1. One may question why Oulipo (Ouvroir de littérature potentielle) does not figure in my discussion. The reason is twofold. On the one hand, that group, founded in 1960 and composed of Georges Perec, Italo Calvino, Harry Mathews, Raymond Queneau, Jacques Roubaud, and others, remains a marginal experiment, the last formalist hurrah, as it were. On the other hand, Jacques Roubaud is one of the writers I interview. Through his observations, as well as Maurice Roche's reminiscences about Georges Perec, perhaps the most attractive figure in that group, we gain a sense of that movement as preoccupied with verbal and mathematical experimentation for its own sake.

Oulipo's program, with examples of its practice and theory, is presented in Oulipo, La Littérature potentielle: créations, ré-créations, récréations (Paris: Gallimard, 1973), and Oulipo, Atlas de littérature potentielle (Paris: Gallimard, 1988).

2. Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism , trans. Joan Pinkham (New York: MR, 1972). In this polemical indictment of the white West, Césaire placed hope in the Soviet model as a way out of the imperialist predicament. But six years later he left the French Communist party, accusing it, in an open letter to the chair, Maurice Thorez, of being as discriminatory as anyone outside it.

3. Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea , trans. Lloyd Alexander (New York: New Directions, 1964). Antoine Roquentin's diary relates an encounter with an autodidact imbued with all the clichés of humanism.

4. The term alludes to Lev Shestov, Athens and Jerusalem , trans. Bernard Martin (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1966). Translated from Russian into French, this work was published in Paris in 1938, the year of Shestov's death in that city.

5. See "Entretien avec Breton et Reverdy," in Francis Ponge, Le Grand Recueil (Paris: Gallimard, 1961), Méthodes 2:292. See also my Introduction in Francis Ponge and the Power of Language: Texts and Translations (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979).

6. On this incident, see my interview with Ponge in Francis Ponge: "The Sun Placed in the Abyss" and Other Texts , with an essay, an interview with Ponge, and translations by Serge Gavronsky (New York: Sun, 1977). In fact it was Sartre in his 1944 essay "L'Homme et les choses," later reprinted in Situations I (Paris: Gallimard, 1947), who claimed that Ponge had defined the bases of a "Phenomenology of Nature." Ponge liked the idea of being the "magus of phenomenology," but I was unable to find that particular formulation other than in his own words.

7. While at the Institut français in Berlin between 1933 and 1934, Sartre wrote nothing about the daily events taking place around him, such as the beating of Jews in the streets. Following his master Husserl, he preferred to leave "events" to the side and concentrate on phenomenology.

8. On Antonin Artaud's politicization of the theater as a hygienic solution to European culture, see my "L'Ordre nouveau et la critique totalitaire," paper presented at the First Colloquium on Twentieth-Century Studies at the Graduate Center, City University of New York, December 1983. Artaud worked as an actor for the German film company Ufa in Berlin during July to August 1930, October to November 1930, and April to May 1932. He thus witnessed both the increasing hardships in that city as well as the inaugural policies of a Hitlerian theatricalization of politics.

9. See Louis Althusser, For Marx , trans. Ben Brewster (New York: Pantheon Books, 1969), especially the concluding section, "Marxism and Humanism."

10. Louis Aragon attended a Soviet congress of writers in Kharkov in 1930. His poem The Red Front first appeared in French in Moscow in 1931; it was published in Paris the following year. One of the lines of the poem, "Kill the coppers," caught the attention of the interested party, and soon enough the Paris police had arrested Aragon and accused him of inciting murder. André Breton, in his Misère de la poésie: "L'Affaire Aragon" devant l'opinion publique (1932), tried to demonstrate, and without excessive enthusiasm, that poetry could not be indicted for political agitation: a person could be morally responsible for his or her acts; a poem could not.

For Sartre, see especially the essay "Marxism and Existentialism" in his Search for a Method , trans. Hazel E. Barnes (New York: Knopf, 1963), 3-34.

11. In a speech he had intended to deliver to the Congrès des écrivains in Paris in 1935, but which the Communists prohibited him from reading, Breton insisted that for the surrealists it was imperative to join Rimbaud's "We must change life" to Marx's "Let us transform the world." André Breton, Manifestoes of Surrealism , trans. Richard Seaver and Helen R. Lane (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1969), 241.

