How Does the Poem Signify: Benveniste, Meschonnic, Michaux

Abstract

Émile Benveniste’s linguistics of discourse and Henri Meschonnic’s poetics of discourse both represent a critical alternative to the conception of the linguistic sign, such as the structuralists attributed to Saussure, and to the entire conceptual field that has derived from this understanding. It is well known that Benveniste grounded his theory of enunciation on the basis of the difference between the semantic and semiotic order. The fact that he was working on a theory of poetic language is less well known because his handwritten notes on this subject were published only in 2011. I briefly introduce some of his conceptual outlines connected to the “poetical practices of sign” that appear in his manuscript on Baudelaire. Their common denominator is the insight that the concept of the linguistic sign, as established by linguistics, does not suffice for research on poetic language. After this, I briefly address some of the key concepts of Henri Meschonnic’s poetics of discourse: generalized signifiance, a new understanding of rhythm, serial semantics, and recitative – which all deconstruct the linguistic sign. In the second part, I show the applied usefulness of these concepts by presenting the results of my close reading and analysis of Henri Michaux’s poem “La Ralentie” (“Woman in Slow Motion”).