POETRY AND SILENCE: Valery and Rimbaud

Jeffrey Mehlman

On March 7,1914, Andre Breton wrotea letter of homage to Paul Valery, whowould receive him at his home on rue deVillejust a week later, thus intitiating afriendship that saw, among other things,Valery serve as best man at Breton's wed-ding, in 1921, to Simone Kahn. For thehistorian of poetry, it would appear to bethe oddest of conjunctions. For the her-itage of French modernism, it is generallyagreed, begins with a bifurcation in theBaudelairean dispensation. The poet ofLes Fleurs du mal was simultaneously aneo-classical polisher of strict verse formsand an explosive prophet of poetry's mis-sion to take us, in a phrase borrowedfrom Poe, "anywhere out of this world."On the one hand, the exquisite pressuresof the He Saint-Louis, in whose confineshe set up shop; on the other, the expan-sive possibilities of the He Maurice, theexotic island in the Indian Ocean hewould never forget. That Baudelaireantension would not last. On the one hand,Mallarme, then Valery would pursue theneo-classical tendency; on the other,Rimbaud, then Breton and the Surrealistswould pursue the will to paroxysm,indeed convulsion, without which, asBreton had it, poetry would not be.

How, then, did Breton come to courtValery in 1914? The answer is that he wasattracted less to Valery the poet than toValery the ex-poet. It was, in a word, thesilence of Valery, intitiated in the course ofa much heralded crisis of October 1892,that inspired Breton's cross-over to theadverse tradition. As he would commentyears later in a volume of interviews: "In

my eyes, he benefited, under the circum-stances, from the prestige implicit in amyth that could be observed crystallizingaround Rimbaud: that of a man turninghis back, one fine day, on his oeuvre, as if,with certain peaks achieved, that oeuvrein some way rejected its creator."' Theintertwining of the two Baudelaireanstrands was, then, more elaborate, moresurprising than Breton's overture toValery in 1914 might suggest. Beyond theBreton/Valery conjunction there was afundamental-silent-resonance affirmedbetween Valery and Rimbaud himself:two grand and, to all appearances, grand-ly incompatible figures joined in the salu-tary impact of their abandonment of poet-ry

The paradox, of course, lay in the thefact that Valery, to Breton's future cha-grin, was, at Gide's behest, secretly engi-neering his "involuntary" return to poet-ry during the very years that Bretonfound himself drawn into the Rimbaldianaura of Valery's "silence." "La JeuneParque," Valery's "involuntary Aeneid,"was begun during the Great War, finishedin 1917.^ The extent of Breton's disap-pointment at what is arguably Valery'sgreatest achievement appears, at its mostsuccinct, in Breton's subsequent dedica-tion of a copy of the Surrealist Manifesto:"A Paul Valery, 1871-1917." Valery, whosemajor volume, Charmes, would follow in1922, died during the night of May 31,1945.

We would appear to be confronted,then, with an embarrassing confusion, on

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Breton's part, between the authenticsilence of Rimbaud and the truncated andspurious silence-a case of reculer pourmieux sauter?-oi Valery. The matter is fur-ther complicated, however, by the specificresonances of Valery's "silence" and itsrelation to the poetry that followed. Torecall the circumstances of the poet'sabandonment of his art, the so-called"Genoa night" of October 5,1892: Valery,a leading member of the young Symbolistcoterie, abjures poetry as ultimately dele-terious to Mind. There hovers over hisdecision a cult of Intelligence (whoseemblematic hero is "Monsieur Teste"), ofintellectual mastery, and, no doubt, atbottom, of mastery or power itself. A fan-tasy of Leonardo da Vinci would presidewith some explicitness over the new dis-pensation, and I have suggested else-where that Georges Vacher de Lapouge,the racist craniometer and theorist ofAryan (or European) supremacy, inwhose service Valery, in his youth, hadexhumed and measured some six hun-dred skulls from a derelict Montpelliercemetery, was another tutelary figure.^But there is a third individual, littleacknowledged in France, whose (latent)presence is particularly striking in light ofthe Valery/Rimbaud nexus Breton mayhave been less deluded in forging than hecame to believe.''