12. For Sartre's interpretation of "the problem of the individual" as well as "the individual in history," see Jean-Paul Sartre, Critique of Dialectical Reason , trans. Alan Sheridan-Smith (London: Verso, 1991), 51-53, 70-74. Sartre, though long faithful to a Marxist vision of the world, became disenchanted with the French Communist party, especially as of May 1968: " . . . we have discovered the impossible. In particular, as long as the French Communist party is the largest conservative party in France . . . it will be impossible to make the free revolution that was missed in May [1968]." Jean-Paul Sartre, Between Existentialism and Marxism , trans. John Mathews (New York: Pantheon Books, 1974), 60.

13. On psychoanalysis in France before Lacan, see Elisabeth Roudinesco, La Bataille de cent ans: Historie de la psychanalyse en France (Paris: Editions Ramsay, 1982), vol. 1: 1885-1939 , 223-42. For Freud's impact on surrealism, see the three letters from Sigmund Freud to André Breton, in André Breton, Communicating Vessels , trans. Mary Ann Caws and Geoffrey T. Harris (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990), 149-55. For a general discussion of psychoanalysis and surrealism, see Elisabeth Roudinesco, Jacques Lacan & Co.: A History of Psychoanalysis in France, 1925-1985 , trans. Jeffrey Mehlman (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), pt. 1, chap. 1.

14. Claude Lévi-Strauss, The Savage Mind (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966), 245-69.

15. On Lacan's privileging language from a Freudian and linguistic point of view, see Jacques Lacan, The Language of the Self: The Function of Language in Psychoanalysis , trans. Anthony Wilden (New York: Dell, 1975). Also see Jacques Lacan, "Le Séminaire sur 'La Lettre volée,'" in Ecrits (Paris: Seuil, 1966), 11-64; this essay on Edgar Allan Poe's "Purloined Letter" is not included in Ecrits: A Selection , trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Norton, 1977). For a critique of Lacan's reading of that tale, see Jacques Derrida, "Le Facteur de la vérité," in The Postcard: From Socrates to Freud and Beyond , trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 420-96. Noteworthy too is Lacan's reading of Martin Heidegger in Lacan avec les philosophes (Paris: Albin Michel, 1991), 189-236.

16. Joseph de Maistre, OEuvres * complètes (Lyon: Librairie générale catholique et classique, 1898), 7:556.

17. See Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The First and Second Discourses , trans. Roger D. Masters and Judith R. Masters (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1964), 119-26.

18. Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (New York: Vintage Books, 1973), 386.

19. From the very first chapter Derrida uses what will become a repetitive formula on the anteriority of écriture: "always already." He explains that "there is an originary violence of writing because language is first, in a sense I shall gradually reveal, writing." Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology , trans. Gayatari Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press), 9. 37. See also Christopher Norris, Derrida (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987), 63-96, on the place of linguistics in grammatology. A more recent analysis is found in Geoffrey Bennington and Jacques Derrida, Jacques Derrida (Paris: Seuil, 1991); see the discussion on écriture, 50.

20. Jacques Derrida, Ulysse gramophone: Deux mots pour Joyce (Paris: Editions Galilée, 1987), 35-53.

21. Paul de Man writes of "the systematic undoing . . . of understanding," in Allegories of Reading: Figural Language in Rousseau, Nietzsche, Rilke, and Proust (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979), 301.

22. See Philippe Sollers, "Ecriture et révolution (entretien avec Jacques Henric)," in Tel Quel: Théorie d'ensemble (Paris: Seuil, 1968), 68.

23. Among the scholars who studied the relation between écriture and philosophy are Derrida, Sarah Kofman, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Jean-Luc Nancy, Jacques Bouveresse, Michel de Certeau, Michel Foucault, and Jean-François Lyotard.

24. Barthes's arguments in On Racine (trans. Richard Howard [New York: Hill and Wang, 1964]) were quickly disputed by Raymond Picard in his New Criticism or New Fraud ? (trans. Frank Towne [Pullman: Washington State University Press, 1969]). Roland Barthes responded in the first part of his Criticism and Truth (trans. Katrine Pilcher Keuneman [Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987]). On the sociological aspects of literary criticism, see Vincent Jouve, La Littérature selon Roland Barthes (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1986), section 1.

