Édith Boissonnas
What are the features of Baroque art? It is first of all innocence or at least the desire for innocence:
Couldn't I escape my tracks, botch
All the way back to a new life
Purer character — keyless character.
The second trait is demandingness. Baroque doesn't quite know what it wants, but it wants it strongly: both flight and solid weight on earth. Where does the neighborhood come from, without there ever being an amalgamation or fusion, of dream and reality. Édith Boissonnas never uses her dreams (as happened to the surrealists) to avoid the traps of rhetoric. It is the sudden transitions from icy fever to burning fever and from snow to fire, which defend it from dreams and which throw us into them.
What a cricket lost under the ashes and which lives
Long melancholy in the depths of so many winters.
A strong rigor follows. Because the poet defends himself from any alloy. He must be, contrary to the common adventure, timid in his dreams, bold in reality. Because :
There is no vagueness that does not conceal
The brutal outline of a stone.
It is a rigor so sensitive that it sometimes resembles anger: a virile and without outburst anger.
Amazing deified paltoquets fall
Descend into the velvety abyss, from where never
Only lifts the heavy brain...
However, baroque poetry, threatened by too many dangers, must be precise and strict. It is never improvised, but it is discontinuous; she has neither the long leashes nor the coherence of the classical or romantic poets. His poem sometimes has the appearance of a story:
Even in the desert we see these slugs
Covered with a transparent shell
The forests thickened, they were set on fire...
Elsewhere she uses certain tricks which before her only belonged to prose:
His colorless, somewhat faded life
From a sentimental point of view, of course.
It also happens that through care that she slips into preciousness and mannerism. And certain poems from Paysage cruel or Demeures are close to jumbles and bagnaudes:
There are so many leaves that turn
Nits, in the hollows to rot
Who can see again as he was
The being who put him in trances? ...
Sometimes too, we think of Rutebeuf (if Rutebeuf had known physics and psychoanalysis): it is the same naturalness in the alert and, in the confession, the same alarming rigor:
On living cards, queens and kings
Moving gently, we could hear their voices.
I say to my partner, have you seen that?
But she turns away and tells me to shut up.
Moreover, the Baroque offers some glorious names: in philosophy, Zeno, Kierkegaard; in the novel, Swift, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, Jarry. In poetry, Persia, d'Aubigné, John Donne...
These are men and we are tempted to add that with Édith Boissonnas it is finally the voice of a woman that we hear. Then we realize that it is any human who tells us in his poems what any human had not yet said. There is an astonishing word from Charles Lamb about this poet, Shakespeare, who is not so far from the Baroque: “Shakespeare resembled all men except in that he resembled all men.”
Jean Paulhan, 1950, in Complete Works, Tchou.
Resources
Edith Boissonnas in the Paulhan circle: lyricism and society, University of Neuchâtel
Edith Boissonnas, writing in its raw state, University of Neuchâtel
The free and daring life of Edith Boissonnas - Le Temps
See also, by Jean Paulhan :
Bibliography of texts published in the NRF
The texts below, published in La Nouvelle Revue Française, are grouped into four main sets: texts by Édith Boissonnas, notes and columns by the author, texts about the author, and, when available, translations by the author.
Texts by Édith Boissonnas
- Les Limaces, 1953-04-01
- Poèmes, 1955-01-01
- Poèmes, 1956-04-01
- En retard, 1957-11-01
- Proses, 1958-09-01
- L'Entonnoir, 1959-01-01
- Âme, 1959-08-01
- Limbe, 1961-03-01
- Mue, 1962-01-01
- En deçà, 1962-08-01
- Notes, 1963-07-01
- Poèmes, 1964-09-01
- L'Embellie, 1966-03-01
- Une approche indirecte, 1967-06-01
Notes by Édith Boissonnas
These texts by Édith Boissonnas may include reading notes, mood notes, performance reviews, miscellaneous pieces, or previously unpublished texts. They appeared in NRF sections such as Chronique des romans, L'air du mois, Le temps comme il passe, etc., or in tribute issues.
- Un poème, 1954-03-01, Les revues, les journaux
- Étrusques, 1955-12-01, Le temps, comme il passe
- L'Œuf, 1956-04-01, Le temps, comme il passe
- Tantale, 1958-07-01, Le temps, comme il passe
- Un hôte de choix, 1958-11-01, Le mois
- Autres vacances, 1959-11-01, Le mois
- Les peintures de Bernard Dufour (Galerie Pierre), 1960-05-01, Notes : les arts
- Correspondance, 1963-06-01, Le mois
- Vasarely, 1964-09-01, Notes : les arts
- Z. T., 1965-10-01, Notes : les arts
- Galets, 1966-11-01, Présences
Chronological distribution of texts published in the NRF (1908-1968)
This chart shows the chronological distribution of texts across the four categories defined above: Texts, Notes, Translations, and Texts about the author.
Bibliography of texts published in the journal Mesures
The texts below, published in the journal Mesures, are grouped into two sets: texts by Édith Boissonnas and texts translated by the author.
Texts by Édith Boissonnas
Bibliography of texts published in Les Cahiers de la Pleiade
The texts below, published in Les Cahiers de la Pleiade, are grouped into three sets: texts by Édith Boissonnas, texts translated by the author, and texts about the author.