Literary Research/Recherche littéraire 18.35 ( Spring - Summer / printemps - été, 2001):145-9.
Kirby Olson
SUNY Delhi
Jacqueline
Chenieux-Gendron, ed., Patiences et
Silences de Philippe Soupault. Paris: L’Harmattan, 2000; 323 pp.;ISBN: 2783492169 (pbk.); FF149;
Arlette
Albert-Birot, Nathalie Nabert & Georges Sebbag, eds., Philippe Soupault: L’Ombre Frissonante. Paris: Jean-Michel Place,
2000; ISBN: 78258935598 (pbk.); FF120;
Myriam
Boucharenc & Claude Leroy, eds., Présence
de Philippe Soupault. Caen: Presses Universitaire de Caen, 1999; ISBN:
2841330591; FF150
Three new collections of writings on Philippe Soupault: one edited by
the most important researcher in the domain of surrealism – Chenieux-Gendron –
and another at least in part by a descendent of Dadaist Pierre Albert-Birot.
The third volume, edited by Boucharenc and Leroy, has overlapping contributors
with the Chenieux-Gendron volume. To critique the volumes it is necessary to
recall the infamous image of an umbrella and a sewing machine meeting on a
dissecting table. While both umbrella and sewing machine are practical
inventions, neither one is quite for use on a dissecting table. The
understanding of this mysterious body of work, which most of them as well as
this critic consider to be one of the major secrets of the twentieth century, is being undertaken by as many as fifty
French critics. What have they discovered? After reading these volumes I feel
my appreciation of Soupault has tripled.
Patiences et Silences is a powerful collection of dissections by original critics, many of
whom are developing their own style of criticism without leaning on Tel Quel,
Socialisme ou Barbarie, or any of the other big names that have temporarily
taken over Anglo studies. Sylvie Cassayre’s essay “Occupation de l’espace
poétique, une poésie de l’effacement,” traces Soupault’s use of space, and his
movement from claustrophobic to open in order to create a geographic reading of
the poetry. She argues that his sense
of himself is often discovered in crowded space, but he likes to leap out of
these identities through references to airplanes, and the huge jumps provided
by trains and open areas in order to kick his poetry into a different register.
This geographical mode of exploration is weakened by her having to invent a
model of reading, as well as apply it. The model is odd, and awkward, and not
always convincing, but certainly it is also original and provocative, and makes
one wish for a solid method of psychogeographical exploration of literary
texts. In “Identité et Temoignage” Ronnie Scharfman points out that Soupault
was working against a narrowing of identity to simple markers when he wrote
about his experience in a Tunisian prison during World War II. Against being a
number, he wanted to represent the marvels of humanity which couldn’t be
quantified or pinned down. Laughter, reciprocity, and courage were some of the
qualities he praised in his book L’Histoire
du Détenu 1234, written and published just after the war. Scharfman quotes
Soupault, “Les prisonniers riaient... J’étais vraiment effrayé par ces rires.
Ces hommes surveillés, condamnés ou anxieux pouvaient donc rire!” (27). Scoffed
at, beaten, given electric shock treatment, the prisoners depended on one
another for their courage, and looked to one another to keep their chins up. Returning to his cell after one such
torturous session with his guards, Soupault realized that the other prisoners
looked to him to keep up their own courage, a politics of reciprocity.
Having left the surrealist group for their ability to let themselves be
led by Breton, Soupault broke ranks and
wrote thereafter as a solitary, and often as a critic of the surrealist
movement. Most criticism to date has compared his writing with Breton’s, but
Soupault’s emphasis on play, laughter, and the simple children’s song are
aspects of his work which are incommensurable with Breton’s. Michele Finck’s
“Philippe Soupault, esquisse d’une poétique du son” is a powerful study of an
area almost completely ignored by Bretonian surrealism: music. Frink points out
that while surrealism privileged images, it is sound, and especially song,
which links great numbers of people, from working men’s songs, to children’s
songs, to the music of popular poetry, and which forms the basis of Soupault’s
poetry. While Breton was totally against music, many of Soupault’s novelistic
characters are black jazz players, or singers. Soupault said that his greatest
inspiration to poetry came from hearing the sound of a horse’s trot on
cobblestones. As Michael Worton writes, Soupault’s poems often feel like anonymous
songs, and thus have a classical appeal in their simplicity.
L’Ombre Frissonante is a collection of short papers given at L’Institut Catholique de Paris
in 1997. While most of the critics in
Chenieux-Gendron’s book are professors or instructors at French and European
universities, there is no contributor’s list for L’Ombre Frissonnante. The 18 brief articles are mostly less than 10
pages in length and tend to have a breathless poetic quality which is often
distracting in a work of criticism.
Gerard Durozoi’s article, “Philippe Soupault et le Roman Policier,”
claims that the mysteries of Soupault’s novels, such as Les Dernières Nuits de Paris, remain, rebellious to closure,
mysteries. There are murders, and strange events, but they are never resolved,
and stability is not reached. It is
difficult to state in exactly what way this is not quite true, but one senses
at the end of this novel that there is a conclusion, but just what it is has
never been articulated. Daylight comes,
and ends the nights, and the circle of life continues after the night’s
strangeness. One feels a return to
normality which is a conclusion in the way that music concludes, by returning
to a beginning note, or moving to a different register, rather than a
conclusion in the Aristotelian sense in which unity is attained through the
conclusion of a meaningful sequence of action.