25. Marcelin Pleynet, Lautréamont par lui-même (Paris: Seuil, 1967). The study is dedicated to Francis Ponge. See the section entitled "Les Chants de Maldoror: L'Ecriture, le lecteur, le scripteur." Maurice Saillet reveals that much more was known about Lautréamont than André Breton led us to believe. See Cahiers Lautréamont , edited by Maurice Saillet (Paris Temps qu'il fait, 1992).

26. For Breton's views on Lautréamont, Poe, and Rimbaud see his Second Manifesto , in Manifestoes of Surrealism , 127.

27. Pierre Fontanier's Figures du discours , first published in 1818, was reprinted with an introduction by Gérard Genette (Paris: Flammarion, 1968). Roland Barthes offered a history of classical rhetoric in "L'Ancienne Rhétorique," in Communications 16 (1970): 172-237; that same issue (158-71) carried an important contribution by Gérard Genette, "La Rhétorique restreinte."

28. Philippe Sollers, in "Program," a series of prefatory notes to Logiques , wrote that "the specific problematic of writing breaks decisively with myth and representation to think itself in its literarity and its space." Philippe Sollers, Writing and the Expedience of Limits , trans. Philip Bernard with David Hayman (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983), 5. For another view on the same subject see Jean-Louis Baudry, "Ecriture, fiction, idéologie," in Tel Quel: Théorie d'ensemble , 127-47.

29. Breton, Second Manifesto , in Manifestoes of Surrealism , 139.

30. See, for example, Alain Robbe-Grillet, " Snapshots" and "Towards a New Novel ," trans. Barbara Wright (London: Calder and Boyars, 1965), 70. There he insists on the author's responsibility to his craft.

31. Georg Groddeck, The Book of the It , trans. V. M. E. Collins (New York: Funk and Wagnall, 1950), 16: "I hold the view that man is animated by the Unknown, that there is within him an 'Es,' an 'It,' some wondrous force which directs both what he himself does, and what happens to him."

32. Jean-Paul Sartre, "Situation of the Writer in 1947," in " What Is Literature?" and Other Essays , trans. Bernard Frechtman and Jeffrey Mehlman (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988), 156.

33. There was considerable conflict among members of the surrealist group on whether or not to join the French Communist party. See Adhérer au Parti communiste ? vol. 3 of Archives du surréalisme , ed. Marguerite Bonnet (Paris: Gallimard, 1992). Two other works provide information on the difficulties between surrealists and Communists: Dominique Berthet, Le P.C.F.: La Culture et l'art, 1947-1954 (Paris: La Table ronde, 1990), traces the evolution from socialist realism to what was then called "new realism" (the implicit problems for Breton are evident in the very name chosen); and Henri Béhar, André Breton: Le Grand Indésirable (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1990), part 4: 1930-1940. Pierre Naville, however, focuses on the compatibility of the two groups, in L'Espérance mathématique , vol. 1 of Le Temps du surréel (Paris: Editions Galilée, 1977), particularly in the two concluding essays, "Le Parti communiste, L'Humanité , et le surréalisme" and "Eclaircissement sur le Second Manifesto du surréalisme."

34. André Gide, Travels in the Congo , trans. Dorothy Bussy (New York: Knopf, 1929). Considered a violent critique of European imperialism in its day, the book now reads more like a racist description of "natives" singing and dancing.

35. See Michel Foucault, "What Is an Author?" in his Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews , trans. Donald F. Bouchard (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977). Barthes formulated the question of the subject most succinctly in his autobiography: "He [Barthes] wants to side with any writing whose principle is that the subject is merely an effect of language." Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes , trans. Richard Howard (New York: Noonday Press, 1977), 79 (emphasis in the original).

36. See Denis Roche, "La Poésie est inadmissible d'ailleurs elle n'existe pas," in Tel Quel: Théorie d'ensemble , 227.

37. Perhaps one of the best introductions to the events of May 1968 remains the actual testimonies of the leading participants. See Hervé Bourges, ed., The French Student Revolt: The Leaders Speak , trans. B. R. Brewster (New York: Hill and Wang, 1968). On the activities of these student leaders, see Bernard E. Brown, Protest in Paris: Anatomy of a Revolt (Morristown, N.J.: General Learning Press, 1974), ch. 2.

