Current practices in French poetic discourse: Christian Prigent, Michèle Finck and Anne-James Chaton

Abstract

At the core of the contemporary literary process is the search for an effective extratextual communicative situation, which is especially relevant for books of poetry, whether in paper or electronic form. This article examines current practices of delivering poetic texts to readers through auditory perception. It focuses on contemporary French poets active between 1990 and 2022, representing three different groups and movements; in Russia, they are known only to a narrow circle of specialists. The study proposes a typology of in-situ and ex-situ strategies for delivering the sound of a poet's voice to the reader. To this end, audio and video recordings by Christian Prigent (born 1945), Michèle Finck (1960) and Anne-James Chaton (1970) are examined. Analysing the presentation of poetic works by comparison and juxtaposition leads one to conclude that authors pursue two strategies: individual playback and reading (book and CD sets) and group sessions (theatrical performances and poetry festivals). Beyond the customary dichotomy of the author's versus the actor's reading, one can distinguish hybrid types of voice preservation via delegation: incorporating a recording of the author's recitation into a theatrical production (Finck) and computer processing of the author's voice (Chaton). Contemporary poetry, especially French, persists in its quest for new codes for accessing the reader, seeking innovative forms of conveying vicarious experiences with transformative potency. Prigent, Finck, and Chaton fully harness the power of the sounding voice in their poetic work: distinctive intonations, prosody, and timbre become auditory 'anchors', substituting the mnemonic techniques of traditional poetic systems. The ancient power of vocal impact is augmented by modern technologies. Modern poetry, moving beyond its linguistic laboratory, seeks to transcend into other forms of art, gaining support from music and painting while exerting a polymodal impact on the addressee's imagination.