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Literature and ˜ought Robert Barsky W.T. Bandy Center … · 2017-04-23 · important role through...

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[Barsky continued] ... University, a long way, in virtually every regard, from the many Paris libraries and private collections in which one would expect to find works on this subject. Like many remarkable library or museum collections, those found in the W. T. Bandy Center because of unusual twists of fate, relating to particular individuals who worked in, or donated to, Vanderbilt’s French and Italian Department. Rather than focus upon the degree to which these events have created a Center that is, at it were, out of place, I’m much more interested in thinking about the works contained in this collection as being in America, in the South, and at Vanderbilt, and in so doing we are induced to consider what role these texts might have played for readers, and authors, in this part of the world. Vanderbilt University is itself fascinating in this regard, being the founding center for the Fugitive and Agrarian literary groups and the New Critics, who influenced generations of teachers and students involved in the reading and critiquing of literary texts, and as Faculty Director of this Center, I’d like to emphasize and discuss the situatedness of this collection, rather than imagining that we’re on a little island connected through language and culture to Paris, and that everything that surrounds this island is of parenthetical concern. Further, this collection is in America, in a part of the world in which the French played an important role through the colony and then province of Québec. In an article published in the inaugural issue of the international on-line journal of the Americas called AmeriQuests, Professor Virginia Scott, Chair of Vanderbilt’s Department of French and Italian, tells the story of Jacques Timothé Boucher, Sieur de Mont Brun, an eighteenth-century Canadian fur trapper who made his home near where Vanderbilt University and AmeriQuests now live (http://ejournals.library.vanderbilt.edu/ojs/index.php/ameriquests/article/view/2). AmeriQuests, strongly supported by the Government of Québec, will publish the proceedings of "Cultural Modernism in the Americas I: Québec”, marking the journal’s entrance into the family of journals published by Duke University Press, a great honor and tremendous boost the journal that already boasts 30,000 hits on top articles, a tribute to its being a pioneer in the open access on-line journal world. is revitalized Bandy Center Bulletin is also on-line, and open access, because this is clearly the direction that academic publishing is headed, and it’s a way of bringing these remarkable collections to the attention of interested scholars around the world, scholars who can then apply to us for Bandy Center grants, aimed at facilitating research trips to this very special place. Soon, we’ll add another on-line, open access journal, a peer-reviewed journal devoted to work that describes or emerges from the archives located in the W. T. Bandy Center; the official launching of that journal will be announced in the next Bulletin. And so, this Bulletin is a front door into the W. T. Bandy Center that is adorned with the welcoming screen, that allows the curious passerby to look inside, beyond the heavy wooden door, and into the many activities that take place inside. We are thrilled you are here, and I invite you to stay a while, peruse the news of our activities and, if you are so inclined, be in touch. A collection of this magnitude and importance resonates and glistens only when we interact with it, a pleasure we hope to induce in many visitors in the years to come. Professor Robert Barsky, Vanderbilt University W.T. Bandy Center Faculty Director www.robertbarsky.org Cultural Modernism in the Americas I: Quebec 1) Daniel Ridge (Vanderbilt University), Paul Bourget and La Nouvelle France 2) Robert Barsky (Vanderbilt University), Dirt, Filth and Matter Out of Place: Baudelaire’s Legacy in the Trial of the Québécois artist Remy Couture 3) Gary Wihl (Washington University in St. Louis), e Modern Definition of National Literature 4) Nelson Charest (e University of Ottawa), L’“américanisme” de Baudelaire chez les poètes québécois au tournant du XXe siècle 5) Cynthia Harvey (L’Université du Québec), Le récit des Fleurs du Mal ou la métamorphose du vampire 6) Benoît Houzé (Paris VIII University), Moderne par tradition: Nelligan et les synesthésies 7) Michel Pierssens (Université de Montréal), L’Écho des jeunes et la première modernité québecoise 8) Nathalie Watteyne (Université de Sherbrooke), Saint-Denys Garneau, Anne Hébert et Jacques Brault : trois poètes lecteurs de Baudelaire 9) Antoine Boisclair (Collège Jean-de-Brébeuf ), Héritages de Mallarmé. Modernité de Paul Morin et de René Chopin(English) PRESENTATIONS The W.T. Bandy Center for Baudelaire and Modern French Studies bulletin April 2013 Bandy Center 1 vol. Dr. Damian Catani Bandy Fellow, Fall 2012 Dr. Damian Catani is a lecturer in French at Birkbeck College, London, where his primary teaching and research interests are nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature and thought. He has published widely on Mallarmé and Baudelaire, particularly on the social and ethical role of the poet and writer. He addressed these themes in his first book e Poet in Society: Art, Consumerism and Politics in Mallarmé (New York: Peter Lang, 2003). His most recent book is Evil: a History in Modern French Literature and ought (London: Continuum, 2013). At the W.T. Bandy Center, Dr. Catani furthered his research on Baudelaire’s underexplored text Les Paradis Artficiels, working specifically on Baudelaire’s adaptation and partial translation of omas de Quincey’s Confessions of an Opium Eater. e Center’s collection of critical works dating from 1860 to the present, as well as the digital resource Charles Baudelaire: Une Micro-histoire, provided Dr. Catani with the essential tools needed to shed light on the genesis, interpretation, and reception of this controversial work as well as the aesthetic attitudes towards drugs through this period. Dr. Federica Locatelli Bandy Fellow, Fall 2012 Dr. Frederica Locatelli is a researcher in the Department of French Literature at the Catholic University of Milan. Her research addresses symbolist and post-symbolist poetry, in particular Baudelaire and Apollinaire. She is the author of multiple articles, including “Une certaine homologie des périphrases: Les Litanies de Satan de Charles Baudelaire”, “L'imagination de Coleridge à Baudelaire: positivement apparentée avec l'Infini”, “Baudelaire et la comparaison”, and “Apollinaire: des cris qui traversent la mer.” Her forthcoming work is titled Une figure de l’expansion : la périphrase chez Charles Baudelaire. While at the W.T. Bandy Center, Dr. Locatelli continued to develop perspectives on the language of symbolist poets. Laure Bordas-Isner Wachs Fellow, Spring 2013 Originally