Poets as Readers in Nineteenth-Century France: Critical Reflections. Edited by Joseph Acquisto, Adrianna M. Paliyenko, and Catherine Witt

Abstract

Long before Mme Rimbaud implored Georges Izambard not to let her son read anything more by Victor Hugo, there was great interest in what poets (and some future poets) read: for the potential influence of external reading on their own writing; for the presence in their poems of destinataires (ideal readers and others); and for the reverse-engineering of their understanding of the act of reading, rendered in new verses. Drawing on recent studies of literacy rates, readership trends, and book publishing, this volume’s twelve essays focus on individual case studies that illustrate many of the threads connecting poets to their readers. Whilst pushing beyond literary studies to consider the political, social, and cultural dimensions of poetic acts, this solid and coherent collection also offers a reminder of the breadth and evolution of French poetry from 1830 to 1900, its divergent approaches, and its cast of characters. If the usual suspects are certainly here — as Rosemary Lloyd’s opening essay demonstrates, it’s hard to imagine discussing nineteenth-century French poets as readers without Mallarmé taking centre stage — there are also important essays on less obvious writers, such as E. S. Burt’s insightful analysis of Nerval’s ‘Les Nuits d’Octobre’ and Aimée Boutin’s on Amable Tastu writing on (and reading) Shelley. Not surprisingly, Baudelaire also plays a pivotal role: as Timothy Raser deftly shows, he is one of the sources of three concurrent and related poems about Cythera; for Catherine Witt, he provides a fount of satire and critique in ‘Au lecteur’; Joseph Acquisto shows how his true colours come to light as Gautier describes them, albeit unwittingly and via Hawthorne; and Helen Abbott argues for a new appreciation of his work made possible by cross-aesthetic renderings. Poets whom we could call ‘Lecteurs maudits’ are here, too, explicated in strong analyses by Robert St. Clair (Rimbaud and Verlaine) and Nicolas Valazza (Verlaine and Coppée), before three unrelated but no less compelling chapters: by Adrianna M. Paliyenko on Malvina Blanchecotte and Louise Ackermann as poets, readers, and critics; by David Evans on the tensions between poetry’s rich oral/aural tradition and the increasing dominance of the printed word; and by Kevin Newmark on (Benjamin reading) Valéry reading Baudelaire (and Mallarmé). This volume raises fundamental questions about poetry as performance and as phenomenon, about the aesthetics of creation, and about the (real and perceived) relationships between writing and reading, poet and reader of poetry, and poetry’s aural traditions and its transposition into written form. Mme Rimbaud might have been right to try to keep dangerous texts out of young Arthur’s hands; readers of French poetry ever since have been grateful to Izambard for not heeding the request of a meddling parent. We owe just as much gratitude to this volume’s contributors for their thoughtful considerations of the complex relationship between reading and writing poetry, with all its perils and riches.