Love, Desire and Transcendence in French Literature: Deciphering Eros by Paul Gifford

Abstract

MLR, I02.4, 2007 II63 of looseness omnipresent inanalogy. If there isan occasional sense of strain, this is in variably redeemed by the ludic nature of thedemonstration. 'Rimbaud' isconceived, productively, as 'un typede parcours plutot que celui d'un auteur' (p. 45), Celine and the poet of the Illuminations being united by 'une affinitede devenirs et la ligne de fuite musicale' (ibid.) theypropose. The titlesofmany ofRimbaud's prose poems are immediately suggestive in aCelinian context, but Lafont's artful choice of quotations allows the latter toacquire an unexpected resonance. To excellent effect, Mort a credit and Rimbaud's poetry are read together in termsof the temptation each writer expe riencedwith regard to theopposing genre,while theall-important figureofRobinson in Voyage ispresented as the reincarnation ofRimbaud in a contemporary setting. Moliere's presence is related toCeline's obsession with 'imposture' and towhat Lafont suggestively terms his 'principe Alceste' (p. 35). The playwright is also seen to provide a context for the interplay ofmedicine and writing, albeit with Celine failing tomaintain his predecessor's satirical detachment ('il s'est pris au piege de ses propres hallucinations, telun medecin imaginaire, personnage qu'il joue malgre lui a laperfection' (p. 29)). Other scholars have related Celine's concept of 'feerie' to seventeenth-century stage entertainments, but Lafont provides a compelling demon stration of his thwarteddesire forthepastoral; her discussion has theadded interestof incorporating an extensive consideration of his ballet-scenarios. Ultimately, though, it is theway Rimbaud andMoliere are seen as conjoined intertextual presences that allows Lafont toconveymost acutely Celine's originality. Lyric poetry and theatre are seen to exert an attraction rooted in an oscillation between fusion and separateness, thereby illuminating an ceuvre inwhich, stillmore generally, generic boundaries are alternately invoked and breached in a search fora formofwriting thataccommodates differingcultural forms,both verbal and non-verbal. This energetic study engages impressivelywith the totalityofCeline's output and undoubtedly has the capacity to be illuminating. That said, Lafont's disinclination to stand back from the specifics of textual demonstration leads to an argument that is more allusive (and elusive) than one might have wished. The reader is,none the less, offered awealth of detailed aperfus, e.g. the resonance inCeline's work of the name 'Arthur'; theplethora of references to feet inVoyage; or the tracing of the discussion of turnips and radishes inEn attendant Godot back to Mort cacredit.The invocation ofDeleuze and Guattari's rhizome fails,however, to acknowledge Greg Hainge's Ca pitalism and Schizophrenia in theLater Novels ofLouis-Ferdinand Celine (New York: Peter Lang, 200oI),where the concept is central to the thesis propounded. SELWYN COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE MICHAEL TILBY Love, Desire and Transcendence in French Literature: Deciphering Eros. By PAUL GIFFORD. Aldershot:Ashgate. 2005. 345PP. ?55. ISBN 978-0-7546-5269-4. The power of erotico-romantic love has fascinated and confounded Western thinkers and writers since Plato. Deciphering Eros is,Paul Gifford tells us, a 'mastermotif' (p. I) ofWestern contemporary consciousness. Gifford begins his fascinating study with a quotation fromPaul Valery: 'Who will decipher the enigma of thismadness? Such frenzywas not necessary to thepropagation of species', and proposes to follow itsdeciphering through interlinked and progressive readings of ten twentieth-century French writers: Proust, Valery, Claudel, Breton, Bataille, Duras, Barthes, Irigaray, Emmanuel, and Kristeva. Gifford's reading ispreceded by fiveliterary-historical essays which serve as frames of reference and grounding texts.They cover Plato's Symposium, thebiblical Song of Songs and Genesis, the troubadours, and Rousseau, toculminate in the crisis ofEros and Nietszche's 'death ofGod'. II64 Reviews The Symposium gives the matrix of love and desire and contains the triadof themes implied in the title.Eros bridges the gap between subject and object, theworld of appearances and the eternal world; itpoints to something 'beyond', a transcending object, an eternal beauty the soul remembers and yearns for.This ultimate object finds a woman's voice in the Song of Songs and her words are the expression of universal love, but woman, themythic incarnation of Beauty in the Song, had been the incarnation of sin inGenesis, and desire is thus a 'shadow' profiled against the brilliance of the creator. With Christianity, love becomes the love of the dying god. Agape is the reflection ofGod's...