent relationship to death. As such, it is worthwhile to explore the significance of the relationship between the flower, woman, and death, in the context of poetic language. To begin, we return to the work of Sartre who himself articulates a fille-fleur connection through the word ‘Florence.’ Sartre notes that Florence in addition to having specific homophonic associations in French and locational connotations, is both etymologically related to the word for flora—flowers – and used as a woman’s name. Thus, Florence is the culmination of both the flower and the girl (Sartre 21). However, when Blanchot takes up this theme, he transforms ‘une fille,’ into ‘une femme’ (312). With this in mind, we turn from literature to the artwork of American modernist painter Georgia O’Keeffe whose work may help elucidate the association between woman and flower. Some of O’Keeffe’s most well-known paintings are the flower paintings, such as Red Canna 1924, and Flower of Life II 1925, which feature images of the anatomy of flowers in macroscopic detail. As many note on first glance, but which O’Keeffe herself denied, the representations bear a striking resemblance to the female sex. In these paintings the flowers stand in for the female sex. This visual association between female genitalia and flowers gives a new significance to the constant referencing to both woman and flower in the aforementioned theoretical texts. The overlap of the woman-flower offers us a point of departure to explore this longstanding association between the two surrounding the question of poetic language and death.27 Given the physical productivity invoked by the work of O’Keeffe, it is no accident that theories about the productivity of poetic language would find themselves revolving around a woman-flower. It is as if even in the very discourse around poetic representation there a knowledge that breaks through about the role sexual difference and physical reproductivity play in the process. With this artwork in mind, we return to the theoretical texts surrounding the problem of poetic language and its (re)productivity. While Blanchot centers his discussion of naming on death, there is one ‘fatal’ assumption that carries his argument—that nonbeing must be death.

27 It is also worth noting the archaic usage of ‘deflowering’ to refer to the forcible removal of a woman’s virginity. 37

His argument that the linguistic quality of displacement in language necessitates the nonexistence of the thing being referred to is thoroughly reasoned. There is a real absence that is necessary for linguistic displacement to be possible. Blanchot even introduces the concept, with the example of “cette femme,” stating that his words announce the possibility of the real woman’s nonexistence in relation to both her being and presence (Blanchot 312-313). Yet the nonexistence of being is not exclusively death. Furthermore, death poses a myriad of issues as the object of any philosophical endeavor due to its inaccessibility. Our knowledge of death is only theoretical, up until the point of our own passing. Blanchot himself recognizes this conundrum, claiming there is an impossibility to death (325). Yet, as Blanchot articulates his theory of language in this essay, death plays a crucial role in the logical structure of his argument. Nevertheless, death does not need to be the foundation of our signifying systems. In fact, Blanchot articulates a secondary foundation in his essay but makes a shift towards death. He does so in pointing out that language invokes nonexistence. There already exists a nonexistence that is not theoretical, which has been universally overcome, and about which we can theorize. It is nonexistence which originates in the woman-flower seen in O’Keeffe’s work.28 Humans are aware of the finitude of existence because of birth, not death. Birth is not only a prerequisite to existence, but also is the necessary and sufficient qualification to understanding ourselves as beings (since beings by definition are those entities which exist, and in the case of human beings this existence requires a birth). It is this point of departure from which a meaningful system can be constructed. Thus, it is not death which allows for displaced reference, and linguistic representation, but rather birth, the coming into existence.29 Here the meaning of birth should be widely construed, birth as creation, initiation, a point of departure, even an Athenian sense of birth, a fully formed coming into existence. Regardless of how this coming into existence occurred, there was previously a nonexistence. It is this space between existence and non-existence which is certain, since death remains merely a potentiality until its occurrence, while birth is a definitive event which has already occurred.30

28 Perhaps here is the best type to note the androgyny of flowers which carry the reproductive organs of both male and female sexes. 29 To put it in Heideggerian terms, being could be defined as being-from-birth (Sein aus Geburt) rather than being- towards-death (Sein zum Tode). 30 For those beings who are reading and engaging with this current line of argumentation. 38

Moreover, in colloquial language our time itself is defined in reference to birth, and in fact that is the only definitive way to make sense of our own temporality. When projecting ourselves into the future, we imagine how many years we have left with false hope. There is no way of assuring an average lifespan. We could live a life which goes on much longer, or one which is cut incredibly short. Death could come tomorrow, next week, in an hour, or at the very moment you are reading this. Its uncertainty is its only certainty. Birth, on the other hand, is a temporal point from which we define our own relationship to time throughout our lives. Our age is marked by the number of years which have passed since our birth, and a birthday is an annual celebration in most cultures. No one characterizes their age as “x years until death,” although a world in which that would be possible would be rather different, or more likely incredibly dystopian. That is not to say that people do not think about their futures or plan ahead for them, but, rather, that on an epistemological level, our relationship to time is defined in relation to birth. Our lives revolve around our own big bang, this dark hole from which our own existence sprung forth.31 That being said, coming into existence, in a human context is still like death, a space of phenomenological loss. We do not remember our own births, despite being present for them. However, unlike death, birth is an event we can theorize after the fact because we are alive for it, whereas death is an event after which we cannot develop any more theories (at least to our knowledge). Furthermore, the directionality of coming into existence, makes it a coming into embodiment, as opposed to a vacating of the body in death. This direction is evident in our linear conception of time and manifested in the language used around birth and death in which to be born is to be ‘brought in to the world’ (even within a medical context birth is referred to as a delivery), while death is referred to as ‘passing on,’ ‘departing’ or ‘leaving this world.’ This means that the ways in which meaning is constructed around nonexistence is based on a coming into existence that makes embodiment possible rather than the ultimate negation of embodiment. To return briefly to the previous analysis of Mallarmé and Krysinska, “Hérodiade” is death

31At this point it is prudent to note a looming absence in our argument. Both, the thinkers cited in this section, and the questions of death, being, and temporality are headed in the direction of a certain German philosopher. It is true that a great deal of this section is dealing obliquely, and at times explicitly, with ideas which Martin Heidegger himself addresses at various points in his work, most notably Sein und Zeit as it speaks to the issue of temporality and being towards death. However, given the scope of this project and richness of Heidegger’s own theories of being and poetic meaning, we have decided to hold off on a more in-depth discussion of his work and the complications it poses, rather than risk an injustice to both endeavors. 39

