Four Ways to Meddle With Subjectivity: French Lyric Poetry Since Baudelaire

Abstract

Conversation. It seems to have been the simple pleasure of talking about books with likeminded people that attracted me to work in the humanities. It's symptomatic, I think, that having been invited some years ago to give a keynote address at a large antipodean conference, I chose to avoid the authority and conclusiveness the word keynote implies and instead to present a species of conversation - a tiny conference, if you will - by bringing together a set of poems that each in its own way 'meddles with subjectivity'. What is the relation of subjectivity to language, and more particularly to poetic language? Each poem in my conversation muddies the water in relation to that abiding question, which is not only a permanent topic of the lyric but also happened to address the conference theme. So it was a case of two birds with one stone: 'conversation', more than 'keynote', is the true modus vivendi of the humanities; the textual subject - in all the possible interpretations of that phrase - their abiding concern.