Le laboratoire du poète : Henri Michaux et les savoirs scientifiques
Institution:
Paris 10Disciplines:
Directors:
Abstract EN:
This study examines the links between poetry and the fields of scientific knowledge often referred by henri michaux. Science produces tangible evidences of the knowledge and the cognitive procedures on which michaux draws in his creative activity. His experiments are directed primarily at his own body, sometimes aided by drugs. In recording experiments, the poet is also able to give a new dimension to natural history. But scientific evidence is insufficient, and is then put to the test. The tools of investigation are impugned by a caric aturing of scientific laws and a detailing of the teratogenic practices of scientists, knowledge being its own epistemological obstacle. However, the poet resolves this problem by an original transmutation of modern scientific knowledge. The physics principle of discontinuity in particular is incorporated in a "quantum poetics" of which madness is a paradigm. Painting aims at deconstructing signifiers, just as poetic creation, bypassing the concerns of literature, redefines the fragment as a quantum practice. But atomic physics also means interaction : michaux can then be said to transfigure fragmentation through a poetics of interaction. Michaux's references to scientific knowledge thus reflects a poetics that offers a new definition of modern poetry, which can no longer be confined to the strict literary.
Abstract FR:
Ce travail interroge les liens existant entre les savoirs scientifiques auxquels henri michaux fait souvent reference, et la poesie. La science apporte des preuves tangibles de savoirs, des demarches cognitives que michaux applique a sa creation artistique. L'experimentation concerne d'abord le corps du poete, parfois aidee par la drogue. Les protocoles experimentaux servent aussi a elaborer une histoire naturelle revivifiee. Mais les preuves de la science sont insuffisantes et mises alors a l'epreuve. La caricature des lois scientifiques, l'expose des pratiques teratogenes des savants contestent les outils d'investigation, le savoir etant son propre obstacle epistemologique. Pourtant le poete triomphe de cette crise par une transmutation originale des acquis de la science moderne. Le principe physique de la discontinuite surtout est integre a une poetique "quantique" dont la folie constitue un paradigme. La peinture oeuvre a la deconstruction signifiante, comme l'ecriture poetique, court-circuitant le litteraire, redefinit le fragment comme pratique quantique. Mais la physique atomique dit egalement l'interaction : michaux transfigurerait alors le morcellement par une poetique de l'interaction. La reference de michaux aux savoirs scientifiques est donc une poetique renouvelant la definition de la poesie moderne : l'impossibilite pour elle desormais de s'en tenir a une stricte litterarite.