ABSTRACT
Now, as it happens, French is, contrary to what people say, a highly poetic language. Not through its clarity, but through its richness. Indeed, until the nineteenth century, it was a language of moralists, lawyers and diplomats: ‘A language of good manners and courtesy’. But then Victor Hugo arrived, and upsetting Malherbe’s strict noble enactment threw ‘the old dictionary to the winds.’ At the same time, he let loose a multitude of forbidden words: concrete and abstract words, academic and technical words, popular and exotic words. And then a century later the surrealists, not content with putting the format for the ‘poème-discours’ in the dustbin, with one blow got rid of all the ‘hinge-words’ leaving us with bare poems panting with the same rhythm of the soul. They had found the black syntax of juxtaposition again, focusing on words which burst out aflame with metaphors and symbolism. The scene was set for black poetry in the French language.
