Fleurs fantasques des vieux Salons!

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Whereas the three lyrical paradigms of the nineteenth century-Romanticism, Parnasse and modern poetry-have been subject to great discussion in literary research in the past, the transitions between these paradigms, as of now, have received less attention. Against this background, the present article analyses the inauguration of a new paradigm of lyrical writing, using the example of Rimbaud’s “Ce qu’on dit au Poète à propos de fleurs”, a poetological poem composed of a large number of particularly complex intertextual references. It endeavours to show that Parnassianism is the text’s main point of reference, a fact that is often overlooked. The central hypothesis of the present study is that the parody in “Ce qu’on dit au Poète…” is aimed precisely at a certain ‘orthodox’ orientation of Parnassian poetry, but that Rimbaud’s text at the same time continues developments that Banville had introduced into Parnassian poetry with the Odes funambulesques.