Poetic writing in contemporary French scientific thought

Belavina Ekaterina ORCID: 0000-0002-4038-7815 PhD in Philology Associate Professor; Faculty of Philology; Lomonosov Moscow State University 119331, Russia, Moscow, Lomonosovsky district, Kravchenko str., 12, sq. 22 kat-belavina@yandex.ru

The task of preserving and transmitting experience has been faced by mankind in all ages, attention to the work of memory has been characteristic of poets from antiquity to the present. The mnemonics of verse, based on repetitions and differences in sound, based on the physical characteristics of sound, were developed by each culture into national versification systems. Poetic language develops techniques that promote memorization, which change along with society and its cultural practices.

The creator of mediology, Regis Debre ^[25], contrasts two complementary registers, such as synchrony (relevance, speed) and diachrony (long time, imprint, eternity), as “information for use” and “values and knowledge for memory.” An important point is the “propagation vector”: the communication register refers to a technical device (dispositive technique) through which OM (organized matter) is available for perception. In the case of transfer, a “device + institution” is needed: organized matter and a materialized organization. In the transmission register, everything is aimed at overcoming the time frame: the “future addressee” (belonging to the same line of “offspring”, consistent co-existence; the need for symbolic change for communication through generations ^{[4, p. 34]}.

For a modern person, the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame de Paris are two symbols not only of the capital, but of the whole of France. At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, the controversy surrounding the construction of the Eiffel Tower presented them as antagonists: Notre Dame de Paris embodied the continuity of tradition, the Iron Lady ushered in a New Century, technocracy, and the avant-garde.

In a famous letter from protesting artists in 1887, it was Notre Dame de Paris that stood at the forefront of a series of cultural heritage monuments that were allegedly threatened by the presence of the Eiffel Tower towering over Paris ^[33]. In a reply letter, Gustave Eiffel was ironic and remarked that for those who want to admire the cathedral, the tower would not hurt at all ^[28]. The contradictions of aesthetic concepts stopped focusing on these two architectural monuments. Notre Dame Cathedral, considered ugly in Hugo's time, has been restored (largely thanks to the novel of the same name) and has taken a strong place in the cultural heritage of France. Notre Dame de Paris found itself at the center of the mediological discourse avant la lettre, about organized matter, which is the carrier of memory: in the chapter “This will kill that” ("Ceci tuera cela") ^[29] Hugo considers in diachrony the idea that typography will kill architecture.

The problem of exteriorizing experience and recording it is at the core of all art. The technical and social changes that influenced the practice of transmitting written text produced changes in the language of poetry similar to those described by Hugo in his novel Notre Dame de Paris (1831). Hugo chooses the 15th century for his novel, a turning point in the history of European culture, before which, in his opinion, architecture was the great book of mankind. Debre in his book “Introduction to Mediology” is based on Hugo's words about the mode of transmission from generation to generation.:

“Until the 15th century, architecture was the main chronicle of mankind; during this period of time, there was not a single complex thought in the whole world that would not express itself in a building; every publicly available idea, like every religious law, had its monument; everything significant that the human race thought about, it imprinted in stone. And why? Because every idea, whether religious or philosophical, strives to perpetuate itself; in other words, having stirred up one generation, it wants to stir up others and leave a mark on itself." [quoted from 4 p.52]

The concepts of trace and memory have become key to modern psychology and philosophy. In Freud's "Note on the Miraculous Block" (1925), he formulated the problem of two types of graphic fixation of writing: a sheet of paper can keep writing for a long time, but it fills up quickly, but a slate from which everything can be erased can accept writing indefinitely, calling res externa the receptive surface of devices for classical writing. ^[18] The restriction formulated by Freud was lifted in the era of a computerized, digitized industry. The advantages of a sheet and a slate are combined in an electronic medium that stores many copies, potentially available for reproduction on a sheet at any time.

One of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century. Jacques Derrida, referring to the writing process as a "scene", considers the metaphors that Freud uses ("Sketch" 1895; "Note on the Miraculous Block", 1925), and uses visual (spatial) metaphors himself: "there is a strange movement, namely, the problem of paving the way more and more it comes closer to the metaphor of writing with ice” ^{[7, p. 339]}.

Derrida, who has been interested in voice since the early 1960s (La voix et le phénomène 1967) ^[5], is surprised by Freud's approach, since everything oral and phonetic is, as it were, put out of brackets: “It is no coincidence that at crucial moments in his scientific career, Freud, willingly resorting to metaphorical models, borrows them not from oral language, not from speech forms, or even from phonetic writing, but from the field of graphic forms, which in no way subordinate to oral speech, do not precede it or follow it. Freud turns to the help of such signs, which by no means serve to convey living speech in its entirety, self-identity and autocracy” ^{[7, p. 336]}. Derrida also refers to the concepts of presence, voice, trace and writing in the duality of the visual and auditory information transmission channel in other works.

