The Architecture of Absence through Metaphor

Abstract

Michel Leiris suggests in Manhood that poetic structurelike the canon, which is only a hole surrounded by steelcan be based only on one does not have; and that ultimately one can write only to fill in a void...' The notion of a poetic structure based on what one does not have ranges from such vast 20th century architectures as Kafka's The Castle, to more particular domains in contemporary French and American poetry. The metaphorical suggestion of absence confronts Kafka's protagonist on the first page of the novel.