38. These quotes of Bataille and Pleynet come from one of the poets in the present volume and thus seem to me doubly significant: Jacqueline Risset, "L'Envers du tapis," Lignes 16 (June 1992): 33. The Pleynet quote is from M. Pleynet, "Poésie 1961," Tel Quel , no. 8 (Winter 1962): 55. Risset wrote a book-length study of Pleynet ( Marcelin Pleynet [Paris: Seghers, 1988]), and for many years she has been one of the most active participants in events centered on Bataille, organizing conferences and teaching his works at the University of Rome.

39. See Michel Deguy's review of Corpus by Jean-Luc Nancy, in Le Monde , July 11, 1992.

40. Jacques Roubaud, Impressions de France: Incursions dans la littérature du premier XVIe siècle, 1500-1550 (Paris: Hatier, 1991). See also his anthology Soleil du soleil: Le Sonnet français de Marot à Malherbe (Paris: P.O.L., 1990).

41. Aragon wrote, "It is against poetic schools that I've polished up the old alexandrine . . . and the decasyllabic of the old medieval tradition, demonetized by those modern doggerels." Louis Aragon, " La Diane française," suivi de "En étrange pays dans mon pays lui-même " (Paris: Seghers, 1946), 99.

42. As quoted in Risset, "L'Envers du tapis," 35.

43. Jacques Ehrmann, "De l'articulation: langage de l'histoire et terreur du langage," Critique 253 (June 1968): 609-12.

44. Denis Roche, Légendes de Denis Roche: Essai de photo-autobiographie (Montpellier: Gris banal, 1981).

45. Ever since Heidegger's comments on Hölderlin, that German poet has held a prominent place in contemporary French letters. The first translations date from 1930. By the 1950s he had attained a special status as a foreign poet in French poetry, akin only to that of Gerard Manley Hopkins Among his translators are Pierre Jean Jouve, Philippe Jaccottet, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Jean-Pierre Faye, and Armel Guerne. Studies by Jean Beaufret, Maurice Blanchot, Roger Laporte, Jean Wahl, and the psychoanalyst Jean Laplanche, among others, attest to the high level of intellectual attention paid to his work. For his presence among French poets, see, for example, the epigraph to the literary magazine Promesse : "'Poetry is the promise of a language.'—Hölderlin." See also Marc Cholodenko, Dem folgt deutscher Gesang: Tombeau de Hölderlin (Paris: P.O.L., 1979), as well as Joseph Guglielmi, " Ils riaient en entendant le nom du nouveau musicien," suivi de "Hölderlin " (Xonrupt-Longemer: Aencrages & Co., 1981).

46. Breton, Manifestoes of Surrealism , 166. In Oracl 8/9 (Spring-Summer 1984), a special issue entitled "Quelle poésie lyrique?", Marcelin Pleynet and Michel Deguy discuss their views on the use of traditional forms in lyric poetry today. For Pleynet, modern lyric poetry inevitably retraces the historical lyric tradition: "If so-called modern poetry seems to be separated from the order and the forms of classical codes, that is only an appearance" (71). He goes on to quote Goethe, Schiller, Schlegel, and Hölderlin, as well as the linguist Roman Jakobson's definition of lyricism: "The point of departure and the principal theme of lyric poetry are the first person and the present time" (72). Pleynet insists on the connection between lyricism and enthusiasm, quoting the seventeenth-century French theologian Bossuet. On the other hand, Michel Deguy believes that attention must focus on rhetorical figures and their relation to lyric poetry; in this light, lyricism becomes a contemporary metonym for poetry in general, thereby displacing the classical triad of epic, dramatic, and lyric. Deguy proposes a new triad, the three basic elements of lyricism: rhythm, image, and tropes (77).

In his discussion of Mallarmé, Sartre's view of lyricism is close to Tel Quel 's position. He writes: "The 'I' which still occasionally puts in an appearance surges up from the depths of language; it refers to anyone and no one, but to no possible author ." Jean-Paul Sartre, Mallarmé, or the Poet of Nothingness , trans. Ernest Sturm (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1988), 139 (emphasis in the original).