In 1896, Valery accepted an offer tomove to London and comnnence work asa translator for the Chartered Companyrun by Cecil Rhodes in the lands thatwould eventually be named Rhodesia. Infact, he was being commissioned to fur-nish propaganda material on behalf ofRhodes, whose company, following aseries of secret armed raids intended totopple the Kruger regime in South Africa,had become a subject of internationalscandal. The plan was to counteract thescandal on the continent by introducingmaterial translated by Valery into theFrench press.

Concerning this mission, two elementsdeserve to be underscored. First, Valery'senthusiasm for Rhodes' colonial enter-prise resonated profoundly with thatphantasmagoria of potency essential tothe legendary period of poetic silence. Inhis Cahiers, Rhodes would figure as oneof the six living individuals he "admiredpersonally."' (The others would bePoincare, Lord Kelvin, Mallarme,Huysmans, and Degas.) He is said to be"inebriate with pure action as one may beinebriate with pure science."*^ More strik-ingly, Valery would write to Gide: "Beapprised that I am engaged in an outfit ofmen who are infinitely strong [je suis dansun engrenage de gens infiniment forts].Thanks to my job (strictly confidential),I have learned some very importantthings...I woke up Tuesday facing one ofthe thousand pieces of a colossal machinecalled the Chartered Company You haveno idea of the power, the depth, the wis-dom, the brutal clarity of these people.They are right. I am becoming aware oftheir ethic. In France, they will never beunderstood.'" The accent is unmistakable.The Chartered Company, directed byRhodes, participates in that will to mas-tery which brought Valery to abjure poet-ry and the sacrifizio dell'intelletto heclaimed it entailed.

There is a second curious aspect ofValery's apprenticeship with the compa-ny. For his stay in London, the consolida-tion of his "poetic silence," at times feltlike a trip to Africa. Again, a letter to Gideis apposite: "Ah! what a strange impres-sion when I arrived, totally unaware ofwhat was expected of me, anxious, andwhen, in my employer's residence, I waskept almost by force in a room where aNegro (negre) from Mashonaland servedme tacitly, as I observed in astonishmentthe library containing books of tactics,travel, treatises on gold-mining, militarymanuals, etc."" The future - of intellectu-al exaltation, poetic silence seemed to

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be leading straight to Africa. Once again,the correspondence with Gide is eloquent:"I shall perhaps be in Montpellier in amonth. But who knows? I may also be inPretoria! or in Rhodesia!"' The abandon-ment of poetry and the departure forAfrica: Breton, in conflating the cases ofValery and Rimbaud in 1914, may neverhave known how right he almost was.

Valery, of course, never made it toAfrica, and his silence of twenty yearswas relatively short-lived. That silence,however, would resonate in the poetry towhich he returned. Poetry, I have shownelsewhere, returns as the tear of the JeuneParque: a virgin awakens on a beachbedazzled and troubled by a tear: thefragment of herself now estranged fromherself , she has no recollection, or under-standing, of having shed.' Many of thepoems of Charmes may be read as exercis-es, or transformations, of the "tear-work"initiated in "La Jeune Parque," an "invol-untary" return to poetry that neverstopped returning. As in the case of "LeVin perdu": the poet spills a bit of redwineas the Parque had shed her tearinto the sea without quite understandingwhy. In "La Crise de I'esprit," Valery'ssignature essay on the state of the worldafter the Great War, the (no longer ex-)poet invokes the same image. The dis-semination of (superior) European intelli-gence into areas of the world statisticallymore imposing, but qualitatively inferior,is compared to the diffusion of wine intowater. The image, in fact, was borrowedfrom Henri Poincare, one of the six indi-viduals, including Cecil Rhodes, who wassaid to have earned Valery's "admira-tion." For Poincare, the image of the dif-fusion of wine into water was emblematicof the incontrovertibility of entropy: thewine, once dissolved, its difference oblit-erated, could never be reconstituted.Maxwell's demon might pretend to, buthe, Poincare and Valery knew, had beendecisively exorcised. Except, claimed