oriented in so far as Hérodiade is condemned to death by her own body, while in “La Mort de Cléopâtre” death is described with terms reserved for care given to a child (“bercer”). It is as if Krysinska herself predicts the association between poetic productivity and the role of maternal figures. Yet, perhaps the ease at which we arrive at this model raises a question. Why is Blanchot, like so many other theorists, so set on death as the only space of nonexistence, while simultaneously taking for the theoretical point of departure this woman-flower, who symbolically invokes the space of birth—the female sex? It is as if there were a connection between the biological process of birth, and the creation of meaning through language. To address this issue we will return, briefly, to the aforementioned passage from Barthes where he associates the totalizing and destructive poetic word with Pandora’s box (38). The myth of Pandora is much like the Judeo-Christian myth of Eve, the arrival of evil in a female vessel. Told by Hesiod in the epic poem Theogony, Pandora is the first woman, who is given as a gift, and arrives with a jar (later mistranslated as a box) containing all assortments of misery. It is upon the opening of this jar that pain, suffering, and death become features of the human existence. Thus, via Pandora, it is women who become the signifiers of evil, death, and human mortality within the Western tradition (Cavarero 120, 123). Likewise, since men are defining these symbolic traditions, the female sex, as the origin of existence, is erased from the symbolic tradition. Instead, woman is characterized as she who gives birth to mortals, those who are destined to die (Cavarero 123-124). This symbolic reordering of sex is crucial to maintaining a signifying system which privileges the male subject, as Cavarero outlines: It happens, therefore, that on the level of the generative power tied to the sexual difference between man and woman, the male sex finds itself disadvantaged, so to speak. So it decides to imagine this power in the opposite way, by translating birth into the negative meaning of the beginning of death, the uterus into a container of evils, the woman into a secondary and inferior creature, and all those other figures of misogynous culture that follow on the centralizing of the male as the universal subject of thought and language. (126) It is fitting that Barthes, in decrying the state of modern poetry, would return to the myth of the first woman. As the analysis of the woman-flower clarifies, modern poetry has circled around the problem of female reproductivity which is labeled as the beginning of the end in the Western tradition. This association is not limited to Pandora, it is mirrored in the myth of Eve, and

continues in the depictions of historic and mythic women such as Helene of Troy, Medea, Judith, Salome, and Cleopatra, to name a few. These representations culminate into the modern ‘femme fatale’ (popularized by film noir). The woman whose very existence spells out death. Blanchot continues this tradition when he claims that the ability to utter the word ‘woman’ is a death sentence. However, as our discussion has illuminated, this analogy between nonexistence, the feminine, and death is one which has its roots in antiquity and a patriarchal symbolic order. Instead, we can understand the absence necessitated by language through the productive nonexistence inherent in birth. It is from birth, that we will continue to develop our understanding of poetic language. Upon reflection, it is curious that many of Sartre’s references were centered around artistic creation. According to Kristeva, Sartre’s articulation of poetic language is one that, to be effective, must reach back to a time that closely follows birth and precedes language. Likewise, for Barthes, what is so horrifying about modern poetic language is the idea of a nonexistence that is productive and establishes connectivities which extend beyond the human, towards the ‘inhuman’ with entities like the sky, hell, the sacred, childhood, and insanity (39). What Barthes appears to fear is not the inhuman, but that which goes beyond the tradition of the Western male subject position as a rational and grounded figure. Heaven and hell are the sacred domains of fanatics, who, like the insane, fail to uphold rationality as the highest value. It is similarly telling that childhood makes it on this list. The crisis in poetic representation is thus not that it has annihilated the signifying process of language, but rather, that it exposes the ways in which nonpoetic language works to mask interconnectivities and universalities of existence and nonexistence which are shared by all those who have come into being. When we turn away from death, and back towards birth as the productive event of language, the poetic is revealed as a space of creation in which we find ourselves face to face not only with others, but with our own nonexistence, the nonbeing inside ourselves. Why not all language? Given the emphasis placed on the uniqueness of poetic language throughout this project it is essential to take a moment to make clear the differences between poetic and non-poetic language. It is equally important to note that while Blanchot does make references to poets such as Mallarmé and Hölderlin his overall argument is about literary language, and not exclusively

poetic language. Thus, the emphasis on poetic language is one we are introducing. It is true, as Blanchot argues, that all language is rooted in absence. Yet Blanchot uses the demonstrative “cette” in introducing the possibility of the woman’s absence (Blanchot 312). As such, it is an absence made possible through deixis. This means that the absence which exists throughout all language is rooted in the real and thus limited by it. That is not to say that prose is incapable of describing entities which do not exist—the multitude of fiction and fantasy novels serves as proof to the contrary. Rather this means that nonpoetic language does not create new experiences outside of the literary sphere. Now, anyone who has fallen in love with a good book can attest that prose can move us to react emotionally. However, what motivates this reaction is our connection to the story, and the world which the author has created, not the text itself. Even in the case that we are struck by a particularly profound bit of prose, it is in appreciation for the author’s prowess and execution. That is to say, one may be blown away by the brushstrokes in Monet’s collection of water lily paintings, but such appreciation is of a different scope than a love of its subject matter. Now poetic language defers in its ability to create meaning from absence and invoke a reaction in the reader. Unlike non-poetic language, poetic language goes beyond merely deictic absence and moves into the absence of semantic displacement. In poetry meaning is created by the association of dissimilar words, take for example the verse from “La Mort de Cléopâtre,” “Et ton âme sera / Comme une barque en perdition dans l'orage” in which the soul is compared to a ship in a storm but neither the soul nor a ship are physically present in the poem (Krysinska, Joies errantes 131). To understand the meaning of this line requires understanding the connection made between the soul and the ship, the meaning of a ship trapped in a storm, and its significance within the poem itself. The association symbolically invokes distress and a sense of being overwhelmed and lost. In the context of the poem, this verse is meant to refer to Antony who Cleopatra asserts will be distraught by her passing. In this way, the lyric creates a depth of meaning through displacing the significance behind the words employed. It is fitting that the origin of poetry is from the Greek poiesis which means to create or fabricate. Thus, poetic language is a language which creates new meaning out of the non-being Blanchot situates behind language itself. Moreover, when reading a poem, the meaning is often not readily accessible. Instead the poem gives off a tone, or general feeling. Take for example Mallarmé’s poem “Le vierge le vivace et le bel aujourd'hui…” whose fractured syntax reveals on first glance a swan

and a sense of isolation, entrapment, and loss. A more detailed reading will reveal the image of a swan whose wing has been frozen in an icy pond overnight and is thus nearing death. However, this imagery does not convey the meaning of the poem. The significance is rooted in its sense— the effect of the poem. It is for this reason that poetic language signifies in a way that is not only uniquely productive, but personal. To read a poem requires an individual to allow themselves to interact with the poem, to open themselves up to its meaning—expose themselves. This means that the lyric is a space of vulnerability in a way that nonpoetic language is not. It is this vulnerability which puts us in a relationship with the text itself, and the others who the text invokes. What is the effect of poetic language? If at the root of poetic language there lies an absence made possible through our own non-being, what is the effect of creating and consuming poetic language? What does it mean to create out of a nothingness which is itself fundamental to our own being and share this creation with other beings who share this same generative wound? The turn to poetic language could be understood as an attempt to make nonbeing sensible—to use language to invoke this generative absence from which we come to terms with ourselves as beings. However, the public nature of writing and its ability to be displaced in time and space adds another dimension to the use of poetic language. In employing poetic language, we attempt to render sensible the initial nonbeing of being to others. Again we arrive in an ethical context, one in which we are forced to think through our obligations to others since poetic language is constantly in reference not only to an exterior other who can receive the poem, but also rooted in a signifying process which necessitates a shared relationship to our origin in birth. The effect of poetic language is to illuminate the void of birth, and to reach out towards other voids in hopes of making some type of connection between our shared beginnings, which although separate, share a similar form, much like philosophers have latched onto death as a shared experience.32 That is to say, poetic language puts us in a relationship with being(s) which are exterior to us, and as such becomes a space of ethical deliberation. However, this speculation about the effect of poetic language and its relationship to ethics, is in need of both substance and context. Who are these others to whom we reach out? How might we do so? How are otherness

32 With the exception of multiple pregnancy which offers a unique counterexample to the solitary experience of gestation. 43

and nonbeing invoked/evoked? In order to respond to these questions and further our understanding of the relationship between poetic language and otherness, we turn to the work of Emmanuel Levinas who is also engaged in conversation with many of the aforementioned theorists and whose book, Totalité et Infini, focuses explicitly on the relationship and responsibilities we have toward the Other.

