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Friday, May 3, 2024
Saturday, April 6, 2024
Poem For Our Times
A
Poem for Our Time
Firstly,
no rostrum or microphone
For
poetry should be natural and so unofficial.
So,
no standing under or behind banners
Erected
for some minority group. No.
The
poetic act, all poetry, is uniquely
Concerned
about the individual, not the group.
Also,
the voice of the poet should be heard
Naturally,
so acoustics not electrics.
These
two essential things to begin with.
Finally,
though no least essentially,
Men,
you need to write about your women
As
this has always been a fundamental aspect
Of
poetry, and do not worry about accusations
Of
the ‘male gaze’, just trust only in your singular vision.
Friday, April 5, 2024
Aristophanes in Plato’s Symposium and Beckett’s Novel Comment C’est How It Is
Aristophanes in Plato’s Symposium
And Beckett’s Novel
Comment
C’est How It Is
One of the names that is often cited in respect to the
works of Samuel Beckett is the Marquis de Sade, both Jean- Michel Rabaté and
Danielle Casseli referenced Sade in connection with Beckett’s final attempt at
the novel Comment C’est ( 1961) at the first How It Is Symposium
organised by the theatre troupe Gare Saint Lazare Ireland at the
Centre Culurel Irlandais, Paris, 2nd February, 2018[1].
Yet, it would appear that to
refer only to Sade in relation to Beckett’s work is to leave out another very
important figure, and yet one who is so often neglected and yet who is
absolutely indispensable in the notion of power play which goes on in the celebrated
author’s work. The figure I am referring to is of course none other than
Leopold von Sacher- Masoch ( 1836- 1895). The Sado-Masochistic element in Comment
C’est, however, far from being a titillating novel of domination and
submission in the usual manner involving dungeons, latex and the inevitable
Saint Andrew’s cross, although funnily enough Beckett does make playful use of
the latter in the work rather, his novel invokes the philosophical ideas of
Friedrich Hegel as outlined in The Phenomenology of Mind ( 1807), the
discourse of Aristophanes in Plato’s Symposium, involving the
hermaphroditic giants who attempt to overthrow throw the gods and so were
punished by being split in two by the gods ( Beckett makes great play of the
term scissiparity in his novel), and I shall also be obliged to refer to Gilles
Deleuze and his reading of Masoch in terms of the historical dimension.
Finally, Michel Foucault’s ideas on the fluidity of power will also have to be
invoked as well as Alan Badiou’s ideas on mathematics as ontology. As you can
see, power play in Beckett is a thoroughly exhausting game.
One of the most seminal discourses in contemporary
western philosophy is the what is often referred to as the Master & Servant
dialectic which features in Friedrich Hegel’s most celebrated text The
Phenomenology of Mind ( 1802). I remember being an undergraduate and my
professor at the time, who was German, and who was responsible for introducing
us to the works of Hegel in my final year had warned me that if I did not stop
reading Lacan she would fail me utterly. That was enough to get me to put the
great rehabilitator of Freud back on the shelf and to get engage properly with
the famous Hegelian dialtectic, and thank God that she did scare me into
reading this phenomenal thinker even if it were just to have me read this
singular text which had such a profound effect on Karl Marx ( 1818-1883) and so
is, in a sense, the bedrock of communism so much so that Stalin ( 1878-1953)
himself was to write his final dissertation on Hegel, all of which underscores
this current reading of Comment c’est How It Is ( 1961- 63) written by
Beckett over fifteen years after the second world war. Indeed, the ripple
effect of such a short text, five pages approximately, are simply astonishing
making it surely one of the most important texts in contemporary philosophy and
crucial to having a proper understanding of the following text. straight
So, in a nutshell, Hegel’s master and servant
dialectic is quite simple to grasp, really. This is its beauty. What it
proposes is that when two humans meet, Hegel is concerned with human
subjectivity from a phenomenological perspective – meaning he attempts to
render the human experience as objectively as he possibly can, confined as he
is to the straightjacket of his own human subjectivity which he believes can
only be breached by annihilating the ego. Looking objectively then at two human
subjects when they first encounter one another, Hegel proposes that immediately
there is a battle to the death ensuing, present day advocates of WOKE take
note, in terms of the will. We can see already the origins of Nietzsche famous
‘Will to Power’ doctrine here. And what immediately ensues, according to Hegel,
is battle ensues. If it helps to conjure an image of two intrepid warriors of
old, Achilles and Hector say, or in modern terms the Predator and the Alien!
But, you must understand that Hegel is really only interested in geist or
spirit, so these two analogies are really just symbolic. Fighting ensues
between the two agents and in time there is a victor and a vanquished. Here is
were it gets tricky, as there is a complicity between the two. Hegel describes
it as a kind of co-dependence on the two whereby the servant, or lesser of the
two, in an ironic twist is now somehow really the master as the actual master,
through the formers servitude becomes dependent on the servant for all of the
services that they provide that they are in turn rendered slavish in turn. It
is an ingenious discourse, and the origins of socialism can clearly be
apprehended in the core of its teaching.
Enter Aristophanes and Plato! So, one of the most
celebrated philosophical discourses in the western world is Plato’s Symposium
and in which Socrates and his companions are discussing the subject of love and
each gives their definition. But the one definition that is, without a doubt,
the most memorable, and I say this simply as it has since entered into common
discourse over the centuries and in many cultures and corresponding languages
traces of this discourse remain and are even used still to define love today,
which when you simply stop to think about that, for a minute, it really is
quite extraordinary. But then the tale that Aristophanes is extraordinary, as
when his turn comes to define love he talks about the tale that Homer first
spoke about in relation to Otys and Ephialtes who were the ‘primeval humans’[2]
and who were hermaphroditic and so could self-replicate and thus multiply, and
they apparently did so in such numbers that they became wayward and decided to
take on the Gods in Olympus. Aristophanes paints this incredible image of these
round creatures, containing both aspects of man, so male and female conjoined,
who climbed up upon each others shoulders forming a ladder up into the sky so
that they were able to storm the heavens, which they did and so a war broke out
between these all powerful hermaphroditic giants and Zeus and his assembled
army of Gods.
