Translating

The three texts of this section deal with translation, a field where Meschonnic is of particular influence and importance. Meschonnic’s own experience of translating the Bible, and a very particular understanding of meaning-making procedures in biblical Hebrew, establishes in fact the basis for his theory. The exposure to the semantic accent system of biblical Hebrew allowed Meschonnic to develop a theory of language which saw meaning as residing not only in linguistic reference but in what he called a ‘serial semantics’: motivated forms of verbal patterning, chains of signifiers, prosodic contours, distributions of and connections between speech sounds and motifs across a longer text. He posits that, more than what a text says, it is what a text does that is to be translated: its force. The third text on translation then offers a demonstration of how Meschonnic applies the continuous of his theory of language to a text.

Preliminary Remarks to this Reader

This chapter explains the background history of this publication, its guiding principles as well as the working procedures and strategies of the translator team, pointing out the difficulties of translating Meschonnic’s unusual thinking and style into the Anglophone tradition.

Critique of Rhythm

The four texts of this section are all taken from Meschonnic’s magnum opus Critique du rythme. Anthropologie historique du langage (Lagrasse: Verdier, 1982) in which he presented for the first time his overarching theory in a more systematic manner. The monograph lays out the main elements of his universe of thought, always with a clear focus on the key term of rhythm, which functions as the operator of subjectivity and historicity. Meschonnic positions himself against structuralism and as a critique of his time. The texts clarify Meschonnic’s understanding of the term ‘critique’ and what is a stake in his theory of rhythm. They exemplify his critique of metrics and of what he calls the thinking of the sign.

Meschonnic’s Poetics of Society

By systematically establishing what Meschonnic called a poetics of society, this chapter explores the connection between a theory of language and a theory of society. Meschonnic makes use of the old debate between realism and nominalism to criticize a language theory exclusively based on the sign. The particular accent system of the Hebrew Bible represents for Meschonnic an alternative model for thinking language, changing our ideas about poetics and subjectivity, with ethical and political consequences. This article sheds light on this political dimension of Meschonnic’s poetics, making the case for the cultivation of language awareness, for poetic thinking as a socially and politically formative activity. It contends that a different approach to language is a different approach to society, which entails that literature is of general social importance and poetics concerns much more than a narrow conception of literature.

Introduction

This chapter presents Meschonnic’s intellectual pathway, situating his theory in its time and French environment. It explains the relationship between linguistics and literary studies and Meschonnics stance in the French debates starting in the 1960s, also pointing at Meschonnic being a distinguished poet himself. Meschonnic saw the flaws of linguistic structuralism and expanded the field. The second part of the introduction offers insights into Meschonnic’s biography and the development of his theory and career pathway, illuminating some of the grand original themes running through Meschonnic’s work and the originality of his thinking.

Historicity and Society

The three texts of this chapter are taken from the posthumous volume Langage, Histoire, une même théorie (Lagrasse: Verdier, 2012). They represent the ambition of Meschonnic’s work from its very beginning, that is, to develop a theory of language that establishes a new basis for all the humanities and social sciences by overthrowing the reign of the sign in our episteme. He focuses here on the connection between language and history through his notion of historicity which is a situatedness that constantly leaves this situation and remains active in the presence. Only poetics, an awareness of what language is and does, he argues, enables to think beyond the sign and to develop a critical theory, that is, a theory aware of its situatedness. Meschonnic connects language to historicity, the political and the ethical.

Modernity

The text of this section is taken from Henri Meschonnic’s Modernité Modernité (Lagrasse: Verdier, 1988). It constitutes the introduction to Meschonnic’s dealings with the debate on modernity and, by extension, on post-modernity. He thus attacks the strong post-modern movement of the time as a misconception of the modern, against which he accentuates the ongoing validity of a certain understanding of modernity, an understanding which operates beyond the categories of chronology and newness. The notion of modernity, as Meschonnic understands it after a rereading of Baudelaire and Rimbaud, overflows the binarism and couplings of the sign and shows its limitations. In Meschonnic’s definition, a critique of modernity implies an understanding of what a subject is.

Poetry and Poem

This section consists of one relatively short text, which takes the form of a manifesto: ‘the Rhythm Party Manifesto’. It is a chapter of the book with the ironic title Célébration de la poésie (Lagrasse: Verdier, 2001) which is a reflection on what a poem is and does. But as every reflexion, it is situated. Meschonnic attacks his contemporary French intellectual scene and its representation of poetry – what he considers not only a use and abuse of poetry, but also a misunderstanding based on a wrong conception of language. Meschonnic explains here his definition of the poem as opposed to a fixed idea about poetry. Meschonnic insists on the uniqueness and unforeseeability of a poem. As soon as we believe we know what poetry is, there cannot be poetry anymore. Consequently, by celebrating it, we have preconceived ideas and miss what makes a poem a poem.

Meschonnic’s Theory of Rhythm, his Key Concepts and their Relation

This chapter introduces into the key concepts of Meschonnic’s theory. Basing the conception of language on the sign represents an obstacle to the awareness of certain elements of human life, especially to a full understanding of what language or art do. Meschonnic’s poetics of the continuum and of rhythm criticizes the sign based on Benveniste’s terms of rhythm and discourse, developing an anthropology of language. Rhythm, for Meschonnic, is no formal metrical but a semantic principle, each time unique and unforeseeable. As for Humboldt, his starting point is not the word but the ensemble of speech. The poem, then, is a process of transformation, a way of thinking, and rhythm is form in movement. Thus, Meschonnic’s poetics attempts to thematize the intelligibility of presence. Art and literature raise our awareness of this continuous. This poetic thinking is a necessary counterforce against all institutionalization.

Rhyme and Life

The three texts of this section are chapters from the essay La rime et la vie (Paris: Gallimard, 2006 [1989]). Meschonnic combines general reflections on poetics with detailed analyses of poets. He focuses on the relationship of language and poetics to life. Meschonnic identifies life with poetry since in poetry everything becomes life through language and at the same time language becomes life. The poem, for Meschonnic, is not necessarily the literary form but more generally an activity, a process of transformation. For him, orality is not part of the duality of oral and written. He constructs a tripartite constellation of the written, the spoken and the oral. Meschonnic defines the oral as the mode of signifying characterised by a primacy of rhythm and prosody in the movement of sense. Meschonnic draws a connection to the subject and criticises the psychoanalytical reduction of subject and language.