Prose poem

The prose poem is a form hybrid, neither new or short history, nor poem with the traditional direction, which complicates any attempt at definition. Suzanne Bernard, in his thesis the prose poem of Baudelaire until our days (Nizet, 1959) proposes the suivants criteria;: It is about a text in Prose in short, forming a unit and characterized by its “ gratuité ”, i.e. not aiming at telling a history nor to transmit information but seeking a poetic effect. A historic insight will make it possible to better seize the problems of this form.

Precursors

The Middle Ages separate strictly towards and prose (even if Guillaume de Machaut could mix them inside same a texte : the Book of See Known as ). To popularize novels initially written in worms, one transposes some in prose from there, but that is confined with the narrative kinds.

It is necessary to wait the XVIIè century to see the limits between prose and poetry to soften itself. Vis-a-vis the extraordinary proliferation of admirably versified but insipid poems of circumstance, considered to be lower than the texts of large designers prosateurs, the idea appears that the worms is not synonymous with poetry. Certain plays (in worms) are thus transposed in prose (in general admittedly very rythmée, with the manner of the worms). The yoke of the established rules by Malherbe and consolidated by Boileau does not leave the place to certain authors to express their sensitivity; their interest thus moves towards the Romance , where develops a poetic prose, quickly recognized by the contemporaries. One speaks about “ poem in prose ” for the Princess of Clèves of Madam of Fayette, without this term recovering the current definition.

The bringing together between prose and poetry becomes more sensitive towards the end of the century with the publication of Télémaque of Fénelon, given for the continuation of the Odyssey of Homère, the largest poet epic of Antiquity; and especially at the XVIIIè century, during which poetic prose makes increasing great strides with Buffon in its descriptions of animals, Devil In love with Cazotte, phantasmagoric account, Paul and Virginia of Bernardin of Saint-Pierre, and especially Rousseau with the News Héloïse and Daydreams of the Solitary Walker .

Origins

However, poetic prose remained prose, an additional means for the novelist, a mark of his style, without constituting a true form of poem. Around 1800, while the Romantisme is constituted, the aspirations of the writers tend more and more towards the absolute. Poetry arouses interest again (contrary to the Age of Enlightenment where she was regarded as an ornament) and versification will be softened, in particular by Victor Hugo. However that is not enough for certain temperaments, which are subjected with difficulty to the tyranny of the rhyme and the meter. The translations in prose of poetries of on the other side of the channel allotted to mythical the Ossian will be followed by several poetic short texts written by less known authors today (Xavier Forneret, Jules Lefèvre-Deumier). Others give their writings for translations of foreign or old poems: Guzcla of Mérimée, the Songs madécasses of Évariste Parny. François-Rene de Chateaubriand, very carried towards the lyricism but equipped with any talent for the worms, writing the many ones and famous passages of its books in poetic prose. About the same time Maurice of Guerin is the author of the Centaure , text lyric in prose length of ten pages. It is in this climate that Aloysius Bertrand publishes in 1842 Gaspard of the Night , considered like the formative book of the kind in France. It uses consciously the form of the medieval Ballade to evoke in prose of the oneiric or fantastic scenes, rather of the impressions that accounts. One regards this author as the true creator of the prose poem.

The development at the XIXe century

The romantic great authors have only little regard for this new form. In are they informed only? It is Baudelaire which redécouvre the book of Bertrand, fallen into the lapse of memory. It is inspired some to write the collection Petits prose poems whose title devotes the formula. In the letter with its editor Arsene Houssaye who is used as foreword, Baudelaire explains why prose is ready to translate the sensitivity of the modern life, especially for that of the city, which becomes thus one of the topics of predilection of the prose poem. Following this collection, the new productions of this type abound. Mallarmé contributes to it, like Rimbaud in the Illuminations , Tristan Corbière, Charles Cros, etc No doubt this form prepares the ground for the emergence of the free Verse. The prose poem is a kind difficult to encircle, being often presented in the form of a short account, but being distingant some by the language rich in images and sonorities, the strong impressions, the absence of well characterized character. No delimitation is very satisfactory, the produced texts are sometimes unclassable. Thus, One Season in Hell of Rimbaud is perhaps more one testimony that a true poem. Towards the end of the Second Empire, the Count of Lautréamont (pseudonym of Isidore Ducasse) publishes the Chants of Maldoror , where interfere themselves authentic prose poems, of the fragments of novel, descriptions of dreams and cruel phantasms, the whole forming a unit dominated by the character of Maldoror. A prose poem however constitutes a unit with him only. Can it be thus integrated in a book which however wants to be a collection of “ chants ” ? But if the definition should be widened, why not there not include texts causing a strong impression, even if they want to be récits ? (cf the Cruel Tales of Villiers of Isle-Adam).

