ABSTRACT
The linguistic foundation is that of a shared rhetoric on a platform of themes, ideas, and aspirations – a form of legislation not untypical of an avant-garde position in the literary field. Poetic foundation for Victor Segalen involves the simultaneous establishment and withdrawal of a je in the face of a distanced nous. The accession to speech both founds and obscures the subject position. The governing artistic paradigm maintained by Segalen in the face of all difficulties and attractions is that of the individual creator. In René Daumal's governing experience of community within the complex of review and group ethic known as Le Grand Jeu, the foundation of the individual and collective subjects as indissociable elements within an economy of pre-linguistic experience determines the entire 'poetic' act. The initial and initiate community, within which valid poetic work becomes possible, measures the authenticity of all communicative acts, and acts as the template of all imaginable community.