Valery, that in the domain of "the physicsof the intellect," the wine might indeed bereconstituted. European intelligence, thatthreatened and utterly improbable treasure,could indeed re-emerge. The poet, havingin effect pissed blood in "Le Vin perdu,"becomes his own Eurologist. Or ratherpoetry becomes Eurology Such is perhapsthe physiological underpinning of "LaCrise de I'esprit," a paean to the reconsti-tution of the squandered droplet: blood,tear, pomegranate seed (the "gemmesrouges de jus" of "Les Grenades") orwhatever, which is, in fact, both an eco-nomic description of Valery's poetry, inthe repetitions of what I have called its"tear-work," and an affirmation of thatpermanence of European superiority forwhich he had been working under theauspices of the Chartered Company in aLondon that seemed to him a gateway toAfrica.

But what did it mean for Valery to feelEuropean? His answer, in Regards sur lemonde aetuel, entails the evocation of twohistorical episodes: the Japanese incursionagainst (European interests in) China in1895 and the American war with Spain in1898. In each case, European intelligence,the treasure squandered or diffused in"La Crise de I'esprit," is turned backagainst Europe itself." Much like thetear that fragment of the self thatthreatens the selfin "La Jeune Parque."Valery, that is, emerges as a (threatened)European much as the Jeune Parque wak-ens (and awakens her creator) to poetry.

At this juncture the case of Rimbaudimpinges again. For if the ground ofValery's poetry is at one level the Europeanthreatened by an estrangement or diffu-sion of European resources turned againstEurope itself, such, according to a muchheralded recent biography, is preciselythe horizon of Rimbaud's silence. The"punchline" of the epic joke of Rimbaud'scareer as a gun-runner for King Menelikof Choa in the Horn of Africa, according

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to Graham Robb, is that "Rimbaud wasmaking a significant contribution to thefirst defeat of a European nation in openbattle by an African army (Menelik'sdefeat of Italy at Adwa in 1896).'"' Towhich extent, Valery's poetry was, at somelevel, Rimbaud's silence.

But then again, Rimbaud's "silence," ifwe follow the provocative Robb, may noteven have been his silence. Alfred Bardey,Rimbaud's associate in Aden, "had theimpression that Rimbaud intended toreturn to literature once he had 'amasseda sufficient fortune.'"" There was a bookon Abyssinia "that was always inabeyance," other "beaux ouvrages" towhich he was committed. Moreover,between the numerous works he neverdreamed of publishing and those otherworks he never, in fact, wrote, is the dif-ference all that absolute? Might the twoalleged phases of Rimbaud's career, Robbin effect asks, not be viewed as a con\monjourney to the limit or "way of the cross,"in which, the second time around,""hides and ivory" take the place of "aes-thetics and Verlaine"?" Finally, ifRimbaud abjured "literature," was it notmuch as Verlaine himself had: as therepository of..."all the rest"?

Verlaine...In his search for an empiricalcorrelate to Rimbaud's abandonment ofliterature, the biographer informs us flatlythat Rimbaud gave up writing poems "atabout the same time that he gave up liv-ing with other people."'' It was as thoughpoetry were a negotiation with the other,electively Verlaine. For which reason, wewould look toward the one poem ofRimbaud's which was cosigned withVerlaine for enlightenment as to the aban-donment of poetry. That it should bear acurious relation to the poetry of Valery aswell will, moreover, provide a secondarybenefit, as welcome as it is unexpected.

"Tear-work" was our term, following aconsideration of the emblematic status of

the tear (larme) in "La Jeune Parque," forthe generative agency of Valery's poems.Curiously, the Rimbaud-Verlaine collabo-ration is centered on a tear-well (larmier)as well, but the poem "L'Idole ou le son-net du trou du cul" is, in this case, an ele-gant obscenity. The asshole becomes asavage larmier for the secretions of thepoets' (poet's?) jealous soul. The poemevokes the idyllic landscape of a humanbottom in terms oddly familiar to readersof Rimbaud:

Obscur etfronce comme un oeillet violetII respire, humblement tapi parmi la mousseHumide encore qui suit lafuite douceDes fesses blanches jusqu'au coeur de son ourlet.