from Nice, France, Laure Bordas-Isner is a Ph.D. student (ABD) in French Literature at the State University of New York at Buffalo. She also teaches introductory and intermediate-level French courses at Belmont University. She is currently working on her dissertation, which focuses on crimes and criminals in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century popular and canonical French literature. Her research hopes to determine whether the conflation of reality and fiction typical of nineteenth-century romansfeuilletons can be traced back to the popular fiction of the eighteenth-century. At the W.T. Bandy Center, Brodas-Isner is working on this concept, otherwise titled "Raconter le crime: La figure du criminel dans la littérature française des XVIIIe et XIXe siècles." She is interested in the Morris Wachs Collection, which contains a wide range of popular eighteenth- century literary texts. Dr. Seth Whidden Villanova University, Villanova, PA Pascal Pia Fellow e W. T. Bandy Center is that very best kind of Pandora's box: one quickly discovers that this relatively small space opens up so many areas of scholarly inquiry in the rich world of French literature: infinite, endless, and seemingly in all directions. e Pascal Pia Collection, known throughout the world for its incomparable holdings, helped my work tremendously this week, transporting me into the universe of the poets of the second half of the nineteenth century and helping me see so many important connections between their poems, volumes, and journals. BANDY SCHOLARS VISITING SCHOLAR Thanks to the exceptional resources of the W.T. Bandy Center and the professionalism and assistance of the library staff I was able to undertake exciting new research on the relationship between ethics, evil and drugs in Baudelaire and De Quincey, a project that originally emerged from my recent book Evil: A History in Modern French Literature and ought. I cannot recommend the Bandy Center highly enough.” Damian Catani, March 2013 Evil: A History in Modern French Literature and ought Continuum Intl Pub Group/ Bloomsbury Academic, London, 2013. Recently published book by Damian Catani, W.T. Bandy Fellow. Professor Catani is a Lecturer in French at Birkbeck College, London University. While at the Bandy Center his research project was "Baudelaire, De Quincey and Les Paradis Artificiels.Baudelaire Prose Poems Illustrated by Stephen Sidelinger Gouache on Arches paper with graphite. Four folios bound in distressed moiré portfolios with linen quarter bindings. 12” X 16” plates, 1995. Stephen Sidelinger, artist and teacher, was inspired by the work of Charles Baudelaire and the gardens of Paris for this illustrated edition of Baudelaire’s work. At the time when the illustrator was visiting Paris, the Tuileries Gardens had loud speakers in the trees broadcasting poetry recitations by different French poets. e poetry of Baudelaire caught his attention. Sidelinger teaches his students using Baudelaire poems to inspire and “to get them interested in writing with their art.” NEW AQUISITIONS Other illustrated Fleurs du mal books, please see this exhibition site: http://exhibits.library.vanderbilt.edu/bookasart WELCOME TO THE CENTER Daniel Ridge Assistant Director One of the greatest pleasures I have found working at the Center is introducing undergraduate students to the life and work of Charles Baudelaire. Not only do I love discussing his poetry and influence on modernism, but I have the rare privilege of illustrating my discussions with original editions of his work, including the 1857 unexpur- gated text of Les Fleurs du mal and his first translations of Edgar Allen Poe. In an increasingly digital world, it is important to bring students back to the material elements of literary production and literary life. Baudelaire’s theories on dandyism, and the life he lived, first as a young eccentric then as a poverty-stricken poet, provide a wealth of visual and literary material to engage questions of nineteenth-century culture and identity. As a literary historian, I am regularly surprised by the materials found in the Pascal Pia Collection. It is always a pleasure to work with an autographed text, particularly when it is accompanied by Pia’s notes. Interestingly, Pia had used his personal library, whose purchase Claude Pichois negotiated in 1981, as a filing cabinet for his own hand written and typed remarks, letters he exchanged with the authors, as well as publicity material and newspaper clippings. As a Pascal Pia Fellow several years ago, I had the privilege of cataloguing this material for addition to Heard Library’s search engine Acorn. I am proud to have made this material more readily available to other scholars. Yvonne Boyer Bandy Center Librarian As Librarian for the W.T. Bandy Center or Baudelaire and Modern French Studies, it is my privilege to welcome scholars, students, and Fellows to the Center. e Center islocated in the main library of Vanderbilt University and is part of the campus life. Scholars come from all over the world to consult material about Charles Baudelaire’s life, works, and related studies. is comprehensive collection is maintained with special attention paid to searching and acquiring materials in many formats and media, and providing access on site and online to scholars worldwide. Our commitment to a constantly expanding bibliography with entries ranging from print form to ephemera, including specifically curated digital exhibitions, acknowledges the continuing legacy of Charles Baudelaire and his central position in modern French studies. e collection is housed in the Treasure Room of the library, an appropriate location, as a former director referred to the Center as the jewel in the Vanderbilt crown. Robert Barsky W.T. Bandy Center Faculty Director is Bulletin marks the return of a newsletter that will henceforth highlight recent acquisitions, the work of recent Bandy Center Fellows, and descriptions of our newly-launched series of conferences that I foresee hosting on a yearly basis, beginning this spring. Our inaugural event, "Cultural Modernism in the Americas I: Québec”, focuses on the influence that French modernist works, most notably Baudelaire, had upon the shape, direction and evolution of Québec modernism. e decision to begin with Québec reflects a number of factors at work at Vanderbilt University, including the presence of a strong program in Québec and Canadian Studies, a very productive relationship with representatives of the Government of Québec who help sponsor our work (including this conference), and, perhaps most interestingly, my sense that we need to focus not only upon the breadth and depth of the Baudelaire, Pascal Pia, Gilbert Sigaux and Wachs Collections at Vanderbilt, veritable jewels in their own right, but we need to also consider the role that they played in different parts of America, beginning with Québec. To begin, though, we need to think about what it means that they are housed at Vanderbilt ... [continued lower right]
Transcript

[Barsky continued] ... University, a long way, in virtually every regard, from the many Paris libraries and private collections in which one would expect to find works on this subject. Like many remarkable library or museum collections, those found in the W. T. Bandy Center because of unusual twists of fate, relating to particular individuals who worked in, or donated to, Vanderbilt’s French and Italian Department. Rather than focus upon the degree to which these events have created a Center that is, at it were, out of place, I’m much more interested in thinking about the works contained in this collection as being in America, in the South, and at Vanderbilt, and in so doing we are induced to consider what role these texts might have played for readers, and authors, in this part of the world.

Vanderbilt University is itself fascinating in this regard, being the founding center for the Fugitive and Agrarian literary groups and the New Critics, who influenced generations of teachers and students involved in the reading and critiquing of literary texts, and as Faculty Director of this Center, I’d like to emphasize and discuss the situatedness of this collection, rather than imagining that we’re on a little island connected through language and culture to Paris, and that everything that surrounds this island is of parenthetical concern. Further, this collection is in America, in a part of the world in which the French played an important role through the colony and then province of Québec. In an article published in the inaugural issue of the international on-line journal of the Americas called AmeriQuests, Professor Virginia Scott, Chair of Vanderbilt’s Department of French and Italian, tells the story of Jacques Timothé Boucher, Sieur de Mont Brun, an eighteenth-century Canadian fur trapper who made his home near where Vanderbilt University and AmeriQuests now live (http://ejournals.library.vanderbilt.edu/ojs/index.php/ameriquests/article/view/2). AmeriQuests, strongly supported by the Government of Québec, will publish the proceedings of "Cultural Modernism in the Americas I: Québec”, marking the journal’s entrance into the family of journals published by Duke University Press, a great honor and tremendous boost the journal that already boasts 30,000 hits on top articles, a tribute to its being a pioneer in the open access on-line journal world.

�is revitalized Bandy Center Bulletin is also on-line, and open access, because this is clearly the direction that academic publishing is headed, and it’s a way of bringing these remarkable collections to the attention of interested scholars around the world, scholars who can then apply to us for Bandy Center grants, aimed at facilitating research trips to this very special place. Soon, we’ll add another on-line, open access journal, a peer-reviewed journal devoted to work that describes or emerges from the archives located in the W. T. Bandy Center; the official launching of that journal will be announced in the next Bulletin. And so, this Bulletin is a front door into the W. T. Bandy Center that is adorned with the welcoming screen, that allows the curious passerby to look inside, beyond the heavy wooden door, and into the many activities that take place inside. We are thrilled you are here, and I invite you to stay a while, peruse the news of our activities and, if you are so inclined, be in touch. A collection of this magnitude and importance resonates and glistens only when we interact with it, a pleasure we hope to induce in many visitors in the years to come.

Professor Robert Barsky, Vanderbilt UniversityW.T. Bandy Center Faculty Director

www.robertbarsky.org

Cultural Modernism inthe Americas I: Quebec

1) Daniel Ridge (Vanderbilt University), Paul Bourget and La Nouvelle France

2) Robert Barsky (Vanderbilt University), Dirt, Filth and Matter Out of Place: Baudelaire’s Legacy in the Trial of the Québécois artist Remy Couture

3) Gary Wihl (Washington University in St. Louis), �e Modern Definition of National Literature

4) Nelson Charest (�e University of Ottawa), L’“américanisme” de Baudelaire chez les poètes québécois au tournant du XXe siècle

5) Cynthia Harvey (L’Université du Québec), Le récit des Fleurs du Mal ou la métamorphose du vampire

6) Benoît Houzé (Paris VIII University), Moderne par tradition: Nelligan et les synesthésies

7) Michel Pierssens (Université de Montréal), L’Écho des jeunes et la première modernité québecoise

8) Nathalie Watteyne (Université de Sherbrooke), Saint-Denys Garneau, Anne Hébert et Jacques Brault : trois poètes lecteurs de Baudelaire

9) Antoine Boisclair (Collège Jean-de-Brébeuf), Héritages de Mallarmé. Modernité de Paul Morin et de René Chopin(English)

PRESENTATIONS

The W.T. Bandy Centerfor Baudelaire and Modern French Studies

bulletin

April2013Bandy

Center1vol.

Dr. Damian CataniBandy Fellow, Fall 2012

Dr. Damian Catani is a lecturer in French at Birkbeck College, London, where his primary teaching and research interests are nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature and thought. He has published widely on Mallarmé and

Baudelaire, particularly on the social and ethical role of the poet and writer. He addressed these themes in his first book �e Poet in Society: Art, Consumerism and Politics in Mallarmé (New York: Peter Lang, 2003). His most recent book is Evil: a History in Modern French Literature and �ought (London: Continuum, 2013). At the W.T. Bandy Center, Dr. Catani furthered his research on Baudelaire’s underexplored text Les Paradis Artficiels, working specifically on Baudelaire’s adaptation and partial translation of �omas de Quincey’s Confessions of an Opium Eater. �e Center’s collection of critical works dating from 1860 to the present, as well as the digital resource Charles Baudelaire: Une Micro-histoire, provided Dr. Catani with the essential tools needed to shed light on the genesis, interpretation, and reception of this controversial work as well as the aesthetic attitudes towards drugs through this period.

Dr. Federica LocatelliBandy Fellow, Fall 2012

Dr. Frederica Locatelli is a researcher in the Department of French Literature at the Catholic University of Milan. Her research addresses symbolist and post-symbolist poetry, in particular Baudelaire and Apollinaire. She is

the author of multiple articles, including “Une certaine homologie des périphrases: Les Litanies de Satan de Charles Baudelaire”, “L'imagination de Coleridge à Baudelaire: positivement apparentée avec l'Infini”, “Baudelaire et la comparaison”, and “Apollinaire: des cris qui traversent la mer.” Her forthcoming work is titled Une figure de l’expansion : la périphrase chez Charles Baudelaire. While at the W.T. Bandy Center, Dr. Locatelli continued to develop perspectives on the language of symbolist poets.

Laure Bordas-IsnerWachs Fellow, Spring 2013

Originally from Nice, France, Laure Bordas-Isner is a Ph.D. student (ABD) in French Literature at the State University of New York at Buffalo. She also teaches introductory and intermediate-level French courses at Belmont University. She is currently working on her dissertation, which focuses on crimes and criminals in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century popular and canonical French literature. Her research hopes to determine whether the conflation of reality and fiction typical of nineteenth-century romansfeuilletons can be traced back to the popular fiction of the eighteenth-century. At the W.T. Bandy Center, Brodas-Isner is working on this concept, otherwise titled "Raconter le crime: La figure du criminel dans la littérature française des XVIIIe et XIXe siècles." She is interested in the Morris Wachs Collection, which contains a wide range of popular eighteenth-century literary texts.

Dr. Seth WhiddenVillanova University, Villanova, PAPascal Pia Fellow

�e W. T. Bandy Center is that very best kind of Pandora's box: one quickly discovers that this relatively small space opens up so many areas of scholarly inquiry in the rich world of

French literature: infinite, endless, and seemingly in all directions. �e Pascal Pia Collection, known throughout the world for its incomparable holdings, helped my work tremendously this week, transporting me into the universe of the poets of the second half of the nineteenth century and helping me see so many important connections between their poems, volumes, and journals.

BANDY SCHOLARS

VISITING SCHOLAR

“ Thanks to the exceptional resources of the W.T. Bandy Center and the professionalism and assistance of the library staff I was able to undertake exciting new research on the relationship between ethics, evil and drugs in Baudelaire and De Quincey, a project that originally emerged from my recent book Evil: A History in Modern French Literature and �ought. I cannot recommend the Bandy Center highly enough.”

Damian Catani, March 2013

Evil: A History in Modern French

Literature and �oughtContinuum Intl Pub Group/

Bloomsbury Academic, London, 2013.

Recently published book by Damian Catani, W.T. Bandy Fellow. Professor

Catani is a Lecturer in French at Birkbeck College, London University.

While at the Bandy Center his research project was "Baudelaire, De Quincey

and Les Paradis Artificiels.”

Baudelaire Prose PoemsIllustrated by Stephen Sidelinger

Gouache on Arches paper with graphite. Four folios bound in distressed moiré portfolios with linen quarter bindings.12” X 16” plates, 1995.

Stephen Sidelinger, artist and teacher, was inspired by the work of Charles Baudelaire and the gardens of Paris for this illustrated edition of Baudelaire’s work. At the time when the illustrator was visiting Paris, the Tuileries Gardens had loud speakers in the trees broadcasting poetry recitations by different French poets. �e poetry of Baudelaire caught his attention. Sidelinger teaches his students using Baudelaire poems to inspire and “to get them interested in writing with their art.”

NE

W A

QU

ISIT

ION

S

Other illustrated Fleurs du mal books, please see this exhibition site: http://exhibits.library.vanderbilt.edu/bookasart

WELCOME TO THE CENTER

Daniel RidgeAssistant Director

One of the greatest pleasures I have found working at the Center is introducing undergraduate students to the life and work of Charles Baudelaire. Not only do I love discussing his poetry and

influence on modernism, but I have the rare privilege of illustrating my discussions with original editions of his work, including the 1857 unexpur-gated text of Les Fleurs du mal and his first translations of Edgar Allen Poe. In an increasingly digital world, it is important to bring students back to the material elements of literary production and literary life. Baudelaire’s theories on dandyism, and the life he lived, first as a young eccentric then as a poverty-stricken poet, provide a wealth of visual and literary material to engage questions of nineteenth-century culture and identity.

As a literary historian, I am regularly surprised by the materials found in the Pascal Pia Collection. It is always a pleasure to work with an autographed text, particularly when it is accompanied by Pia’s notes. Interestingly, Pia had used his personal library, whose purchase Claude Pichois negotiated in 1981, as a filing cabinet for his own hand written and typed remarks, letters he exchanged with the authors, as well as publicity material and newspaper clippings. As a Pascal Pia Fellow several years ago, I had the privilege of cataloguing this material for addition to Heard Library’s search engine Acorn. I am proud to have made this material more readily available to other scholars.

Yvonne BoyerBandy Center Librarian

As Librarian for the W.T. Bandy Center or Baudelaire and Modern French Studies, it is my privilege to welcome scholars, students, and Fellows to the Center. �e Center islocated in the main library of Vanderbilt University and is part of the campus life. Scholars come from all over the world to consult material about Charles Baudelaire’s life, works, and related studies. �is comprehensive collection is maintained with special attention paid to searching and acquiring materials in many formats and media, and providing access on site and online to scholars worldwide. Our commitment to a constantly expanding bibliography with entries ranging from print form to ephemera, including specifically curated digital exhibitions, acknowledges the continuing legacy of Charles Baudelaire and his central position in modern French studies. �e collection is housed in the Treasure Room of the library, an appropriate location, as a former director referred to the Center as the jewel in the Vanderbilt crown.

