Itinéraires (Dec 2022)
L’émotion du poème incarné : les lectures à une voix des Épiphanies par Henri Pichette
Abstract
Whatever its mode of publication (theatre, book or reading aloud by its author), the text of Les Epiphanies constitutes an astonishing visual and sound spectacle in which the direct transmission of more or less violent affects takes precedence over the intellectual understanding of the poem. Based on spectator testimonies as well as sound and visual archives, this article examines the specificity of the literary emotions at stake in the readings Henri Pichette gave from 1965 onwards. The text thus put into voice and body by its author appears to be an extreme form of poetic publication, which is in line with Pichette's idea of poetry as a nervous participation in a great common body : the poet-reader is less concerned with interpreting his text or even performing an artistic act than physically bringing out its pure emotional charge through an art of diction and gesture that borrows from Artaud's theories and Gérard Philipe's generous ingenuity.
