Poetic creation in "Jules Supervielle-Etiemble’s letters"

Abstract

Through the study of Jules Supervielle-Etiemble’s letters and their comparison with the manifestos written by the poet—―Elements of Poetics‖ and ―Reflecting Upon Poetic Art‖—this paper shows how Supervielle’s definition of poetry is distinctive and unique in its kind. This paper presents the difficulties encountered by the poet in his attempt to externalize in his early poetry collections those images inherent in his inner world. The paper also lists the principles ruling the writer’s poetic activity, namely: the rejection of all aesthetic norms and techniques that might predetermine the nature of poetic creation; the adoption of motion as a technique that is proper to each poem; the process of correction, which by necessity involves adjustments and deletions; and the central notion of forgetting not as a failure of memory, but as a catalyst for the production of a series of associations and unexpected images.