The Voice of Merleau-Ponty: The Philosopher and the Poet

References

• Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Le visible et l'invisible, edited by Claude Lefort, Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1964, p. 201; trans. The Visible and the Invisible, translated by Alphonso Lingis, Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1968, p. 155; from now on referred to as VI, followed by English and French page reference.
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• Paul Valéry, Introduction to the Method of Leonardo da Vinci, translated by Thomas McGreevy, London: John Rodker, 1929, pp. 31–33. Publication in French, 1894, additional “Note and Digression” added in 1919.
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• Jacques Derrida, On Touching—Jean-Luc Nancy, translated by Christine Irizarry, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005, p. 215.
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• Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Signes, Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1960, p. 34f; trans. Signs, translated by Richard C. McCleary, Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1964, p. 25; from now on referred to as S, followed by English and French page reference. The translation of “Indirect Language and the Voices of Silence” is taken from the The Merleau-Ponty Aesthetics Reader, pp. 76–120, and referred to as ILVS.
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• Sound recording, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Éloge de la modernité, CD 6, Anthologie sonore de la pensée française par les philosophes du XXème siècle, Paris: Frémeaux et Associés, 2005. The three fragments are excerpts from radio talks titled “La pensée et l'art contemporain“ in the series “Heure de culture française,” given on French radio R. D. F. on 9 October 1948.
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• Jacques Derrida, Speech and Phenomenon, translation by David B. Allison of La Voix et le Phénomène, Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973, p. 78.
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• Paul Valéry, “Note and Digression,” Introduction to the Method of Leonardo da Vinci, p. 1.
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• Ibid., p. 7.
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• Maurice Merleau-Ponty, “Le doute de Cézanne,” in Sens et Non-Sens, Paris: Les Éditions Nagel, 1948, 1966, p. 37; trans. “Cézanne's Doubt”, in: The Merleau-Ponty Aesthetics Reader: Philosophy and Painting, edited by Galen A. Johnson, translations by Michael B. Smith, Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1993, 1998, p. 72; from now on referred to as CD followed by English and French page reference.
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• Ibid., pp. 10–11: “To possess this liberty in profound change…is merely to possess such a sense of human integrity as we imagine the ancients possessed.”
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• Ibid., p. 18.
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• Paul Valéry, “Poetry and Abstract Thought,” in: Paul Valéry, The Art of Poetry, translated by Denise Folliot, Bollingen Series XLV, 7, New York: Pantheon Books, 1958, p. 76.
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• Ibid., p. 60.
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• Paul Valéry, “Concerning Le Cimetière Marin”, in: Paul Valéry, The Art of Poetry, p. 143.
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• Jacques Derrida, “Qual Quelle: Valéry's Sources,” in: Margins of Philosophy, translated by Alan Bass, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982, p. 299. French edition, Marges de la Philosophie, Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1972. Also cf. Nicoletta Grillo, “The Subject at the Mirror: Merleau-Ponty, Derrida, and Valéry starting from Qual Quelle”, Chiasmi International, Volume I, Paris: Librairie J. Vrin, 1999.
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• Ibid., p. 301.
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• Paul Valéry, “Introduction to the Method of Leonardo da Vinci,” p. 15.
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• Ibid., pp. 15–16.
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• Maurice Merleau-Ponty, L'Oeil et l'Esprit, Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1964, p. 17; trans. “Eye and Mind”, in The Merleau-Ponty Aesthetics Reader, pp. 121–149, p. 124; from now on referred to as EM followed by English and French page reference.
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• Maurice Merleau-Ponty, L'Institution, La Passivité: Notes de cours au Collège de France, 1954–1955, Paris: Éditions Belin, 2003, p. 75. “En échange de ce qu'on avait imaginé, la vie vous donne autre chose, et autre chose qui était secrètement voulu, non fortuit. Réalisation n'est pas ce qui était prévu, mais tout de même ce qui était voulu: on avance à reculons, on ne choisit pas directement, mais obliquement, mais on fait tout de même ce qu'on veut: l'amour est clairvoyant, il nous addresse justment à ce qui peut nous déchirer.” I am grateful to Mauro Carbone for his paper discussing this passage, titled “Love and Music,” presented at the 31st International Conference of the Merleau-Ponty Circle, Fairfax, VA: George Mason University, October 30, 2006.
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• Paul Valéry, “Poetry and Abstract Thought,” p. 63.
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• Paul Valéry, “A Poet's Notebook,” in: Paul Valéry, The Art of Poetry, p. 173.
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• Paul Valéry, “Poetry and Abstract Thought,” p. 61. Cf. Hilary Putnam, Paul Valéry Revisited, New York: Twayne Publishers, 1995, p. 22.
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• Ibid., p. 61.
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• Ibid., p. 80.
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• Ibid., p. 80.
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• Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The World of Perception, translated by Oliver Davis, London: Routledge, 2004, p. 99.
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• Paul Valéry, “Poetry and Abstract Thought,” p. 71.
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• Ibid., p. 72.
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• Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phénoménologie de la perception, Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1945, p. 229; trans. Phenomenology of Perception, translated by Colin Smith, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1962, p. 197; from now on referred to as PP followed by English and French page reference.
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• Ibid., p. 75.
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• Ibid., p. 67.
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• Ibid., p. 74.
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• Cf.Jacques Derrida, On Touching—Jean-Luc Nancy, translated by Christine Irizarry, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005, “Tangent III,” pp. 203–215. French edition Le toucher, Jean-Luc Nancy, Paris: Éditions Galilée, 2000.
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• Here one must oppose the claim that Merleau-Ponty's concept of Flesh is reductive or univocal, as argued by Renaud Barbaras in his otherwise admirable work, Desire and Distance. Barbaras himself writes: “the concept of flesh cannot be univocal once it is constructed on the basis of the body itself.” This is surely correct, but the claim that Merleau-Ponty does not see this is mistaken, in our judgment. Cf. Barbaras, Renaud, Desire and Distance: Introduction to a Phenomenology of Perception, translated by Paul B. Milan, Standford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006, p. 83.
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• Henry David Thoreau, “Sounds,” in: Walden, Boston: Beacon Press, 1854, 2004, pp. 116–117.
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• Ibid., pp. 63–64.
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• Cf.Hilary Putnam, Paul Valéry Revisited, pp. 63–64.
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• Paul Valéry, “Poetry and Abstract Thought,” pp. 80–81.
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• Paul Valéry, “La Pythie,” in Poems, translated by James R. Lawler, Bollingen Series XLV, Volume I, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971, p. 176, 177.
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• Ibid., pp. 176, 177. Last three lines of the English translation modified.
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• Paul Valéry, “Poetry and Abstract Thought“, p. 81.
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• Christine M. Crow, Paul Valéry and the Poetry of Voice, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982, p. 178. Jean Hytier has connected this ideal voice with a similar theme in Rimbaud: “Thus extreme personality of form returns to impersonality. This is, indeed, the impression given by the flash of genius when it formulates itself beyond time and place like an ineluctable judgment…. Rimbaud declared that we should not say ‘I am thinking” but 'I am being thought.’” Cf. Hytier, Jean, The Poetics of Paul Valéry, translated by Richard Howard, Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1966, p. 74.
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• William Styron, Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness, New York: Random House, 1990, p. 48.
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• Franz Kafka, “The Metamorphosis,” in: The Metamorphosis and Other Stories, translated by Malcolm Pasley, New York: Penguin Books, 1992, p. 66.
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• Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Nature: Course Notes from the Collège de France, compiled and with notes by Dominique Séglard, translated by Robert Vallier, Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2003, p. 174.
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• Cf.Paul Valéry, “Aesthetics,” in: Paul Valéry: Aesthetics, translated by Ralph Mannheim, Bollingen Series XLV, Volume 13, New York: Pantheon Books, 1964, esp. pp. 42–29.
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• Paul Valéry, “A Poet's Notebook,” p. 175.
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