Parisian literary fields: James Joyce and Pierre Reverdy's theory of the image.(Critical essay)

This article examines Joyce's Parisian works through the lens of Reverdy's aesthetic of the image, which was symptomatic of the intricate tensions between innovative ideas and the rivalries surrounding avant-garde practices, thus showing possible links between Parisian avant-garde practices and what is commonly called 'high modernism' in modernism studies. This parallel analysis of Joyce and Reverdy should help reassess the role played by images in Joyce's modernist aesthetic in Ulysses, and also in Finnegans Wake, where words become 'word-images'. New relations should emerge between the innovative practices of poetry and of novel writing, beyond a seemingly well-established divide.

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   Il [Joyce] tentait de definir les puissances de 
   la poesie. 
   (PHILIPPE SOUPAULT)(1) 
 
   Reverdy etait beaucoup plus theoricien 
   qu'Apollinaire. [...] Nul n'a mieux su faire 
   mediter sur les moyens profonds de la 
   poesie. 
   (ANDRE BRETON) (2) 

When Joyce finally arrived in Paris in 1920, the French capital was 'the hub and spokes of the literary universe'; (3), yet critics tend to dismiss the influence of the Parisian avant-gardes on the author, studying him instead in the context of Anglo-Saxon high modernism. Ulysses' aesthetic is usually analysed in the context of modernist texts written in English, and of movements such as the imagists spearheaded by F. S. Flint, Hilda Doolittle, Richard Aldington, T. E. Hulme, and most notably Ezra Pound. (4) However, the imagists were hardly avant-garde--they actually propounded an anti-futurist agenda based on a 'reconnection with a valued cultural tradition' (5)--and if their emphasis on the 'poetic image' is well known, one cannot establish any solid links between 'imagism' and Joyce's aesthetic developed in Ulysses. This article will move away from high-modernist contextualizations of Joyce and turn instead to the Parisian avant-garde movements themselves, and to one of its leading proponents in particular, Pierre Reverdy, whose place and importance are well established in France and in post-war American poetry circles, but who otherwise remains overlooked in modernism studies.

There is no direct evidence that Joyce and Reverdy had met or read each other's works, but indirect links between the two writers did exist: by an interesting coincidence, and beyond the more obvious fact that they shared close friends such as Aragon and Soupault, they also had one crucial point of contact, the bookshop La Maison des Amis des Livres run by Adrienne Monnier, who was acting as a 'patron' for both artists, as well as for most other avant-garde artists in need of promotion and encouragement. If nobody knows whether Joyce had read Reverdy, we can assume that Monnier, who knew and admired Reverdy, would most probably have told Joyce about his work and about his literary review Nord-Sud, which she kept and distributed in her own bookshop. (6) In her revealing account of Odeonia she wrote:

Pierre Reverdy fut un des premiersamis de ma librairie. Il venait regulierement, en 1917, nous apporter Nord-Sud, la revue qu'il faisait paraitre avec tant de vaillance. Quand je considere maintenant la collection Nord-Sud que j'al soigneusement conserve, elle m'appars6comme le type exemplaire des revues d'avant-garde. C'est dans Nord-Sud que debuterent serieusement Breton, Aragon, Soupault. [...] Reverdy a eu une grande influence sur les jeunes d'alors. Il a doma a ceux qui l'ont approch un poids et une gravite qu'ils n'auraient pas eus sans lui. [...] L'influence de Reverdy etait fondamentale, dans le vrai sens du mot. (7)

By using this 'link' between these two avant-garde writers as a prompt and a springboard to further comparative analysis, this article will show that the aesthetic developments of Joyce and Reverdy were actually following a common trajectory among the Parisian 'literary fields', defined by Bourdieu as 'un champ de forces agissant sur tous ceux qui y entrent, et de maniere differentielle selon la position qu'ils y occupent, en rime temps qu'un champ de luttes de concurrence'. (8) Indeed, the fiercely autonomous aesthetic position I detect in Joyce and Reverdy was none the less part of a modernist battle for recognition, contemporaneous with a shift in the way works were being read, assessed, and criticized. If much fascinating work has been done on Joyce's politics, little has been said regarding the 'politics of his aesthetics', (9) his relationship with the Parisian avant-garde, and the positioning, or status, of Ulysses, then of Finnegans Wake, within the art world. (10) The notion of 'fields' will help us frame the parallel study of Reverdy and Joyce, bringing to the fore their common will to demarcate themselves--via their aesthetic of the image--from the other avant-garde movements.