Chapter Five: The Ethical Space of the Lyric: Approaching the Other Être pour autrui — c’est être bon. (Levinas 292) For Levinas the question of otherness is certainly not limited to language. As for poetry, he only touches on it briefly in the aforementioned text, but with suspicion (Levinas 222). Nevertheless, the philosopher does articulate ways in which language serves to connect ourselves to ‘the Other’ or being which is outside of the self (Levinas 70). Exteriority and separation play a significant role in Levinas’s theories of otherness and are central to his idea of language. As he states, “Le rapport du langage suppose la transcendance, la séparation radicale, l'étrangeté des interlocuteurs, la révélation de l'Autre à moi. Autrement dit, le langage se parle là où manque la communauté entre les termes de la relation, là où manque, où doit seulement se constituer le plan commun” (Levinas 70-71). For Levinas, language itself already assumes an exteriority. There must be something outside of ourselves to which we are communicating with language. He describes the exchange which occurs between these speakers as an ethic (Levinas 70). By ethic he means a sort of direct confrontation, a face-à-face, in which the directness of contact forces us to recognize the relationship with the Other who faces you (Levinas 30, 70). In this way, language is a space of ethics as it forges a connection between the self (le Moi) and the Other (l’Autre/l’Autrui) by the way in which language makes common that which is personal (experience) and offers this up for receipt by others (Levinas 74). However, as Levinas clarifies, “Le langage n'extériorise pas une représentation préexistant en moi—il met en commun un monde jusqu'alors mien. Le langage effectue l'entrée des choses dans un éther nouveau où elles reçoivent un nom et deviennent concepts” (Levinas 189). That is to say, language is a medium through which particulars are reformulated as universals. Language serves as a connector between the self and others and establishes an ethical relationship between the two. The foundation of such a relationship lies in being itself, who recognizes its own existence as a subject (a ‘je’) and who comes to understand otherness from the perspective of the individualized self. As such, the initial relationship between self and other is constructed as a discourse, in which the self partitions itself off linguistically (Levinas 29). Yet there must be something that draws the self into language, a motivating force which causes the self to take up language. This force is the pleasure (jouissance) from which the self derives its relationship to the exterior world and affirms what Levinas calls the “ipseity” of the self—that which defines the selfhood of the self (Levinas 122-123). In fact, it is pleasure which is the

foundation of subjectivity, “La subjectivité prend son origine dans l’indépendance et dans la souveraineté de la jouissance” (Levinas 117). Pleasure is accomplished through separation which allows for the identification of the self as a self, the separation of the self from the Other (Levinas 119). The interiority of the self which is illuminated through pleasure is necessary for the understanding of separation and the infinity of the Other (Levinas 158). This infinity which separates the self and Other, is one which takes the form of an abyss, a never ending ‘il y a.’ As Levinas describes it, “C’est un movement de descente vers un abîme toujours plus profound et que nous avons appelé il y a, par-delà l’affirmation et la négation” (94). This ‘il y a’ is not the negation nor absence of being, rather it is a void which gives possibility to both negation and absence (Levinas 207-208). Thus, this void is an affirmative or productive one, one which allows for existence seen in the phrase itself ‘il y a’ which invokes the existence or presence of an entity. This formulation is mirrored in its English equivalent, ‘there is.’ Take for example the phrase ‘there is nothing,’ here ‘nothing’ is a predicate nominative, and even though nothing refers to the absence of the thing the formulation ‘there is’ transforms this absence into an entity itself. Yet Levinas affirms that the space of ‘il y a’ is not the space of absolute negation out of which being arises, rather it is modality of pleasure and separation, “Le vide de l’espace n’est pas l’intervalle absolu à partir duquel peut surgir l’être absolument extérieur. Il est une modalité de la jouissance et de la séparation” (Levinas 208). Here, pleasure is not limited to abstract enjoyment, but also includes physical pleasure which Levinas associates with the creation of being (Levinas 157). So, physical pleasure and reproduction are an innate part of the relationship between self and Other, as the creation of a self is a prerequisite to recognizing the Other. The productive nature of this void, which makes possible the distinction between being and nonbeing, and the self and Other, echoes our discussion of poetic language whereby birth is essential to the unique signification of the lyric. Thus, poetic language serves not only to bridge the gap between being and non-being, but also as a way through which the self articulates an awareness of the relationship between its own being and non-being. In the context of Levinas, this distinction between being and non-being is encapsulated in the finitude of the self in contrast with the infinite nature of the Other (Levinas 94). Yet, this does not totally address the issue of non-being. As previously mentioned, Levinas does acknowledge the importance of physical

reproductivity in the relationship between self and Other and he also discusses the relevance of death to this dynamic. For Levinas, death is connected to desire, in so far as life itself is the desire to live for something. In this way, the self can push itself towards death in pursuit of the absolutely Other (Levinas 22-23). Yet, death is not the end of being, as Levinas articulates, “Mort qui, par conséquent, ne se réduit pas à la fin d'un être” (Levinas 49). Death rather represents a rupture in the totalizing movement of time out of which the creation of a being is possible (Levinas 51). As such death is not a terminal point, but rather the possibility for life. In fact, Levinas considers life to contain the possibility of a triumph over death, “C’est pourquoi la vie entre la naissance et la mort n’est ni folie, ni absurdité, ni fuite, ni lâcheté. Elle s’écoule dans une dimension propre où elle a un sens et où peut avoir un sense un triomphe sur la mort” (Levinas 50). Nevertheless, the focus Levinas puts on death as opposed to birth falls victim to the critique leveled in the previous chapter. Although death may efficiently function to distinguish life as a unique event, birth is the primary event which makes life possible, as Levinas himself references in noting that the creation of a self, is the eruption of being into the world through birth (Levinas 157). Here, the relationship between the self and the other resonates with our description of poetic language in the previous chapter. The connection between the self and the other is recognized through language which allows for the self to acknowledge the way in which the it is born out of the (m)other, and the infinite space separating the two. This infinite space functions like a receding threshold and echoes our description of birth as the place in which being passes out of non-being. As such, the act of birth plays a central role to both the relationship of self-other, and the relationship of being-nonbeing. However, Levinas himself resists the idea that poetic language itself can authentically reach out from the self towards the other, as the aesthetic nature of the poetic reduces the self to playing a role (Levinas 222). The problem that Levinas raises with poetic language is the issue of mimesis. For Levinas poetic language is inauthentic because it replicates something else, and when taken up by the poet or reader it forces them to step outside of themselves and become something else. Yet, this is precisely the problem the lyric poses for us. How are we to understand our ethical obligations to others we come face to face with through poetic language, when those connections occur via proxy—the lyric? Thus, in the context of the lyric, the relationship between the self and other takes on a different dimension. The lyric self and lyric

