Abstract
Paris: A Poem by Hope Mirrlees is a modernist ‘curiosity’ which remained largely unknown due to the peculiar conditions of its original publication. In recent years, however, it has regained its place within the field of modernist studies due to the efforts of Julia Briggs and Sandeep Parmar. Instead of approaching the poem through established categories of urban representation, such as flânerie, urban phantasmagoria or the urban palimpsest, this article focuses on Paris, then in the midst of the 1919 Peace Conference, as a liminal space and site of Bakhtinian carnival. This framework advances an understanding of the poem as a complete and complex work of art. The article argues that the peculiar structure and formal organization of the poem, and its relation to the reality of Paris in 1919 and beyond, turns the poem into a liminal space of its own, thus doubling the city it speaks of.
Highlights
Paris: A Poem by Hope Mirrlees is a modernist ‘curiosity’ which remained largely unknown due to the peculiar conditions of its original publication
Hope Mirrlees started working on Paris: A Poem in the spring of 1919, when she was staying in the French capital with her mentor and companion, the famous classical scholar, linguist and anthropologist Jane Harrison
The poem was published by Virginia and Leonard Woolf, with whom Mirrlees developed a close friendship, and was personally typeset by Virginia Woolf
Summary
Paris: A Poem by Hope Mirrlees is a modernist ‘curiosity’ which remained largely unknown due to the peculiar conditions of its original publication. Both contemporary scholars and the attendees of the conference often referred to the Paris of 1919 as ‘the capital of the world’ (MacMillan, 2001; Dillon, 1920), yet despite this grand title, Paris at that time was a conflicted and liminal space of its own, which is a theme Mirrlees inevitably picks up on in her poem.
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