ABSTRACT
The aesthetic of the nou-lieu enacted in Steles is, on first appearances, entirely consonant with that represented in Religion du Signe. An important consanguinity is attested by several details – the dedication of the work 'en hommage a Paul Claudel' being only the most explicit. Victor Segalen was subsequently to organize from Peking what Claudel himself described as the canonical edition of Connaissance tie l'Est. Published by Cres in 1914, it was the second volume in the so-called 'Collection Coreenne' of which Segalen was director and which had been initiated with the second edition of Steles itself. The remarkable commitment of these productions to the material dimension of the text are of direct descent from the original edition of Steles, in which Segalen's consciously spatial approach to the book-object is given its fullest and most radical expression. The very excessiveness of form in Segalen sets up a dialectics of monumentality.