47. Emmanuel Souchier, "Les Solitudes de l'encyclopédiste," Art Press 171 (July-Aug. 1992): 61. See also Jacques Roubaud, "La Mathématique dans la méthode de Raymond Queneau," in Oulipo, Atlas de littérature potentielle , 42-72.

48. Quoted by Jacqueline Lichtenstein in her "Retour du désordre," Art Press 171 (July-Aug. 1992): 27.

49. Georges Perec, W, or the Memory of Childhood , trans. David Bellos (Boston: Godine, 1988).

50. Guglielmi mentions Louis Zukofsky and William Carlos Williams in his Fins de vers (Paris: P.O.L., 1986), 13, 93. Poets are named throughout Joe's Bunker (Paris: P.O.L., 1991): for example, Arnaut Daniel, Basho * , Jacques Roubaud, William Carlos Williams, Scardanelli, Friedrich Hölderlin, Pierre Reverdy, T. S. Eliot, Antonin Artaud, and Charles Olson. The name that appears most frequently is Jack Spicer's, author of Billy the Kid , which Guglielmi translated.

51. Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes , 80.

52. Louis Aragon, L'OEuvre * poétique (Paris: Livre Club Diderot/Messidor, 1989), vol. 2: 1927-1935, reprinted in Les Lettres françaises 23 (Aug. 1992): 5. See also Guillaume Apollinaire, Poésies libres (Paris: J. J. Pauvert, 1978), especially "Cortège priapique" (23-34) and "Julie ou l'arose" (35-52). Apollinaire wrote a number of prefaces, including one for L'OEuvre du marquis de Sade (Paris: Bibliothèque de Curieux, 1912).

53. Abbé de Pure, La Prétieuse; ou Le Mystère des ruelles , ed. Emile Magne (Paris: Droz, 1939), vol. 2, book 3, p. 170.

54. See "Entretien: Claude Royet-Journoud avec Emmanuel Hocquard," Action poétique 87 (1982): 13.

55. After leaving Editions Gallimard, Deguy wrote a polemical text on the editorial policies of a major publishing firm. See his Le Comité: Confessions d'un lecteur de grande maison (Seyssel: Champ Vallon, 1988).

56. Alain Robbe-Grillet, Project for a Revolution in New York , trans. Richard Howard (New York: Grove, 1972). Part of the game of fiction in that novel is the transposition of East Side streets and avenues to the West Side and vice versa.

57. For a recent example of such praise, see "La Légende de Raymond Carver," Le Nouvel Observateur , no. 1521 (30 Dec. 1993-5 Jan. 1994): 62-63.

58. See Lloyd Goodrich, Selections from the Hopper Bequest Exhibit, Sept. 10-Oct. 25, 1971 (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1971). The presentation is strictly situational and aesthetic, omitting any psychological or psychoanalytic interpretation of works in which the uncanny (Freud's Unheimliche ) is so frequently inscribed.

59. In her Poetic License: Essays on Modernist and Postmodernist Lyric (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1990), Marjorie Perloff asks, "But which American écriture matters in Paris?" (54). Her answer is found partly in the frequent presence of American poetry in the French magazine Change , with issues on topics ranging from Afro-American literature (1970), to the work of Louis Zukofsky (1973), to the Language Poets (1981). What emerges from her analyses of French anthologies and literary magazines is a far wider knowledge of American poetry in France than is true in the opposite direction.

60. The Centre de Poésie & Traduction at the Fondation Royaumont is one of the mainstays of an enterprise that brings together American poets with their French poet-translators. From these collaborative efforts Royaumont publishes the French text alone, without the original English poem. At the Fondation's Tenth Annual Conference, in December 1992, a number of American poet-translators, including Michael Palmer, Norma Cole, and I, discussed new possibilities for closer collaboration between poets in the U.S. and in France. In 1989 Emmanuel Hocquard and Remy Hourcade had already founded Un Bureau sur l'Atlantique, likewise at the abbey of Royaumont, outside Paris, which sponsors readings, translations, and publications.

