CONTEMPORARY FRENCH POETRY
Jacob
a
Phanuel,
qu'apprit-il?
a
mourir pour ne pas mourir
il apprit
a
ne pas appartenir
a
fonder son matin sur sa perte en ce monde,
a
baiter pour la vie.
65
It is
in
this sense that Rene Char writes about the poet in our civili–
zation: "He knows how to shape his health out of misfortune"
(A
une Serenite Crispee).
Like Char and F. Ponge, the contemporary French poets who
are most deeply marked by the aesthetic heritage of the late 19th
century and committed to formal perfection, put their enthusiasm
at the service of another cause than that of M. Teste or Herodiade.
Thus St.-John Perse, whose influence
is
visible on
J.
Charpier, E.
Glissant, P. Oster, continues to celebrate, in
his
great poems pub–
lished since the war, the tragic splendor of a universe and of an
historical adventure which includes all peoples, in which individual
man, and the poet himself in his subjective aspect, hold little place.
This
is the end of solitary Romantic pessimism. Everything here be–
comes Type and Species. World and history are the protagonists in
this epic which sounds the advent of a new empire of man, heralding
the "great works of Reason."
If
Perse's rhetorical magnificence draws, beyond Paul Claudel,
Rimbaud and Lautreamont, on the sources of classical eloquence, it
is
rather of the rigor and sober perfection of the Mallarme tradition
that we are reminded by the poetry of Yves Bonnefoy. But he does
not suffer from the defect which is common in the last century's
symbolistic school: he avoids logolatry-the cult of language-in-itself,
and "pure poetry." While he actualizes its powers, he also recognizes
with courageous lucidity the limits of the poetic language, threatened
by
death and obliteration. Like the flame which knows itself only
in
its reversion, the power of speech is condemned to disappear in
the very moment when it asserts itself. It never has access to being.
It
is
a tension, a pure elan, and certain only-like human conscious–
n~
itself-to perish in his movement towards unrealizable
permanency:
