SubStance

In one of its greatest paradoxes, French minimalist literature exists only in the plural. However, by no means do the different types of minimalism enjoy the same level of prestige. Some, particularly in the area of prose narration, have a certain public success—not always validated with the same enthusiasm by criticism, and certainly not by theory. Others, like the field of "poetic" writing, suffer from a readership generally dissatisfied with this type of textual production, while nevertheless successfully representing to critics and theorists a kind of ideal of late twentieth-century poetic expression.

These differences in reputation are not always justified, especially in the case of minimalist poetry. We think poetry is neither truly interesting nor truly minimalist, and there, perhaps, is the rub: the failure of much minimalist poetry is not due to its minimalist program as much as to the particular manner in which it is considered or implemented. The object of this article is to take a position in this debate by demonstrating that another minimalism is possible, and doubtless necessary if we are to overcome the impasses of the type of poems generally classified as minimalist.

Minimalism in Prose, Minimalism in Poetry

In prose, minimalism was forcefully imposed with the work of the Jeunes Minuit (we are thinking here of authors such as Deville, Oster, Gailly, Ravey, Toussaint and several others, but not Echenoz, a writer still considered part of the minimalist school only because of a curiosity of the publishing industry). Following the analysis of Sémir Badir¹ the minimalism in question is not "orthodox": in effect, it is not at root a practice (in this case, the novel) reduced to its fundamental components and bare essentials (for example, time, action, character), as is the case in most of the artistic currents that comply with the minimalist creed. It is more precisely an effort, often difficult and awkward, to reinvent the novel after L'ère du soupçon,² which is to say in the wake of increasingly caustic criticism of récit and its pure and simple destruction by the [End Page 66] successive waves of the Nouveau Roman, the New Nouveau Roman and the "textual writing" of Tel Quel (if one can so cavalierly sum up the different waves of "suspicion" that crashed against the century-old edifice of the novel). If the public rapidly followed this group of authors, many of whom were quickly held up as leaders of contemporary French literature, the theoretical reception was, for its part, more reserved. The problem with the minimalist movement was its own impurity—too minimalist to please partisans of traditional narrative, too maximalist to satisfy hard-core minimalists.

In poetry, minimalism follows an entirely different program. Associated with the work of writers such as Anne-Marie Albiach or Jean Daive (or that of a Roger Laporte or an Edmond Jabès, if one believes, as is often the case in reflections on this literary trend, that the distinction between poetry and prose should give way to the global category of "writing"), poetic minimalism much more closely resembles minimalism as it is generally understood than does its narrative prose counterpart. Prolonging the radical implications of the literature of the 1960s and especially that of the 1970s, minimalist poetry constitutes the pinnacle of an evolution toward ever greater purity and essence. With this evolution, it is a matter of pulling the art of writing closer to its irreducible essence, and stripping it of any other sort of distracting elements. However, contrary to the minimalist novelists, who were greatly appreciated by the public but held at some distance by theorists, poetic minimalism benefited from the opposite reception: little read outside of those milieus that were directly concerned, it was always well regarded by those who thought theoretically about poetry. The reasons for this infatuation are sufficiently clear: minimalist poetry figured prominently in the wake of the various avant-garde movements of the...