From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Philippe Beck
Philippe Beck
Philippe Beck writers of Gérard Pesson’s opera libretto Pastorale. Pesson
also wrote the music for a number of Beck’s poems from
Born April 21, 1963(1963-04-21) Chants populaires (Popular Songs for the vocal ensemble Ac-
Strasbourg, France
centus. The premiere of Oeuvre acousmatique (Acousmatic
Occupation Poet, writer and university professor work by Philippe Mion was held in 2009, a piece based up
Nationality French
Beck’s Lyre dure.
Genres poetry
Work
Influences
• Jacques Derrida Nostalgiqueur est l’indépendant périlleux ; Naïveur est dépen-
dant résolu, chargé de la matière / Nostalgicist is the perilous
Philippe Beck born in Strasbourg on April 21, 1963, is
Beck, independent ; Naïvist is resolute dependent, charged with the
a French poet, writer and professor for Philosophy at matter
University of Nantes, in France and European Graduate In the essay on La Fontaine’s "fables fabric", Patrick
School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland.[1] Dandrey describes "the ambivalence of the absolute and
the relative" as being one of the "keys of classicism". He
explains : "As subject matter, the description of morals
Biography and hearts, the ample depiction of human nature (...). Its
After taking a master in literature and an H. dip in phi- goals, to teach and to please, and even to please with the
losophy, Philippe Beck defended a doctoral thesis in phi- sole goal of teaching, from a resolutely moral viewpoint,
losophy (Histoire et imagination / History and imagination) ih there were such !" Philippe Beck could subscribe to
under the supervision of Jacques Derrida. A lecturer in those words.
Philosophy at the University of Nantes[2] since 1995, his If the Beckian poem does not use a metaphorical al-
seminars mainly treat matters in the field of aesthetic, legorical writing that tries to reconcile "ancient art po-
for instance the specification of the distinction between etry" and "modern dew", what comprises what we might
literature and philosophy. Since 2006 Philippe Beck is a provisionally call this "classicist stance" or classicist ges-
professor of poetry at European Graduate School in Saas- ture, in other words, Beck’s idea of the classic ? And in
Fee, Switzerland.[1] what way does it overturn, metheorically, the poetry of its
In 1990, he was a founding member of Alter, a journal time ?
of phenomenology (Ecole Normale Supérieure of Saint- "Classicist stance" would be the term we would use
Cloud). Founder and editor in chief of the poetry maga- to describe the obstinacy of a stubborn person ("classical
zine Quaderno (Ed. MeMo, Nantes, from 1998 to 2000), he labour"), a term which in no way means classical postur-
wrote various articles on poetics and criticism. He is also ing nor would imply a kind of neoclassicism or any re-
a member of the editorial board of Cités (Cities) and Droits turn to it, nor any form of absolute avantgardistic rup-
de cités (Laws of Cities) (PUF) and of the journal Agenda de ture. This gesture which wishes to provide an answer to
la pensée contemporaine (Calendar of Contemporary Thought) "the great need / of a continuous newness" is essentially
(Flammarion). modern, if modernity stands for an effort or for a "power
Regularly invited throughout France and abroad for to move forward". Regarding a "promise past", the aim of
lectures and conferences, in 2008 he was Writer in Resi- this effort is to verify a possible "contiguous continuity"
dence at Château de Blandy-les-Tours and, in 2009, Mission between the classic and the modern.