Familiar? Consider, after the collabora-tive obscenity, part of the Album zutique,Rimbaud's edifying "Le Dormeur duval." The evocation of an apparentlysleeping soldier in a valley is couchedbetween two holes: the "trou de verdure"or clearing at the beginning and the redbullet holes revealing, at the poem's end,that the apparently resting soldier is, infact, dead. It is as though there were ahole-or two holes-hidden within the holein (or of) the valley. But observe thebeginning of "Le Dormeur du val":

C'est un trou de verdure oil chante une riviereAccrochant follement aux herbes des haillonsD'argent; ou le soleil, de la montagne fibre,Luit: c'est un petit val qui mousse de rayons.

"L'Idole" moved toward its secret"hole" in the valley (formed by buttocks)by way of a reference to pubic "moss"{mousse) still moist from love. It is odd,then, that the edifying sonnet makes itsway to its secret holes by way of a valley"foaming" {qui mousse) with daylight.Might the secret hole(s) within the hole of"Le Dormeur du val" be the very bodilyorifice extolled in "L'Idole"? Or shouldthe obscenity rather be dismissed (oradmired) as a send-up of its edifyingtwin?

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Further analysis will help us decide.Consider "Les Effares": a group of shiver-ing children peer in the morning's darkthrough an illuminated grating at a bakerbaking bread. As in "Le Dormeur du val,"we have a cold victim (or collective vic-tim) exposed to light and heat streamingtoward them through an opening. But asin "Le Dormeur du val," there is a hole inor behind this hole. In this case, behindthe grating {soupirail), there is the orifice{trou clair) of the oven into which thebaker stuffs {enfourne) the dough of hisbaguette. One can imagine the trou clairbehind the soupirail almost as a trou rouge,to use the phrase from "Le Dormeur duval." Now not only does the central act(the baker inserting his bagueffe info theopening) seem to resonate sexually, butfhe entire episode is inflected by a fram-ing conceit. Af fhe poem's beginning thechildren are evoked with fheir culs en rondor round bottoms. At fhe poem's end,they bend toward fhe spectacle with sucheagerness that they split fheir breeches:qu'ils crevent leurs culottes. This detail hasbeen described as Dickensian (orDisneyesque), but it suffices to align thisthird hole (in fhe culotte) with the fwoothers {soupirail and oven) to see that "LesEffares" reenacfs even as if answers our quesfion regarding fhe superimposi-fion of "Le Dormeur du val" and"L'Idole." The edifying poem about aslain soldier invites us fo idenfify a holewifhin (or behind) a hole, and fhe super-imposifion of fhaf poem with "L'Idole"supplies an obscene answer. In "LesEffares," we are given a summation of fheenfire process: a hole (fhe oven) wifhin ahole {soupirail), and behind them bofh athird hole (between cul and culottes).

Turn now fo the "Leffre du voyanf," fheclosesf Rimbaud came fo a manifesto, orrather fo fhe poem included fhereinunder the fifle "Le coeur supplicie." If is

significanfly followed by fhe words: "Qane veut pas rien dire [If does nof meannofhing]," and is frequenfly inferprefedas fhe recollection, evoked in defensivelyhighfalufin terms, of a rape affempf onRimbaud by a group of soldiers af abouffhe fime of fhe Commune." The poem'sfirst line ("Mon frisfe coeur bave a lapoupe") has fhe poef's melancholy hearfdrooling af fhe stern of a ship. Buf fhesecrefion af fhe rear recalls fhe larmier, fhesoul's fearwell, lodged in a differenf rearin fhe sonnet "L'Idole." GeorgesIzambard, fhe addressee of fhe leffer,insisted on fhe marifime resonances ofpoupe. The poem would be an anficipafionof "Le Bateau ivre," whose fhrusf is inparf capfured by fwo lines of "Le coeursupplicie": "O Hofs abracadabranfesques/Prenez mon coeur, qu'il soif sauve."Salvafion fhrough drowning af sea is fheorder of fhe day. Moreover, Izambardnofes fhaf fhe marifime mofif wouldmake of fhe young vicfim less a soldier ina barracks fhan a cabinboy (mousse) on aship. Once again, fhe word mousse recursin our chain, buf this fime wifh a fhirdsense: neifher moss ("L'Idole") nor foam("Le Dormeur du val"), buf cabin boy. Yefonce again, buf wifh a change of gender,fhe mousse surfaces in a confexf of analeroficism {Ithyphalliques et pioupiouesques...J'aurai des sursauts stomachiques, efc).