The theme throughout this collection is Soupault’s emphasis on freedom
as opposed to morality, and how laughter and dance and lightness remain his
vision of poetics: and the reason why he placed Apollinaire above the more
intellectual Valery in his pantheon. Emmanuel Rubio discusses the tension
between Breton and Soupault during the composition of the Les Champs
Magnétiques and writes,
Breton, fidèle à une vérité psychologique et métaphysique, s’attache avant
tout à la pureté de la source… Breton se place dans le domaine éthique. A la
vie il préfère encore une fois le sens de la vie. Soupault trouve dans
l’écriture et dans la toute liberté qui la fonde, la voie royale vers la
redécouverte de l’homme. (60-1)
A critical consensus seems to be emerging that Soupault’s writings are
more free in that he didn’t reedit them towards a previously acquired and held
philosophy. Soupault, however, was not merely a witness of his time, he was
also a clown and a skilful inventor with a philosophy that has yet to be
articulated. Both of these books too
often simplify Soupault’s vision into one of liberty at all costs, against the
rigidity of Breton. This framework is not flexible enough to encompass such an
elusive individual or two such complex individuals. While Soupault’s writings
were clear and lucid, they were never simply simple. Soupault’s relationship to
nature (especially in his many poems about whales, fish, and the sea) as well
as his relationship to God remain aspects of his work which await a critic with
a giant command of thought and a capacity for paradox and mischief equal to the
subject, along with an ability to remain critical, as opposed to many of these authors
who are seemingly more poets than critics.
As if they were doing dissection with an umbrella or a sewing machine,
few of these critics have tools which are appropriate for investigating
Soupault’s thought. The emerging consensus that Soupault’s work is about
liberty feels preliminary and ill-advised. Soupault had a very strong sense of
ethics, especially in relation to children. He maintained very deep
friendships. He was polite. Friendship, in the greatest sense of that word, is
something he aimed at, and what I think keeps his readers loyal to his vision
after his death. Friendship is not liberty, and is not slavery. It is not
rigidity and it is not just flexibility. It is not romantic love, and it is not
familial love. When the narrator sleeps with the prostitute Georgette in Les Dernières Nuits, nothing passes
between them. In that nothing is the absence of everything Soupault celebrates.
Our critical tools at this point, honed on identity politics and Marxism, or on
Sadean transgression, are inappropriate to an understanding of Soupault’s work
as is a simple position that Soupault is the opposite of Breton. To understand
this work, new tools will have to be tried. These new books work towards that
giant goal, one better than the other, although both are commended and have
many things to commend them, in what seems like the insuperable project of
understanding an oeuvre which remains largely incomprehensible to our current
ways of reading.
A third book, Presence de Philippe
Soupault, contains a brief recollection of Philippe Soupault by the poet
Alain Lance. Visiting Soupault in 1959, he was surprised to see the author
reading the 19th century literary critic Saint-Beuve. In the 1960s, when he was
asked to participate in an homage to the writer Rene Crevel at the Sorbonne,
Soupault said that he was surprised that Crevel could have hung out with “an
abominable individual such as Jean Cocteau,” to which Soupault promptly added,
“happily, he [Cocteau] is dead.” Cocteau had only died a couple of months
previously, and a shock went through the audience and many left in protest.
This is an extremely rich book in that it contains many new aspects of
Soupault’s character: his friendship with Andre Gide, his similarity to Marcel
Duchamp, his love of Germany in spite of having been forced to participate in
World War I, and more on his love for music.
Another fascinating essay by Sylvie Cassayre continues to chart her
geographical reading of Soupault, and she writes that his poetry is often
composed of evanescent things like cigarette smoke, fog, laughter, music, and
shadows, and rarely anything as substantial as a rock, or a cliff. Jacqueline Chenieux-Gendron writes that
Soupault, having been booted from surrealism, is the only one ever rejected to
continue to insist that he had a right to define the movement. His definition
was that poetry must not speak a language which adhered to a given politics,
but rather speak without quite knowing the name of anything. Veronique Duchemin
raises this principle to sparkling heights when she writes that poetry for
Soupault is a language of silence which refuses to remain silent, which lets
words rejoice in the way in which they have resided within the poet.
Soupault is not as easy to catalogue as many writers. At last, there is
a rich and fascinating conversation under way in France concerning this work.
Although in American academia surrealism has given way to a pedantic Marxism,
in Europe the movement has bounced back. One can see surrealism as well as
Marxism as aspects of Christianity which have become divorced from one another.
Surrealism is based on the Christ that could make the best wine anyone had ever
tasted, and who could spin charmed parables, and make bread appear out of thin
air. It is a Christianity of marvels, and miracles. Marxism is based on the
Christ who overturned the money tables, and insisted upon the inclusion at the
banquet of life of lepers, prostitutes, and those who have been beaten and
betrayed by life.
It seems to me that Soupault, more than any other surrealist, combines
these two visions. His work is
empathetic, and often includes blacks in leading roles. It is marvelous, and
insists on the miraculous nature of everyday life. A refreshing inventiveness,
a childish air, a love for music, a staunch appreciation of friendship and a
hatred for opportunists and careerists and materialists, Soupault seems to be
essentially Christian in his love of the priceless souls of men, women and
especially children. In the questionnaires during the surrealist period,
Soupault was the only member to give the highest possible score to Jesus Christ
– a +20.
The humor, the beauty, the inventiveness and some of the intolerance of
Jesus Christ can be found throughout his work, as well as his emphasis on
solidarity between peoples, and even across lines of race, gender and class,
and I think this may be the source of his perennial appeal, and also the reason
he remains so poorly understood. After twenty centuries of Christianity in the
west, our critics (in the aftermath of Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre)
have moved towards sectarian politics as a measure of a poet, while our
greatest poets continue to have their hearts tuned to eternity.