Poetry, Portrait, Poetrait

Abstract

The aim of this essay is to show how a writing of visible traits has been an ideal shared by writers of (and commentators on) French poetry for at least the last two hundred years. I use the term trait in its various meanings, both as personal attribute and as written or, especially, painted trace: according to the etymology of por-tray, the trait "drawn forth" in a painting or what I call a "poetrait," preserves some vital element of the object or person portrayed. In order to define this writing of traits, I begin by examining some early texts of the 18th and 16th centuries that propose such a writing. After contrasting the trait with the concept of an arbitrary linguistic sign, I go on to show how the trait depends for its existence on the displacement of meaning inherent in figurative language, and especially in poetry. An analysis of poems by Eluard and Saint-John Perse forms the basis for my argument that a poetic writing of traits, inviting the reader to seek meaning in a poem’s visual form, rests on a myth of the portrait whereby the marks of a written language are drawn directly from nature.