Beyond the American Difficult Poem: Paul Celan’s “Du liegst”

This paper presents a close reading of a late poem by German poet Paul Celan, with a view to call into question several critical assumptions relating to modernist-derived “difficulty.” By looking in detail at what makes a poem “difficult” for the reader,a fact highlighted by a comparative approach, it becomes possible to move beyond such qualities as innovative, radical or avant-garde, and to consider what truly makes up our literary knowledge.Cet article propose une lecture détaillée d’un poème tardif de Paul Celan, de façon à remettre en question plusieurs présupposés critiques hérités du modernisme en matière de « difficulté ». En observant dans le détail ce qui rend un poème « difficile » pour le lecteur (phénomène que souligne l’approche comparatiste), il est plus aisé de se défaire d’une terminologie qui repose sur les notions d’innovation, de radicalité ou d’avant-garde, afin de comprendre où commence réellement notre savoir littéraire

Oliver Tearle, The Great War. The Waste Land and the Modernist Long Poem

Oliver Tearle’s study, The Great War, The Waste Land and the Modernist Long Poem, from Bloomsbury (2019), is a particularly welcome addition to the field of modernist studies in poetics inasmuch as it attempts to bring together competing lines of interpretation and often succeeds in finding a fruitful middle-ground. As the title clearly suggests, this book seeks to deal on an equal footing with a cultural, historical and material context (the Great War), with the specific text and as well as ..

Formalism as Mysticism: Reading Jewish American Poets Louis Zukofsky and Charles Reznikoff

La tradition moderniste américaine telle qu’elle nous apparaît aujourd’hui offre un panorama dont la richesse le dispute à la dispersion. Au sein de ce modernisme, les poètes objectivistes traversent le vingtième siècle depuis des parcours hautement dissemblables. Pourtant, la critique les rassemble de plus en plus comme poètes juifs américains de l’entre-deux-guerres. A travers cette désignation aux contours souvent flous, le formalisme du dernier vingtième siècle se réinvente aux sources identitaires présumées des précurseurs qu’il se désigne. Appuyé par l’étude des textes de Louis Zukofsky et de Charles Reznikoff, cet article se propose d’envisager les problèmes méthodologiques que posent les notions de mysticisme et de formalisme lorsqu’elles se superposent

Vers l’image aveugle : George Oppen et l’usage de la lumière

This article means to discuss the question of light in George Oppen’s poetry, quite independently of the images built within the poems. It is a paradoxical endeavour, and should only be seen as an exercise in approaching such an otherwise concrete poetry, known for its emphasis on the visible world. Yet, let us assume there is some merit to this detour, inasmuch as it will allow us to show how eminently reflexive and abstract George Oppen’s poetry is, and that it ought not to be read only when in search of serial and local perceptions

Mimesis de la douleur chez George Oppen et J. H. Prynne

Cet article se propose d’étudier chez deux poètes de la deuxième moitié du vingtième siècle, l’un américain, George Oppen, et l’autre britannique, J. H. Prynne, les procédés de citation lorsque ceux-ci mettent en jeu l’expression d’une douleur ; cela dans le but de se livrer à une application pratique des remarques de Wittgenstein quant à l’acquisition du langage à travers l’exemple de l’expression de la douleur. On se demandera si ce type de citation constitue pour ces auteurs un moyen de réintroduction ou de préservation d’une forme de subjectivité à l’intérieur du tissu textuel, et dans quel but. Car bien loin du simple collage-gage d’un certain modernisme, c’est la justesse d’un rapport au monde qu’il s’agit ici de parvenir à garantir - monde auquel le poète appartient et dont le poème doit rendre compte.This article means to consider the work of two poets working in the second half of the twentieth century - an American, George Oppen, and a British poet, J. H. Prynne - and how they resort to quotation as a technique when dealing with expressions of pain. The aim is to attempt a practical application of Wittgenstein’s remarks on learning language using the example of expressions of pain. Are such quotations a means for these authors to bring back a measure of subjectivity within the textual pattern, and if so why? The question matters all the more as the poems do not partake of collage as the belated sign of modernist claims. The issue is that of one’s connection to the existing world and how this connection must be maintained and the world accounted for