Stendhal Laureate in China. As a poet, he is featured in var- This gesture or stance needs to be clarified. Certainly
ious magazines and anthologies. Some of his books and one has to distinguish between classicism as a moment
poems have been translated into English, Dutch, Korean in the history of literature (and even in French poetry)
and German. and a form of classicism as a moment in the history of art
Through his poetic work (to quote Jean-Luc Nancy : or of aesthetics. This leads to the existence of two par-
"tenir la langue et tenir à la tenue de la langue" or : "up- allel libraries whereupon Beck’s work is based (there is
holding the language and fond of form and substance of no book of Beck’s that does not contain a library) : on the
the language"), Philippe Beck has been in touch with con- one hand, there are amongst others La Fontaine, Saint-
temporary musicians and composers and has collaborat- Amant, Théophile de Viau, Mlle de Scudéry, Honoré
ed with them on numerous occasions. He is one of the co- d’Urfé, Cyrano and the libertine writers ; on the other
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Philippe Beck
hand, we have Platon and Aristote, Winckelmann, Hegel the stake of a classicist stance is vital, and critical ? And
and Nietzsche, the unknown soldier Karl Philipp Moritz, would classicism be the conscience of the sentimentality
but also Weimar classicism, in other words Schiller (and naïve, which the poet claims to work at his own division,
Schiller versus Goethe), then the reading of this classi- within a division of the language ? Philippe Beck reminds
cism (Goethe versus Schiller) by the first romantics, by us : "We no longer can play the naïve card. But when ex-
Novalis and the Schlegel brothers. It goes without saying actly did we do so ? Sometimes I claim that we are senti-
and it would be better to say that these classicist exam- mentally naïve. We are animals, donkeys or oxes with a
ples reply in Beck’s work on their reference to a moder- will. This also applies to the Greek ot the 5th century."
nity of modern life (in the Baudelairean sense) that the To aspire to the best through the intempestive force
poem is supposed to capture. We need to consider Beck’s of a classicist stance and through the re-reading of a cer-
work in poems as a critical gesture (in the Benjaminian tain idea of the classical ? Let’s enumerate some creative
sense) both towards classicism and towards modernity. methods :
("The idea of reconsidering the quarrel of the Ancients The writing of a handbook on good behaviour, thanks
and the Moderns is not new, it is modern. (...) The ancient to an analytic reading of the unconscious classicism of
given inherits the present, by capitation.") Which re- Mister Everybody. The "ancient Ancients" are "snoring
classicism today, now ?, even though modernity has been Sleepers", according to the poem "Sentimental naïve"
(is) a period of an eclipse of classicism ; if not, those re- from Didactic Poems - this book dreamt of, or awaited for,
markable exceptions, Francis Ponge’s (Pour un Malherbe) by the historians of the Weimarer Klassik, who mastered at
and Jean Tortel’s (Un certain XVIIe siècle), two books red will the capacity to read while desiring to stay as long as
with a magnifying glass by Philippe Beck. possible in one or another room without moving in. Clas-
If Beck’s classicist preoccupations certainly fit into sicism of division, one of its most striking characteristics
the scheme of these libraries, the classicist gesture (or being the simultaneity of total belonging (based upon the
stance), strongly present in the poems, continuously goes familiarity with and the dominance of a matter) and of an
beyond this framework through its resimplification : "to irreduceible distance built on renewals ? Classicism of an
refigure the language, is to modify slightly but essentially insistent reading of the classics as classicism of an age ?
its regimes (...) by a new resimplification". (Contre un ("In a period of art without transcendency, of reflected
Boileau). Beck’s classicist gesture and stance aim at the es- art, the idea of classical is put as a test."), by means of
sential : the intervention of the Ancients in their time, the "now of recognizability" ("Jetzt der Erkennbarkeit",
through work on language - of which maternity always Walter Benjamin) of a historical moment when the An-
count, even if a court no longer exists. To return to a cienty reveals a Hantiquity, neology in which the fund of
precise remark by Yves di Manno, one could say that in a universal matter is treated in a personal way ? But can
Beck, work on the language creates a "tension between we speak of the "mannerism" of a manner ? Or about a
Baroque and Classicism (...), working on the substance of re-preciousness, with its pearls : neologisms, circumlocu-
language itself (and its prosodic memory), (...) assuming tions, abstractions, adjectives or nominalized adverbs...,
the poetic inheritance whereupon it is based and that he in the light of a critical reading of Curtius ?
revisits." This tension is illustrated by the opposition to Memorial classicism ? The poem as "capitation en-
the Boileau principle : "Whatever we conceive well we gine" is a warlike power which is linked in language to
express clearly".Beck resolutely positions himself along memory in order to orientate itself during its conquest.
