To Blanchot, to Bataille, as to M. Leiris (born in 1901) or to Céline, who experienced a new success in the 1950s (see in this App.), And therefore to the more distant experiences of Sade, Lautréamont, Kafka, by Joyce, by Proust himself (for the technique of the interior monologue), some of the newest and most original novelists of the latter period are based, from M. Duras and P. Klossowski, to A. Pieyre de Mandiargues, to Beckett (see all in this App.), and again Y. Régnier (b. 1918), L.-R. des Forêts (born in 1918), R. Pinget (born in 1920), not to mention the great posthumous success – and which is another indication of the turning point in fiction – of a writer like B. Vian (1920-1959; v. in this App.), while J. Gracq (see App. III, 1, p. 771) continued his solitary experience, passing from the novel-poem to the novel-poem (La Presqu’île, 1970). The characters, the plot, the chronological succession, the realistic description, the background, the analysis of situations, the “message”, all these traditional devices are dismissed as imitation or interpretation of reality, of life: a concept now, completely rejected in the absolute invention of the word, which breaks up, overturns, mixes, intersects the usual and flat ways of the story. These are the principles that also inspired the novelists of the “nouveau roman” or the “école du regard”, united more by the desire for renewal than by a common program, and who consider the novel above all as “an open work “, a research of writing, implemented and completed in the relationship with the reader: and we quote N. Sarraute, A. Robbe-Grillet, M. Butor, C. Tel Quel – P. Sollers, J. Ricardou, J.-L. Baudry, J. Thibaudeau – who also carries out group work, with primary linguistic, anthropological, structuralist interests, the novel – if it is a novel in the traditional sense still speaking – becomes a discourse that “rewrites” the world, or “re-creates” it. And always in an invention of “writing”, which however is not an alternative to the rhythm of life, but is placed on a level of sensory expression, of material ecstasy and panic, which finds its outlet and its own in writing. existence, the work of J.-M.-G. Le Clézio (born in 1940), one of the youngest novelists committed to this renewal or overturning of narrative codes (Procès-verbal, 1963; Le Déluge, 1966; Le livre des fuites, 1969; Land of love, 1967; La guerre, 1970; Les géants, 1973).
According to Thereligionfaqs, this literary “revolution” seems to have touched less the field of poetry in the strict sense; but first of all we must take into account the lower popularity of poetry with respect to the novel and the theater, and therefore its isolation; moreover, it should be considered that while for the novel the innovations occurred with a certain slowness, and under the insistence of a very strong tradition, poetry, from 1945 to today, has already found itself more conditioned by the “surrealist revolution”, of which he has largely developed the premises up to extreme consequences, and thus also from the recovery of already very modern situations of the same French tradition, from the second half of the nineteenth century to Surrealism in fact (and it is no coincidence that Nerval, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Lautréamont, Mallarmé,
In the sixties there is first of all to record, alongside the disappearance of many poets trained in the climate of the avant-garde of the early twentieth century and of Surrealism (P. Reverdy, who died in 1960; B. Péret, who died in 1959; J. Cocteau, who died in 1963; A. Salmon, who died in 1969; J. Supervielle, who died in 1960; P. Fort, who died in 1960, and the same A. Breton, who died in 1966), the continuation and fulfillment of remarkable poetic experiences, already started or consolidated between the two world wars or in the immediate postwar period; some, born in the surrealist field, then followed different and divergent paths: we recall Aragon (see in this App.), R. Char (born in 1907; see App. III, 1, p. 356), who has added more collections of poems to his nostalgic search for authenticity (La parole en archipel, 1962; Commune présence, 1964 – anthology for themes of his poetry -; L’âge cassant, 1965; Dans la pluie giboyeuse, 1968; Le nu perdu, 1971; La nuit talismanique, 1972), J. Prévert (see App. III, 11, p. 483; died 4/11/1977); others have matured far from any school, and from France itself, such as that of Saint-John Perse (1887-1975; see App. III, 11, p. 647), with Chronique (1960), L’ordre des oiseaux(1962), and the complete works (1972), after having obtained the Nobel Prize for literature in 1960; still others have verified the values of the Christian tradition, or more generally spiritualist, in modern restlessness, and we cite the work of Pierre Jean Jouve and Pierre Emmanuel (see App. III, 1, p. 541), which he published again Èvangéliaire (1961), Les jours de la passion (1962), Le monde est intérieur (1967), Jacob (1970), Sophie (1973), and who was elected in 1969 to the Académie française; finally others, like that of France Ponge (born in 1899; see in this App.), who, known above all until 1960 for some precious plaquettes, illustrated by his painter friends (Braque for the Poêmes, 1948), he has published most of his work in recent years.