When the battle finally was over and the Gods were
victorious, Zeus held council with the other Gods in order to decide about what
should happen to the rebellious giants who had tried to overturn them and this
is what Zeus decided to do in the end. He decided to split each giant in two
and hurl the male element far from the female so that the two halves would be
forever apart from one another and so, Love, according to Aristophanes is when
the two halves finally find one another again and they mate and they become
once more whole. This is Love according to Aristophanes. It is an extraordinary
account, but what makes it even more extraordinary is the fact how this myth
has entered into popular culture and language. For example, in English there is
a very common expression which both young and old people still use today in
Dublin and other English speaking cities and that is the phrase ‘my other
half’. And it is transgenerational, this is another extraordinary thing about
this phenomenon as it is not just old people who use the expression but middle
age people and young people do also, so this is living proof that this ancient
myth rings true to people and has done for generations and generations
throughout the ages of time. Of course, it is the task of writers to renew the
tale or tell it again just as Aristophanes retold it after Homer. Well, this is
one of the wonderful things that Samuel Beckett does in his novel Comment
c’est / How It Is.
One of the most immediate signs in the text is the
term scissiparity, it is actually used in the extraordinary collocation
‘latrinal scissiparious frenzy’[3],
which is but part of a lexicon of terms that are surgical in origin. For
example, ‘imbrication of the flesh’[4],
‘cleave’[5]
and then phrases such as ‘bodies glued together[6]’,
the text is full of such allusions to Aristophanes myth all of which I will
come back to, but before I do that I should like to present an entire fragment
from the text which will immediately situate us where we want to be. This
particular segment is extracted from part 2 of the book, with Pim.
heads
together necessarily my right shoulder overriding his left I’ve
the
upper everywhere but how together like two old jades harnessed
together
no but mine my head its face in the mud and his its right
cheek
in the mud his mouth against my ear our hairs tangled togeth-
er
impression that to separate us one would have to severe them good
so
much for the bodies the arms the hands the heads[7]
So, here is what could be described as the first complete
frieze from Plato’s symposium illustrating and quite graphically Aristophanes
description of the primeval beings that were joined together as one whole and
who were later separated by Zeus as a punishment so that they could never come
together again and storm the heavens. Noticed the very clinic language Beckett
uses- ‘harnessed together’, ‘to separate us one would have to sever them good’ –
to severe, this is a very specific verb, and once again rather clinical. There
is something of the operating table in all of this[8]imbuing
the text with a gruesome realism which is rather reminiscent of the imagery of
Francis Bacon[9]. Here
now is a description of the creatures that Aristophanes describes in Plato’s Symposium.
the
primeval humans were round, their backs
and
sides forming a circle, and they had four hands and
four
feet, one head with two faces, looking opposite ways,
set
on a round neck and precisely alike; also four ears, two
sets
of genitals, and the remainder to correspond. [10]
Again, a very graphic description which helps the
reader to visualise even more graphically these extraordinary creatures, and,
once again, this tallies very much with the extremely graphic descriptions that
Beckett uses of the couples in his modern retelling.
we
are one and all from the unthinkable first to the
no
less unthinkable last glued together in a vast imbrication of flesh
without
breach or fissure[11]
The almost forensic use of very scientific terminology
that Beckett employs matches in content the extremely rigorous reasoning of the
formal method of thinking, which Giles Deleuze was to single out so markedly as
such a distinctive element of his style and which he described as ‘a relentless
Spinozism’[12]as
Beckett exhausts every possible variable in every context, and, this, for
Deleuze, is the most distinctive feature of Beckett’s style of writing. The way
he flips from ‘the unthinkable first to the no less unthinkable last’ in such a
reflexive and such a relentless manner is merely the rigorous application of a
forensic method, so it makes perfect sense to insert very elevated topic specific
vocabulary to formulate the very distinctive lexical sets which the substance
of Aristophanes myth, surgical incision, suggests. Indeed, the only difference,
really, between Plato’s text and Beckett’s is that Beckett simply multiplies
the vision further into a kind of nuclear process of atomisation creating a
very disturbing apocalyptic vision of humanity that makes Michelangelo’s vision
of Hell in the Sistine Chapel appear like a mere cartoon.
at
the instant Pim leaves me and goes towards the other Bem leaves
the
other and comes towards me I place myself at my point of view
migration
of slime- worms then or tailed latrinal scissiparous frenzy
days
of great gaiety[13]
[1]
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/50fe596ee4b0499abb0986a9/t/5df7a321148f414853332919/1576510271747/How+It+Is+Symposium+2018+-+The+Beckett+Circle
[2]
Jowett, Benjamin: Selected
Dialogues of Plato, Translated by Benjamin Jowett Revised and with an
Introduction by Hayden Pelliccia, The Modern Library, New York, 2000, p. 229.
[3]
Beckett, Samuel: Comment
C’est How It Is and / et L’image, A Critical-Genetic Edition Une Édition
Critico-Génétique, Edited by Edouard Magessa O’Reilly, Routledge, New York,
First Paperback Edition 2016, p. 145.
[4]
Ibid, p.185.
[5]
Ibid, p.139.
[6]
Ibid, p.117.
[7]
Ibid, p. 119.
[8]
It’s a rather curious thing
but Eoin O’Brien when he is speaking about the town of Saint- Lô in Normandy,
after the war, he writes how ‘it has a special significance in that it symbolises
Beckett’s departure from Ireland and the severance of old ties and friendships.’
Beckett was working for the Irish Red Cross at the time as an ambulance driver
and somewhat also playing the role of an interpreter, a point that I think is
important in the context of the current discourse with its focus on medical
terminology. There were 100 beds in the temporary hospital unit that was set up
in what remained of the town after the terrible destruction of the battle for Normandy
and Beckett would have been surrounded by both Doctors and Nurses during this
time who would have been heavily involved. O’Brien states that ‘by Christmas
1945 the full Irish staff, consisting of ten doctors, each a specialist, 31
state-registered nurses, most of whom had specialist training, a pharmacist,
pathologist and administrative staff, had arrived. By March 1946, 80
in-patients were receiving treatment, and over 120 patients attended an out-
patient department.’ So, a considerable theatre of operations by any account,
all of which would appear to be highly important in the context of the kind of
language that Beckett is using in relation to the couples in Comment C’est
How It Is.
O’Brien,
Eoin: The Beckett Country, Samuel Becket’s Ireland , The Black
Cat Press in association with Faber and Faber, Monkstown and London, 1986,
p.327.
[9]
Bacon, like Beckett, in a
curious parallel also was employed during the war in an official capacity, he was
an air raid warden during the blitz and so would have also been privy to the
sight of countless horrors that he had experienced also during the war.
[10]
Jowett, Benjamin: Selected
Dialogues of Plato, Translated by Benjamin Jowett Revised and with an
Introduction by Hayden Pelliccia, The Modern Library, New York, 2000, p.229.
[11]
Beckett, Samuel: Comment
C’est How It Is and / et L’image, A Critical-Genetic Edition Une Édition
Critico-Génétique, Edited by Edouard Magessa O’Reilly, Routledge, New York,
First Paperback Edition 2016, p.185.
[12]
Deleuze, Giles: The
Exhausted, Translated by Anthony Uhlmann, SubStance #78, 1995, p. 3.
[13]
Beckett, Samuel: Comment
C’est How It Is and / et L’image, A Critical-Genetic Edition Une Édition
Critico-Génétique, Edited by Edouard Magessa O’Reilly, Routledge, New York,
First Paperback Edition 2016, p.145.
Wednesday, March 27, 2024
Extract from work in progress
Most People are Fucking Cunts
Most people are fucking cunts. That is the truth of
the matter. I mean, instinctively, when someone approaches you in a public
space what is your immediate reaction when they do? Do you sigh, internally,
and think to yourself, “Now, what does this fucking cunt want?” or, do you
smile with anticipation saying, “Now, who might this be?”
If you are in the latter group, you are a naïve
fucking cunt and I don’t want anything to do with you. You’re probably the kind
of idiot that is all pervasive on social media apps like Face Fucking Buke!
You know those idiots that want to friend you and you
have no idea who they possibly could be! Why would you do that, why in the name
of god would you want to befriend and entire stranger who would then have
access to all of your most private content, including most probably pictures of
your family and friends?
Such is society today! I don’t get it. This shit could
only have come out of the USA. Silicon Valley my ass! I was born in Cork in the
Republic of Ireland in the late nineteen sixties so this means in extension
that both my mother and father grew up under two arch cunts; namely Éamon de
Valera and Bishop John Charles McQuaid.
Now, as you’re probably of that particular generation
that grew up on purely visual images over overtly detailed written documentary
evidence, why don’t you just Google those two names and go look at their
visuals.
Tell me, what do you see? It’s all about the surface
now baby, purely superficial superfluous informational content. Wouldn’t want a
nice boy or girl like you now to start actually using the old grey cells. Why,
that would almost be bordering on the almost criminal now, wouldn’t it!
Thinking, now that’s a very dangerous exercise.
Take physiognomy, it used to be considered a science
back in medieval times when basically what you saw in front of you – Facebook –
was what you got. Just scroll down through them, all the thousands upon
thousands of faces that you can see.
Go on scroll and scroll, the infinite loop that is
what they call it, isn’t it! You can go on like that for infinity. Ingenious
shit. Just go into any public space and they’re all at it. I remember about
twenty or so years ago commuting into town and I remember very distinctly
looking around one particular morning.
I was coming up on the DART from the southside. Back
then I was living on the southside. Everyone had either hardbacks in the palm
of their hands, not paperbacks, mind. Hardbacks! And they were not just sports
biographies. You know, no they had history books, economic texts, political
magazines, literary tracts, novels, and even poetry collections for God’s sake!
Now, everything is reversed. I’ve flipped to the
northside, couldn’t handle all that middle class western aspirational bullshit,
any longer. Now, I’m up here in a former Viking settlement founded back in the
8th or 9th century AD, and people on the commute are all
doom scrolling on their fucking iPhones as if paper, not to mention books,
never even existed!
Doom scrolling! It’s a fucking joke really as the
world is literally going down the proverbial toilet bowl as I type, I mean
literally! There are multiple wars and they are all somehow, it would appear, related so that the world, in both the east and the west, would seem to be
spiraling into an escalatory negative death drive, which is both extremely
exciting and at the same time really bloody scary.
And, while all of this is going on… you have the whole
WOKE thing still going on! I mean, it’s a fucking joke, the whole thing. On one
side of the planet you have some poor bastard with a foot on his neck while
someone else is slicing off his friggin’ ear, all LIVE – "Smile! You’re on Candid Camera!"
And then, in
another neck of the woods you have some pretentious asshole standing by
a photocopier talking whole miles of horse shite about inclusion and inclusivity in
the workforce and what s/he means by this is that s/he is actually standing on
top of the heap looking down from their moral Olympus shitting in turn ten
times of crap down on everyone else, and particularly if they have a fucking penis….!
To be continued
Tuesday, March 26, 2024
Caliban
Caliban
“So,
you have a penis protruding between your legs,
Which
means I take it you want to fuck me, at some stage!
What
an absolutely revolting idea, how primitive!
You
know, I can self-fertilize, and have a “wand”
For
the other thing. Good God, I gave up
Fornicating
with fools like you long ago!
I
got tired of telling you to drop the seat,
Or
to pay attention to me when I was speaking!
Who
needs the aggravation… Besides, now I have
Friends
on all the committees. We’re in power now!
And
you poor fools can just fuck off and
Consider
your history, make amends.
Crawl
back to the table, on our terms!
For
you now have become the new minority!”
Sunday, March 24, 2024
de Vowels - poem
de
Vowels
With
the first look you cut me cleanly,
Both
assailant and rescuer,
Haemorrhaging
now into Life
Like
the Mystical Rose.
I
now a cult of One, the eternal Loser –
An
alchemist of old seeing
Symbols
littering the universe
Leading
me only ever onto You!
Keeping
relics, these fetishes,
After
the great abandonment,
As
proof positive of your actual presence.
Making
offerings on sacred feast days,
Holding
weekly masses,
Praying to you alone, inside the Walled Garden.
Wednesday, March 20, 2024
Chris Murray's latest collection Her Red Songs, reviewed by The Gombeen
Her
Red Songs
Chris
Murray
Turas
Press
(
87 pages)
If we start with the title, we must always start with
the title, these are songs! The poet would seem to be reminding us of the very
intimate connection between poetry and song, which I would say has largely been
lost when one considers the amount of prose, as opposed to prosody, which has
slipped into contemporary “poetry” these days. The irony being that while I
write this, I am finishing an almost year long study into the prosody of the
seldom read French novelist Louis Ferdinand Céline whose poetic lineage goes
back to chanson de geste and Le Roman de la Rose of Frech
medieval poetry and which was to have such a profound influence on not only
western literature but on western notions of chivalry and what we understand in
a modern sense as romantic ‘Love’ today!
The second thing I should like to point out is the
dedication to the poet Evan Boland ( 1944-2020). Chris Murray has been curating
Poethead now, a website that is dedicated to publishing the work of
women writers and poets, though I should also point out that she has also
published the work of men. Feminist though Chris Murray obviously is, she is
not, thankfully, a man hater. She is essentially a humanist and this is born
out in every sense by the multi-dimensioned nature of her writing.
The first cycle of poems, for example, are named after
the ancient Roman deities or gods that were known as Lares. In Roman
times, rather like in places like India today, gods were everywhere. Domestic
Gods, in short. There was the god of the kitchen that one prayed to or
worshipped in order to help one with one’s culinary endeavours. There were the
gods of the garden, dwelling in the wells and in the plants themselves so that
despite being a pagan society spirits, and so spirituality, was everywhere and
I think this is a very useful key into unlocking the very complex and delicate
structure of this latest collection of poetry by Chris Murray.
As with her previous collections, the poems in Her
Red Songs are delicate micro-structures yet which prove themselves to be
remarkably robust, as well. Murray the poet has a background that is as complex
and multi-dimensional as her poetry. Being at one time chorister, stone mason
as well as poet, these very different experiences inform her work. I think the
stone mason is ever present working behind the scenes, as it gives her
incredibly delicate imagery, as Murray is essential an imagist, the stoney
flintiness and robust inscriptive sonority to each piece.
I.
Ferns,
once
We
awaken in our bodies,
their
smooth hurt, winged.
The
mourning dove awakens too,
her
back to the city,
she
curves into the rain.
There it is forever inscribed, the image! I can think
of very few poets writing today in the English language who can imbue a poem in
so few words with such power and force and yet with such incredibly delicacy.
It is this twin act or power and delicacy, a Heraclitean element, that runs
through not only the entire collection, but which also runs through the entire
body of writing that Chris Murray has written to date. While I am on this
point, when will a publisher in this country finally wake up and publish a
selected works of this most remarkable poet, who has already several
collections to choose work from to date. As there are recurring themes and
techniques that readers who are familiar with the poet’s work will see in Her
Red Songs, and if a selected works were to be brought into the light this
very hallmark, the sign of a true poet, would be so readily seen.
For example, all of the rather curious punctuation
typically involving colons : forward slashes // or even | or dashes - … all the
very curious signs that Murray brings into her constructs are on display,
indeed seem to take on an even more elaborate and altogether essential
dimension in the work. Let me show you, here is another poem, complete.
Coda:
Leaf // Settles
jewelling
| nowhere
her Garnets
tempering |
scarlet
on steel
sky
–
a Leaf
there
is
Friday, January 26, 2024
Rabelais & Céline and the Hippocratic Nature of Language
Lafayette House, Dublin.
The Hippocratic Nature of Language
in D’un château
l’autre
« Rabelais avait
voulu faire passer la langue parlée
dans la langue
écrit ; un échec. » [1]
Céline
Two
doctors and two writers and both of a prodigious nature and who also both came
up against the authorities all their lives and often at great expense to their reputations
and who both almost lost their lives[2]. But, asides from these two very important factors,
in this chapter I will also be looking at the use of language which both
writers use, their incredible invention and humour, particularly when they are
addressing some of the issues of society that were troubling them and this is
why both writers are described as being Hippocratic, as by describing the
madness of the world which surrounded them this was a way for both men to
literally keep sane themselves and in turn to help to keep their readers mental
health in order. In the case of Céline, during the historically circumstances
that he now found himself sequestered with the remnants of the Vichy government
in the medieval castle of Sigmaringen, humour is really the last resort. I
shall be particularly focusing on the final section of D’un Château l’autre when
the occupants of the castle, in order to keep up morale, are preparing to hold
a festival for ‘La reprise des Ardennes…[3]’The irony for Céline, having fled France as he was
receiving death threats for apparently collaborating with the Germans, is that
he now finds himself at the end of the war in a mediaeval castle with the
collaborationist government who will choose to believe anything rather than the
allied victory which is certain, and which Céline is well aware of. Not only
must he confront his own past, which brings him to his current predicament, but
also that of his country and that of Europe’s. Sigmaringen is a medieval castle
and so it is a physical manifestation of a world that Rabelais would have
known. All his life, Rabelais sought refuge in similar structures from the
noble people of his time due to his ‘heretical’ stance. Finally, just as I will
later be examining the role of music in the further two instalments of the
trilogy, ( Erlkönig by Schubert in Nord and Polonaise in G
minor by Chopin and Piano Sonata No. 23 Apassionata by Beethoven in Rigodon
) in D’un château l’autre I will be looking at the role that Wagner
plays and in particular the famous Ritt der Walküren[4].
One of the
fundamental literary tropes that both Rabelais and Céline share are and indeed
are staple of epic poetry since ancient times are lists. Both writers use lists
to great comic literary effect as a very simple and effective way of
demonstrating their literary prowess and powers of invention. In D’un
château l’autre, as in all his novels, Céline uses them to great comic
effect. For example, when Ferdinand Brinon, modelled on the same Brinon who
presided over the Vichy government commission who were housed by the Nazis in
the ancient castle of Sigmaringen during the last months of the war, informs
Céline that he has been condemned to death by the “Comité de Plauen!” back home
in now recently liberated Paris, Céline, typically, goes into a tirade about
all the supposed horrors he has committed. It is a hallmark of his style, and
it is also one of the aspects of his writing that readers of Céline deeply
enjoy as they know that Céline will use the occasion to become as inventive as
he possibly can, typically trying to outdo himself in playful derision of his
enemies, who are legion. Here is his response to the news from France.
…s’il y a quelque
chose de fastidieux c’est
les « terrible
accusations »…rabâchis pires que les amours !...
je vois encore plus
tard, en prison, au Danemark…et par
l’Ambassade de
France…et par les journaux scandinaves…
pas de mal à la
tête !...simplement : « le monstre et vendu
le pire de plus
pire ! qui dépasse les mots !...que la plume
éclate !... »
sempiternels forfaits de monstre : vendeur de
ceci ! de
cela !...de tout la Ligne Maginot ! les caleçons
des troupes et
cacas ! généraux avec ! toute la flotte, le rade
de Toulon ! le
goulot de Brest ! les bouée et les mines !...
grand bazardeur de la
Patrie ! question des « collabos »
féroce ou
« fifis » atroces épurateurs de ci…de ca..[5]
This is hallmark
or signature of Rabelais also, and Céline, in this sense, is really his true
inheritor. Let us take a passage or two from Pantagruel just to show
exactly what I mean. I have decided to take two passages from chapter eight in
which Rabelais wishes to demonstrate why the codpiece, or ‘braguette’,
is the most important piece of equipment for soldiers, or men of war. So, to
begin, while first introducing the subject, Rabelais makes the point that as
with all things, man is inspired by nature first and he wishes to first
demonstrate how in the natural world plants are suitably protected or fortified
against the natural elements so that they can propagate, and in order to this
he lists out numerous examples.
Voyez
comment nature
voulent les plantes, arbres, arbrif-
feaulx, herbes, &
Zoophytes vne tois par elle créez,
perpétuer & durer
en toute fucceffion de temps,
fans iamais deperir
les eípeces, encores que les ind-
uiduz periffent,
curieufement arma leurs germes &
femences, es quelles
confifte icelle perpetuité, & les
a muniz & couuers
par admirable induftrie de
gouffes, vagines,
teftz, noyaulx, calicules, coques,
efpiz, pappes,
efcorces, echines poignans : qui leurs
font comme belles
& fortes braguette naturelle.[6]
Comparatists
typically would point out the ‘horizon of expectation’ that such lists invoke
in the mind of the reader, in other words the reader knows what is coming
ahead, and this phenomenon builds up in the reader a form of confidence that
they now share with the author. In other words, a bond or implicit pact between
the reader and the author has been forged because of the inclusion of such
literary tropes, and this can simply be attributed to the reader’s inherent
respect for the poetic art or craft of the writer. Such technical
accomplishments are always deeply prized by the reading public, and it is a
testament to the ever- pervading character of the human mind, how in a sense it
is forever unchanging in terms of structural underpinnings, or tropes. As just
as Céline, in a sense, is taking up the baton from Rabelais, Rabelais himself,
who very much prized his classical education, is merely aping or parroting the
stylistic tropes of Homer[7].
These, these were the captains of Achaea and the
kings.
Now tell me muse, who were the bravest of them all,
of the men and chariot-teams that came with Atreus’
sons?
The best by far of the teams were Eumelus’s mares
and Phere’s grandson drove them – swift as birds,
matched in age and their glossy coats and matched
to a builder’s level flat across their backs.
Phoebus Apollo lord of the silver bow
had bred them both in Perea, a brace of mares
that raced the War -god’s panic through the lines.[8]
Before I go on, I
should, at this stage, like to refer to the North American poet T. S. Eliot who
I have been going back to again and again since I first picked up his poetry
when I was a very young man in the nineteen eighties, and so who I have been reading
for now for over a period of four decades…I will always remember reading his
short essay Tradition and the Individual Talent, the date that I have
scribbled inside the flyleaf of the book, as is my habit when I purchase a book
that I have need of, is 2003, so I have been going back to this particular text
for over two decades now, but I recall reading it first in a library book when
I was much younger. Let me just give you the quotation by Eliot himself on
tradition, as it is still a quote that resonates[9].
Tradition is a matter of much wider significance.
It cannot be inherited, and if you want it you must
obtain
it by great labour. It involves in the first place,
the historical
sense, which we may call nearly indispensable to
anyone
who would continue to be a poet beyond his
twenty fifth year;[10]
Returning to
Céline now and the influence of Rabelais and particularly in the context of D’un
château l’autre, after having examined the first two sections of the novel
beginning in Meudon in the fifties; when Céline is writing the novel after his
return to France having left in fear of his life and now very much keeping a
low profile under still a cloud of disgrace; to the train station and streets
around Sigmaringen where Céline describes particularly the horrendous
possibility of rape for countless women and the sporadic and often random
nature of death for countless civilians due to the indiscriminate carpet
bombing by the approaching allies; to the final section in the novel which very
much takes place inside the castle itself as the occupants, in order to
keep their spirits up start planning to have a festival to celebrate the future
victory of the newly reformed SS panzer divisions, recently redeployed from the
eastern front, and the Wehrmacht in the Ardennes. In order to situate us better
historically, before returning to Céline in the medieval castle of Sigmaringen,
I should like to first refer to Antony Beevor’s image of Hitler who was also
sequestered in a medieval castle during this time preparing to address the
assembled gathering.
Late that afternoon, buses brought divisional
commanders to the
Alderhorst to be addressed by Hitler. Each officer was
searched by SS
guards and had to surrender his pistol and briefcase.
At 18:00 hours,
Hitler limped on to the stage. Generals who had not
seen him for some
time were shocked by his physical deterioration, with
pallid face, droop-
ing shoulders and one arm which shook. Flanked by
Keitel and Jodl, he
sat behind a table.[11]
The vision that
Beevor presents is nothing less than Gothic[12], and I think this is very useful to see before we now
turn our attention to the events which Céline is about to recount as I think it
is very easy to forget how absolutely mad, insane is perhaps a better term
being more clinical, a lot of the events were in Europe at the time, mad, at
least, in the very real medical sense of the term.
Je laisse Lili à
travailler, répéter ses danses avec le
couple Delaunys, ses
numéros pour la Fête…il s’agit
plus de plaisanter…à
fond « ça va de soi » !...cha-
connes, passe-pieds,
rigodons !...un moment y a plus
que de sérieux…pas
faire basculer la marmite !...que
vous verriez plus que
les diables ! la « Reprise des
Ardennes ? »…certainement !
tous les Ambassadeurs y
seront !...bien
sûr !...le triomphe de l’Armée Rundstedt ?
ah là là !
Triomphe, c’est peu dire ! [13]
Céline loved
dance, so much so he married a dancer. Lucette Destouches, who is Lili in the
novels, was a dancer and the way Céline describes her in the passage above
contains some of the fundamental elements of dance amongst them being
discipline, rhythm and cadence. It is coming back to his qualities as a
musician.[14]
Je laisse Lili à
travailler,
répéter ses danses
avec le couple Delaunys,
This is a rhyming
couplet, almost in iambic pentameter.
ses numéros pour la
Fête…
ils s’agit plus de
plaisanter…
à fond « ça va
de soi » !...
chaconnes, passe pieds, rigodons !...
And it goes on and
on…Céline’s ‘petite musique’. Content dictates form; Céline is writing about a
dancer, and so the music dances! This is James Joyce, language is the
thing not merely representation and the two writers have so much in common, in
this sense. Of course, the further association with Rabelais is another. Joyce
too was a great admirer, he too had his innumerable lists. But Joyce too was a
music lover, particularly of Italian opera and he was considered, in his say,
to be a very fine tenor.[15]
But it is not
Italian opera that I want to focus on here but rather German, Wagner’s Valkyrie
to be more precise as it is the piece of music that Abetz, Chateaubriand and Hoffman
are discussing with Céline as the ideal piece of music to celebrate ‘le
triomphe de l’Armée Rundstedt’. This is a reference to the Ardennes offensive
which was to prove so disastrous to the German army. All of his generals said
it was madness, but Hitler had long ago ceased to listen to them, much to the
delight of the Allied generals. In the novel D’un château l’autre, this
chapter is critical as it shows the full farce of the situation that Céline,
the antisemitic collaborationist author, now found himself in holed up in a
Germanic castle, dating from medieval times, with the entire Vichy government
which the Nazis had installed there. Abetz is of course the German Ambassador
to France who Céline met previously in Paris during the occupation and these meeting
were recorded as there is testimony to them. In fact, the writer Alphonse Châteaubriand,
who actually was a collaborator with the Germans, was in the company of the
Ambassador and Céline in the Café de la Paix in Paris for a reception given by
a Japanese newspaper and Céline, who happened to be dressed like a tramp, was
overheard asking a German colonel what month the Wehrmacht would they loose the
war[16]. So, the accusations that Céline was a collaborator
simply do not fully stack up, anyone who has read the German Trilogy could tell
you that as the majority of the time in the three novels Céline is simply being
quite satirical about the whole Nazi debacle that he witnesses and the scene with
Abetz, Chateaubriand and Hoffmann is typical of the humour of the trilogy.
Abetz, je le connaissais
vrai-
ment tré peu…nous étions
pas en sympathie…cer-
tainement rien à nous
dire…on les voyait guère qu’en-
touré de « clients »…courtisans…clients-courtisans
de toutes les Cours !...les
mêmes ou leurs frères…vous
pouvez aller chez
Mendès…Churchill, Nasser ou
Krouchtchez…les mêmes
ou leurs frères ! Versailles,
Kremlin, Vel’d’Hiv,
Salle des Ventes…chez Laval !
de Gaulle !...vous
pensez !...éminence grises, voyous,
verreux, Académistes
ou Tiers État, pluri-sexués,
rigoristes ou proxénétistes,
bouffeurs de croûtons ou
d’hosties, vous les
verrez toujours sibylles, toujours [17]
The
style is always slightly mocking and the lists, Rabelaisian, all help with the
flow of the language making it light and comical, and of course Céline, as it
is also his custom to do, uses the momentum to build the scene up into a kind
of a delirium which transports the reader also. This is the main hallmark of Céline,
commentators have often remarked about it, the delirium that he manages to
build up in his books, or indeed in the pamphlets. This is what carries the
readers away, and of course such kind of artistry took Céline an inordinate
amount of time to write, as he was always saying. It is simply staggering to
think about how he actually found the time to write all of the novels that he
did, ten in total, not to mention all of the other texts and letters, he really
was one of the most prolific writers, and of course there is something Rabelaisian
in this also, the almost gargantuan appetite that Céline had for not only
writing but also living!
Je vous éloigne de Siegmaringen[18]…puzzle
que ma
tête !... je vous parlais de la rue à Siegmaringen…des
schuppos…mais pas que des schuppos !...des militaires
de toutes les armes et de tout les grades…refoulés
de la gare…grands blessés de régiments dissous…
unités des divisions souabes, magyar, saxonnes, hachées
en Russie…les cadres on ne sait d’où !...officiers d’armées
de Balkans à la recherche de leurs généraux…plus
sachant…ce que vous avez vu ici même, pendant le
grand « rally-culotte » I’Escaut-Bayonne…les colonels
plus sachant!...Soubises sans lanternes…vous les voyez
devant les vitrines comme cherchant quelqu’un à l’in-
térieur…faisant semblant… [19]
Of
course, the fact that all of the action is taking place in a medieval castle
which was around in Rabelais’s time, Rabelais like Céline had to go into hiding
due to his heretical thinking and was offered protection by Jean du Bellay, a nobleman,
and Rabelais is typically associated with La tour Rabelais in the Abbey
of Saint-Maur in the suburbs of Paris among other domiciles.[20]
“Docteur, s’il vous plait!...voulez-vous venir au
Château, demain soir ?...diner ? avec Hoffmann ? sans
façon !...entre nous !...
-Certainement, Monsieur Abetz ! »[21]
The
humour here is clearly evident, the way Céline mocks the elevated tones and
decorum of the denizens of Sigmaringen, while war rages all about and the very
foundations of their society are being blown, literally, into a hundred
thousand pieces. Yet, the Ambassador and his entourage are behaving with all of
the graces of petit bourgeois society, and of course this is what Céline, in
his writing, was at war with all his life.
Là, à table, je regardais Abetz, il jouait avec sa ser-
viette…un homme replet, bien rasé…il remangerait
quand je serait parti !...oh, pas ce qu’on nous servait
là juste ! radis sans beurre, porridge sans lait !...il péro-
rait pour ce que je l’écoute et que je répète…pour ça
qu’il m’avait invité !...on nous sert un rond de saucis-
son, un rond chacun…alors mon Dieu, qu’on s’amuse !...[22]
Céline’s
comic timing is simply exquisite, apparently he was very good company in real
life and enjoyed making people laugh, a lot. We can well believe it, as his
sense of humour is simply deliriously funny[23]. And,
this is very much Céline fulfilling his role as chronicler, ‘chroniqueur fidèle’[24].
“ Que ferez-vous Monsieur Abetz quand l’Armée
Leclerc sera ici ? Á Siegmaringen ? ici-même !...
au Châteaux ? »
Ma question les trouble pas…ni Hoffmann ni lui,
Ils y avaient pensé…[25]
And
now we are right at the heart of the matter, Nazi fanaticism. Now, it is
routinely the stuff of comedians, one immediately thinks of John Cleese’s
performance in the popular TV program Faulty Towers, for example, when
some German tourists stay at the hotel and all of the ridiculous comedy ensues.[26]
In D’un château l’autre, Céline’s comic genius is such that he stages a ‘human
comedy’ in the grand style of Balzac before him and Dante before him, chronicling
the nightmarish events of WW2, yet doing so with the most madcap sense of
humour. I can only think of one other writer who did something similar and that
is Joseph Heller in Catch 22, again a book based on Heller’s own experiences
in the American army based in Italy during the war. But, once again, Céline
goes one better as he is chronicling the war as seen from the point of view of
an ordinary citizen, not from the perspective of the military.
“Mais nous avons en Forêt Noire des hommes abso-
lument dévoués ! Monsieur Céline !... notre maquis
brun !...[27]
The
comedy which is at work here is the apparent blindness or sheer stupidity of
the characters involved, blinded by their fate in Nazi ideology.
-
Oh
certainment, Monsieur Abetz!”[28]
Céline
speaks to the man as if he were talking to a child, and the reader is in on it.
As pure spectator. Céline’s dramatic sense of genius is to put the reader right
there in the castle with the German Ambassador to France and to give them a
bird’s eye view into the madness that ensues.
- Comprenez- moi mon cher Céline ! avec quelque
compagnons « de choc », nous avons choisi notre
endroit !... oh j’ai connu d’autres épreuves ! »
Il se recueille…trois très énormes profonds soupirs !...
et il reprend…
« Un endroit, une vallée absolument inaccessible,
très étroit, un Cirque nous dirons, entre trois som-
mets…au fond du Tyrol !...et là ! là Céline !...
nous nous isolons !...vous me comprenez ?...nous nous
concentrons !...nous mettons au point notre bombe ! »[29]
And just when you think the madness cannot get any
worse, it does!
“Avec quoi votre
bombe?
- Oh cher Hoffmann!... pas un bombe d’acier
ni dynamite !... mille fois non !...une bombe de concentra-
tion ! de fois ! Hoffmann ![30]
The fact that Céline is a doctor and so is using,
clearly, his best bedside manner as he talks to this lunatic merely adds to the
sense of delirium, as his manner, one of reason, contrasts so strongly with the
almost insane babblings of the Ambassador. But it does not stop here, it is
only starting. The delirium continues…
C’est à ce moment-là, je ne sais pourquoi, qu’ils se
sont mis à ne plus s’entendre…Chateaubriand réfléchis-
sait…Abetz aussi…Hoffmann aussi…je disais rien…
Chateaubriand rompt le silence…il a une idée !...
« Vous ne trouvez pas mon cher Abetz que pour un
tel événement ? L’Opéra de Berlin ? l’Opéra de Paris ?
les deux orchestres ?
- Certainement ! certainement mon cher !
-La Chevauchée des Walkyries ! le seul air ! oh,
le seul air ! oh, le seul air ! celui-là ! »[31]
In the previous three chapters, I have looked at
various aspects of Céline’s style in the first novel in the German Trilogy D’un
château l’autre and I have also looked at Yannick Gomez’s study on Céline
and Beethoven and the extent to which music plays such a significant role in
the author’s writing. So far, the popular song Lili Marlene made so
famous by Marlene Dietrich and just now Wagner’s The Ride of the Valkyrie made
so famous by Francis Ford Coppola in Apocalpse Now ( 1979). But, as we
continue into the trilogy, we will see that this is but the start of the
importance that music will play in Louis Ferdinand Céline’s writing, as in Nord,
the central novel and the most voluminous, Céline uses the famous lieder Erlkönig
by Franz Schubert to great dramatic effect, and then again in Rigodon,
the final third instalment, a polonaise by Chopin is evoked in order to
simulate the firestorm created by the bombing of Hanover which Céline actually
witnessed in March, 1944.
[1] Rabelais, Il a Raté son Coup, Louis
Ferdinand Céline, Entretien
http://archiveslfc.blogspot.com/2016/11/rabelais-il-rate-son-coup-quand-celine.html
[2]
Louis Ferdinand Céline was
actually incarcerated for almost two years in a Danish prison on the charge of
collaborating with the Nazi regime, charges which he always fundamentally
rejected and which he was eventually acquitted of in a French military court
allowing him to return home to his native France after years of exile. Céline
himself was convinced that the real reason for his imprisonment was all down to
petty jealousy coming from left wing figures like Jean Paul Sartre, who had
their own personal agendas and which there is some truth to his accusations and
which rather reminiscent of the kinds of witch hunts that are going on today
against many scientific members of the academic community who, like Céline,
have gone against the driving ideologies that have infested our universities.
Likewise, Rabelais was also persecuted all his adult life by religious groups,
be it the Sorbonne, which was a theological college during his time, or the
puritanical Calvinists who were gaining a stranglehold of mainly northern
countries but also had power in France. The parallels with what is happening
today are simply dumbfounding.
[3] Céline, Louis Ferdinand : Céline Romans ii, D’un
Château l’autre, Nord, Rigodon, Édition Présentée, Établie, et Annotée par
Henri Godard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, Éditions Gallimard, Paris, 2016,
p.219.
[4]
Music plays an incredibly
important role in the writing of Céline, he often referred to his writing as
his ‘petite musique’. My own recent reading of the novelist has been highly
influenced by Yannick Gomez whose recent study D’un musicien l’autre, de
Céline à Beethoven ( La Nouvelle Librairie, 2023) helped me to appreciate
to what degree music plays a role in the writings of this formidable,
misunderstood and highly controversial writer.
[5] Céline, Louis
Ferdinand: D’un château l’autre, Collection Blanche, Éditions Gallimard,
Paris, 1981, pp. 156,157.
[6] Rabelais, Francois: Pantagruel, LES ŒVVRES de
Maiftre Francois Rabelais, Tome deuxième, Alphonse Lemere, Éditeur, Paris,
M. DCCC. LXX., p.45.
[7]
A note here on so called
‘critical reading of texts’ in terms of the ‘Other’, I am referring now to the
very mass of ‘so called’ critical readings of texts with respect to ‘minority
groups’; in other words LGBT, BLM, Feminist Theory, Queer Readings, etc, etc…It
is very simple, either you accept a literary tradition as you would a
linguistic inheritance and all of the grammatical rulings that go with it,
or, you do not! Us Irish have been
dealing with post-colonialism and all of the subsequent trauma, either
identified or otherwise, since the day that we were delivered unto this cruel
earth… Deal with it!
[8]
Homer: The Illiad,
Translated by Robert Fagles, Introduction and Notes by Bernard Fox, Penguin
Classics, London, 1990, 124.
[9]
On a more
personal note, I will be fifty- seven this year and I have been writing poetry
since the mid-1980s. My first full-length collection was published in 2015, and
since then I have had ten books published, again, mainly poetry. This current
book on Céline is all part of it, it is research that I am doing into the novel
as I am currently working on my second novel. It is part of my ongoing literary
research that first started with Samuel Beckett and which led onto my
translations of Baudelaire, both ongoing projects that I have been engaged on
since I did my post-graduate studies over ten years ago. Personally, I couldn’t
afford a doctorate so I have been working as an independent scholar now for
over the last decade, presenting papers at conferences whenever I can get an
opportunity, but it is all, all of this research, it is all done for but one
purpose, and that is to strive to attain some level of excellence in the craft
and art of writing, be it novels, poems, or indeed, literary essays! I think it
is important to state all of this as a practitioner, as that is what I am.
Although, I have an academic background or training, I am not an academic but
rather a writer who uses academic research to further my own literary output
and I think it is very important for me to state this here as there is, in my
opinion, a real lack of academic rigour in the written arts these days,
particularly poetry and this is mainly due to the thoroughly appalling ideology
which has been promoted in the arts and in so called academic sectors and which
promotes individuals in minority groups as opposed to pursuing artistic
excellence. This of course has been a complete disaster for the arts, and in
particular poetry.
[10]
Eliot, T.S.: The Sacred
Wood, Essays on Poetry and Criticism, Faber and Faber, London, 1997, p.40.
[11]
Beevor, Antony: Ardennes
1944, Hitler’s Last Gamble, Viking, Penguin Books, First publication, 2015,
p.95.
[12]
Kransberg Castle dates from
the 12th century, it was appropriated by the Nazis in 1939 and
Albert Speer built the Adelhorst bunker and command headquarters where Hitler
staged the meeting before the Battle of the Bulge.
[13] Céline, Louis Ferdinand : Céline Romans ii, D’un
Château l’autre, Nord, Rigodon, Édition Présentée, Établie, et Annotée par
Henri Godard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, Éditions Gallimard, Paris, 2016,
p.224.
[14] « Je suis musicien de langue. » ( give reference !)
[15]
References to music and
Rabelaisian use of language abound in Finnegans Wake.
‘But,
thunder and turf, its not alover yet. One recalls Byzantium. The mystery
repeats itself todate as our callback mother Gaudyanna, that was daughter to a
tanner, used to sing, as I think, now and then consinuously once her possetpot
in her querhomolocous humminbass hesterdie and istherdie forivor.’
Joyce,
James: Finnegans Wake, With an Introduction by Len Platt, Wordsworth
Classics, London, pp. 294-295.
[16] Vitoux, Frédéric : La vie de Céline, Collection
Folio, Gallimard, Paris, 2004, pp. 645-646.
[17] Céline, Louis
Ferdinand : Céline Romans ii, D’un Château l’autre, Nord, Rigodon,
Édition Présentée, Établie, et Annotée par Henri Godard, Bibliothèque de la
Pléiade, Éditions Gallimard, Paris, 2016, p.225.
[18]
Note the very Joycean play on
words ‘Siegmaringen’ with the Nazi Sieg, as in “Sieg Heil!” as opposed to
Sigmaringen, the actual name of the castle.
[19] Céline, Louis Ferdinand : Céline Romans ii, D’un
Château l’autre, Nord, Rigodon, Édition Présentée, Établie, et Annotée par
Henri Godard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, Éditions Gallimard, Paris, 2016, pp.225
– 226.
[20]
Just thinking about the similarities
between Céline and Rabelais, I jotted down the following: both doctors, persecuted,
prodigious inventors of language, stylists, anarchic, both wrote under
pseudonyms ( Rabelais published under the name of Alcofribas Nasier), both were
extremely popular in their own lifetime, both used extremely vulgar language
and slang, and both were anti-academic.
[21] Ibid, p.226.
[22] Céline, Louis
Ferdinand : Céline Romans ii, D’un Château l’autre, Nord, Rigodon,
Édition Présentée, Établie, et Annotée par Henri Godard, Bibliothèque de la
Pléiade, Éditions Gallimard, Paris, 2016, p, 226.
[23]
Samuel Beckett, another great
comic stylist of the 20th century, in his novel Watt, which
he wrote during WW2, in Languedoc. The parallels between both writers, Céline
and Beckett, particularly when looking at their experiences during the war are
simply fascinating; Celine the antisemite apparent ‘collabo’ and Beckett the
Irish expat resistance member who flew Paris to the south of France in fear of
arrest by the Gestapo…
What
I wanted to show here was this fragment on laughter.
‘Where
were we. The bitter, the hollow and – Haw! Haw! – the mirthless. The bitter
laugh laughs at that which is not good, it is the ethical laugh. The hollow
laugh laughs at that which is not true, it is the intellectual laugh. Not good!
Not true! Well well. But the mirthless laugh is the dianoetic laugh, down the
snout – Haw! – so. It is the laugh of laughs, the risus puris, the laugh
laughing at the laugh, the beholding, the saluting of the highest joke, in a
word the laugh that laughs – silence please – at that which is unhappy.
Beckett,
Samuel: Watt, Grove Press, New York, No Date of Publication given.
[24] Céline, Louis
Ferdinand : Céline Romans ii, D’un Château l’autre, Nord, Rigodon,
Édition Présentée, Établie, et Annotée par Henri Godard, Bibliothèque de la
Pléiade, Éditions Gallimard, Paris, 2016, p, 307.
[25] Céline, Louis Ferdinand : Céline Romans ii, D’un
Château l’autre, Nord, Rigodon, Édition Présentée, Établie, et Annotée par
Henri Godard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, Éditions Gallimard, Paris, 2016, p, 227.
[26]
« Don’t mention the war. »
becomes the watchword for Cleese’s character.
[27]
Ibid, p.227.
[28] Ibid, p.227.
[29] Céline, Louis Ferdinand : Céline Romans ii, D’un
Château l’autre, Nord, Rigodon, Édition Présentée, Établie, et Annotée par
Henri Godard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, Éditions Gallimard, Paris, 2016, p, 230.
[30]
Ibid, p.231.
[31]
Ibid, p. 231.