Public Enemies_ Dueling Writers Take on Each Other and the World - Bernard-Henri Levy [100]
And William Cliff,† whom I ran into on a train from Paris to Brussels, had much the same reaction. After a little small talk, he launched into a discussion of Villon and on my use—rather too free in his opinion—of the alexandrine.
It is extraordinary, and I find it terribly moving, that such people exist. I feel like saying—actually, I don’t feel like saying it at all, but I almost feel obliged to say—that such people still exist. People with a system of values so distant, so incommensurable with that of their contemporaries.
How long will they go on existing? Oh, I don’t doubt that Gallimard is conscious to some extent of its cultural responsibilities; I’m sure the company will make it a point of honor to publish its old poets until the day they die; but I doubt they will put much energy into looking for their successors.
Besides, it would be unfair to cast the first stone at publishers; when was the last time I saw a poetry section in a bookshop?
And what can the bookshops do, if there are no readers? Maybe we live in a world (this was Ghérasim Luca’s* conclusion just before he committed suicide) where poetry simply has no place anymore.
And so something precious is disappearing, disappearing before our very eyes. I can attest to it, I have watched it fade away in my lifetime, even during my modest career as a writer, I have seen the poetry sections in the bookshops get smaller, seen the poetry collections gutter out.
I have also seen the annual, Soviet-style displays of enthusiasm by those in charge; congratulating each other on the incredible success of “le Printemps des Poètes,”† on the extraordinary and growing appetite of the public for poetry, oh, it makes me tired just talking about it.
In l’Auteur, Vincent Ravalec‡ is viciously funny about the years he spent on another parallel circuit that is culturally subsidized and almost as pathetic as that of poetry: the world of the short story.
Before coming to the true business of writing novels (in 1994, he with Cantique de la racaille, I with Whatever), both of us had published (he, short stories by Les Éditions Le Dilettante; I, poetry with Les Éditions de la Différence). Like him, I experienced those improbable cultural encounters where the cultural attaché from the local council wonders aloud whether the côte de veau is included in the prix-fixe, where you’re never really sure where you’ll be staying (he was once put up in an old people’s home, I in a disused caravan).
There is, however, a difference—minor but crucial—which means that if I had to recount my years on the parallel circuit, my story would be less funny, and less scathing, than his. Publishers consider the short story writer to be immature and lazy; I mean, after all, these little stories have characters, they have plots. What’s stopping the writer from doing the same thing on a bigger scale in a novel (which, at least, might find a readership)? Whereas the poet is considered to be an utterly irresponsible misfit; or, more straightforwardly, is not considered at all.
This is why poets, who are out of the squad completely in any case, have warmer relationships with one another than short story writers, who are sitting on the bench.
And this colors the entirety of their relationships.
Now I am in the game, to say the least; I’m desperately looking for a way to get out (while continuing, to some small extent, to be in).
Because it requires something to remain in touch with poetry, a certain