other cannot be considered synonymous with the global ‘self’ and ‘other’ as conceptualized by Levinas. Thus, the rest of the chapter will be dedicated to understanding the relationship between self and other, the unique connections established by lyric between the two which extend beyond Levinas’s own formulation, and the ethical implications of such proximity. The Self For Levinas the self (le Moi) is the individual subject and the identification of that subject by itself (hence it is le moi and not le je). As he explains, “Le moi, ce n'est pas un être qui reste toujours le même, mais l'être dont l'exister consiste à s'identifier, à retrouver son identité à travers tout ce qui lui arrive. Il est l'identité par excellence, l'œuvre originelle de l'identification” (Levinas 25). Thus, the self can be understood as self-identification, or the recognition of oneself. As such, the self is a subject, which finds itself within an intersubjective relationship with the Other (Levinas 28). In the context of the lyric, the self could take on various roles. Intuitively we could imagine the self as the reader, that is ourselves who are confronting the lyric as exterior language. This approach is the most accessible, as it can be practiced or experienced. An individual can reflect on the experience of reading a lyric, with its various forms of address, forcing the reader to take on poetic language. The self as reader exists in a relationship to the text as other, in which the text is consumed by the reader, yet remains a separate entity from the reader themselves. Or as Jonathan Culler puts it, “We encounter lyrics in the form of written texts to which readers give voice” (187). However, Culler’s formulation adds an additional aspect to this relationship. The reader does not simply consume the poem, but performs the poem in reading it, taking the place of the poem’s speaker. Yet not all poems have clear speakers. “La Mort de Cléopâtre” does have clearly designated speakers, but it is not representative of all lyric poems. For example, Stéphane Mallarmé’s experimental poem, “Un coup de des…” does not appear to have an evident speaker, rather the words fall across the page in an almost haphazard manner, like tumbling dice. Nevertheless, it is cases such as these which point to another potential speaker, the original dice thrower, whose words are seen scattered across the page. In poems such as these, the poet (perhaps erroneously) is taken to be the speaker of the poem. Although a speaker who in most cases must be replaced by the reader at the time of reading. Regardless of whether or not the poet is the ‘true’ speaker of the poem, the reminder of the poet points us in another direction. In the

context of the poem, the poet could be the self. In this case the poem can be understood as the production of a self whose voice is directed towards an-other. Without a doubt the multiplicity of voices allowed by the iterability of poetry leaves a plurality of options when it comes to the ‘self’ of the poem. The Other As stated above, the Other in Levinas is, at its most essential, a conscious other which is not the self.33 This Other is referred to with the terms l’Autre or l’Autrui. While the two terms have nearly synonymous meanings in French, they have different connotations. For Levinas, “L’absolument Autre, c’est l’Autrui” (28) meaning, that l’Autrui cannot share in the sameness that is accessible to the other (l’Autre) as this other (l’Autre) is also ‘an-other’ and can be incorporated into a totality or collectivity. The ‘we’ or the collectivity possible between the self and other (l’Autre) is inaccessible to the Other (l’Autrui) because it is absolutely other, fundamentally and infinitely distant from the self (Levinas 28, 94, 211). To speak of a communal association between the self and the Other (l’Autrui) would destroy the alterity from which the Other is defined (Levinas 211). Thus, moving forward when speaking of the Other, we are referring to L’Autrui, the concept of absolute otherness. It is due to the alterity of the Other, that Levinas formulates our ‘understanding’ of the Other as a face-à-face, since by definition we cannot truly understand or know the other. We can simply recognize and greet it, as if seeing it face to face. However, if we cannot speak of the Other as in community with the self, how can we speak about the Other at all? Levinas explains that it is through language that we articulate a relationship between distinct entities, “Le langage est un rapport entre les termes séparés” (Levinas 212). It is through language that we can speak

33 For Levinas the Other is limited not only to that which is perceived to be conscious, but also that which is human. However, given the characterization of otherness by Levinas, there is room to argue for a more global understanding of otherness. For example, the question of consciousness is not one which can be easily verified. It is possible that entities which we perceive to be inanimate, possess a type of consciousness which escapes our understanding. Moreover, even if limited to a more strict sense of consciousness, the preference made by Levinas towards the human over the nonhuman seems solipsistic in so far as it asserts that only the human self can be known, and the nonhuman cannot possess a similar sense of self. In fact, when asked to address this issue by John Llewelyn, Levinas evasively responded, “Le visage humain est absolument différent et c'est seulement après coup que nous découvrons le visage d'un animal. Je ne sais pas si le serpent a un visage. Je ne peux pas répondre à cette question. Une analyse plus spécifique est nécessaire" (Levinas qtd. in Derrida 149). Here Levinas implies that there is some fundamental difference between the human and the nonhuman and puts into question the possibility to recognize the nonhuman, here a snake, as other, since the snake does not have what humans would recognize as a face. 49

of the self’s relationship to the Other, but also in doing so are forced to face the ethical obligations of such a rapport (Levinas 213, 220). Yet the details of the mechanism are still unclear. In what way does language allow for this face-à-face? Part of the response lies in our initial discussion at the beginning of this chapter which outlined how language is motivated and necessitated by exteriority. The motivation to communicate via language comes from outside of the self. It is the signifying aspect of language which connects it to the Other. As Levinas expounds, Ce n'est pas la médiation du signe qui fait la signification, mais c'est la signification (dont l'événement originel est le face à face) qui rend la fonction du signe possible. L'essence originelle du langage ne doit pas être cherchée dans l'opération corporelle qui la dévoile à moi et aux autres et qui dans le recours du langage, édifie une pensée, mais dans la présentation du sens. (Levinas 226) That is to say, the signifying process is itself one which creates meaning, out of a confrontation of two differences. Like this, the symbol, that which is produced by language, mirrors the impossibilities of submitting the Other to language. Or as Levinas puts it, the signifying process involves an inherent separation in meaning, “Le signe ne signifie pas le signifiant, comme il signifie le signifié. Le signifié n’est jamais présence complète ; toujours signe à son tour, il ne vient pas dans une franchise droite. Le signifiant, celui qui émet le signe est de face malgré l’entremise du signe sans se proposer comme thème" (Levinas 97-98). Here the separation inherent in signification is that the signified does not capture the essence of the signifier. As such, the signified is incomplete and, as Levinas point out, a sign in its own right. Levinas builds on this association of the signifier with the Other, emphasizing the ways in which the Other is present in language but the totality of its essence is not, “Autrui, le significant—se manifeste dans la parole en parlante du monde […] Cette présence de la clé qui interprète dans le signe à interpréter—est précisément la présence de l’Autre” (Levinas 98). This formulation is a return to the inherent absence in language described by Blanchot (see Chapter Four). The Other cannot be fully incorporated into language due to the inherent absence at the center of all language (Levinas 227). Levinas characterizes this void, which we have defined as nonexistence, as the abyss or void between the self and Other (Levinas 94, 207). Levinas echoes the conclusions made in the previous chapter in which being is separated from nonexistence through its physical creation, “La jouissance est la production même d'un être qui naît, qui rompt

