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 love forhis creatures and itkeeps Eros contained. But the idealization and passionate yearning fora possession always deferred stays at the centre of twelfth-and thirteenth-century texts,and this longing develops into an exploration of ideas and sexuality in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, toemerge finally in itsdualistic formof sexual desire and desire of the spirit inRomantic texts.The nineteenth cen tury illustrates thenostalgia fora transcendent spiritual self that the subject attempts topossess through the experience of passion. The exalted reappropriation of ameta physical selfbyNietszsche inhis 'death ofGod' opens up theadventure ofmodernity and reveals the absence which lies at itscore. From Proust's 'idealized Eros', Valery's tension between the human need for transcendence and the knowledge of the im possibility forerotic passion to fulfil it, toClaudel's hope to resolve the tension by seeing in desire the key to the love of God, all these attempts at deciphering Eros leave pending the fundamental question: 'what is it that love seeks, above and beyond sexual possession; and what is fulfilment?' (p. I36). The same question lies behind the haunting Durassian Eros which transforms the love object into a 'metonymic actualization of the "Real thing"' (p. 324), an endlessly replaceable empty entity for the 'lostObject ofDesire'. From Proust to Kristeva, all the voices presented here are concerned with the triangular 'relation of self, other and Third Party' (p. 327) and its ambiguity. The final question remains perhaps 'that of knowing which we recognize better as an image of human potential: "love within thebounds of self-reflectingEros"' or "Eros re-informed byAgape?"' (p. 329). A short review ofGifford's book cannot do justice to such a complex work. Gif ford's precise, informed,detailed, and at times lyrical reading takesus readers through a fascinating literaryand theoretical journey inwhich 'we interpret the triangle, so, knowingly or unknowingly, we construct our loves and lives: and aswe construct our loves and our lives, sowe interpretEros' (p. 327). HOBART ANDWILLIAM SMITH COLLEGES MARIE-FRANCE ETIENNE Philippejaccottet: l'videncedu simple etl'clatde l'obscur. ByJEAN-CLAUDE MATHIEU. Paris: JoseCorti. 2003. 547 pp. E23. ISBN 978-2-7143-0826-9. This detailed study,encompassing Jaccottet's publications until 2002, presents a poet and prose writer who is gaining increasing critical attention. Jean-Claude Mathieu discusses the texts chronologically in an introduction of i50 pages that also sets out themotivating tensions in Jaccottet's work. Among these are thequestion of how the poet is to effacehimself as subject while attesting tonuance, particularly in thenatural world, and the difficultyof rendering faithfullya visible reality that isunderpinned by a sense of the invisible. Mathieu's lengthy account is punctuated by effective summaries that suggest how each volume takes Jaccottet's work in a new direction. Mathieu then revisits thework in short chapters grouped under threebroad head ings. 'L'Ecriture et la distance' considers doubt, mourning, and Jaccottet's engage MLR, 102.4, 2007 II65 ment with other writers as reader and critic. In 'Mesure du visible: les descriptions pensives' he presents the range of Jaccottet's prose writing, from meditative pieces to notebooks, andwhat these texts reveal about his sensitivity tochanges in the landscape and nature. The third section, 'Jalons dans l'ouvert: la resonance du chant', reads Jaccottet's delicate lyricism through discussion of prosody and the poetic subject. Mathieu's various approaches help tomake sense of the continuities and differences between Jaccottet's texts. Mathieu shows an extraordinary knowledge of Jaccottet's publications and, in scholarly footnotes, sets them in the context...