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 by Abigail Culpepper Miami University Oxford, Ohio 2019 Advisor: Jonathan Strauss Reader: Audrey Wasser Reader: Elisabeth Hodges ©2019 Abigail Culpepper This Thesis titled TOWARDS AN ETHIC OF THE LYRIC: TAKING ON THE OTHER IN “LA MORT DE CLÉOPÂTRE” BY MARIE KRYSINSKA by 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. iv 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. v 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 1 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