The Rising Speech trans.

 Wanyoung Kim [Reader’s Copy], 6/2014 
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Maurice Blanchot

The Rising Speech

Are We Still Worthy of Poetry?

Translated by Wanyoung Kim

The Rising Speech trans. Wanyoung Kim [Reader’s Copy], 06/2014 
The Rising Speech trans. Wanyoung Kim [Reader’s Copy], 6/2014 
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Originally published in French, as an afterword to Vadim Kozovoi’s Hors de la Colline,

1984

©2014, Wanyoung Kim

©1984, Hermann (France)

Licensed under Creative Commons

Attribution: No Derivatives 4.0 International

 
The  Rising  Speech  is  licensed   under  a  Creative  Commons Attribution­NoDerivatives 4.0 
International License.

The Rising Speech trans. Wanyoung Kim [Reader’s Copy], 06/2014 
The Rising Speech trans. Wanyoung Kim [Reader’s Copy], 6/2014 
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1
When Mallarmé says, "Only the poet can speak", and when Valéry says,

"The true writer is a man who does not find his words, so he seeks," I myself am

ready for a statement that leaves me far from what is at stake for me, in what is

called poetry (it is called, it does not respond). But when I read the end of a text

by Vadim Kozovoï: "Between two points of pain, poetry is the shortest route.

Short so that at his lonely grave, the time was beheaded,” I feel challenged by the

torment of a riddle whose primary effect is to confuse me, clearly - to make me

feel that there is not a 'definition' of poetry, that the latter exhausts any

definition. I agree (not only in my mind, but in my life - writing - mind) to a final

crisis, because of the indefinite quality that it incessantly provokes.

Who could say, "I am a poet," as if "I" could attribute poetry to itself? Such

a rich opportunity that would be, among others; its glory and dependence, and

without immediately being disqualified and disastrous, rather than enhanced or

disqualified by the inappropriate attribution. The ancient cursed poet is nothing

other than someone with the impossibility of being recognized elsewhere than by

a bad name; bad in terms of a common language, socially accepted, which, while

not disturbing anyone or anything, becomes forgotten.

1It should be mentioned, as it reads in the letter: "The poetic fact itself consists in
grouping quickly ["quickly," a word to meditate upon], a certain number of lines
of equal traits, to adjust them, such thoughts that are otherwise distant and
scattered, which explode, rhyme together, so to speak. One must, then, above all,
dispose of the common measure, that it applies; or in the Verse. The poem
remains short, multiplies in a book; its fixity forms a norm, as the Verse. Such, at
least, is my vision. Now, for the proportionate emotional notation, I tasted it
absolutely, but as much as a prose; delicate, nude, pierced. The poetic operation
of the common measure fails, or it is not a game." (Letter to Charles Bonnier, in
March 1893, Correspondence, Volume VI, Gallimard).   
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On the one hand, the poet is honored; poetry deserves reverence; "Only the

Poet [essentially in uppercase] can talk." On the other hand, he is wandering

without a place, the pursuer whom one persecutes, the defaulting which is based

only on his own refusal (still unsafe to be assured), the hermit in a vain seeking of

solitude, with uninhabitable remains. No, he is not victorious; if from distress he

has courage, and if from fear he receives the life of incompleteness. He finds no

wealth in his poverty, he whom one calls obscure, because he brings the

generosity of a new day to the "night for nothing."

As a poet, he senses the relation between the terror and the word, and still

the ancient Pythia that embodies the proper horror of saying everything; the

monstrousness that is choked with the impossible voice, unable to utter anything,

and, thereby suggesting what precedes every word; that terrible antecedence

that calls and devastates the expression, until it welcomes the temper by setting

it to the beat. But the rhythm, always in connection with the furious origin,

extends it by the same scanning so that no ultimate meaning thwarts it or rests

there. Poetic intra-translation there, not in the difficult passage of one language

to another, but rather within the original language itself; what is concealed while

working there or delegable to the previous track that always fades away. (Recall

that Jules Renard depicts a spirit without spirit: "Mallarmé is untranslatable,

even in French." I add: "Especially in French.")

But what does Mallarmé himself, have to say of this? Nothing that stops

him. It does not escape from the national language, but only up to the strangeness

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contained in it, as old as it is new: old because "innate" (the idiomatic generator)

and more than new, as it uncovers untold intonations or issues new agreements.

"Having provided the voice to unheard intonations to just to themselves... and

actually rendering to the national instrument such new agreements that are,

however innately recognized; he constitutes the poet, in the extension of his task

and prestige." A perhaps disappointing phrase, if it was related to the

now-established poet, belonging to the institution that he elevates to fall. But

what is it that without membership, does not have language "except in the

abolition of the text, subtracting from it the image"? Perhaps he is carried by a

trans-national rhythm or trans-linguistic rhythm which defeated the linear

phrase - the syntactic space - just to reach the fragmented energy "where

everything is in suspense", at the same time (the same time?) that it interrupts

the time and substitutes in it "the shipwreck of eternal circumstances" or the

short-circuit of that which escapes measurement -the metric-: the clash of

"decapitated" expectation. The poetic language is never that of a heritage or

anticipation of an abstract or completed universality, but rather the rupture of a

refractory Speech without which, as previously said, there would not even be

silence.

I canceled all that. I only add: when Mallarme designates his target, the

response falls decisively: "I call it Transposition" - indeed, the first transport

which is in another language, but also, in this language that is never given as

would be a mother tongue, the rhythmic trajectory which only count the passage,

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the voltage, the modulation and not the points by which one passes; the terms

that do not end. And poetry would be the requirement of a translation that

makes it impossible, or the perpetual transfer that it calls at the same time that it

lacks or denies it. There would perhaps be the response that would be given by

Joyce: "Untranslatable? Nothing." This means that it is not anything that does not

write itself, or does not already have the work of the laborious translator, as also

the cheeky Commentator, all indefatigable Assists - hence there is the injunction

of Vadim Kozovoï: "Get rid of the other way". (Must I remind you of René Char's

early statement: "We are passively applied to pass, so as to cause trouble, impose

our heat, and state our exuberance"?)

Mallarmé -yes, him again-: it took him time to abandon the distinction

between prose and verse; that is to say, to recognize that this division should be

placed elsewhere - where? it will remain problematic. In 1893, writer Charles

Bonnier boldly defines the poetic fact: "The poetic fact itself consists in quickly

combining a certain number of equal lines, so as to adjust them, such phrases

that are otherwise distant and scattered; but it explodes into rhyming together,

or the Verse. It is therefore, above all, having the common measure, that it

happens to apply, or the Verse. The poem remains short, and multiplies into a

book..." Of course, Mallarmé adapts what he thinks into poems that he reads

(those of Bonnier); where, despite the politeness, the exclusion of emotional

notation where he boldly says it is not any longer poetry, but prose (...): "The

poetic operation of the common measure is [thus] the default, where there is not

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a game" 1. And yet (it is well-known), after "the memorable crisis") "Even if it was

never seen. We hit the verge"), he will say: "In the genre called prose there are

sometimes admirable verses, of all rhythms... "What, in the end, removes the

prose and especially dispels these hybrid ways that were called "poems in

poems" or "free verse", while it is established in 1895, with "The Mystery in the

letters," "the critical Poem" or "the critical poems", etc.. But - they state more

formalistically than it is, only to break with all romanticism and perhaps even

with Baudelaire - he reaffirms it: "It's all about making music with his pain,

which does not directly matter. "(However, he should take into account the word

"directly": the pathetic quality or the pathos pretends immediately as if it refuses

the expression.)

Always Mallarmé. Consideration should be given to the meaning of

"Tuesdays," as the headquarters of poetry, as said by one of the participants. That

does not delight us. But despite the charm and enchantment, was it not Mallarmé

who, leaning against the chimney, let unfold a word, from which one, in wonder,

failed to recover; Mallarmé, who once joined the outside (perhaps Lacan and his

seminar)? Or was it none other Mallarmé, who said something like: I am not

related to the gentleman who carries that name? Or saying how the word "poet"

was disagreeable to him and affirming (before Georges Bataille) that he hated

the word poetry; adding after Fontainas - which is not a guarantee --one must

dream of eternal art and nonetheless a continuous growth, and where man goes,

there is not a gentleman whose whole life consists in being a poet; it was the

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poet's day at a time when the poem gave it a momentary existence (the breaking

at the same time that it contributes, compared to the stranger who excludes or

disperses it).

"Creating: exclusive." (René Char) "Author, creator, poet, this man never

existed." (Rimbaud) That the fury (the terror), the pure, impure violence, the

explosive, which one assigns, by frame, from the beginning of the universe (the

Big Bang) is able to maintain in the still-traditional poem, Rimbaud, of course,

attests: "And all revenge? - Nothing! ... But if, all the same, / We want it! (...) / It is

our due. The blood! Blood! The golden flame! / All the war, revenge, terror..." The

poetic rage is at the extreme. Artaud did not add, except that he shattered the

syllabic language with spasms, arrhythmia, the pulsation without measurement,

and without the sudden spawning of the unattained form, expulsion and

retaining the

vacuum. But Rimbaud will remain eternally apart through solitary indifference,

the final oblivion where he is hiding, "staying alive from poetry" in the poetry

itself, not because one day he goes, but because he is always already outside:

"What is my nothingness other than the stupor that awaits you?" Poetry: violence

of burglary where language refrains from opening itself, due to shock or

malfunction, to the enigma of its improper gap. "It cannot be the end of the world

moving forward."

Valéry, who has not always attached great importance to Rimbaud, says

something about him: "The work of the poet is perhaps all that work where the

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greatest impatience has essential need of the utmost patience." The particular

sketches or drafts of "Season in Hell" show that Rimbaud had time to reach the

short, tighter rhythm, the "beheaded time ," which was never added, but is still

striking-- as if the crude or brutal language and the sudden bitterness does not

first come into this too helpful and naturally friendly French language. Draft:

"Shut up, it is pride!"Final text: "Pride." Draft: "Ah! my God, I'm afraid, pity!"

Final text: "Lord, I'm afraid." etc.

That there is some difficulty and roughness (for us) in some poems of

Vadim Kozovoï - and to better say, devastation - evokes the exigency of

impatience, the rhythmic breaking, the need to quickly depart, that challenges

the judgment, and sometimes an accumulation of images that can be said to zoom

into one word. But just as the joking of Rimbaud, the percussive violence, the

non-incantatory shock, keeps an inner rhythm and a premeditated vibration that

beyond lyricism and provocation, marks the momentum... (the unknown?), and at

the same time, in Vadim Kozovoï, one must foresee rigor and freedom, a terrible

vehemence and an even more terrible sweetness, a furious movement;

uncontrollable, however controlled, perhaps intolerant revolt against any

intolerance; that is to say against oppression that prohibits sharing with this

eternal migrant, the poet, whose sole job is to leave. "I watched, searching for the

reason that he wanted so much to escape ... One day, maybe he will happily

disappear..." Happily? Miserably? There is no difference. "Miserable miracle",

Michaux has always warned us.

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The poetic enigma. Whether the most sure statement of Mallarmé is thus:

"The work involves the elocutionary disappearance of the poet ..." But Valéry

(1941) refers to the strangeness of Mallarmé saying exactly the opposite: "How

and where was the strange and unshakable certainty born, on which Mallarmé

has founded his whole life - his sacrifice, his incredible temerity ... -to be- .... the

man himself of a work that he has not accomplished and he knew not the power

to be?"

In other words (because there is always an "otherwise"): for Mallarmé, the

work is the ultimate denial of the author, and the progressive deletion (which

has the sense of a grand urgency); but Valéry does not sees in Mallarmé that an

author without his work, some man of an unfinished work, where he dedicates a

lifetime for nothing besides work: (ie: “Mallarmé was wonderful and crazy,

wonderful for having shared his madness to someone who was the least willing

to read it,” Valéry). But is there not, in this duplicity, the same force of poetic

enigma that has a share of the impossible?

Valery's judgment of Rimbaud (at the least, "Season in Hell"). The immense

fire that he lit leaves him "cold." There's nothing outrageous here. I do not

assume that poetry is pure subjectivity, but it is not a "value" that can be

recognized: it escapes one in expecting an effect. Rimbaud was too impatient, too

foreign to others and to himself for wishing to exert effects on anyone. His books

are rotting in a cellar. He forgets them, he forgets himself, he goes. He is perhaps

a Hebrew; perhaps a prophet without people and without God, called by no

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name, attracted by the bitter risk of the unknown where others would not take

shape - and the man who ignores most respects, destructor of solidarity at this

point that he is still deprived of solitude. Moreover, Valéry speaks differently:

"All the known literature is written in the language of common sense. Excluding

Rimbaud - "But he is clearly not upset2. Mallarmé was, at least, one feels that he

was. Maybe one cannot love a single poet - polygamy being prohibited: in one

poet, the only one who would be everything; not the totality, but the poetic

infinity.

It is here that it translates, "this madness," that it comes back to us as the

impossible need. Translating especially the untranslatable: when the text does

not only carry an autonomous meaning which alone would be important, but

when the sound, the image, the voice (phonological) and especially the

principality of rhythm are predominant compared to the meaning or making

good sense, so that the meaning is always in action, in formation, or "the nascent

state" cannot be dissociated by what by itself is not stored in the semantics. And

this, this is the poem. Certainly, no translator, no translation will not pass it,

intact, from one language to another, and will not permit it to be read or heard as

if it were transparent. And I would add: happily. The poem in its original

Adjective that certainly does not suit him. Yet, he writes:

"Mallarmé hit me." - Hit, this is a very strong term; he received a
2

blow. And one morning, he wrote: "I loved this extraordinary man
..."
 
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language, is always already different from the language, whether it restores or

establishes it;

and it is this difference, the otherness, where the translator grabbed it or where

it is grabbed, modifying in its turn its own language, making it dangerously

moving, removing its identity and transparency to the "common sense," as Valéry

says.

Opacity? Opacity of sense? Opacity as meaning? Neither one nor the other.

The opacity has multiple layers of language through which they walk and form

what eventually - in infinity - mean: strata that simultaneously flicker or darken

by the significance, moments by themselves neglected in common parlance,

transforming then just to make comprehensible another another form of

agreement, the unlimited agreement that breaks the ordinary trade. Hence,

perhaps, the poetic loneliness (has anyone been there to understand it? It is

infinitely enough to hear it?); hence also the poetic fraternity ("sovereign

conversation"), since which, by the poem, we are called to the urgency of

interminable ration where the "I" has always faded away to the other, and where

speech, writing, and sign collapse without constantly pursuing anticipation that

dissolves them and mysteriously remains there by a frightening dispersion.

To finish (but haven’t I just begun?) I will quote this episodic note by

Valéry: "I ​confess that I do not think every day about the future of poetry." How

does one believe it and how does one believe it without any future? I then quote

René Char: "... How is one to deliver the poetry of one's oppressors? Poetry that is

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enigmatic clarity and the haste of rushing, in discovering them, cancelling them.

"May the poems of Vadim Kozovoï, in his language unknown to us and our

language that is not solely ours, bring us the promise that against the oppressors -

they are everywhere, but the threat is not without name - the household of

"beheaded time" once again, another time where, despite its failing us, we still

hope for the hopeless ones that we have loved, our only survival that we could

not deny.

The Rising Speech trans. Wanyoung Kim [Reader’s Copy], 06/2014