Anne Mounic – författare

Following the footsteps of Spanish philosopher Maria Zambrano, Anne Mounic explores the relationships between poetry and philosophy, trying to understand why Plato dismissed poets from his Republic and thus drew an enduring dividing line between reason and myth, reason and imagination. Various instances of poetic dissidence are analysed from a poet’s viewpoint, and the connections between existential philosophy and poetry are highlighted. From Kierkegaard to Lequier, via Shestov, the common ground is the attention to the beginning ‒ the act of subjective consciousness shaping time and opening toward the future and freedom. Works by various poets are discussed. A la suite de certaines analyses de la philosophe espagnole Maria Zambrano, Anne Mounic explore les relations entre poésie et philosophie, s’interrogeant sur les raisons du rejet des poètes par Platon qui dissocia ainsi durablement la raison du mythe, la raison de l’imagination. Des exemples variés de dissidence poétique sont analysés du point de vue du poète et les liens entre philosophie existentielle et poésie sont mis en relief. De Kierkegaard à Lequier, en passant par Chestov, le point commun est l’attention portée au commencement ‒ l’acte de la conscience réflexive modelant le temps, ouvrant à l’avenir et fondant la liberté. Les oeuvres de nombreux poètes sont envisagées.

Here is presented an existential view of Graves’ poetic, historical, and critical work, whose coherence is being emphasized. Graves’ poetic outlook is first of all ethical and his aesthetics are subservient to his aim of transforming the emotion into existential thought in order to live on, to probe the experience, and to give it its ontological resonance. The divine capacity is to be found within the individual soul. It is immanent but transcends the phenomenological world. Like Kierkegaard, the poet experiences a feeling of certainty when faith animates him. In the present moment, he gets glimpses of paradise – the plenitude of being. No clipped wings, no well polished discipline or well-behaved guidance. In Kierkegaard’s words, the poet’s sphere is not the universal, or general, but the religious, or individual, sphere – faith, not the concept; self-confidence, not conformity to any over-simplified logic.Graves’ stance is paradoxical throughout: he was not politically involved (except immediately after the war when he said he was a Socialist), but evinced some political ideas in his essays. He was not religious, but poetry took the place of religion for him. He evinced a very original poetic outlook, but kept within the limits of well-accepted prosody. He liked to provoke his audience, but his poetry is never provocative. In other words, it is not easy to situate Graves according to time-honoured categories. He is too much of an individual poet to stand general classification. Yet his poems have a direct appeal to the reading public. He is a poet of unrest.This volume is of interest for scholars and poetry readers who wish to renew their appreciation of poetry and go beyond nowadays critical standards through a careful reading of the very powerful thought of a major poet.

The spirit of the narrative is mankind’s reflexive consciousness, or poetic genius ‒ our unique access to ourselves, our desperate endeavour “to be REAL”. It brings to light the dark unknown which is the zest of our lives; it gives shape to the tremor of our inner souls ‒ otherwise nearly imperceptible. “Ah, what is it? ‒ that I heard”, Katherine Mansfield wondered throughout her whole life and writings ‒ poems and stories, letters and notebooks. Through the metamorphic movement of her highly sensitive, perceptive mind, she highlights the deep ambivalence of light and dark, mirth and awe, fear and longing which is the keen feature of our naked existence. She sketches her epic motifs with a dedicated sense of wonder. A true poet, she returns, as Baudelaire, Keats, Hopkins, Proust, or Shakespeare, to the origins of language ‒ this poignant contrast of light and dark following the alternate rhythm of night and day, of yielding to darkness and converting it into speech: “Let there be light.” Poetic language is performative. It means an everlasting questioning over the abyss ‒ with wings of wonder upon the face of the deep.This volume will also be of interest to scholars and dedicated readers who wish to share in the current reassessment of Katherine Mansfield’s poetic achievement. Her awareness of the literary tradition and modernity, the utmost finesse of her artistic thought, the boldness of her temper make her a major twentieth-century poet.