Poetry & Science: Intransitive Writing Of Denis Roche and John Ashbery

Abstract

The poetry of the 20th century has become a real linguistic laboratory. The transition from traditional (national) systems of versification to free verse and, what is especially important, to international free verse, which can be translated faster and with less distortion, made it possible to reduce the time gap in the reception of American authors in France and French authors in the USA. John Ashbury, a prominent representative of the New York School, who lived in France for about 10 years, Denis Roche and Marcelin Pleine — members of the editorial board of the avant-garde magazine Tel Quel, the theorist of intransitive writing R. Barthes were active participants in the transatlantic dialogue of poets in the middle of the 20th century. The texts of John Ashbery and Denis Roche are an international vers libre created according to the principle of intransitive writing. R. Barth, also participating in the French-American dialogue, analyses the peculiarities of writing of the period in question in his paper “To write is an intransitive verb” (1966). A poem is understood as a rhythmic inoculation of lived experience, which has a transformative power for the writer and the reader.