Les Langages de Larbaud by Stéphane Chaudier, Françoise Lioure

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MLR, 102.2, 2007 523 poetry, edited by her biographer (Poesies completes, ed. by Jean-Pierre Goujon (Paris: Regine Deforges, I986)), aswell asmuch of the available prose and thepublished and unpublished correspondence, thisbook sets out todemonstrate themodernity and the erudition ofVivien's work, and the consistency of both her vision (her 'imaginaire') and her project as a feministwriter, from the earliest verse toher death in I909. Three-quarters of a century before 'second-wave' feminism,Vivien recognized the deeply androcentric nature of the Western cultural tradition, and the disabling effect that this had on women artists.Although women's education excluded the study of classical languages, Vivien succeeded in acquiring a fineknowledge of ancient Greek in order to translate and reinterpret theworks ofmany women poets of antiquity, including, of course, the celebrated but oftenmisread Sappho. Vivien saw the impor tance forwomen of a specifically feminine legacy, ofwhat Elaine Showalter termed a 'literature of their own' (Elaine Showalter, A Literature of theirOwn (Princeton: Princeton University Press, I977)), and worked toestablish this through the reappro priation of texts thathad been lost, devalued, mistranslated, and misinterpreted. In her poems and stories she also reclaimed female figuresfromhistory, turningVigny's sly femmefatale of a Delilah (La Colere de Samson) into a brave female rebel, and minor biblical figures such as Queen Vashti into resistance fightersagainst patriar chal authority. The study under review demonstrates the importance of thiswork of 'exhumation intellectuelle' (p. 402), and also shows how Vivien herself invented a feminine, gynocentric poetic voice, often in a complex intertextual dialogue with Sappho's poetry.Marie-Ange Bartholomot Bessou's analysis ofVivien's use of the hauntingly lyrical 'strophe sapphique' (a quatrain with I I/I I/I 1/5syllables) is par ticularly effective in showing how Vivien translates not only content but also rhythm and tone fromGreek intoFrench, and goes on to adapt what she saw as the feminine specificity of Sappho's voice intoher own poetry. The 'champ semantique' of exile runs through all ofVivien's work, and Bessou explains this both in terms of her personal biography, torn between cultures and languages (Vivien was actually an Englishwoman, Pauline Tarn), and in terms of a deep-seated sense of non-belonging, in aworld made by and for men. The argument for the rich coherence and the originality ofVivien's writing iswell made, despite a degree of repetition and a slightly rambling structure to the book that could have been improved by some pruning and tighter editing. The bibliography is excellent on Vivien's own work, but a little random in itscritical sources, excluding inparticu lar some important critical work in English, notably that of Tama Engelking (see, forexample, 'Renee Vivien's Sapphic Legacy: Remembering theHouse ofMuses', Atlantis: A Women's Studies Journal, i8 (I992-93), I29-4I; 'Genre and theMark ofGender: Renee Vivien's "Sonnet feminin"', Modern Language Studies, 23 (I993), 79-92). Overall, though, this is a valuable piece ofwork andmay encourage theover due republication of Vivien and her greater recognition in France, where (like so many otherwomen writers) she is taken considerably less seriously than she is within anglophone French Studies. UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS DIANA HOLMES Les Langages de Larbaud. Ed. by STEPHANE CHAUDIER and FRANCOISE LIOURE. (Litteratures) Clermont-Ferrand: Presses Universitaires Blaise Pascal. 2006. 364 pp. ?30. ISBN 978-2-845I6-30I-0. 'Langages' and not 'langues': Larbaud, with his acute sense of linguistic precision, would approve, though he would no doubt have raised an eyebrow at the definite ar ticle's implication of totality.For thisvolume, collecting twenty-fourpapers given at 524 Reviews Clermont-Ferrand in March 2004, isnot concerned with Larbaud as linguist, his ac tivityas translator and promoter inFrance of a diversity of foreign literatures,butwith his style (or styles) and more generally his literary techniques across thewide range of formsof creative writing he employed. Three contributors do touch on 'langues', none the less.Freddie Plassard seeks inLarbaud's essays on translation a forerunnerof modern 'traductologie', Carmen Licari and Solange Montagnon explore the creative use of Italian inBarnabooth and Amants, heureux amants respectively.And a fourth, Christine Kossaifi, expands the significance ofLarbaud's quotation fromTheocritus inBeaute, mon beau souci into a discussion of the protagonists' failure to fusewith...