In an essay on Husserl's phenomenology ^[5], Derrida develops and critically comprehends the positions of the German philosopher, addresses the problem of voice as presence, hearing, subjectivity and communication: “The voice simulates the preservation of presence. <...> The phenomenological voice was this spiritual flesh that continues to speak and be real to itself. <The ideality of an object can only be expressed in an element whose phenomenality has no mundane form. The name of this element is voice. We can hear the voice. Phonetic signs are heard by the subject who suggests them in the absolute proximity of their present. The unity of sound and voice is the only case where the distinction between the mundane and the transcendental escapes; it also makes this distinction possible (italics – J. D.)" ^{[5, p. 101]}). Derrida's concept of "the metaphysics of presence" ^[12], which is key to understanding the subject, is revealed in the auditory modality of perception.

The question of what writing is is posed by semiotic and cultural critic Roland Barthes in the first part of the essay “The Zero Degree of Writing” (1953). Barth focuses on the process of signification: “Language and style are objects, writing is a function" [1 p.56]. Having considered the features of political writing, roman writing, Barth asks the question “Does poetic writing exist?” (part IV) and gives a paradoxical definition: “In the classical era, prose and poetry were like mathematical quantities, the difference between them could be measured; they were no more or less distant from each other than two different numbers - comparable to each other, but not the same precisely because of their quantitative differences. If minimal speech, the most economical way to convey thoughts, is called prose, and some specific linguistic attributes, such as meter, rhyme, or a set of generally accepted images, are designated with the letters a, b, c, then on the surface the entire set of words will fit into a system of two equations. Mr. Jourdain:

Poetry = Prose + A + b + c

Prose = Poetry - a - b - c” [1 p. 71]

Barth is annoyed about syllabic poetry, denying all rhymed metrics a special way of meaning: “In the classical era, the word “poetic” did not denote either a special range, a special density of human experiences, or special internal connections, or any closed, special world at all" [1 p. 72]. Contrasting classical syllabics with modern poetry Barth counts down from Rimbaud: “It is known that in modern poetry (the one that goes back to Baudelaire, not Rimbaud) there is nothing left of this structure [...]” [1 p.72].

Barthes' spatial (closed world) and kinesthetic (density of experiences) metaphors indicate the problem of changing the code (poetics), which the thinker feels as a mental discomfort that does not allow him to feel interest in the “old” code. This passage indicates the need for “a project of sociological poetics, which was accepted for development in the Bakhtin circle almost a hundred years ago”, “the urgent need to understand the aesthetic as a kind of social, and the social in internal connection with the sensually aesthetic”^[1] [3 p. 5.].

Writer, poet, Georges-Emmanuel Clancier (1914-2018), author of the anthology From Chenier to Baudelaire, responding to the debate surrounding Barthes' essay “The Zero Degree of Writing", refuses to deny continuity, arguing that it is impossible to love Rimbaud, Mallarmet, Verlaine without loving Chenier, Lamartine, Hugo, Musset it is impossible to love Eluard without loving Vigne, Nerval, Baudelaire^[2] [22 p. 13]. The metaphors that the poet uses indicate the dual nature of reading a poetic text, implying visual and auditory modes of perception. Clancier points out the need for the ability to read and hear: “ [...] si, impur, la poésie d'un Chénier, d'un Lamartine, d'un Vigny, d'un Hugo, d'un Bertrand, d'un Borel, n'atteint pas l'intemporelle jeunesse des vers de Marceline Desbordes-Valmore, de Nerval ou de Baudelaire, elle n'est est pas moins vivant, pour peu que nos yeux sachent la lire de nouveau et nos cœurs l'entendre malgré cette “célébrité qui tend à nous faire détourner notre regard prêt à ne voir que mornes et vains statues là où nous attendant des étres proches" [22 p. 13]. This is another evidence of the emergence of a new type of reader, with a new type of perception, for whom the recognized poetic masterpieces of the 19th century were inaccessible. The metaphor of gloomy and vain statues shows that the exteriorization of experience (writing) does not evoke empathy, an emotionally involved perception.

The mediology of Regis Debray, which puts architectural monuments and books on a par, raises the question of the information carrier for this letter, which have been modified in the history of mankind (stone, clay tablets, microfilms, CD-room, etc.) ^{[4, p. 66]}.

