Autobiography as Enigma ("Gisants" by Michel Deguy)

Abstract

THE POEMS OF MICHEL DEGUY rarely sustain any cohesive fiction, aside from that of Poetry itself. The poetics which conclude three of his recent collections, Jumelages suivi de Made in USA, Donnant Donnant, and Gisants allow the figures of poetry, pursued through the poems themselves, to be discursively articulated at the end of the book. In Gisants, however, something -new occurs: throughout the volume, the fiction of Poetry delineates the figure of a woman who, unlike Maurice Schve's Delie or the Olive of Du Bellay, remains unnamed and multiform but who, for the reader, constitutes the hypothetical addressee, a recurring tu, an unknown female Referent-Receptor. Since each poem explicitly addressed to someone outlines a specific tu, not necessarily in accord with the others, the conjectural woman might be spouse, lover, friend, or other, depending on the poem. Because no woman is ever named, and the relationship of the poet to the woman drawn by each poem differs in nature and intensity, a sort of protean figure takes shape, an ever-changing actress in a drama which, albeit devoid of specific information, provokes the reader to biographical interpretation. Certain poems, in which nothing indicates that the addressee is a woman, suggest, in an almost irresistible fashion, the plot of a love story: