“Illuminate my fantasy”: Charles Cros’s “prose fantasies,” a new avatar of the prose poem
Piantoni, Antoine
“Illuminate my fantasy”: Charles Cros’s “prose fantasies,” a new avatar of the prose poem - 2020.
46
Within the notoriously unstable category of the prose poem during the 19th century, Charles Cros “Fantaisies en prose” or “Prose Fantasies” as gathered in the last section of the 1879 Coffret de santal are as experimental a read as daring as Rimbaud’s Illuminations or Germain Nouveau’s Notes parisiennes. His poetry’s dark core condenses formal innovation and metaphysical vertigo in a way that hands back to the notion of fantasy its full meaning, antithetical to the idea of a form of nonchalance and lightness to which critical analysis has often reduced it. In this sense, during the last quarter of the century, fantasy gradually darkens and can come to be momentarily identified with a certain kind of negativity and anxiety of failure, both literary and existential. This paper will take a close look at this carefully staged precariousness, and at the same time bring to loight the specificity of Cros’ work and style.
“Illuminate my fantasy”: Charles Cros’s “prose fantasies,” a new avatar of the prose poem - 2020.
46
Within the notoriously unstable category of the prose poem during the 19th century, Charles Cros “Fantaisies en prose” or “Prose Fantasies” as gathered in the last section of the 1879 Coffret de santal are as experimental a read as daring as Rimbaud’s Illuminations or Germain Nouveau’s Notes parisiennes. His poetry’s dark core condenses formal innovation and metaphysical vertigo in a way that hands back to the notion of fantasy its full meaning, antithetical to the idea of a form of nonchalance and lightness to which critical analysis has often reduced it. In this sense, during the last quarter of the century, fantasy gradually darkens and can come to be momentarily identified with a certain kind of negativity and anxiety of failure, both literary and existential. This paper will take a close look at this carefully staged precariousness, and at the same time bring to loight the specificity of Cros’ work and style.
Réseaux sociaux