with Kleist : the progressive elaboration of thought is de- The classicist stance aims at the truth through recapture,
veloped during speech. "The head writes, si it has a heart. through the memory and memorial functions, because
Poetry is more than reason and clarity." In "relative clar- the truth does not reveal itself, but one still needs to see
ity", "Baroque luminaries pointed out the necessary", if the whole picture in order to be able to distinguish. "If all
there is a constitutive impossibility in direct expression the words were living units of ancienty and modernity,
(according to Tortel). Oblique expression is the "baroque we would live the present rigorously. If memory dimin-
gift". ishes, the narcotic of words is too strong, and we live as
The intervention in question is defined by work on if we were sleeping." The classicist stance is one of use-
language : "Poetry declares the materiality of language." ful erudition, that knows how to avoid slavery in reading
Poetry wants to say something, it wants that because it (being the slave of the ancients) and the useless repro-
has to, as long as its principle consists in aspiring toward duction of self, in order to reach a "singular impersonali-
the best, and this by means of critical thought that resists ty, reaching so far as to forget death in war."
the tides of the anti-intellectual. To say that the poem Harmonious and measured classicism ? First the
makes itself in the saying, and that it makes just what it works, then mankind, or it is not friendship that com-
says, requires a harmony, or a rhythm, or a beat, the beat mands the reference, or rather the opposite. A refusal of
of sense and truth, which could be described as mimet- the Doppelleben that finds its dynamic in interiority - self-
ic in nature, as supposing a unity, a coherence perhaps, confinement, Goethe’s genius (a confinement that does
or a cohesion between form and content. In this way, not necessarily imply spiritual interiority, what is proven
2
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Philippe Beck
again by Goethe and his fetish for the sensibility of the ences to a truth outside itself ? Would the idea of the clas-
sensible), and the requirement to write "books of poetry sic be characterized by an esoterism implying an esoter-
in order to be those books, as if a book is a special way ism ? Would it be the resolute confirmation that poetry
of living." The need for the exterior monologue tied to the owes it to itself to be popular ? Popular poetry countered
need for harmony = mobile generality. Harmony depend- by popular poetry ? A Popular Song as an "After Song", a
ing on the fusion of a theoretical practice with a practical song that "throws itself in front of the reopened past" ?
theory. Every book of Beck bears witness to this through
an art poétique. The forward is inside.
Classicism of verse ? Testing the idea of the classical
Bibliography
is also an opportunity to relaunch the question of verse.
"Or a so-called ancient object : verse". The verse is a Poetry
"classical future", if it is the "horizon of poetry" and if • Garde-manche hypocrite, Fourbis, 1996.
modernity is (has been) the time of prose poetry or of • Chambre à roman fusible, Al Dante, 1997.
prose prose ? Would Beck’s verse in that case insist on • Verre de l’époque Sur-Eddy, Al Dante, 1998.
the link between the useful and the agreeable, "the basis • Rude merveilleux, Al Dante, 1998.
of classical poetics" (foreword to the Aristotle’s Poetics)? • Le Fermé de l’époque, Al Dante, 1999.
Classicism of the insufficiency of literature, and at the • Dernière mode familiale, Flammarion, postface de
same time of the verse ? And the paradoxical extension Jean-Luc Nancy, 2000.
of literature by quotations of other classicisms or clas- • Inciseiv, MeMo, 2000.
sics, that the poem’s voice acquires in its own way ? What • Poésies didactiques, Théâtre typographique, 2001.
about Classicism in the other arts ? In movies, from Ozu • Aux recensions, Flammarion, 2002.
to Straub, from Bergman to Chaplin through Renoir and • Dans de la nature, Flammarion, 2003.
Harpo ; in music from Haydn and Mozart to Bartok and • Garde-manche Deux, Textuel, 2004.
Schoenberg ; in painting, from Rembradt to Klee ? • Élégies Hé, Théâtre typographique, 2005.
Classicism of objective poetry ? The revendication of • Déductions, Al Dante, 2005.
objectivity, of an "objective lyric poetry" raises the ques- • Chants populaires, Flammarion, 2007.
tion of the mimetic gesture based upon the prose of the • De la Loire, Argol, 2008.
world. An important support can be identified in Beck- • Lyre Dure, Nous, 2009.
ett’s (classicist and Mallarmean author) question : How • Poésies premières (1997–2000), Flammarion, 2011.
to fond a form to express waste ? Philippe Beck answers • Boustrophes, Texts & Crafts, 2011.
from the classicist point of view : "The harshness con-
tains marvelous elements ; there must be harshness in Prose
order not to ruin the shape itself of waste." Therefore, • Contre un Boileau (esquisse), Horlieu, 1999.
harshness has be questioned sharply by the critical reacti- • Du principe de la division de soi in Le colloque de
vation of elements of a classical aesthetic : the eloquence nuit, Le temps qu’il fait, 2000.
