Cinepoetry : imaginary cinemas in French poetry

504 Pages·2013·67.716 MB·English

by  Wall-Romana, Christophe

Cinepoetry

verbal arts :: studies in poetics
series editors : : Lazar Fleishman & Haun Saussy

Cinepoetry
imaginary cinemas in french poetry
Christophe Wall-Romana
fordham university press New York 2013
this book is made possible by a collaborative grant
from the andrew w. mellon foundation.
Copyright © 2013 Fordham University Press
All rights reserved. No part of this publication
may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic,
mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—
except for brief quotations in printed reviews,
without the prior permission of the publisher.
Fordham University Press has no responsibility for the
persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-
party Internet websites referred to in this publication
and does not guarantee that any content on such
websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
Fordham University Press also publishes its books
in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that
appears in print may not be available in electronic
books.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wall-Romana, Christophe.
Cinepoetry : imaginary cinemas in French poetry /
Christophe Wall-Romana. — 1st ed.
p. cm. — (Verbal arts: studies in poetics)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8232-4548-2 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. French poetry—20th century—History and
criticism. 2. Motion pictures and literature—France.
3. Motion pictures in literature. 4. French poetry—
19th century—History and criticism. I. Title.
PQ443.W35 2013
841'.91209357—dc23
2012033167
Printed in the United States of America
15 14 13 5 4 3 2 1
First edition
contents
List of Illustrations ix
Acknowledgments xiii
List of Abbreviations xv
Introduction: Cinema as Imaginary Medium
in French Poetry 1
part one
The Early Poetic Sensorium of the Apparatus
1. Mallarmé Unfolds the Cinématographe 55
2. The Pen-Camera: Raymond Roussel’s
Freeze-Frame Panorama 79
3. Le Film surnaturel: Cocteau’s Immersive Writing 97
part two
Telepresence of the Marvelous: Cinepoetic Theories
in the 1920s
4. Jean Epstein’s Invention of Cinepoetry 113
5. Breton’s Surrealism, or How to Sublimate Cinepoetry 136
6. Doing Filmic Things with Words: On Chaplin 158
part three
Cinepoetry and Postwar Trauma Cultures
7. The Poem-Scenario in the Interwar (1917–1928) 177
8. Reembodied Writing: Lettrism and Kinesthetic Scripts
(1946–1959) 205
viii Contents
part four
Cinema’s Print Culture in Poetry
9. Postlyricism and the Movie Program: From Jarry
to Alferi 259
10. Cine-Verse: Decoupage Poetics and Filmic Implicature 290
part five
Skin, Screen, Page: Cinepoetry’s Historical Imaginary
11. Max Jeanne’s Western: Eschatological Sarcasm
in the Postcolony 313
12. Maurice Roche’s Compact: Word-Tracks
and the Body Apparatus 326
13. Nelly Kaplan’s Le Collier de ptyx: Mallarmé
as Political McGuffin 337
Conclusion: The Film to Come in Contemporary Poetry 347
Notes 375
Bibliography 433
Index 467
Color plates follow page 256
illustrations
plates
(following page 256)
1. Detail of Blaise Cendrars and Sonia Terk-Delaunay,
“La Prose du transsibérien et de la petite Jehanne
de France”
2. Intertitles and intratitles from Marcel L’Herbier’s
L’Homme du large
3a / 3b. Two pages from “Cinéma accéléré et cinéma ralenti,”
in Blaise Cendrars, La fin du monde filmée par l’ange
N.-D., illustrated by Fernand Léger
4. Anamorphosis in Maurice Roche, Compact
5. Double page from Maurice Roche, Compact
6. A page from David Lespiau, Ouija Board
figures
1. Stéphane Mallarmé’s flat and the nearest movie theater 2
2. Page from booklet accompanying the release of Jean
Epstein’s docudrama Pasteur; new hybrid of photo
and text in the cine-novel version of Louis Feuillade’s Judex 7
3. Stills from Écriture à l’envers (Reverse writing),
Lumière Bros. 33
4. Stills from Émile Cohl, Le Binettoscope 34
5. Henri-Achille Zo, illustration for Raymond Roussel,
Nouvelles impressions d’Afrique 35
6. Stills from Louis Feuillade, Fantômas 36
x Illustrations
7. Automorphic anagram, Louis Feuillade, Les Vampires 37
8. Guillaume Apollinaire’s first calligram: “Petit paysage
animé” and its final typeset version, “Paysage” 38
9. “Dead” soldiers forming the letters of the title
of Abel Gance’s J’Accuse. 39
10. Intertitle from Jean Epstein, L’Auberge rouge; and page
from Reverdy, Le Voleur de Talan 40
11. Opening credits of Chaplin’s Shoulder Arms 41
12a. Opening rolling credits of Marcel L’Herbier’s L’Homme
du large 42
12b. Closing shots of Dulac’s L’Âme d’artiste 42
13. George du Maurier’s drawing of a “Telephonoscope” 48
14. A page from Stéphane Mallarmé’s Un Coup de dés 56
15. Comic strip by Stéphane Mallarmé, “La journée du 12” 57
16. The odometer invented by Jule-Étienne Marey to
measure and transcribe distance into a graph on paper 70
17. The poet deplunging from the mirror in Jean Cocteau’s
Le Sang d’un poète 101
18. Cinematic “iris” dream scene from “Les Eugènes,”
the comic strip in Jean Cocteau’s Le Potomak 107
19. Table of contents in the form of a movie program,
in Jean Epstein, Bonjour cinéma 124
20. Cover page of Jean Epstein, Bonjour cinéma 125
21. Opening pages of Jean Epstein, Bonjour cinéma 126
22. Cover of Jean Epstein, Bonjour cinéma 127
23. Stills from Jean Epstein, Coeur fidèle 131
24. Ad and title of the collective cine-novel published
in Le Crapouillot 146
25. Facing pages from Louis Delluc, Charlot 160
26. Chaplin in The Rink 163
27. Facing pages from Ivan Goll, La Chaplinade, poème
cinématographique, in Le Nouvel Orphée, print
by Fernand Léger 166
28. A page from Blaise Cendrars, La fin du monde filmée
par l’ange N.-D., illustrated by Fernand Léger 180
29. Still from Henri Andréani, L’Autre aile 186
30. Antonin Artaud looking treacherous in Marcel
L’Herbier, L’Argent 193