Anyone who has stayed for some time in the Azores has kept a great memory of it. I am no exception to the rule, especially since I was welcomed there in 1982 by Marc-Ange Graff, a colleague from the University of Paris VIII (not to be confused with the novelist of the same name, bearing the same initials), as well as by Païva and their students, who made me discover in a few days all the varieties of the main island. In fact, as indicated by the first words of my intervention, I had replaced at short notice Henri Meschonnic (1932-2009), prevented by health problems. In the emergency, I referred to Tristan Tzara's reflections on the final function of poetry as a means of knowledge, while thinking of the various esoteric-inspired works I had read when I was editing the complete poems of Roger Vitrac. This theme came back to me when I presented I. C. Flamand to the public of the Halle Saint-Pierre in 2020. Textos reunidos e organizados por Marc-Ange Graff [e Ofélia Paiva Monteiro]. Edição Escher. Lisboa. 1991 e 1992. 2 Volumes de 23x16 cm. Com 250, [ii]; 236, [i] págs. Brochados. Edição patrocinada pela Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian com o apoio do Banco Português do Atlântico e do Banco Fonsecas & Burnay. Language: Português.

Download the text of my conference in PDF Text reprinted in: H. Béhar, History of Literary Facts, Paris, Classiques Garnier, pp. 286-301 To this essay, it is appropriate to associate the HSP day of February 8, 2020 at the Halle Saint-Pierre (Paris): Study Day February 8, 2020

Elie-Charles FLAMAND Presentation of the day by Henri Béhar To open this day devoted to Elie-Charles FLAMAND and his astrological poetry, I would like to look back for a moment, in order to evoke three or four milestones that will help us situate him, which does not mean making him a direct heir.

1. You all know Tristan Tzara's theory in his "Essay on the Situation of Poetry" (1931). According to him, there would be two forms of thought. First, there was non-directed thinking, producing spontaneous, primitive poetry. Then came directed thinking, producing voluntary, rational poetry, such as classical poetry. But the 3rd time of thought that he postulated dialectically is generally ignored. This opened the cycle of knowledge poetry. Elaborated from surrealism, it was supposed to go beyond. It is in this framework that, in my opinion, Elie-Charles Flamand's work is situated.
2. I must recall the Mélusine magazine whose No. XXVII, 2007, is devoted to the relationships between surrealism and science, and, more so, to poetry as science, knowledge, and even knowledge of knowledge. I wrote in the preface; "This offensive attitude, aimed at the powers of establishment, as Pascal would have said, and particularly at positivist forces, was undoubtedly necessary in the aftermath of the carnage. It was absolutely necessary to restore to dream, imagination, even analogical thought, the place that had been confiscated from them. This is how Breton will state, in the Second Manifesto of Surrealism, a prediction by Commander Choisnard according to which a conjunction of Uranus and Saturn would be likely to engender 'a new school in matters of science'. Now, he specifies, this conjunction characterizes the birth sky of Aragon, Éluard and his own."
3. All this brings me back involuntarily, of course, to my university studies, and more precisely to the French Literature certificate. At that time, our masters included in the program a certain number of remarkable theses, necessary for a good knowledge of French literature. This is how I had to go through Albert-Marie Schmidt's Scientific Poetry in France in the Sixteenth Century. Ronsard, Maurice Scève, Baïf, Belleau, Du Bartas, Agrippa d'Aubigné. Paris, Albin Michel, 1938 (reissue Lausanne, Rencontre, 1970). To be brief, here is the summary provided by the author himself: "Scientific poetry has always been flourishing and vigorous. It has certainly known ups and downs, periods of glory and periods of relative ebb. We must still agree on the very term 'scientific poetry'. Is it only poetry with a didactic character, or is it philosophical or cognitive poetry, certainly inspired by science, but which takes more inventive literary forms? – in which case I claim that the genre has always been very much alive, and that by its very nature, it can hardly be otherwise." [It will be noted that, in his intervention, Jean-Clarence Lambert will invoke the same remarks and the same authors, without us having consulted each other].
4. How can we not mention here the poetry of Roger Vitrac, and notably this collection, The Black Lantern, which I placed in his complete poems? The text, perfectly established, was dedicated to André Breton, and it fully belongs to astral poetry. Now, we know that Vitrac, who signed the preface of La Révolution surréaliste, and therefore belonged to the first nucleus, was the first excluded from the group, for basely carnal reasons, I would say. Here are the first pages of the booklet, containing the most characteristic citations of the ancestors to whom he refers:

THE BLACK LANTERN SURREALIST POEMS (1925) To André Breton.