l'éternité tranquille de son existence séminale ou utérine pour s'enfermer en une personne, laquelle, vivant du monde, vit chez soi” (Levinas 157). Here Levinas also adds a sexual dimension to ‘jouissance’ correlating it with the pleasure of orgasm. Thus, the self is acknowledged as a being which comes into existence out of this ‘eternal tranquility’ preceding existence. However, for Levinas it is also from this origin that the self defines itself against and comes to understand as exterior and other. Yet, if language and our acknowledgement of the Other are rooted in this inviolable liminal space which takes the form of birth, how can we understand the Other and the ethical obligations such a proximity invokes? To respond, we will dive deeper into the Levinasian idea of otherness. The Other for Levinas Perhaps up until this point we have taken a rather naïve approach to the position of the self and Other in Levinas’s work. As such before delving further into the category of otherness, we must ask: To whom is selfhood allotted? A quick review of Totalité et Infini reveals that the self (le Moi) is a position given to the male subject, ‘l’homme’ as the universal neutral subject. For now we will side-bar the larger discussion to be had about the usage of masculine gendered language as a neutral subject, in favor of focusing on the unique problem that such language creates in Levinas. A fundamental aspect of the self for Levinas is the being at home (chez soi) which is an expression of interiority supported as well as possession and pleasure (jouissance) (Levinas 137-139). The separation and intimacy of being at home (chez soi) implies an intimacy with someone else, an Other (Levinas 165). Thus, the relationship between the self and Other, is one that is embedded in these systems of domestication, and resistance to such control. For Levinas, the world is a private space in which man is at home, “L'homme se tient dans le monde comme venu vers lui à partir d'un domaine privé, d'un chez soi, où il peut, à tout moment se retirer” (162). It is the intimacy of this relationship to space, its welcoming nature, which Levinas associates an intimacy with an-other, that of the woman who signifies reception, the domestic space, and inhabitation (165-166). As such, the body of the woman itself becomes the inhabitable space of otherness for the masculine self, in which female being is ‘welcoming par excellence’ (Levinas 169). Levinas continues to associate the feminine not only with otherness, but with physical appropriation as found in the section “Phénoménologie de l’Éros” in which he connects pleasure and otherness in the context of physical love (Levinas 286-298). Here it becomes evident that his usage of ‘feminine’ does not simply refer to stereotypical effects

of femininity such as tranquility and domesticity, rather to the physical female sex. He goes on to describe the way in which the feminine other becomes the second partner in the physical reproduction of the male self. Thus, just the self is male, “Le féminin, c'est l'Autre” (Levinas 297). However, it is important to note, that the feminine is other and not the Other (l’Autrui). This categorization is afforded to yet another figure who will be discussed momentarily. Before such a discussion, we will reflect on how this idea of sexed otherness may be understood in a poetic context, given the echoes between our discussion of sexual difference in poetic language, and Levinas’s reestablishment of the dominant male subject and the feminine as a space of alterity. The Poetic Other Following the discussion of a poetic self, it is prudent to consider who might be the other in such a dynamic. Since this is a specific instance of alterity, and not an absolute other, our discussion turns towards l’Autre rather than l’Autrui. Unlike the dichotomy established in our understanding of the poetic self, the poetic other has a variety of possibilities. At its most basic, the poetic other could simply be the other member of the dichotomy between reader and poet. Yet, there are further possibilities. The poetic other could also be the poem as a written object, the poetic object itself, and/or the subject of the poem—which the poet and reader approach through poetic language. What these different possibilities make evident is the ways in which poetic language while originating from a singular point, reaches out beyond the self in a productive way, establishing relationships with various exterior points. Yet this discussion of otherness, language, and their intersection, lacks specification as to how the lyric establishes a unique ethical relationship between these different aspects. As such, the next section will discuss how the productivity of poetic language in referring to that which is absent (made possible by the real non-being of the thing), establishes connections between the self and Other. The Poetic: the Self as Other, the Other as Self Chapter Four focused on the ways in which poetic language’s productivity is connected to birth, the creation of being out of nothingness as the referential aspect of language which requires the absence of the thing being referenced. Poetic language takes this absence a step further, changing it into a displacement, in which the word (which is the absence of the thing) stands in for yet another word (which is the absence of yet another thing). Take for example the verses from “La Mort de Cléopâtre”, “Car ils sont, ces abominables baisers, / Pareils aux tristes

fleurs d'asphodèle” (Krysinska, Joies errantes 125). Here kisses are associated with asphodel flowers. To even begin to understand the significance of these verses within the context of the poem, requires first to understand the significance of asphodel flowers within Greek mythology. These flowers are those which supposedly grow in a section of the underworld, and thus are symbolically associated with death. However, Krysinska also plays off the literal meaning of the flowers as flowers when she parallels them to “La dernière Rose rouge” in a following verse (Krysinska, Joies errantes 125). Thus, poetic language creates meaning through a network of words which all refer to nonbeing, the possibility of absence. This space of nonbeing is connected to being through the process of birth, in which the self comes into being out of another, the mother, and out of nonexistence. Language itself necessitates the exteriority which birth makes possible, but is also, as outline in Chapter Four, rooted in the possibility of nonexistence. As such, that which makes the signifying aspect of language possible, is this originating relationship between being and nonbeing, but also between the self and other. Levinas recognizes the importance of this generative moment of birth, as previously quoted, in which the self comes into the world out of the eternal tranquility of nonbeing localized in the female sex (Levinas 157). Yet, poetic language works with more than just absence and exteriority. The lyric’s efficacy comes from its ability to draw forward the connections between disparate entities and in doing so highlights a network of relationships. What makes poetic language distinct from nonpoetic language is in part its indirectness. This means that the ‘path’ of poetic language has fewer touchstones, and as such fewer points of connection. To return to Sartre’s imagery, it is like a microcosm of semantic connections which themselves have relationships to the real and to decipher poetic language requires tracing these various points of contact. Doing so places the reader within this microcosm, yet they cannot ever truly integrate. As such the reader finds themselves tangled up in a network of proximities that can be recognized but not actualized, much like the face of the Other can be seen, but never reached. Faced with this network of relationships, we find ourselves again tangled up in a system of relationships with an exterior other, and must ask what obligations does such entanglement produce? This brings us back to our attempts to comprehend the role of the self and other in the production of a lyric work. On a basic level, a poem, like any act of language, is an attempt to communicate with an exterior other. Thus, the poet, in writing a poem, is attempting to reach out

