« Souvenir d’horizons, qu’est-ce, ô toi, que la Terre? » : Écopoétique chez Bonnefoy et Mallarmé : lieu, sens, présence.

Abstract

Few studies have compared Mallarmé and Bonnefoy. We will explore in this study the importance that each attributes to the earth in their work. If poetry endows our earthly sojourn with authenticity, according to Mallarmé, the poet remains confronted with the anguish of void and nothingness. In this context, the Earth presents a great unresolved mystery. However, Mallarmé does not renounce his dream of Beauty through “the Orphic explanation of the Earth.” Writing poetry is, for Bonnefoy, “to render the earth in the face of its presence.” We will explore in Ce qui fut sans lumière how the quest for experiencing the earth is no longer achieved through a totality (Mallarmé’s Book) but through a co-presence with others in which “the earth becomes poetry.” We analyze the theme of the earth in both poets’ works in light of the recent research published on ecopoetics, in particular that of Pierre Schoentjes and Jonathan Bate.

Keywords:

• Ecopoetics
• earth
• place
• meaning
• presence
• alterity

Notes

1 Voir Pierre Montebello, Nietzsche. Fidélité à la Terre, Paris, CNRS Éditions, 2019.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Éric Touya de Marenne

Éric Touya de Marenne is Professor of French at Clemson University. He received his D.E.A. in Comparative Literature at the Université de Paris IV, Sorbonne, and his Ph.D. in Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Chicago. His research and teaching interests include nineteenth-twenty-first Century French and Francophone Literature and Culture, and interdisciplinary approaches to literature, art, theory, ethics, and society. His recent books include The Case for the Humanities: Pedagogy, Polity, Interdisciplinarity (Lanham, Rowman & Littlefield, 2016), and Simone de Beauvoir: le combat au féminin (Paris, PUF, 2019).