Writing, depending on the medium, may involve different reading situations. For example, the eccentric poet Alphonse Alley, one of the authors of the cabaret magazine Le Chat Noir, makes it absurd to want to read poetry with his eyes when the opportunity to listen to the author who is nearby is ignored.:

- Quel, ce poème?

-Ce sont des vers que j’ai écrit sur^[3] le toit en chaume de la maison ou je suis né.

-Une drôle d’idée, vraiment ! Et pas banale pour un sou! […]

- Parfaitement… Eh bien, un de ces jours, je pousserai en bicyclette jusqu’à Lieu-Godet et je prendrai connaissance de votre poème… Vous avez une échelle, chez vous ?

- Une échelle ? Pour faire, une échelle ?

- Dame, pour grimper sur le vieux toit en chaume de la maison ou vous êtes né, w sur lequel vous avez eu la fichue idée décrire ces vers…

-Mais, monsieur…

- Car, enfin, c’est une fichue idée ! Vous ne pouvez donc pas faire comme tout le monde et écrie vos vers sur du papier ?” [32 p. 139]

Regis Debre draws attention to writing practices and their media, calling the material form a paratext that helps organize the text” ^{[4, p. 70]}, a form necessary for archiving lived experiences for transmission to the next generations.

For poetry, according to Heidegger, the crossing of time boundaries is the most important characteristic of the text: “Poetry is the foundation/justification through the word and in the word. What is justified in this way? The eternal. But can the eternal be justified/established/created (gestiftet werden)? Isn't it something that's always available? No! It is the imperishable that must be made stable against its demolition” ^{[19, p. 15]}.

Derrida focuses on the concept of a trace, considering it to be associated with writing. The trace of an encounter with the world remains in memory, and this experience can be externalized through writing. A trace is an intermediate stage between presence and absence, a potential opportunity to preserve memory.

Writing, which is the process of transcoding experience (the inner trace of encountering the world) while creating an object accessible to other people's perception systems, appears as one of the ways to “produce” a trace and brings Derrida to the key concept of “difference": “All these differences in the production of a trace can be understood as moments of difference" [7 p. 340].

The discussion of writing, about poetic writing, is at the center of philosophical questions of the 20th century, in connection with the work of memory. Derrida draws attention to writing as a response to distrust of memory in Freud's discourse: "If I do not trust my memory [...] I can supplement and insure [...] its function by providing myself with a written trace [...]. In this case, the surface that perceives the trace, a notebook or a piece of paper, turns, so to speak, into a materialized part [...] of the mnesic apparatus [...]), which I invisibly carry within myself. It is enough for me to remember the place where I have safely stored the "memory" recorded in this way, and I can "reproduce" it at any time at my own discretion; I am sure that it will not be damaged and will avoid any distortions to which it would probably have been subjected in my memory" [7 p. 336]. The study of the way a trace is placed – the manner of writing – is not limited to logocetric models.

In the phenomenology of speech proposed by Merleau-Ponty, two modes are involved in the process of writing (écriture): logos is a letter (logos) and phusis is a letter (phusis). Merleau-Ponty first introduced this term in a public lecture in Brussels in 1951 [23 p. 50].

Derrida refers to the term “fusis”: "Since the emergence of the antithesis of physis/nomos, physis/techne, this opposition has been transmitted down to the present day along a historical chain, which throughout its entire course presupposed the opposition of "nature" to law, institution, art, technology, but also freedom, self-rule, history, society, spirit, etc."[8 p. 413]

The concept of phusis writing is considered by the French semiotic Jean-Claude Cocke, who correlates culture with logos, and nature with phusis ^[23],[24], pointing out that Benveniste's path of thought goes in the opposite direction from the structuralists' approach. Benveniste suggests an inductive method (from consequence to principle, as opposed to Heilmslev and Greimas): “If we reason inductively, trying to clarify the initial model of the relationship between language and writing, we will see that the general evolution of well-known graphic systems follows the path of subordination of writing to language"^[4] [20 p. 115].

The concept of a sign is contrasted with the concept of a trace, which does not mean anything, but preserves the memory of the presence, of the encounter of the subject (in his corporeality) with the world. The author builds his narrative or poetic discourse using the possibilities of language, a linguistic code that can be read and perceived after a long time beyond the limits of the author's life, can be transcoded into other linguistic codes (translated) or adapted into other systems (in other forms of art). But at the same time, in writing, whether it is intransitive or classical, there is a part that escapes the dualism of the sign. It cannot be recoded. It is this part of the writing that is the focus of the anthropological theory of rhythm. Writing in its historicity, in its relation to memory^[5], occupies a central place in the anthropological theory of rhythm by the French thinker Henri Meshonnik, whose legacy includes versatile, multifaceted interdisciplinary research. Literary history and theory, philosophy and linguistics underlie his methodology of studying rhythm, which is present in his works on literary theory and translation.