towards an other but to do so must also reach back towards their origin which connects them not only to otherness but also to nonexistence. This is done through the usage of language, which as argued in Chapter Four, is rooted in nonexistence and entails a desire to communicate with those exterior to us. This is a departure from the formulations of Levinas. For Levinas, absolute otherness, is not something that can make up the self, for if the Other and self could be considered connected, the Other would no longer be an alterity. However, since the internal otherness (the innate connection to nonexistence) which language calls out is not a knowable otherness, it still remains distant. We paradoxically cannot understand the otherness of nonbeing but must also recognize its role as our own origin. To clarify, the relationship between the self, the other, and non-being is one of convergence within the moment of birth. The self is related to the Other, as the self comes into being out of another. However, this coming into being is also a creation out of nothingness. The self did not exist prior to its creation. Thus, birth is not the replication of the other in the self, but rather the creation of being out of non-being. Otherness and nonbeing are related in so far as they are both intimately connected to the creation of the self or being. The self does not exist in isolation as defined by Levinas, rather the self is always forced to face the other, whose exteriority produces the interiority of the self. It is by exiting the space of nonbeing through the other via birth, that the self comes to be. In fact, this originating relationship between the self and Other is discussed by Levinas in his articulation of fecundity which connects the self to the Other, stating, “La fécondité du moi n'est ni cause, ni domination. Je n'ai pas mon enfant, je suis mon enfant. La paternité est une relation avec un étranger qui tout en étant autrui […] est moi; une relation du moi avec un soi qui cependant n'est pas moi” (310). As Levinas elucidates, reproductivity is the way in which the self is reproduced but whose product is paradoxically both the self and other, or the self as other, and the other as self. It is through this reproduction of the self, which is both a rupture and a recourse, that being achieves infinity, and overcomes the finality of death, “L'être infini se produit comme temps, c'est-à-dire en plusieurs temps à travers le temps mort qui sépare le père du fils. Ce n'est pas la finitude de l'être qui fait l'essence du temps, comme le pense Heidegger, mais son infini” (Levinas 310, 317). Yet, this relationship as described by Levinas, is rooted in a patrilineal connection. Ironically, he notes that to fully understand the relationship between father and son, we must acknowledge maternity, but does so in passing before returning the focus of his

argument to patrilineage (Levinas 311). This de-emphasizing of the maternal by Levinas echoes the death oriented rhetoric critiqued in Chapter Four. Nevertheless, the maternal plays a crucial role not only in the production of a self who is related to the other, but also in signification. Per Levinas’s formulation, the male self reproduces itself through the female other. This physical sexing of the “neutral” self remains clearly masculine. It is reinforced by the discussion of self’s erotic love of the other whose face is described as feminine (Levinas 291). The child is thus the product of the self (male) and the other (female). It is due to this dynamic, that Levinas makes all too explicit, that it was essential to highlight the ways in which self and otherness are sexed. For the self to be reproductive in the way that Levinas attributes to it, requires the self to be understood as male, and the other as female. How are we to understand the relationship the self has to the child — the product of both the self and the other? To attribute the child to only a patrilineal tradition would be to exclude the mother entirely, to ignore the threshold whose trespassing makes possible being itself. Moreover, what is the relationship of the Other who suddenly finds themselves face to face with another whose existence will always be tied intimately to their own? On an epistemological level paternity can be verified, but only (biological) maternity can be understood ontologically.34 The act of birth is a definitive moment experience by the mother, while the act of reproductive sex which is experienced by the father is not proof of paternity. Thus, the relationship mother-child is the only one which has a true claim to the infinite reproduction described by Levinas. The self can only hope to see himself in the child, while the (m)other knows the child is her own progeny. Again, this relationship between the Other, understood as mother, and its productivity echoes our understanding of poetic language whose signifying power originates in the moment of birth. Thus, the lyric attests to an otherness which produces a self. No matter the best attempts of the self, be it poet or reader, poetic language can attest only to exteriority. Imagine an attempt at autobiographical poetry: in the process of describing the self through language, the specificity of the self is given up to the commonality of language. By default, the description of the self must make usage of symbols that are not the self, and as such what is articulated in such a poem, is not an image of the pure self, but rather the self face-à-face with the Other. Here the self

34 That is to say the ‘truth’ of paternity can be proven via a paternity test, but there is no way for the father to know on an ontological level that the child he believes to be his really is. 55

attempts to make itself sensible to that which it is absolutely different from, yet intimately related to. The poetic serves not only as a medium to produce the self as other, but also to uncover the other as self. Given the shared origins of the self in absolute otherness, the poetic in its otherness reflects a self, in the same way that the child appears to reflect, for the parent, a ‘self which is not me’ (Levinas 310). These connections return to some of Levinas’s initial propositions, that our confrontation with the other is one which produces ethical obligations. However, for Levinas, the ethical relationship established between self and other is rooted in authenticity and ‘responsibility in face of the Other’ instead of a codified practice. Yet, this conception of obligation towards the other is still rooted in the idea that the other cannot be part of the self. Thus, the recognition of the relationship between the self and other and its connection to the embodiment forces us to rethink the ethics forwarded by Levinas. What ethical obligations exist between a being and that which it is intimately related to, and impossibly distant from, and how one might act in light of such a rapport? An Embodied Ethics: Taking on the Face of the Other If poetic language is rooted in radical alterity, what does it mean to engage with poetic language? The poem by its nature is an expression of otherness, that which is not the self, but what must also be connected to the self. However, Levinas offers little to articulate the large scope or implications of this ethical relationship. Moreover, he hesitates around poetic language itself, concerned with the authenticity of such linguistic connections. As such, to continue our discussion of an ethics of the lyric requires a departure from Levinas starting with the place of the Other in the lyric. First, imagine the poem as a face which stands in as a symbol for that which is absolutely Other. Reading a poem is an attempt to align ourselves with the Other, as to overcome the gap in understanding between ourselves and the signification of the poem. Yet poems, unlike the Levinasian Other, are not infinitely distant. They are tangible artifacts whose language offers itself to reading, and whose meaning instead retreats from our grasp. It is as if, to return to our discussion of signification, the meaning of the poem is the essence of the Other which is present in language but not capturable. In this case, the ‘face of the poem’ is its language which can be taken up much like we might take on a mask. It seems fitting then that “La Mort de Cléopâtre” takes the form of a dramatic poem, as ancient dramas were known for their usage of masks. Behind the mask stands a real person, but

in putting on a mask they become other, an embodiment of that which they are not. Furthermore, since the lyric is a genre meant for reperformance, the mask of the lyric is taken up ad infinitim.35 In this way the reading, or rereading of a poem, is a re-embodiment of the otherness encapsulated in its language. In reading “La Mort de Cléopâtre,” we are reanimating Krysinska’s formulation of Cleopatra and Charmion by voicing lines attributed to them. However, the figures of Cleopatra and Charmion are mere representations of their real (physical) counterparts. The creation of a poetic mask risks distorting its likeness. Given this possibility, what is our ethical relationship to those others whose masks we put on? When we embody their subject position, what is our relationship to them as both poetic objects and potentially real people? Must we represent them truthfully? How would that be possible? The discussion of mimesis in Chapter Three in many ways foreshadowed this discussion. Krysinska’s poem engages with representations of Cleopatra found both in historical records and in literary texts. Those records of Cleopatra strip the queen of her agency, and reduce her to a devastated lover, which is a denial of her legacy as a powerful empress. On the contrary, Krysinska’s reformulation of Cleopatra presents an affirmation of her agency. Krysinska appears to recognize a fault in previous representations of Cleopatra—masks which do more to mirror those who created them, than those who they are meant to represent. Yet who is to say that Krysinska’s representation of Cleopatra is somehow more authentic than Plutarch’s? After all, his representation is historically based, temporally closer to Cleopatra’s life, and is the only surviving biographic record. On what grounds are we to contradict his representation of the Egyptian queen? It is in response to these questions that the concept of taking on the face of the other becomes crucial. The inconsistencies in Plutarch’s representation of Cleopatra are most evident when imagining Cleopatra and attempting to reconstruct her life as described by Plutarch. The crux of Plutarch’s characterization of Cleopatra rests upon her cruelty towards others for political and personal gain. From the perspective of Cleopatra, those motives do not seem impossible. The catch comes in Plutarch’s description of the queen’s downfall and relationship to Mark Anthony which has captured the Western imagination for millennia. This cold and calculating queen, is suddenly turned into the archetype of a tragic woman, mutilating herself out