Robert BarskyW.T. Bandy Center Faculty Director

�is Bulletin marks the return of a newsletter that will henceforth highlight recent acquisitions, the work of recent Bandy Center Fellows, and descriptions of our newly-launched series of conferences that I foresee hosting on a yearly basis, beginning this spring. Our inaugural event, "Cultural Modernism in the Americas I: Québec”, focuses on the influence that French modernist works, most notably Baudelaire, had upon the shape, direction and evolution of Québec modernism. �e decision to begin with Québec reflects a number of factors at work at Vanderbilt University, including the presence of a strong program in Québec and Canadian Studies, a very productive relationship with representatives of the Government of Québec who help sponsor our work (including this conference), and, perhaps most interestingly, my sense that we need to focus not only upon the breadth and depth of the Baudelaire, Pascal Pia, Gilbert Sigaux and Wachs Collections at Vanderbilt, veritable jewels in their own right, but we need to also consider the role that they played in different parts of America, beginning with Québec. To begin, though, we need to think about what it means that they are housed at Vanderbilt ... [continued lower right]

Cultural  Modernism  in  the  Americas  I:  Quebec  April  2013  –  Presentation  Abstracts  

 

“Dirt,  Filth  and  Matter  Out  of  Place:  Baudelaire’s  Legacy  in  the    Trial  of  the  Québécois  artist  Remy  Couture”  

In  1857  two  seminal  texts  came  before  French  tribunals,  and  their  authors,  Gustave  Flaubert  and  Charles  Baudelaire,  were  both  charged  with  obscenity.  Despite  the  differences  in  genres,  and  in  the  approach  taken  by  the  defense,  the  rhetoric  of  both  trials  is  notable  as  precursors  to  arguments  that  would  be  made  against  Vizetelly  in  1888;  Les  Fleurs  du  mal  was  denounced  as  follows:  “L’odieux  y  coudoie  l’ignoble,  le  repoussant  s’y  allie  a  l’infect,”remarked  Gustave  Bourdin  in  his  “Critique  de  Les  Fleurs  du  Mal,”  in  Le  Figaro,  5  July,  1857.  He  added  that  “ce  livre  est  un  hôpital  ouvert  à  toutes  les  démences  de  l’esprit,  à  toutes  les  putridités  du  coeur”,  providing  a  remarkable  link  between  a  poetic  text  and  a  hospital!),  while  others  portrayed  Baudelaire  as  a  mere  purveyor  of  garbage:  “Il  ramasse  les  sentines  et  les  egouts”  in  a  fashion  typical  of  “les  immondices  de  la  presse  boheime  et  realiste.”  [1]  On  the  English  side,  we  find  similar  denunciations  pronounced  at  inquiries  into  the  work  of  Swinburne  following  publication  of  is  1866  work  Poems  and  Ballads,  and,  moreover,  in  hearings  held  in  1888  regarding  Vizetelly’s  translations  of  Zola’s  novels.  In  spite  of  the  many  differences  between  Swinburne,  Zola  via  Vizetelly,  Baudelaire  and  Flaubert,  and  despite  considerable  variation  in  the  legal  systems  employed  to  prosecute  them  in  England  and  in  France,  the  critical  vocabulary  deployed  against  them  all  seems  to  make  one  thing  clear:  in  the  eyes  of  many  of  their  contemporaries  and  certainly  in  the  courtrooms  of  justice,  these  works  were  all  portrayed  as  a  kind  of  dirt  that  was  imposed  upon  an  unsuspecting  reading  public  that  risked,  in  its  exposure  to  it,  an  irreversible  infection.  And,  surprisingly,  the  vestiges  of  this  view  still  have  currency,  as  evidenced  in  the  recent  obscenity  trial  of  the  Québécois  artist  Remy  Couture,  a  remarkable  link  to  the  continued  importance  of  the  trials  of  Baudelaire.  

 [1]  Cited  in  André  Guyaux,  Baudelaire:  un  demi-­‐siècle  de  lecture  des  ‘Fleurs  du  mal’,  1855-­‐1905.  Paris,  PUPS,  2007.  

Professor  Robert  Barsky  Vanderbilt  University  Website:  www.robertbarsky.org  

 

La  filiation  mallarméenne    Paul  Morin  et  René  Chopin  

«  Ô  Mallarmé  manqué  »,  écrit  Paul  Morin  dans  un  poème  daté  de  1915  où  il  s’interpelle  avec  un  sens  étonnant  de  l’autodérision.  Il  va  sans  dire  que  le  poète  répond  ici  à  ses  détracteurs  –  certains  critiques  canadiens-­‐français  du  début  du  XXe  siècle  ont  associé  Le  paon  d’émail,  son  premier  recueil  publié  en  1911,  au  maniérisme  de  Mallarmé  –,  mais  une  telle  phrase  révèle  surtout  l’influence  exercée  par  les  symbolistes  auprès  des  poètes  du  Nigog,  une  revue  d’avant-­‐garde  publiée  en  1918  à  laquelle  le  nom  de  Morin  a  été  associé.  Cette  communication  propose  d’étudier  l’ascendant  exercé  par  Mallarmé  chez  Paul  Morin,  mais  aussi  chez  René  Chopin,  un  

poète  qui,  dans  Le  cœur  en  exil  (1913),  adopte  une  poétique  de  la  suggestion  directement  inspirée  de  Mallarmé.  Il  s’agira,  autrement  dit,  de  voir  comment  la  poésie  de  Stéphane  Mallarmé  (et  plus  largement  l’esthétique  symboliste)  a  joué  un  rôle  significatif  dans  le  développement  de  la  modernité  poétique  au  Québec.    