Within the “French theory", a special branch is represented by the anthropological theory of rhythm, which contrasted the concepts of intertextuality with the concepts of forme-sens (form-meaning) and lecture-écriture (reading-writing) for interpretation in the process of reading-writing, reading the act of writing, the genesis of the text, and décentrement (“decentering") for explication of the poetics of the process translation, which is a "movement towards another" by comparing with it.

The greatest modern French poet Henri Meshonnik (1932-2009) entered the intellectual life during the transition from structuralism to post-structuralism in France. In French literary criticism, the figure of Henri Meshonnik stands alone. G.K. Kosikov called Meshonnik a “moderate” structuralist: “The title of his first work, Pour la poétique, speaks in favor of this [10 p.6]. However, as a professor at the University of Paris VIII, originally called the Vincennes Experimental University Center, Meshonnik sought to go beyond the framework of the structure. Yulia Marichik, a translator of Meshonnik into Russian, emphasizes the consistent polemic of the thinker's concept in relation to structuralism: “From that moment on and throughout his life, he struggled with structuralism, the structuralist approach to text analysis and its theoretical legacy. The French scientist is the author of a complex theory of rhythm, a unique poetics that explores not the meanings generated by an artistic text, but the ways of signification" ^{[13, p. 110]}.

The works of the French linguist, literary theorist, translator, poet Henri Meshonnik (1932, Paris — 2009, Villejuive) continue to influence the sciences of language: his books are being republished, translated into various languages, and become the subject of scientific research. ^{[2],[13],[21]}. The descendant of emigrants from Chisinau managed to create an original theory of rhythm, implicitly bringing the subtleties of Russian poetry into French thought.

During the heyday of structuralism, when the works of Russian formalists were introduced into the field of scientific research in France, the works of Jacobson, Polivanov^[6], Tynyanov, Bogatyrev were translated, and the scientific community was surprised to discover the connection between structuralism (today) and formalism (its historical source), in the 60s and 70s. Henri Meshonnik He began to create a system that was completely different from the resonance research of that time. He was interested in things that didn't fit into the structure, the scheme, the dualism of the sign., it surpassed and overflowed over the edges: the subjectivity and historicity of the statement expressed in any speech, merged with it.

The attention to stress in French verse studies of the 20th century is connected with the phonetic turn in philology, as well as with the works of Russian and Soviet scientists, in particular Evgeny Dmitrievich Polivanov (1891-1938), who studied the laws of versification based on the material of different languages. Polivanov, along with Yakubinsky, was one of the founders of OPOYAz and its active participant. His interests included abstruse poetry, the work of V. V. Mayakovsky, and the poetry of the peoples of the world. Polivanov analyzed the phonetic figures of poetic speech organization: “

“zaum", as a principle, or as a special (independent) subspecies of poetic plays, exists and has every right to exist precisely as the purest or most poetic (if we proceed from our definition above) type of poetry: in “zaumi" (according to kr<at least in the “zaumi” of the ideal type — without meaningful words), all the creative energy of the author and all the attention of the perceiver (reader or listener) are directed to the formal (sound) side of speech.”” [16 p. 62]

For example, he could compare the Mordovian chorus with Victor Hugo's quatrain in phonemic composition.:

For example, let us refer, firstly, to the Mordovian refrain we quoted above (the only theme of which, as we see, boils down to a condensed “echo” of the sounds j, v, x), and, secondly, to the refrain from French artificial poetry.: I'm taking the chorus from a song in “Notre Dame de Paris” Victor Hugo:

Grève, aboie, Grève, grouille,

File, about file, ma quenouille,

File sa corde au bourreau ,

Qui siffle dans le préau.” [16 c. 63]

Polivanov uses transcription to deduce repetitions of pronounced sounds rather than letters, and studies the patterns of repetitions in different languages.

Graphic schemes of Polivanov's consonant repeats formed the basis of the original theory of rhythm by Meshonnik and Desson, which includes the concept of prosodic stress ^[27],[12]. Polivanov's articles from the 1930s were published in Russian in 1960, and translated into English in 1974 ^[32]. The study of zaumi in comparison with the systems of versification of different cultures leads to the question of whether any poetic writing is perceived as zaumi in the absence of linguistic competencies for reading logos writing (when listening to poetry in an unfamiliar language). French versifiers believe that it was Polivanov who managed to reflect the principles of European verlibra: “Ce qui rend peut-être le mieux compte du phénomène. Français et européen, du vers libre, est le principe de Polivanov" [27 p. 103]. Combining the efforts of Russian and French versifiers and linguists opened up new ways of researching poetic writing.