35 “Even since Pindar and doubtless before, lyrics have been constructed for reperformance, with an iterable now: not timeless but a moment of time that is repeated every time the poem is read” (Culler 295). 57

of grief (Plutarch 382). It is a stark departure from the previous characterizations of Cleopatra, and makes her suicide seem desperate rather than calculated. Whether or not there is truth to this shift can only be understood by attempting to engage with Cleopatra authentically, and not simply as a secondary character in the biography of someone else’s life. In working through Plutarch’s description of Cleopatra, it becomes clear that the text reflects the author himself. Thus, to attempt to ‘take on the mask’ of Plutarch’s Cleopatra, is also to confront Plutarch face to face and see how he saw the Egyptian Queen. The goal of this confrontation is not to ascertain definitive facts about Cleopatra’s life, rather it is an attempt to come closer to the others whose existences are represented before us. There is no way to truly understand the Other, whether it is a historical figure, a fictional character, or an author. We can only confront them face to face. In the context of the “La Mort de Cléopâtre” Krysinska’s Cleopatra comes face to face with the ‘real’ Cleopatra and, by proxy, embodies her otherness in a sensible way. Thus, by engaging with the poem itself, readers are called upon to take up the same mantle, to allow our own selves to be masked by another and mark the differences between the two. It is in this way that poetic language is efficient in establishing ethical relationships that inform us of our relationship to the Other.36, That is to say, the lyric succeeds in not only bringing us face to face with an alterity that is both strange and familiar, but also in forcing us to momentarily step outside of ourselves and take on the face of another.

36 “Lyric language doubtless works subliminally, and much of its social efficacy may depend on its ability to embed itself in the mind of readers, to invade and occupy it, to be take in, introjected, or housed as instances of alterity that can be repeated, considered, treasured, or ironically cited” (Culler 305). 58

Chapter Six: Il faut imaginer Cléopâtre heureuse… If just for one hour, you could find a way / To see through [her] eyes, instead of your own muse. (Mary Lathrap, “Judge Softly”) Thus far the project has alternated between a discussion of Marie Krysinska, “La Mort de Cléopâtre” and a theoretical discussion of poetic meaning and relational ethics. This final chapter will bring together these two disparate threads through a discussion of the ethical ramifications of Krysinska’s poem. In doing so the chapter affirms the importance of considering an ethics of the lyric, and how the influence of the lyric moves beyond the literary. As seen in the first three chapters, Krysinska and her work disrupt norms of how poetry should be written, and the ways in which female subjectivity is represented in the lyric. However, her work also offers an example of the potential of the lyric to influence our own ethics. Plato’s Republic warns about the dangers of allowing lyric poetry into the public sphere. As he states, Nonetheless, be aware that hymns to the gods and eulogies of good people are the only poetry we can admit into our city. For if you admit the honeyed Muse, whether in lyric or epic poetry, pleasure and pain will be kings in your city instead of law and the thing that has always been generally believed to be best—reason. (Plato 311) What Plato emphasizes here is the efficacy of lyric (and epic) poetry to disrupt the dominant perspective of rationality. Note the fear that Plato espouses in this warning. There is a risk that comes with allowing the public access to lyric poetry; to do so is to risk the status quo and open the possibility for a society governed by desire, pleasure and pain37 instead of the rule of laws and tradition. It is precisely this pleasure, and desire for life, which Levinas defines as the essence of living (Levinas 115-117). As such, Plato’s warning should be taken as a means of living rather than a maxim to censor the lyric. The previous chapters articulated how poetic language is tied to the nature of existence itself. To use language is to speak of and from the position that makes life possible. The lyric is an affirmation of being, and the innate connections which exist between the

37 For Levinas pleasure and pain are related to each other in so far as pain or suffering can be understood as instances in which pleasure is not accomplished. Although Levinas does clarify that pleasure is not simply the absence of suffering but rather the fulfillment of needs (Levinas 99, 199). 59

self and the other. With this in mind, the poem of choice for this project seems a bit ironic. Why, in a work so focused on affirming life, choose to study a poem that is explicitly about death? The answer to this lies in the text of the poem itself, and the ways in which Cleopatra’s suicide is represented. As previously mentioned, the initial lines of the poem announce the imminent arrival of death. However, this death is not a murder, it is a suicide, which is one of the most radical acts of agency. Yet the representation of Cleopatra’s suicide, historically speaking, has been reduced to a hysterical act and at times a fetishized event (exemplified by the description of Shakespeare). In portraying Cleopatra’s suicide as the decision of a woman who is distraught by the death of her lover, the act loses its radical agency. Instead it takes on the attributes of madness, which makes her death theatrical but no longer the act of a rational agent.38 This is why Krysinska’s work is so important because her poem reattributes the radical agency to Cleopatra’s death, and, by extension, her life. While Camus, referenced in this chapter’s title, considers suicide to be a capitulation of the individual’s freedom, as the dead have no free will, there is a possibility for suicide to be life affirming (Camus 81). Within Camus’s philosophy, suicide is meaningless because it removes the possibility for meaning to be made. However, this conception is based upon an understanding of existence as radically solitary, and as Camus defines it, absurd. This is not the understanding of being which has been developed throughout our project. Our understanding of being is one in which life “est une existence qui ne precede pas son essence […] La réalité de la vie est déjà au niveau du bonheur et, dans ce sens, au-delà de l’ontologie. Le bonheur n’est pas un accident de l’être, puisque l’être se risque pour le bonheur” (Levinas 115). As such, life is understood not as a vacuous existence, but rather as an existence which necessitates a substance (se vivre de…). It is for this reason that one would risk life for happiness, because to live is to live for the pleasure of living (Levinas 118). This maxim returns to the ideals of Camus, only from a different direction—to live is to affirm one’s love for life.