Antoine  Boisclair  

 

 

Proposition  de  communication    «  L’“américanisme”  de  Baudelaire  chez  les  poètes    

québécois  au  tournant  du  XXe  siècle  »  

 

Dans  des  Notes  préparatoires  qu’il  amasse  en  vue  d’écrire  un  article  sur  Baudelaire,  Jules  Laforgue  relève  ce  qu’il  appelle  son  «  américanisme  »,  un  aspect  qu’a  bien  mis  en  lumière  un  article  de  Daniel  Grojnowski  (2003).    Selon  Laforgue,  Baudelaire  a  conservé  de  l’esthétique  d’Edgar  Poe,  qu’il  a  traduit  comme  on  sait,  un  goût  pour  l’image  qui  mêle  l’idéal  et  le  concret,  dans  une  écriture  marquée  par  la  témérité,  l’énormité  et  la  crudité.  Il  en  voit  un  exemple  particulier  dans  l’utilisation  de  l’adverbe  «  très  »,  comme  dans  «  Que  diras-­‐tu  ce  soir…  ».  Des  comparaisons  comme  celle  que  présente  «  Le  Beau  Navire  »  lui  semblent  particulièrement  représentatives  de  cet  esprit  «  yankee  »,  comme  lorsque  Baudelaire  dit  :  «  Ta  gorge  triomphante  est  une  belle  armoire  ».  En  ce  sens  Baudelaire  inaugure  une  nouvelle  tradition  qui  commence  à  s’implanter  dans  la  poésie  française  à  la  fin  du  XIXe  siècle,  où  les  œuvres  communiquent  de  plus  en  plus  avec  les  œuvres  étrangères,  américaines  notamment.  On  sait  que  Laforgue  lui-­‐même  est  né  à  Montevideo,  tout  comme  Lautréamont  ;  que  quelques  vers-­‐libristes  de  la  fin  du  siècle  sont  d’origine  américaine,  comme  Francis  Vielé-­‐Griffin  et  Stuart  Merrill  ;  et  surtout,  que  la  traduction  des  Leaves  of  Grass  de  Walt  Whitman  va  considérablement  marquer  cette  époque.  Il  sera  dès  lors  intéressant  de  voir  comment  se  manifeste  cet  «  américanisme  »  dans  une  littérature  qui  est  autant  marquée  par  l’ascendance  française  que  par  l’ascendance  américaine,  soit  la  littérature  québécoise.  D’Émile  Nelligan  à  Alfred  Desrochers,  Baudelaire  demeure  une  source  très  présente,  en  qui  on  trouve  un  modèle  de  prosodie  bien  ciselée,  d’âme  sensible  ou  d’imagination  fertile.  Même  si  on  peinerait  à  lier  le  dandysme  d’un  Nelligan  à  l’esprit  du  terroir  d’un  Desrochers,  il  semble  que  les  deux  conservent,  de  manières  différentes,  l’esprit  yankee  que  met  en  œuvre  Baudelaire.  D’autres  poètes  de  cette  époque  pourraient  également  servir  d’exemples  ;  on  pense  notamment  à  Charles  Gill,  Marcel  Dugas,  Arthur  de  Bussières.  On  sera  par  ailleurs  attentif  au  fait  que  l’américanisme  de  ces  poètes  est  possiblement  retourné,  par  rapport  à  la  forme  qu’il  reçoit  chez  Baudelaire.  En  effet,  toujours  selon  Laforgue,  Baudelaire  contrevient  alors  aux  règles  de  bon  goût  français  et  étonne  par  sa  témérité.  Mais  on  peut  penser  que  le  poète  québécois  procède  à  l’inverse,  soit  qu’il  parte  d’une  expression  sauvage  pour  accéder,  par  degrés,  à  une  expression  raffinée,  «  à  la  française  ».  Il  est  clair  que  les  influences  des  poètes  québécois,  dès  cette  époque,  sont  métissées  ;  ce  qui,  paradoxalement,  les  situe  en  phase  avec  les  esthétiques  les  plus  innovantes  du  tournant  du  XXe  siècle.  

Nelson  Charest  Université  d’Ottawa  

Le  récit  des  Fleurs  du  Mal    ou  la  métamorphose  du  vampire  

Dans  sa  défense  contre  les  accusations  d’immoralité  portées  à  son  recueil  Les  Fleurs  du  Mal,  Baudelaire  demandait  que  son  livre  soit  «  jugé  dans  son  ensemble,  et  alors  il  en  ressort[irait]  une  terrible  moralité  ».  Il  ne  s’agit  pas  ici  de  défendre  le  recueil  contre  de  vieilles  accusations,  maintenant  dépassées.  Dans  cette  communication,  je  souhaite  montrer  que  le  recueil  peut  être  lu  non  seulement  comme  un  ensemble,  mais  comme  un  récit.    En  prêtant  une  attention  particulière  aux  premiers  textes  (le  poème  liminaire  et  «  Bénédiction  »)  et  au  dernier  texte  («  Le  voyage  »),  le  fil  qui  soutient  l’ensemble  est  aisé  à  retracer  :  de  la  naissance  à  la  mort  du  poète,  et  entre  les  deux,  une  oscillation  entre  l’idéal  et  le  spleen,  les  promenades  dans  Paris,  le  vin  et  la  poésie.    J’aimerais  non  seulement  proposer  de  lire  Les  Fleurs  du  Mal  comme  un  récit,  mais  comme  un  récit  fantastique,  selon  l’acception  moderne  du  terme,  c’est-­‐à-­‐dire  comme  une  «  réflexion  sur  le  réel  ».    

