“Poetry, Space and Deleuze in Jacques Réda’s L’Improviste”
Subject Area
French and Francophone Studies
Abstract
How does the poet orchestrate through words? In painting, we appreciate a composition’s line, color and volume; in music, how instrumental lines establish a sonic texture, develop themes and interweave through counterpoint. In poetry, and especially in poetry inspired by music and that seeks to create a musical effect, how does a word serve as an agent of disruption or union, a bearer of cadence, an emissary of color such that it becomes an orchestral expression composed of choral patternings? And how do these expressions bring space into being? This paper considers these questions in Jacques Réda’s collection of poetry and prose on jazz, L’Improviste (1990).
From Réda’s earliest writings space has been the imaginative force through which he expresses a dynamic relation to the eruptive and discontinuous fabric of contemporary life. While the critical literature and Réda’s writing reflect the importance of space—urban, monumental, everyday—in his work, there has been less study on how the structure of his poetic language—rhythmic, syntactic, semantic— and how his writing inspired by jazz open new spatial perspectives. Because concepts such as the ritournelle and deterritorialization from Deleuze and Guattari’s Mille Plateaux (1980) provide a useful point of entry to Réda’s creative process, I will draw on these approaches in considering how the relation of music and poetry in this collection creates the inherently spatial perspectives which they term “paysages mélodiques” (391).
Brief Bio Note
Lynn Anderson received her Ph.D. in French from Princeton University and is Associate Professor of French at the University of West Georgia. Her articles have appeared in Romanic Review, Romance Quarterly, Dalhousie French Studies and L’Érudit franco-espagnol. Her research interests include the structure of poetic language, the relation between poetry and space, the visual arts and literature, and film studies.
Keywords
Contemporary French poetry, Jazz, Space, Improvisation, Deleuze, Deterritorialization
Location
Coastal Georgia Center
Presentation Year
2016
Start Date
4-7-2016 3:30 PM
End Date
4-7-2016 3:50 PM
Embargo
11-8-2015
Recommended Citation
Anderson, Lynn S., "“Poetry, Space and Deleuze in Jacques Réda’s L’Improviste”" (2016). South East Coastal Conference on Languages & Literatures (SECCLL). 78.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/seccll/2016/2016/78
“Poetry, Space and Deleuze in Jacques Réda’s L’Improviste”
Coastal Georgia Center
How does the poet orchestrate through words? In painting, we appreciate a composition’s line, color and volume; in music, how instrumental lines establish a sonic texture, develop themes and interweave through counterpoint. In poetry, and especially in poetry inspired by music and that seeks to create a musical effect, how does a word serve as an agent of disruption or union, a bearer of cadence, an emissary of color such that it becomes an orchestral expression composed of choral patternings? And how do these expressions bring space into being? This paper considers these questions in Jacques Réda’s collection of poetry and prose on jazz, L’Improviste (1990).
From Réda’s earliest writings space has been the imaginative force through which he expresses a dynamic relation to the eruptive and discontinuous fabric of contemporary life. While the critical literature and Réda’s writing reflect the importance of space—urban, monumental, everyday—in his work, there has been less study on how the structure of his poetic language—rhythmic, syntactic, semantic— and how his writing inspired by jazz open new spatial perspectives. Because concepts such as the ritournelle and deterritorialization from Deleuze and Guattari’s Mille Plateaux (1980) provide a useful point of entry to Réda’s creative process, I will draw on these approaches in considering how the relation of music and poetry in this collection creates the inherently spatial perspectives which they term “paysages mélodiques” (391).