The XXe century

These questionings are not yet with the last style with the turning of the century. The thirst for exoticism is favourable with the publication of texts dealing with elsewhere mythical or rêvé : Pierre Louÿs claims to translate old Greek poems in the Chants of Bilitis , Paul Claudel ( Connaissance of the East ) and Victor Segalen ( Stèles ) evokes Asia. The limits are done increasingly fuzzy. Between Persian Saint-John whose verse will become disproportionate at the point to run sometimes on almost a whole page and to constitute almost a paragraph of prose, between Blaise Cendrars which writes the Prose of Trans-Siberian the in… towards (free), between André Gide of which Terrestrial Foods are sometimes made up of poems in free verse or verses, sometimes of extracts of newspaper, sometimes of poetic prose addressed to its imaginary disciple Nathanaël, it is difficult not to be disorientated. After the First World War, max Jacob in the foreword with the Cup Dices , tries to establish a theory of the kind, but which answers certain questions badly. Pierre Reverdy ( Prose poems ) and with his Surrealist continuation the , attracted by the image of modernity which emerges some since its beginnings, definitively anchor the prose poem in the French literature, which it is in the form of small oneiric accounts ( Poisson Soluble of André Breton, the Night Stirs up and Certain Plucks Henri Michaux), or short texts in the style of the automatic writings as at Louis Aragon or Paul Éluard. More personal styles appear then during, but especially after the Second world war. Rene Char uses his laconic language in many prose poems and brings this form closer to the Aphorisme. Francis Ponge tries out in the Party taken of the things the meticulous description of the daily objects, showing once again the richness of the kind and its close link with the modern world which surrounds us. Pierre Jean Jouve undoubtedly the most authentic heir to Baudelaire at the XXe century, regains the shape of the short and percussion text in its Proses of 1960 to revisit all its work.

Today

Since 1945, the majority of the poets were tested closely or by far with the poem in prose : Yves Bonnefoy with Cross Street and other accounts dreams of it discovers the poetry which can lie in narrative texts which are not simple stories, thus scrambling even more the kinds. Jacques Dupin deploys his hard and beautiful language there, according to particular rates/rhythms. At Philippe Jaccottet ( Paysages with figures absent ), it is connected with the test on Article André of Bouchet punctuates it white, characteristic of its writing, which dissolves the text, so much so that one does not know where to arrange it: prose or towards? practical Michel Deguy two types of writing in this kind: one rather reflexive, the other strictly speaking " poétique". One can also quote authors like James Sacré, Jacques Réda, etc If the prose poem gained ground by removing the limit which existed between prose and poetry (what is seen in the novel where the use of poetic prose spread), it remains with the mounting new fields by the jamming of the old and new limits, in particular by the exploration of the hybrid expressions, between poetry and novel (Emmanuel Hocquard, Olivier Cadiot with Futur, Ancien Fugitive , Pierre Alféri with Fmn , Nathalie Quintane with Début and Mare ), Danielle Sarréra, pseudonym of the novelist Frédérick Tristan. Matthieu Messagier with Orant proposes a " poème" , like he says, running on almost 800 pages of prose, which is very far from the usual definition. Often near to the visual arts ( the Subject Monotype of Dominique Fourcade), the prose poem is in the middle of the concerns of contemporary poetry, in its concern of saying to the limit of dicible, sometimes until in a repetitive, almost formless language (Christophe Tarkos in Anachronisme ) or on the contrary kaleidoscopic, split up, (Caroline Sagot-Duvauroux). Laurent Bourdelas, contributes to the gathering kind with several books of the " fragments" , like " The Way of the indigotiers" (subject of an emission on France Culture in 2003) or " Chronicles of Aubos". One can wonder whether the diary and the notebook could be connected with the kind. (Andre Blanchard, but also the newspaper of Robert Musil).

Elsewhere

Born in France, the prose poem was propagated in everyone. One finds authors who practiced it in the anglophone countries (Oscar Wilde, T.S. Eliot), in Russia (Ivan Tourguéniev, in Germany (Rainer Maria Rilke, Stefan George, Günter Eich, Helga Novak, Sarah Kirsch), in Austria (Friederike Mayröcker). See also certain very short news of Kafka and " microgrammes" of Robert Walser. One also finds these poems in the United States and even in India (Udayan Vajpeyi).

One sees there also authors known as insular, such Aimé Césaire, Emmanuel Juste, Ernest Pépin, Edouard Glissant, Boris Gamaleya and Khal Torabully to explore this form, with personal alternatives, getting rid of a formal traditional gangue too rigid for their writings whose experimentation with the form could not be crossed of their intrinsic contents.

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