 Cynthia  Harvey  Université  du  Québec  à  Chicoutimi  Département  des  arts  et  lettres  555  boul.  de  l’Université  Chicoutimi  (Québec)  G7H  2B1  

 

«L'Écho  des  jeunes  et  la  première  modernité  littéraire  québécoise»  

L’historiographie  de  la  modernité  littéraire  au  Québec  a  souligné  l’importance  de  l’École  littéraire  de  Montréal  et  la  place  toute  particulière  occupée  par  Nelligan.  Ce  faisant,  elle  a  négligé  des  précurseurs  d’un  modernisme  souvent  plus  audacieux  mais  dont  les  proclamations  et  les  œuvres  fragmentaires  restent  enfouies  dans  des  périodiques  rares  et  mal  connus.  Ces  devanciers  sont  cependant  intéressants  car  leur  démarche  est  très  proche  de  celle  des  avant-­‐gardes  européennes  contemporaines,  qu’ils  connaissent  de  loin,  mais  manifestement  bien.  Des  liens  existent,  encore  très  mal  connus,  mais  les  manières  de  s’affirmer  sont  identiques:  pratique  du  groupuscule,  déclarations  frondeuses,  culte  de  la  petite  revue,  éclat  éphémère,  puis  fusion  dans  des  mouvements  plus  larges  qui  captent  mieux  l’attention  du  public  lettré.  L’Écho  des  Jeunes  est  le  meilleur  représentant  de  cette  avant-­‐garde  oubliée,  dont  je  retracerai  quelques  étapes  en  évoquant  diverses  revues  représentatives  de  ce  moment  «moderne»  bien  particulier  de  l’histoire  littéraire  québécoise.  

Michel  Pierssens  Université  de  Montréal  

 

Paul  Bourget  and  La  Nouvelle-­‐France  

The  genre  of  travel  literature  in  the  nineteenth  century,  particularly  in  the  francophone  context,  allowed  European  writers  to  compare  the  Old  World  with  the  New  World  and  cast  judgments  about  democracy,  religion,  and  race  in  comparison  to  Europe,  themes  which  are  particularly  

relevant  to  our  discussion  about  modernity.  One  such  example  of  this  literature  is  Outre-­‐Mer  by  Paul  Bourget  which  was  written  over  an  eight  month  period  beginning  in  July  1893  and  was  published  in  Paris  in  1895.  Bourget  is  best  known  for  his  1883  collection  Essais  de  psychologie  contemporaine  and  for  his  1889  novel  Le  disciple.  Although  his  work  is  viewed  largely  as  minor  literature  today,  in  the  1880s  and  1890s,  he  was  essentially  a  literary  celebrity.  Thus,  in  1893  when  he  visited  Canada  at  the  very  beginning  of  his  trip  he  was  received  with  great  fan  fare  and  the  events  of  his  three-­‐week  vacation  were  chronicled  in  nearly  every  Francophone  Quebec  Journal.  However,  when  the  book  was  published  in  1895,  the  Canadians  were  surprised  to  find  that  Bourget  did  not  mention  them  once,  as  if  he  had  never  even  gone  to  Canada.  The  outcry  from  the  Canadian  public,  in  my  opinion,  was  not  just  about  being  snubbed  by  a  literary  celebrity,  but  showed  that  French-­‐speaking  Canadians  genuinely  wanted  to  hear  Paul  Bourget’s  opinion  about  their  culture  and  society.  To  meet  this  need,  a  Canadian  journalist  and  editor  named  Sylva  Clapin  wrote  Sensations  de  Nouvelle-­‐France  with  the  subtitle  “Pour  faire  suite  à  Outre-­‐Mer”  and  signed  the  book  Paul  Bourget.    

My  communication  seeks  to  study  Sylva  Clapin’s  appropriation  of  Bourget’s  political  and  social  ideology  which  he  used  to  create  his  forgery  and  launch  a  polemic  in  the  francophone  journals  of  Québec  in  1895.  At  the  core  of  Bourget’s  vision  is  the  concept  that  while  Democracy,  Science  (Positivism),  and  the  problems  of  Race  were  essentially  destroying  the  Old  World,  they  were  at  the  heart  of  what  made  the  Americas  great.  These  are  the  tools  that  Clapin  applied  to  his  study  of  French-­‐speaking  Canada  which  I  propose  to  explore  in  my  communication.  

Daniel  Ridge  Vanderbilt  University  

 

Saint-­‐Denys  Garneau,  Anne  Hébert  et  Jacques  Brault:  trois  grands  poètes  québécois  lecteurs  de  Baudelaire  

Le  jeune  Hector  de  Saint-­‐Denys  Garneau  lit    Baudelaire  dès  1930  et  invoquera  à  diverses  reprises  cette  figure  tutélaire  de  la  poésie  moderne  dans  son  journal  entre  1930  et  1939.  Selon  l’historien  de  la  littérature  Gilles  Marcotte,  les  jeunes  gens  de  La  Relève,  une  revue  fondée  au  Canada  français  en  mars  1934,  auraient  découvert  Les  Fleurs  du  mal  par  l’entremise  de  leur  professeur  de  Belles-­‐Lettres  au  collège  :  «  Je  pense  aux  étudiants  qui  devaient  fonder  La  Relève,  Robert  Élie,  Jean  Le  Moyne,  Saint-­‐Denys  Garneau,  qui  découvrirent  Baudelaire,  au  Collège  Sainte-­‐Marie,  grâce  à  l’ouverture  d’esprit  d’un  professeur  exceptionnel,  le  père  d’Auteuil  .  »    

