STUDY DAY ON ELIE-CHARLES FLAMAND, PRESENTATION

par Henri Béhar

February 8, 2020

Study Day February 8, 2020 – Elie-Charles FLAMAND

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.

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. I must recall the Mélusine review whose issue 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, targeting the powers of establishment, as Pascal would have said, and particularly the positivist forces, was doubtless necessary coming out of the carnage. It was absolutely necessary to give back to dream, imagination, even analogical thought, the place that had been confiscated from them. It is thus that 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." 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 inscribed in the program a certain number of remarkable theses, necessary for a good knowledge of French literature. It is thus that I had to go through Albert-Marie Schmidt's La Poésie scientifique en France au seizième siècle. Ronsard, Maurice Scève, Baïf, Belleau, Du Bartas, Agrippa d'Aubigné. Paris, Albin Michel, 1938 (reprint 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 highs and lows, periods of glory and periods of relative ebb. Still, we must agree on the very term 'scientific poetry.' Is it only a question of didactic poetry, or is it a question of 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 concerted]. How not to mention here the poetry of Roger Vitrac, and notably this collection, La Lanterne noire, which I placed in his complete poems? The text, perfectly established, was dedicated to André Breton, and it entirely belongs to astral poetry. Now, we know that Vitrac, who signed the preface of La Révolution surréaliste, and thus 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 which 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 makes celestial spirits come into human bodies, by the presence and instinct or in- spiration 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 that having broken the bridle and the bonds of the members and of 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 suns corresponds with the sigh of flowers, chains of harmony make correspond among themselves all beings of nature.

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.

Apollonius of Tyana.

THE DEMONS AND THE SACRIFICES

The fire always agitated and bounding in the atmosphere can take a configuration similar to that of bodies. 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 abundant 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 gazes appearances of bodies always deceptive. Change nothing in the barbarous names of evocation: for they are the pantheistic names of God; they are magnetized with 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 the same time all the depths of the world; Listen to what it will tell you!

François Patricius.

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 feathered hat, had to, to be born, let fall from a fire 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 forests, in jewel bushes. Nothing could reveal the star secret of the absinthe tears. Nothing, except the water that fell from a piece of sugar onto 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 sojourn 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 lightning hung suspended.

Read the continuation and the totality of the collection Dés-Lyre long out of print: Roger Vitrac, Dés-Lyre, complete poems