(the poet as "ex-orator" oh the "quasi-sermon"), theatre • Beck, l’Impersonnage : rencontre avec Gérard
(the poem as a drama of words), moralism (moraline- Tessier, Argol, 2006.
free) of the "de-moralizing" poet who cultivates "con- • Un Journal, Flammarion, 2008.
trariness", a concern for form (without formalism), revis-
ited genres (elegy, story, satire, idyll...), for "the link be- Translations
tween presentation and content", between what is said
• Walter Benjamin, "Expérience et pauvreté",
and the act of saying ("modern art verifies (...) the con-
translated by P. Beck, in Po&sie, n° 51, 1989.
tact between thought and the material") - in brief, of an
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "Définition de la poésie",
aesthetic that is inseparable from an ethic.
translated by P. Beck et É. Dayre, in Po&sie, n° 51,
Everybody’s Classicism ? The classicist gesture can be
1989.
compared with the gesture of emerging of oneself, by a
• F. W. von Schelling, "Philosophie de l’art, § 39",
selflessness defining "the condition of all possible later
translated by P. Beck, in Po&sie, n° 54, 1990.
interests" and by the general interest that compels some-
• Walter Benjamin, "Crise du roman", translated and
body to think and write, in so far as it is about "some-
introduced by P. Beck et B. Stiegler, in Po&sie, n° 58,
thing in the air". Would this impersonal attitude be a
1991.
critical variation upon the ancient organicity of the beau-
• Walter Benjamin, "Théories du fascisme allemand",
tiful ? An attitude that would have integrated multiplic-
translated and introduced by P. Beck et B. Stiegler, in
ity ("Mannichfaltigkeit") and accord ("Uebereinstim-
Lignes, n° 13, 1991.
mung"), extending the paradoxical popularity of an art
that takes hold of the matter thereby imposing its neces-
sity, and so becoming useful to life and refusing all refer-
3
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Philippe Beck
• Karl Philipp Moritz, Le concept d’achevé en soi et • "Modalisations", in Cahier Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe.
autres écrits (1785–1793), texts introduced and L’Animal, n° 19-20, 2008.
translated by P. Beck, PUF, 1995. • "La trompette modeste" (sur Sens de Walden de
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Les Sermons laïques (suivi Stanley Cavell), in Agenda de la pensée
de) L’Ami, translated and introduced by P. Beck et É. contemporaine, n° 10, 2008.
Dayre, Gallimard (Bibliothèque de Philosophie), 2002. • "La relation des jours" (sur le Journal de Jean-Patrick
Manchette), in Agenda de la pensée contemporaine,
Essays and Articles n° 12, 2008-2009.
• "Le Dit d’hypocrisie ensommeillé", in Po&sie, n° 66, • "Entrer en poésie" (entretien), in Fragil La Gazette,
1993. n° 4, 2009. (http://www.fragil.org/magazine/
• "Le Quasi-sermon", in Critique, n° 571, 1994. numéro/1057)
• "Minima Lyrica ou Lyrismes du rude boeuf", in • "D’un espace espéré ou : la danse pré-pensive de
Recueil, n° 30, 1994. Keith Waldrop", in Agenda de la pensée
• "Mort et naïveté (Régime transcendantal et régime contemporaine, n° 13, 2009.
sentimental)", in Alter, n° 1 et 2, 1994. • "Dimensions ou : Optique, geste et comportement",
• "La bête, question de projection animale", in Alter, in La vue et la voix, Pierre Ouellet (dir.), vlb éd.,
n° 3, 1995. Montréal, 2009.