It is said, moreover, that the melancholic humor is so imperious that by its impetuosity it brings celestial spirits into human bodies, by the presence and instinct or inspiration of which all the ancients said that men were transported and uttered admirable things. They say therefore that the soul being pushed by the melancholic humor, nothing stops it, and having broken the bridle and the bonds of the members and the body, it is all transported in imagination. Henri Cornelis-Agrippa. THE NUCTEMERON SEVENTH HOUR A fire that gives life to all animated beings is directed by the will of pure men. The initiate extends his hand and sufferings are appeased. EIGHTH HOUR The stars speak to each other, the soul of the suns corresponds with the sigh of flowers, chains of harmony make all beings of nature correspond with each other. ELEVENTH HOUR The wings of genies stir with a mysterious rustling, they fly from one sphere to another and carry from world to world the messages of God. TWELFTH HOUR Here are accomplished by fire the works of eternal light. THE DEMONS AND THE SACRIFICES The fire always agitated and bounding in the atmosphere can take a configuration similar to that of bodies. Apollonius of Tyana. Let us say better, let us affirm the existence of a fire full of images and echoes. Let us call, if you will, this fire an overflowing light that radiates, that speaks, that coils. ............................................................... The stars have ceased to shine, and the lamp of the moon is veiled. The earth trembles and everything is surrounded by lightning. Then do not call the visible simulacrum of the soul of nature. For you must not see it before your body is purified by the holy trials. Softening souls and always drawing them away from sacred works, the earthly dogs then come out of these limboes where matter ends and show to mortal eyes appearances of bodies always deceptive. Change nothing in the barbarous names of the evocation: for they are the pantheistic names of God; they are magnetized by the adorations of a multitude and their power is ineffable. And when after all the phantoms you see shining this incorporeal fire, this sacred fire whose arrows traverse at once all the depths of the world; Listen to what it will tell you! THE APPROACH I wonder whence come so many genuflections at the instant when the dead man descends on a rope ladder, and takes me in his melodious branch arms, and carries me into the darkness whose circles are of honey. The bird that breathed in a hat of feathers, had to, to be born, let fall from an instrument of leaves baskets of platinum moss, and there, find a stammering that would bring it closer to love. We discovered the lost bodies on the edge of the forests, in bushes of jewels. Nothing could reveal the star secret of the tears of absinthe. François Patricius.

Nothing, except the water that fell from a piece of sugar on the other from the top of the firs to the barricaded heart of the poet. Besides, the purple made itself small to pass under the Roman door. It apologized for being the sister of blood. White birds launched by the chest of the desperate, left like stones. We counted seconds where we should have counted centuries. The strange architectures of sleeping water rose with the concentric breath of the drowned. Beyond everything was lost. THE ROTTEN The shore where women stretch out among the moirés of desire is smaller than the tip of the breast of light. An ox is rocked by the children of a landscape where it must stay for eight years. There, we found the withered skeletons of travelers and the brain of a snowy century, similar to the cake called: "nun", but harder than the forehead of assassins after confession. Nothing could fall into the well that was not aerial. The sycamore leaf danced there in Sicilian veils, a grain of sulfur on the cheek. We let fall there alliances and lead claws. But they stopped at the level that swallows never reach, for there were no storms in this country. Further on, it was the dreamed phantom. This man let his body rot during his life which was to be of short duration. And none moved the summit of the edifices of azure where the lightning hung. [Read the continuation and the totality of the collection Dés-Lyre long out of print on my site: http://melusine-surrealisme.fr/en/henribehar/en/wp/?p=122]