Mimesis de la douleur chez George Oppen et J. H. Prynne

This article means to consider the work of two poets working in the second half of the twentieth century - an American, George Oppen, and a British poet, J. H. Prynne - and how they resort to quotation as a technique when dealing with expressions of pain. The aim is to attempt a practical application of Wittgenstein’s remarks on learning language using the example of expressions of pain. Are such quotations a means for these authors to bring back a measure of subjectivity within the textual pattern, and if so why? The question matters all the more as the poems do not partake of collage as the belated sign of modernist claims. The issue is that of one’s connection to the existing world and how this connection must be maintained and the world accounted for

Distance without Remoteness: The Objectivist Poetics of Nonmimetic Pain

This article begins by briefly examining some of the history of reading in terms of the critical relationship between mind and body, with a view to moving beyond any sense of a simple opposition between the two. Going back (shortly) to the roots of western literacy and now little-known meditative mind-body techniques, it emphasizes the once healing value of reading with an embodied mind. This article then proposes to compare three excerpts––all written after 1945––from the work of three US poets (George Oppen, Charles Reznikoff and Louis Zukofsky) which all deal with the experience and trauma of World War II. In doing so, this article will show how all three attempted to produce accounts of, or to reflect upon, what had taken place in a way that would not allow for any forms of aestheticization and that would show extreme caution when engaging with readers’ sensitivities. This article concludes that, while such poetics may seem far removed from today’s emphasis on reading as a sensory and indeed somatic event, these poets’ practice of mitigating and even of attempting to heal from the suffering that had accumulated still does hold precious insights into what and how literature can or should make us feel

Mimesis de la douleur chez George Oppen et J. H. Prynne

Cet article se propose d’étudier chez deux poètes de la deuxième moitié du vingtième siècle, l’un américain, George Oppen, et l’autre britannique, J. H. Prynne, les procédés de citation lorsque ceux-ci mettent en jeu l’expression d’une douleur ; cela dans le but de se livrer à une application pratique des remarques de Wittgenstein quant à l’acquisition du langage à travers l’exemple de l’expression de la douleur. On se demandera si ce type de citation constitue pour ces auteurs un moyen de réintroduction ou de préservation d’une forme de subjectivité à l’intérieur du tissu textuel, et dans quel but. Car bien loin du simple collage-gage d’un certain modernisme, c’est la justesse d’un rapport au monde qu’il s’agit ici de parvenir à garantir - monde auquel le poète appartient et dont le poème doit rendre compte.This article means to consider the work of two poets working in the second half of the twentieth century - an American, George Oppen, and a British poet, J. H. Prynne - and how they resort to quotation as a technique when dealing with expressions of pain. The aim is to attempt a practical application of Wittgenstein’s remarks on learning language using the example of expressions of pain. Are such quotations a means for these authors to bring back a measure of subjectivity within the textual pattern, and if so why? The question matters all the more as the poems do not partake of collage as the belated sign of modernist claims. The issue is that of one’s connection to the existing world and how this connection must be maintained and the world accounted for

Chapitre II. Quelle herméneutique pour une poésie de l’impersonnel ? L’exemple de l’objectivisme : l’interprétation du texte-objet chez Williams Carlos Williams et Charles Reznikoff

Si le travail de l’« impersonnel » en littérature peut nous permettre d’éclairer une littérarité particulière, celle-ci ne saurait se résumer à une conception de l’espace scripturaire comme seul lieu d’une dépersonnalisation ou d’une indéfinition, simple constat de l’existence d’un flux, opposant ainsi la profondeur supposée du sujet de l’énonciation à la surface de ce que Gilles Deleuze nomme des agencements collectifs d’énonciation. À l’impersonnel du fait poétique répondrait plutôt une rel..

L’effet de longueur dans un poème tardif de George Oppen

International audienceRather than looking at the long poem as a genre or as the sum of various strategies developed by the text, this article focuses on the structural effects of length, especially on length as it is prosodically effected by the line. Based on a close reading of one of George Oppen’s late poems, the working hypothesis here will be as follows: if the dimensions of the poem are perceived as problematic, one should start with the line itself as the place where the poem as a whole starts on its path towards achieving an adequate form