CONTEMPORARY FRENCH POETRY
61
When Andre Frenaud wrote
Les Rois Mages
during the world
war, the quest of his Magi ended, like that of Eliot's, in failure, lost–
ness, the nostalgia of a forbidden Paradise and of a death that might
recall it. And yet, in the heart of the straying, wondering Kings,
there survived a pathetic impulse towards joy:
«Nous sommes perdus
...
On nous a fait de faux
rapports
c'est depuis le debut du voyage
Il n'y avait pas de route il n'y a pas de lumiere
M ais je ne puis guerir d'un appel insense"
(Les Rois Mages, 1942)
In the works of Lucien Becker, Alain Bosquet, Yves Bonnefoy, in
my own poetry too, this conflict between disillusion and "a senseless
call" attains its full breadth. While Robert Sabatier, a little prema–
turely perhaps, yields to the celebration of
Solar Festivals
(1955),
Lucien Becker remains on the dividing line of the poetic domains in
our period. Is it time to envisage, as Jean Cassou recently wrote,
"the restoration of the reign of the Sun"?
«Qui parle de desert,
d'absence?))
asks
J.
Charpier.
«Le monde est la.))
The very fact that
these questions are raised at all reveals a deep change in attitude of
present-day poets towards life. They can only be answered by the
act of living itself, as each one of us resolves to fulfill it in his inner–
most self, and to express it in words.
Lucien Becker's world is made up of lonely, separate objects,
pebbles or passers-by, "who cannot share our existence." Isolated by
the surrounding void and the inner nothingness of consciousness, men
and things as targets of perception seem stuck to the surface like
"collages" of reality. The fragile canvas is always on the verge of
tearing. The objects are "the witness of a world without depth."
Only the return of the desired woman restores it intermittently to
its true dimensions. In such instants which alone are real amidst
a universe condemned to endless eclipses, and which constitute
Becker's major source of inspiration,
objec~
reconquer their absolute,
that is to say, their humanized meaning. They take their fill of
reality in spite of the threatening vacuum. The moment of carnal
contact or of erotic vision thus stands in the center of Becker's re–
construction of the world as well as of his poetic creation. Voluptu-