Move now fo fhe most celebrafed andleasf silent (because blafanfly vocalic) ofRimbaud's poems, fhe sonnef on"Vowels," fhe poem deemed in Paris fobe his "masterpiece" during fhe years ofhis African fravels." Midsf all fhe specula-fions inspired by Rimbaud's excursioninfo synesfhesia, whaf seems inconfro-verfible is fhe irregular order in which fhevowels are invoked: A, E, I, U, O. "O" is,of course. Omega, a fiffing end fo fhepoem, buf nofe fhaf fhe associations fo Uare, in facf, dominafed nof by fhe vowel.

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buf by ifs near equivalenf, V: "U cycles,vibremenfs divins des mers virides..."^"The poem, a journey fo fhe source, thusconcludes by bringing us, idiosyncrafical-ly, from fhe valley of a V fo fhe conclud-ing orifice or hole of an O. Once again,we appear fo be rehearsing fhe ferms ini-fiafed by our superimposifion of "LeDormeur du val" and "L'Idole." And lesffhere be any doubf as fo whaf fhe (pre-sumably poefic) source is of, I wouldmerely recall fhe excremenfal sfenchwhich lay af fhe beginning of Rimbaud'svoyage, in fhe poem, fo fhaf source:

A noir corset velu des mouches eclatantesQui bombinent autour des puanteurs cruelles.^'

Rimbaud's alleged "masferpiece" mayindeed be a poem abouf bowels.'^All of which leads fo a final speculafion:fhaf the "silence" of Rimbaud may haveless fo do wifh fhe will of an aspiringbusinessman fo dissociafe himself fromfhe scandal surrounding his "literary"exisfence, as Robb infriguingly suggesfs,fhan wifh a will fo move beyond a dis-pensafion whose infanfile "source," as fheFreudians say, fhe no-longer-younggenius may have infuifed all foo well.

1. Andre Brefon, Entretiens (Paris: Gallimard, 1969), p. 24.2. Letter to Maurice Denis in Valery, Oeuvres, I (Paris: Pleiade, 1957), p. 1623.3. Jeffrey Mehlman, "Craniometry and Crificism: Nofes on a Valeryan Criss-Cross" in

Genealogies ofthe Text (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).4. Valery's biographer, Benoif Peefers, Paul Valery, une vie d'ecrivain? (Paris:

Nouvelles Impressions, 1989), p. 61, refers fo fhe episode surrounding fhis thirdfigure as all the more imporfanf in fhaf if is "so liffle known."

5. Cahiers, 1894-1914,1 (Paris: C.N.R.S., 1987), p. 204.6. Oeuvres, I, p.1811.7. Correspondence Andre Gide-Paul Valery (Paris: Gallimard, 1955), pp. 262-263.8. Ibid., p. 263.9. Ibid., p. 263.10. Jeffrey Mehlman, "On Tear-Work: I'art de Valery" in Yale French Studies, 52 (1976).11. Oeuvres, ll, p. 914.12. Graham Robb, Rimbaud (New York: Norton, 2000), p. 381.13. Ibid., p. 354.14. Ibid., p. 327.15. Ibid., p. 288.16. Rimbaud, Poesies complies (Paris: Livre de poches classique, 1998), ed. P. Brunei,

p. 212. Dark and crinkled like a purple carnafion. If breathes, humbly couched inthe sfill moisf moss fhat follows fhe genfle flow of fhe whife buttocks fo fhe hearfof ifs rim.

17. Ibid., p. 132. It's a green opening in which a river sings, madly catching silveryshreds wifh blades of grass; info which fhe sun, from fhe proud mounfain, glistens:a small valley afoam wifh daylight.

18. Ibid., p. 146.19. Robb, p. 401.20. Poesies completes, p. 188. Eons, divine vibrations of viridian seas...21. Ibid., p. 187. Afurry black corsef of spectacular flies fhaf thrum around fhe cruel

sfench.22. As suggested, in conversation, by Alicia Borinsky.

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