Il  est  intéressant  d’observer  que  le  même  père  jésuite  écrira,  en  1942,  un  article  élogieux  sur  le  premier  recueil  d’Anne  Hébert  :  Les  Songes  en  équilibre.  Par  l’entremise  de  son  cousin  Saint-­‐Denys  Garneau,  qu’elle  admire,  Anne  Hébert  fait  elle-­‐même  la  découverte  de  la  poésie  moderne  dans  les  années  1930,  aussi  bien  celle  de  Charles  Baudelaire  que  de  Paul  Claudel  ou  de  Pierre  Jean  Jouve.  Tout  comme  son  cousin,  qui  lui  fait  découvrir  ces  auteurs,  c’est  Baudelaire  qu’elle  tient  en  plus  haute  estime,  lorsqu’il  s’agit  de  jeter  «  sur  le  mal  une  lumière  impitoyable  et  d’une  lucidité  telle  que  le  monde  en  frémit  encore  .  »  Et,  à  l’instar  de  l’auteur  des  Fleurs  du  mal,  elle  voudra  révéler  la  nature  duelle  de  l’être  humain,  aux  prises  avec  les  forces  adverses  du  temps  qui  passe,  en  mettant  à  profit  sa  compréhension  de  la  révolte  et  du  désir  individuels.    

Quand  elle  se  rend  pour  la  première  fois  à  Paris,  en  1954,  Anne  Hébert  loue  une  chambre  à  l’Hôtel  du  Quai  Voltaire,  là  même  où  Baudelaire  vécut  et  écrivit  quelques-­‐uns  des  poèmes  des  Fleurs  du  mal.  À  l’occasion  du  Centenaire  de  la  mort  de  Baudelaire,  elle  participe  à  des  événements  commémoratifs  à  Namur,  en  Belgique,  à  l’automne  1967.  Elle  est  invitée  aussi  par  Pierre  Emmanuel  à  lire  des  poèmes  dans  le  cadre  d’autres  célébrations  qui  devaient  se  tenir  au  Petit  Odéon,  les  9  et  10  mai  1968,  mais  l’événement  est  annulé  en  raison  des  troubles  civiques  et  des  émeutes  à  Paris.  Quand  elle  compose  son  dernier  recueil,  Poèmes  pour  la  main  gauche,  au  printemps  1996,  elle  recopie  à  la  main  des  poèmes  de  Baudelaire,  s’en  inspire  au  moment  de  parler  de  la  mort  et  du  mystère  de  l’existence,  et  de  formuler  des  sensations.    

En  plus  d’être  poète,  Jacques  Brault  a  été  professeur  de  littérature  à  l’Université  de  Montréal.  Grand  lecteur  de  Baudelaire  dans  les  années  1950,  il  l’enseigne  toujours  dans  les  années  1990.  Ce  créateur  doublé  d’un  critique  est,  pour  Jacques  Brault  aussi,  un  confrère  en  lucidité.  Dans  un  article  qu’il  publie  en  1967  à  l’occasion  du  centenaire  de  la  mort  de  Baudelaire,  Brault  lui  rend  hommage,  et  consigne,  en  marge  du  texte:  «  Baudelaire  rend  notre  poésie  plus  anticipatrice  que  prophétique,  moins  sentimentale  que  psychique,  il  lui  permet  de  recentrer  dans  le  poème  l’âme  du  monde,  cette  réalité  des  réalités  d’où  chacun  peut  confier  à  chacun:  J’ai  plus  de  souvenirs  que  si  j’avais  mille  ans.  »        

Dans  notre  communication,  nous  voudrions  souligner  la  fortune  de  Baudelaire  au  Québec  en  faisant  ressortir  l’influence  durable  que  «  l’impitoyable  lucidité  »  de  l’artiste  a  exercée  sur  trois  de  nos  plus  grands  poètes.  Nous  analyserons  quelques  intertextes  baudelairiens  dans  les  écrits  de  ces  passeurs  culturels,  dont  on  peut  difficilement  aborder  la  poésie  sans  invoquer  cette  figure  tutélaire  de  la  modernité  poétique.  

1  MARCOTTE,  Gilles  (2000),  «  Autobiographie  d’un  non-­‐poète  »,  Le  Lecteur  de  poèmes,  Montréal,  Boréal,  p.  8.  

2  GARNEAU,  Hector  de  Saint-­‐Denys  (1954),  Journal,  Montréal,  Beauchemin,  p.  47  

3  BRAULT,  Jacques,  «  Fragment  d’un  “Baudelaire”»,  dans  Chemin  faisant,  Montréal,  Les  Éditions  La  Presse,  1975,  p.  103-­‐104.  

Nathalie  Watteyne  Université  de  Sherbrooke  

 

The  Modern  Definition  of  a  National  Literature  

This  paper  traces  a  set  of  concepts  that  underlie  the  definition  of  literature  as  the  product  of  a  nation.  In  an  obvious  way,  it  is  meaningful  to  classify  works  of  literature  by  the  language  bounded  by  national  territory,  giving  rise  to  the  study  of  German  literature,  or  French  literature,  or  English  literature.  Literature  therefore  becomes  the  expression  of  a  nation’s  particular  language.  No  literature  can  be  studied  apart  from  the  poetic,  rhetorical,  properties  specific  to  the  language  in  which  it  is  written,  even  in  some  cases  down  to  the  appearance  of  the  language  as  letters  or  characters  on  a  page.  But  language  by  itself  is  insufficient  as  a  category  of  literary  classification  when  we  speak  of  these  literatures  as  expressive  of  the  history,  culture,  values  of  the  populations  that  speak  those  languages.  Other  forces  and  ideas  are  at  work  behind  the  common  practice  of  asking  students  and  scholars  to  study  French  literary  history,  or  Spanish  

American  literature,  or  indeed  Arabic  or  Chinese  literature.  What  gives  rise,  in  the  first  instance,  to  these  common  assumptions  about  the  classification  of  literature  into  national  groups?  

Gary  Wihl  Washington  University  in  St.  Louis  


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