FAREWELL TO THE POEM. REFLECTIONS UPON THE POETIC ART (BRIEF HISTORY OF A CRISIS)

Abstract

“Farewell to the Poem. Reflections upon the Poetic Art” is a text which, in a diachronic manner, reviews the different notions of lyricism that the French tradition considers. Receiving heritage from classicism, poetry originally establishes mimetic relationships with reality: nature is copied, thus the divine design is copied as well. The preceptives of French Renaissance (such as Peletier and Sebillet) associate poetry with civilization and transcendence. Formal perfection gives account to worldly perfection. Poetry describes the correspondence between microcosm and macrocosm. In the text, the notion of lyricism among Neoclassical and Romantic poets is also attended. The work of both Baudelaire and Rimbaud gives account to a rupture. The Twentieth Century proposes a kind of transformation, or annihilation, of lyricism. That is why Dupin chooses silence, aridness, as a poetic objective. This article, through revision, ennunciates the characteristics of contemporary lyricism.