38 What is at issue here is less the issue of rationality and irrationality. Rather it is that Cleopatra is doubly demonized for being too rational (she is a cold, calculating ruler, who seeks to strip men of their power), and too hysterical (she dies to save herself from the pain of loss, of either or both her lover and kingdom). Cleopatra is manipulated into whatever emotional state makes her the least appealing, and it is for these reasons that Plutarch’s depiction of her death as hysterical poses an issue. Had Plutarch kept a consistent description of Cleopatra as cold and calculating, her death would have seemed noble and dignified. She would have had a death to parallel Mark Antony, but she does not. Plutarch’s description strips her of anything that could be salvaged as consistent character trait. 60

This formulation shows how suicide can still be an affirmation of life. Life may be risked towards the end of its own fulfillment. So, suicide is a fulfillment of a being who no longer lives a solitary existence, but whose existence and pleasure are connected to the Other: On fuit la vie vers la vie. Le suicide apparaît comme possibilité, à un être déjà en rapport avec Autrui, déjà élevé à la vie pour autrui. Il est la possibilité d'une existence déjà métaphysique. Seul un être déjà capable de sacrifice est capable de suicide. Avant de définir l'homme comme animal qui peut se suicider, il faut le définir comme capable de vivre pour autrui et d'être à partir d'autrui, extérieur à soi. Mais le caractère tragique du suicide et du sacrifice atteste le caractère radical de l'amour de la vie. (Levinas 160) Thus, suicide is an affirmation of life and the authentic and potentially radical connection between self and Other. That is not to say that the love of life cannot be expressed in other ways, rather that the individual who commits suicide must be an individual who has already acknowledged the Other. Furthermore, the way in which death (via suicide) can affirm life lies in the sacrificial aspect of suicide. To kill oneself is to give up one owns life, that is to recognize its value and forfeit said value in a tragic gesture. Moreover, this death is not an end to being but rather that which makes being unique and possible (Levinas 49, 51). As such, suicide is not the negation of life but rather, as Levinas said, the fleeing of life towards life. This dynamic surrounding suicide appears in Krysinska’s lyric tragedy in which Cleopatra herself reflects upon her own legacy and the way in which her death will not be the end of her existence, “Le nom de Cléopâtre sera, lui aussi, / Comme un beau Navire impérissable / Qui flottera sur les Mers futures, / […] La Mort — c’est la grande alliée des très grands / Et la Servante fidèle / Qui met la suprême parure au front des Reines” (Krysinska, Joies errantes 124, 128). It is then fitting that the last adjective used to describe Cleopatra is ‘heureuse,’ happy. In death, Cleopatra affirms her love for her own self, and a radical love of life which she recognizes is connected to an infinite otherness, a distant future. Therefore, while the death of Cleopatra arrives at a different end than Camus seeks when he evokes the myth of Sisyphus, there are similarities between these two tragic heroes(Camus 161-166). Cleopatra, immortalized in her death, is remembered and thus lives on eternally. Reading “La Mort de Cléopâtre” repeats the moment of Cleopatra’s death, much like Sisyphus repeats his journey up the mountain. As such we conclude that, ‘one must imagine Cleopatra happy.’ In conceiving her death as her final act of radical agency and an affirmation of life, we

find ourselves face to face with the other who is not only Cleopatra, but also the poem which carries her story.39 In confronting this event and the difference Krysinska’s Cleopatra represents, the poem participates in an embodied ethic of the lyric. By retelling the story of a woman whose story had been thoroughly established within the literary tradition, Krysinska succeeded in creating a space for Cleopatra to exist as a poetic object, irreducible to her characteristics as a woman, as an ‘Oriental’ queen, or simply a lover. In so doing, “La Mort de Cléopâtre” disrupts prior representations of Cleopatra which reduced her to an empty figure, serving as a secondary character to another’s story. Instead, the representation of Cleopatra in this poem affirms her existence as an individual with her own subjectivity, by focusing on the individual deliberations and desires of the queen and by describing her death as one that is actively sought by a reasonable military leader, not a hysterical widow. To return to the fear of Plato: what does this poem, which offers subjectivity to a queen whose legacy is one of infamy, threaten to change to a public safe in the arms of reason? In engaging with a lyric poem, we come face to face with otherness and its relationship to ourselves. This is unique to the lyric genre due to the relationships established through poetic language that do not exist in prose. As poetic language revolves around the possibility of nonbeing, and the displacement or absence of that being, to create connections between different entities. Nevertheless, there is another layer to this dynamic. When taking on the face of the Other, we critically reflect on the assumptions projected onto the other, and those assumptions which seem most comfortable from the position of otherness. Engaging with poetic language allows us to occupy the space between and surrounding the self and Other in a way that gives perspective. This face to face confrontation, along with taking on the face of the other, reminds us of the aspect of otherness which constantly escapes us, and how similarly there is an aspect of ourselves which is beyond our own comprehension, but which we still strive to understand.

39 This depiction of Cleopatra is echoed in Krysinska’s poem “Héroines,” : “Cléopâtre aux orgueilleuses galères / Courbant sous leur poids précieux, les vagues fières. / Grande reine, courtisane sublime. / Philtre subtil, fin joyau d'Orient, / Tombe de héros, harmonieux abîme, / Harpe amoureuse aux immortels accents !” (Krysinska, Intermèdes 35)

Conclusion In the presence of something other, I become other. This paper began with an epigraph from Blanchot’s work, “La littérature et le droit à la mort” and which was later discussed at length. As the line concludes, “…C’est justement moi-même devenu autre” (Blanchot 305). It’s precisely myself, become other. This project has followed various lines of inquiry, all revolving around a central question of otherness, the lyric, and our ethical relationship to both concepts. As such it seems fitting for us to return to where it started. For Blanchot this other which both moves the self to become other and is the self- become-other is a book. However, as our analysis has shown there is something which exists beyond what a book can capture. Certainly, the author in writing will have a unique connection to their own book, and it is this relationship to which Blanchot speaks. However, there is slippage in language that faces all of us, both writers and readers. We reach out in language to find this other, who cannot be written down in a book. In the lyric we become other as well. The relationship to the Other is an inherent aspect of being. However, it is a connection whose essence is hard to explicate. In part, this is why Blanchot’s articulation is so appealing. Otherness appears to us in a sense, and it is only after we have stumbled upon it that we realize it was there all along. In engaging with a poetic work, we are forced into a relationship with disparate entities and that which we all have in common— nonexistence. Only after we step back is it clear that those relationships always existed, and the poem simply brought them forward. The lyric, in exposing the connection between the self, nonbeing, and the Other, forces us to confront such connections in an embodied way, as our own embodiment is caught up in such relationships and in the ways in which we expose ourselves to a lyric work. An ethic of the lyric is one that is cognizant of such interconnectivities and asks us to take on otherness intimately, not solely from a distance. The result of such an ethic is a society which allows itself to be influenced by and live in relation to alterity, instead of sequestering itself away from such difference. In this way, the Other is not incorporated into society, rather its distant is acknowledged along with the productivity such space creates. Marie Krysinska’s work provides an example of lyric work which makes use of the unique aspect of the lyric genre and exemplifies what poetry can do. In her poem “La Mort de

Cléopâtre,” the poet retells Cleopatra’s death giving the queen her own agency, one which lives on in the poem itself. This poem not only affirms Cleopatra’s subjectivity, but also resists her representation in other works. In this way the poem is engaged in not only a localized relationship to the poetic object, but also a larger conversation which forces readers to question not only their relationship to the poem, but the poem’s relationships to other works, and those works’s relationships to their own subject matter. In doing so, Krysinska affirms the possibility of lyric works which recognize the connection between self and other and acknowledge those connections in an ethical way, without reducing the distinct existence of either. It is this type of questioning that an ethic of the lyric hopes to promote. Moving forward, when confronted with a poem, we hope to take it on not as a distant linguistic abstraction, but as a testimony to the interconnectivities inherent in existence and as an extension of our responsibilities to ourselves and each other.

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