Persephone Unbound: Dionysian Aesthetics in the Works of Anna de Noailles by Anna de Noailles , Catherine Perry (review)

Abstract

MLRy ioo.i, 2005 217 ments in the hypotexts, the role ofthe young girl, shifts of meaning. The reworkings of Perrault are not tales of adjustment to reality (Bettelheim is judiciously used) but the dangerous indulgence of fantasies; 'La Barbe-bleue' becomes a tale of masochism in 'La Voluptueuse' (Le Livre de Monelle). The interplay of contemporary voices in La Croisade des enfants deforms the Middle Ages and is very much the work of an erudite agnostic of 1895, drawing on Galland's Mille et une nuits and the Pied Piper as much as on historical sources. Schwob's tales show the hostile twists of fate; his artists and writers, his paradoxical protagonists, are masks forthe author; the failure of char? acters to achieve salvation or awareness betrays an underlying pessimism. Lhermitte also demonstrates the consistent technique of Schwob's rewritings: stylization, the reliance on stereotype, the creation of thematic unity,the use of intensified antitheses, of ellipsis to create ambiguity. Many of these techniques are arguably those of the nouvelle of the period and reinforce the observations of Florence Goyet, although she is not mentioned. The length and detail of the study mean that the whole volume will probably only be read by specialists, but anyone interested in fin de siecle fiction will be well served by the index, which leads to the discussion of individual tales, and by the comprehensive bibliography. University of Southampton Peter Cogman Persephone Unbound: Dionysian Aesthetics in the Works of Anna de Noailles. By Catherine Perry. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press; London: Associated University Presses. 2003. 455 pp. $75. ISBN 0-8387-5499-6. Anna de Noailles, as Catherine Perry notes, has 'virtually disappeared fromthe French cultural memory' (p. 15). Her poetry, acclaimed from the instant success oiLe Coeur innombrable(1901), fell out of favour with the rise of Modernism, and is largely inaccessible today. If she is appreciated, it is as a poet of Romantic inspiration and pagan intensity and as a representative of 'feminine poetry' of the time. Perry's study,based on comprehensive knowledge of Noailles's prose works and poetry, aims to correct these stereotypes and to show the paradoxes of her poetry, the shifts in attitude to key preoccupations (nature, the durability of poetry, death) that occur over a career of some fortyyears, and the modernity of her lyric voice, obscured by the traditional verse patterns she adopted. Four lengthy chapters focus on different issues. The first explores her debt to Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, transformed and adapted to her own ends, not just in general terms (a commonplace since her work firstappeared), but through speci? fic echoes and adjustments. Chapter II outlines her reception as a 'feminine' poet, contrasting this with the more complex reality of a poet for whom nature was not necessarily feminine, and whose response to it (characterized by Dionysian intensity, a sometimes playful eroticism, and violence) varies considerably from poem to poem, both celebrating nature and recognizing its autonomy and destructiveness. Chap? ter III is comparative, demonstrating her distinctiveness from the male Romantic tradition (Lamartine, Hugo). Close readings of individual poems, attentive to their imagery and metre, bring out their contrasting agendas (the control of the rational mind in Lamartine's Meditations and Noailles's submission to the apparent disorder of multiple sensory perceptions). Chapter IV, examining the emotional interdependence and mutual reinforcement of inspiration shown in Noailles's relationship with Maurice Barres, is the only one in which biographical detail is central: Perry shows the effectson Barres's works as well as on Noailles's. The conclusion, focusingon Les Vivants et les morts(1913), makes an excellent case for the simplicity and restraint of this collection, read as a definitive disabused contemplation of life. 218 Reviews Perry's study is not always easy to read: the extensive notes at times show a tangential digressiveness; at the same time discussion in the text itself is often delayed by the inclusion of qualifications or associative leaps that would have figured more ap? propriately in a note. Extended quotations of verse are given in French, with English translations, but quotations of prose and isolated lines of verse in the text appear only in a sometimes gallicized English, which...