La creation poetique chez john ashbery : themes, structures et style

John ashbery's poetic creation : themes, structures and style

• Auteur / Autrice : Bertrand Lentsch
• Direction : Henri Suhamy
• Type : Thèse de doctorat
• Discipline(s) : Études nord-américaines
• Date : Soutenance en 1997
• Etablissement(s) : Paris 10

Résumé

La poesie de john ashbery se singularise par la capacite de la conscience a inclure un vaste ensemble d'experiences disparates au sein d'oeuvres univoques, d'ou une impression de foisonnement et d'incoherence. Ces constructions mentales s'apparentent cependant a certaines compositions picturales qui privilegient la tension entre des forces concurrentes afin, de parvenir a une revelation epiphanique de la signification de chaque tentative. L'exploration entreprise dans ce travail est d'abord celle de la nature des oppositions fondatrices de cette cumulation. Il s'agit ensuite de demontrer que l'efficacite du developpement metaphorique provient de l'equilibre que l'ecrivain menage entre l'apport de notations nouvelles et l'examen des courants de conscience qui en constituent le scenario. Les poemes ici analyses revelent ainsi leur qualite proprement dramatique et oraculaire. Ils attestent tous de l'interrogation poursuivie par l'auteur quant a la possibilite meme de la signification. Cinq recueils sur les treize, a ce jour publies, sont ici etudies. On y assiste a la faillite de la notion de sujet propre a la poesie, et a celle conjointe de l'adequation entre la sublimite du langage mis en jeu et la transformation de l'incident inaugural en une scene desalienante. On y decouvre aussi la subversion systematique des progressions convenues et leur reorientation vers la verite de sensations soustraites a la gangue culturelle qui leur a ete imposee par des modes de pensee traditionnels. L'ensemble de l'oeuvre ainsi analysee temoigne d'une quete sans cesse recommencee de l'authenticite d'une intuition purifiee de la realite.

John ashbery's poetry is distinguished by the ability of consciousness to include a wide range of disorderly perceptions in unequivocal works, hence their creating a sense of indiscrimination and inconsistency. These mental constructions are yet similar to some paintings that are based on the tension between competing forces thus aiming at the epiphanic disclosure of the meaning of such endeavours. The matter under investigation in this doctoral thesis is first that of the nature of the contending forces at work in those metaphorical developments. The general purpose is to show that their efficiency stems from the balance reached between a "putting in" and a "leaving out" process in what he deems a scrutiny of the scenario of his stream of consciousness. The poems which are here analysed therefore reveal their trul y dramatic and oracular character. They all testify to the extent of the author's query about the very viability of meaning. Five out of the thriteen so far published collections of poetry are here examined. They bear out the collapse of the so-called "subject fit for poetry" and that of any appropriateness of a sublime language at play within the conversion of an opening incident into a de-alienating scene. The unremitting subversion of hackneyed progressions is hence conceived as a way of turning perception toward the truth of sensations that are wilfully shorn of the layers of culture imposed on them by tradition. In this view, john ashbery's poetic creation withnesses to his endless quest for the genuineness of a purified intuition of reality.