France Literature Part V

France Literature 5

And it is no coincidence that some exponents of the “nouveau roman” (Robbe-Grillet), as well as the group of Tel That (Sollers). And in reality, in its dimension of critical creation, of poetry that is intended to be provisional and sketchy, unfinished, and is recognized in the work of “construction” of word-objects and in the control of this work, Ponge’s work is very close to some of the most recent expressions of poetry, also attempted by linguistics, by the germination of language, which proceeds by analogies, associations, mathematical relationships, systems, and by decomposition, in syllables, in letters (the “lettrisme” of I. Isou, born in 1925, and P. Garnier’s “spatialisme”), and oscillating between trust in the word, albeit in an ironic tension, and distrust, but certainly now far from any form of commitment, and if ever in some cases started to shrink into a sphere of abstraction and deliberate non-communication. The cut of the verse, of the “measure”, of the rhythm, and the traditional fixed forms have not disappeared; if anything, the easy acceptance of those modules has failed, without the constant drama of hearing and re-justifying them. More frequent is the discourse freed from any constraint, as well as the aspiration to the book of poetry, rather than to the collection. And so the “themes” – from religious or biblical inspiration to Nature – have not completely disappeared from poetry, but poetry itself has increasingly become the object of poetry, with its anguish of saying, breaking the silence, reaching the boundaries of the ineffable. without the constant drama of resenting and re-justifying them. More frequent is the discourse freed from any constraint, as well as the aspiration to the book of poetry, rather than to the collection. And so the “themes” – from religious or biblical inspiration to Nature – have not completely disappeared from poetry, but poetry itself has increasingly become the object of poetry, with its anguish of saying, breaking the silence, reaching the boundaries of the ineffable. without the constant drama of resenting and re-justifying them. More frequent is the discourse freed from any constraint, as well as the aspiration to the book of poetry, rather than to the collection. And so the “themes” – from religious or biblical inspiration to Nature – have not completely disappeared from poetry, but poetry itself has increasingly become the object of poetry, with its anguish of saying, breaking the silence, reaching the boundaries of the ineffable.

Of the poets of the last generation, who were thirty or forty years old from 1960 to 1975, we will especially remember A. Bosquet (born in 1919) who, in addition to novels and essays, has recently published other poems: Maître objet (1962), Quatre testaments et autres poèmes (1967), in which he combines a traditional versification with a corrosive spirit of demolition and revolt, bordering on nihilism; J. -Cl. Renard (born in 1922), of Christian inspiration (Incantation des eaux, 1961; Incantation du temps, 1962; La terre du sacre, 1966; La braise et la rivière, 1969); Y. Bonnefoy (born in 1923), who with M. Deguy (born in 1930) and J. Garelli (born in 1931) is engaged in a metaphysical dimension of poetic research; and then again M. Pleynet (born in 1933) and D. Roche (born in 1937), of the Tel Quel group ; and Ph. Jaccottet (born in 1925), and J. Roubaud (born in 1932) who, from his book curiously entitled ∈ (1968), proposes four different readings, as a sign of openness to the reader on this theory of sets. Other poets, already established after World War II, have continued to deepen their experiences: L. Estang, J. Cayrol, A. Frénaud, J. Grosjean, P. Seghers, to whom the latest collection of critical monographs and anthologies, of the Poètes d’aujourd’hui.

According to SHOPAREVIEW, surrealism is also credited with the most important innovations of contemporary theater, at least for its evident characteristics of unreality, which if it still appears dominated, in the 1960s, by some strong personalities of traditional and “classic” writers, such as Montherlant o Anouilh (see in this App. and in App. III), and from the remains of the boulevardier theater, still very vital for the general public, tried and traveled other roads in directions similar or parallel to those of the novel or more generally avant-garde literature. Theater “committed”, of ideas, and didactic, in the fifties (Sartre, Camus), or tense between commitment and destruction (Genêt; v. App. III, 1, p. 716 and this App.), Has recovered in the same years, and therefore in the latter period 1960-75, décor that is not only reduced, but unrealistic, symbolic, which must concretely render not a presence, but an absence, the space of a myth, of a parable, which is not an expression but an actual manifestation of the tragic of contemporary life, of the absurdity of existence. And of “theater of the absurd” – but also of “a-theater” or “anti-theater” or even of “nouveau théâtre” – we speak above all of Ionesco (see App. III, 1, p. 890), by Beckett (see in this App.), By Adamov (1908-1970), by M. Duras, by R. Pinget, by France Billetdoux, by R. de Obaldia, by France Arrabal, while with the fundamental distinctions between the optimistic opening on the same function of the theater that is found in the last piecesof Adamov (and of Billetdoux, of G. Michel), the fall of all hope into the total emptiness of the absolute vanity of existence that is perceived in Beckett’s theater, and the tragic humor, all the more ruthless the more entrusted to a paradoxical and grotesque comedy, by Ionesco, who after the successes of the 1950s still gave the scenes Le roi se meurt (1962), Le piéton de l’air (1963), La soif et la faim (1967), Jeu de massacre (1970), Macbett (1972), Ce formidable bordel (1973), as well as publishing his reflections, Notes et Contre – notes (1963) and Journal en miettes (1967), and a novel, Le solitaire (1973), and who was recently elected to the Académie française.

France Literature 5