Two major poetry festivals have, over the years, organized readings and seminars around the works of prominent American poets such as Ezra Pound and Louis Zukofsky, while also giving contemporary American poets an opportunity to read their own works. The first took place in Cogolin, inland from Saint-Tropez, and was founded in 1984 by Jean-Jacques Viton, Liliane Giraudon (both interviewed in this volume), Julien Blaine (editor of the magazine Doc(k)s ), and Emmanuel Ponsart (publisher of Spectres familiers, a small press in Marseille). After its 1987 demise a second festival began, in 1989, in Tarascon, north of Arles. In the summer of 1992, the American poet Armand Schwerner was one of the principal readers and also led a seminar on his work.

As of 1992 a new Centre international de poésie was founded in Marseille. It holds readings at the "Refuge," a renovated ancien régime halfway house for prostitutes run by Catholic nuns. The funding is indicative of the considerable support accorded to this project and ranges from city to region (Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur), to the Ministry of Culture as well as to the Centre national des lettres (CNL). This last organization also provides generous grants for French translators. Anthologies published in the past twenty-five years attest to the commitment in France to the translation of contemporary American poetry. These include Walter Lowenfels, ed., 89 poètes américains contre la guerre au Vietnam (Paris: Albin Michel, 1967); Serge Fauchereau, ed. and trans., Lecture de la poésie américaine (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1968); idem, ed. and trans., 41 poètes américains (Paris: Denoël, 1971); Michel Deguy and Jacques Roubaud, eds. and trans., 21 poètes américains (Paris: Gallimard, 1980); Emmanuel Hocquard and Claude Royet-Journoud, eds., Marc Chenetier, Philippe Jaworski, and Claude Richard, trans., 21+1 poètes américains d'aujourd'hui (Montpellier: Delta, 1986); and Emmanuel Hocquard and Claude Royet-Journoud, eds., Françoise de Laroque, Emmanuel Hocquard, Pierre Alféri, et al., trans., 49+1 nouveaux poètes américains (Royaumont: Un Bureau sur l'Atlantique/Action poétique, 1991)—this list is far from exhaustive. French magazines, especially Siècle à mains, Tel Quel, Change, Banana Split, Action poétique, Po&Sie , and Doc(k)s , have often published translations of American poetry. Indicative of the impact of American poetry on French practices is this statement by the poet-translator Joseph Guglielmi: "For me . . . the contact with American poetry has been decisive in books of mine such as La Préparation des titres, Fins de vers, Le Mouvement de la mort " (Bruno Grégoire, Poésies aujourd'hui [Paris: Seghers, 1990], 134).

On the American side there has been a comparable experience, though perhaps fewer anthologies. A nonexhaustive list would include Wallace Fowlie, ed. and trans., Mid-Century French Poetry (New York: Grove, 1955); Alexander Aspel and Donald Justice, eds., Mark Strand, W. D. Snodgrass, et al., trans., Contemporary French Poetry (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1965); Serge Gavronsky, ed. and trans., Poems and Texts: An Anthology of French Poetry with Interviews (New York: October House, 1969); Serge Gavronsky and Patricia Terry, eds. and trans., Modern French Poetry: A Bilingual Anthology (New York: Columbia University Press, 1975); Paul Auster, ed., David Antin, John Ashbery, Clayton Eshleman, et al., trans., The Random House Book of Twentieth-Century French Poetry (New York: Random House, 1982); and Stacy Doris, Phillip Foss, and Emmanuel Hocquard, eds., Cole Swenson, Norma Cole, Stacy Doris, Robert Kelly, et al., trans., Violence of the White Page: Contemporary French Poetry , special issue of Tyuonyi , no. 9/10 (1991). Smaller selections, as well as studies of French poetry, have appeared over the years in magazines including SubStance (1979), Avec (1991), and Esprit Créateur (1992). Small presses have been in the forefront in bringing out translations of French poetry in this country: Station Hill Press (Barrytown, N.Y.), Post-Apollo Press (Sausalito, Calif.), Awede (Windsor, Vt.), Burning Deck (Providence, R.I.); translations of prose have been published by Dalkey Archive Press (Elmwood Park, Ill.), David Godine (Boston), and Red Dust (New York).