• "Quelques remarques à propos d’une époque dans • "La poésie du geste" (Anthropologie poétique,
l’espace", in Alter, n° 4, 1996. poétique de l’anthropologie : Marcel Jousse), in
• "Logiques de l’impossibilité", préface à la Poétique Agenda de la pensée contemporaine, n° 15, 2009.
d’Aristote, Gallimard (Tel), 1986. • "Entretien" (à propos de Lyre Dure) avec Martin
• "Quelques remarques sur la prose apophantique en Rueff et Tiphaine Samoyaut, on http://www.m-e-
régime inchoatif", in Le poète que je cherche à être. l.fr/rencontres-publiques.php?id=124, 2010.
Cahier Michel Deguy, La Table ronde/Belin, 1996. • "La suite (voix)", entretien avec Benoît Casas, in
• "Entretien" (à propos de Garde-manche hypocrite), Grumeaux, n° 2, NOUS, 2010.
in Biennale Internationale des poètes en Val-de- • "Hugo Friedrich : réalité, monologue et subjectivité
Marne, n° 19, 1997. dans la poésie du XXe siècle", in Po&sie, n° 136, Belin,
• "D’un fumier sans pourquoi (Thèses concernant la 2e trim. 2011.
poésie)", in Lettres sur tous les sujets, n° 13, 1997. • "Le poétisme aveugle, ou la bataille du critère voilé",
• "Les turdidés, ou l’affaire du toucher à distance" (à in CCP, n° 22, 2011.
propos de Dominique Fourcade), in Lettres sur tous
les sujets, n° 13, 1997. Notes and references
• "Les espèces confuses, désassorties", in Paroles à la
bouche du présent : le négationnisme, histoire ou Documents
politique ?, Natacha Michel (dir.), Al Dante, 1997.
• "La vie saturée", in Analecta Husserliana, vol. L, 1997. • "Maintenant Philippe Beck", in La Polygraphe, n°
• "Précisions sur quelques thèses.", in Action Poétique, 13-14, 2000.
n° 150, 1998. • "Philippe Beck, une poésie recommence", in il
• "Quaderno : une idée de la poésie", in Art Press, n° particolare, n° 7-8, 2002.
262, 2000. • "Philippe Beck", in Amastra-N-Gallar (Gallicean
• "L’époque de la poésie", in Littérature, n° 120, 2000. magazine), n° 14, 2007.
• "Où va le vers", in Magazine littéraire, n° 396, 2001. • "Cahier : Philippe Beck", in il particolare, n° 24, 2011.
• "Méduse automatique stoppée", in Fin, n° 13, 2002.
• "Entretien" avec David Christoffel, on External links
http://www.doublechange.com/issue3/beckint-
• (English) Philippe Beck’s page on the site of the
fr.htm, 2003.
European Graduate School. (Biography, bibliography,
• "Sexicité", on http://www.sitaudis.com/Excitations/
texts and photos)
sexicite.php, 2003.
• (French) Beck’s page on the website of the Centre
• "La vie pensée", on http://remue.net/
Atlantique de Philosophie.
spip.php?article135, 2004.
• (French) Philippe Beck’s File on the site of the web-
• "Si le corps est le lieu des pensées...", in Écrire,
magazine Remue.net.
pourquoi ?, Argol, 2005.
• (French) Page about Philippe Beck on Sitaudis.com.
• "Entretien" avec Emmanuel Laugier, in Le Matricule
des anges, n° 81, 2007.
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Philippe Beck
References Persondata
Name Beck, Philippe
[1] ^ "Philippe Beck. Faculty profile at European
Graduate School. Biography, bibliography, photos Alternative names
and video lectures.". The European Graduate School. Short description
http://www.egs.edu/faculty/philippe-beck/ Date of birth April 21, 1963(1963-04-21)
biography/. Retrieved January 29, 2011.
Place of birth Strasbourg, France
[2] "Philippe Beck, Faculty profile" (in French). Centre
Atlantique de Philosophie, University of Nantes. Date of death
http://caphi.univ-nantes.fr/_Philippe-Beck. Place of death
Retrieved January 29, 2011.
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Philippe_Beck&oldid=471478412"
Categories:
• Living people
• French poets
• 1963 births
• European Graduate School faculty
• People from Strasbourg
• University of Nantes faculty
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