Poetic writing, which inherits the oral poetic tradition, has the specificity of signification processes: when perceiving a visual object (reading a linguistic code), the reader has a mental auditory image of the text. The specifics of writing (trace, Derrida) varied depending on the historical epoch, in particular, on the available means of writing (external material storage media, Debra).

The subject in the communication register, verbally exteriorizing his experience of meeting the world, gives him a voice (mise en voix, mise en page), sends a message that can have transformative power (speech, text, performance, critical or scientific article, translation, adaptation, translation, etc.), can receive a response a message, a response that will have transformative power (critical article, discussion, translation, etc.). In the transmission register, the author's externalized experience, which has transformative power, is preserved by society (libraries, citations, adaptations) and can transcend time frames and leave a mark. Poetic writing in its historicity requires a departure from the dualism of the sign (logocentric model, logos-writing) and the study of rhythm in the process of signification during the genesis and interpretation of the text (physis-writing).

The anthropological theory of rhythm, put forward by Henri Meshonnik in the 80s, was built taking into account Russian formalists (Jacobson, Polivanov, Tynyanov, Bogatyrev), but coming into conflict with the structuralist approach, analyzed poetic writing in its historicity, which can be called a response to the anthropological turn in the humanities and preparation for a sociological turn in literary studies, which allowed the development of phenomenological and receptive criticism. Paradoxically, the Russian roots of Meshonnik's theory of poetry made it difficult for him to be accepted in our country, since it created the illusion of a familiar approach and it was difficult to grasp the originality of his approach to rhythm analysis. The use of his concepts of historicity and subjectivity in combination with phenomenological concepts (voice, presence, writing), as well as the study of the material medium for the dissemination of works can become an effective tool for analyzing poetic writing.

^[1] Venediktova T. D. “Literature as experience, or the “Bourgeois reader" as a cultural hero.” M. New Literary Review, 2018. p. 5.

^[2] “cette poésie – celle des “célébrités” injustement dédaignées, et celle des “oubliés” injustement délaissés – nourrit de sa sève ce que nous aimons dans Rimbaud, Mallarmé ou Verlaine, dans Corbière, Laforgue ou Jarry, Apollinaire, Fargue ou Jammes. Autrement dit, si l’on aime Apollinaire, Aragon, on ne peut pas ne pas aimer Chénier, Lamartine, Hugo, Musset, si l’on aime Eluard, on ne peut pas ne pas aimer : Vigny, Nerval, Forneret ou Baudelaire; si l’on aime Claudel, Saint-John-Perse, on ne peut pas ne pas aimer Chateaubriand, Hugo etc…

^[3] A wordplay based on the polysemy of the preposition (sur) Sur le toit – on the roof, on the roof.

^[4] « Si nous raisonnions par induction pour essayer de retrouver le model premier du rapport entre langue et écriture, nous voyons que l’évolution générale des systèmes graphiques connus va vers la subordination de l’écriture à la langue”.

^[5] Perhaps Meshonnik was familiar with B. Livshits's preface to the book of translations “French Lyrics of the XIX-XX centuries”: “Our poetry strives to develop a new style, the old schools are collapsing, the principles of socialist realism are winning. More and more often we turn to the classics. And here we have a book dedicated to French poetry, from Lamartine to Eluard. Several classics— Hugo, Lamartine, Alfred de Musset, Barbier, and next to them again there are names familiar from the old Libra and Apollo numbers)), from declarations and literary manifestos of symbolism, from articles by acmeists, from translations by Bryusov and Sologub, Voloshin, Vyacheslav Ivanov and Balmont. Is it worth going back to that? Do we need it? Is it useful to revive interest in French symbolism? Is it worth it should we start talking about the Parnassians and the "damned poets" again, about Theophile Gautier and Maurice Rollin, about Tristan Corbiere and Leconte de Lisle? These poets were understandable to the bygone generation.” [11 p. 3]

^[6] The works of the Soviet scientist were so popular that the scientific community and the publishing house “Cercle Polivanov” were organized. The works of this community relate mainly to the poetic language. [Mezura. Forme et mesure. Cercle Polivanov, pour Jacques Roubaud/Mélanges, n° 49, Paris, Inalco, 2001]