61. Les Cantos pisans [Pisan Cantos ] (Paris: Editions de l'Herne, 1965). The following year Denis Roche published L'A.B.C. de la lecture [ABC of Reading ] (Paris: Editions de l'Herne, 1966). A sample of further translations of Pound includes Comment lire [How to Read ], trans. Victor Llana (Paris: Editions de l'Herne, 1966); Laurette Veza, Ezra Pound (Paris: Seghers, 1973); Traité de l'harmonie [The Treatise on Harmony ], trans. Claude Minière and Margaret Tunstill (Paris: Editions de l'Energumène, 1978); Au coeur * du travail poétique [collected essays], trans. François Sauzey (Paris: Editions de l'Herne, 1980); Poèmes, suivi de Hommage à Sextus Propertius , trans. Michèle Pinson, Ghislain Sartoris, and Alain Suied (Paris: Gallimard, 1985); Les Ur-Cantos , trans. Philippe Mikriammos (Royaumont: Fondation Royaumont, 1985); Les Cantos , trans. Jacques Darras, Yves di Manno, Philippe Mikriammos, Denis Roche, and François Sauzey (Paris: Flammarion, 1986); Lettres de Paris , trans. Marie Milési, Jean-Michel Rabaté, and François Dominique (Dijon: Ulysse, fin de siècle, 1988); and Je rassemble les membres d'Osiris [collected essays], trans. Jean-Marie Auxméry, Claude Minière, Margaret Tunstill, and Jean-Michel Rabaté (Paris: Tristram, 1989). In a recent interview, Denis Roche summed up Pound's importance as follows: "Pound was the last person in the twentieth century who attempted to express the whole history of poetry in a single great poem, impossible to finish" ("Entretien Denis Roche-Jean Ristat: La Haine de la poésie," Lettres françaises 21 [June 1992]: 11).

62. André Lefevere, "Translation and Other Ways in Which One Literature Refracts Another," Symposium 38, no. 2 (Summer 1984): 127-42. Though the author focuses on Catullus 32 and its cultural transformations over time, the model he establishes is applicable to any text written in the past and filtered through cultural grids.

63. Zukofsky, the American founder of the Objectivists, has fared far less well in France than Pound, even though twenty years ago the poet-translator Jacques Roubaud exclaimed, "Without a doubt more so than Pound . . . Louis Zukofsky has become, over these last few years, the most important American poet of this century" ( Action poétique 56 [1973]: 12; that issue also contains Roubaud's translation of a fragment of Zukofsky's " A "-10, later reprinted in Deguy and Roubaud, 21 poètes américains ). Since then, however, only one translation has been published to attest to Zukofsky's fame: Pierre Alféri, Louis Zukofsky: Un Objectif, et deux autres essais (Royaumont: Fondation Royaumont, 1989). Anthologies have carried his work, as have a few literary magazines.

In addition to Roubaud's translation cited above, see also his translation of Zukofsky's poems in Europe 578-79 (June-July 1977): 109-21. A fragment of " A "-9 is translated by Anne-Marie Albiach in Siècle à mains (1970): 25-30; her translation of "It Was" ("C'était") appeared in Action poétique 74 (1978): 20-22; her essay "Counterpoint," on translating Zukofsky, appeared in Anawratha (Le-Revest-des-Eaux: Spectres familiers, 1984), 51-60; Joseph Guglielmi translated a page of Zukofsky's "partita" in " A "-13 in Aencrages 8 (1988): 73. See my own translations of " A "-1 to " A "-7 in Banana Split 26 (1988): 53-99, as well as a wholly revised version of the same text with François Dominique, with a preface, in Serge Gavronsky, Louis Zukofsky: L'Homme-poète (Dijon: Ulysse, fin de siècle, 1994).

64. Emmanuel Souchier, "Les Solitudes de l'encyclopédiste," Art Press 171 (July-Aug. 1992): 64.

65. One of the major themes that defines " A " is its genesis, that is, the creation, in a self-referential operation, of the poem itself, starting from the first letter of the alphabet and concluding with the first letter of Zukofsky's last name. This metadiscourse includes observations not only on the making of the poem but also on family, friends, literary presences, life and death, international events, music, wars, strikes, and American history and politics.

66. See note 19 above.