The ruins of the Paris Commune (1871) provided a genius loci
for Rimbaud's Vers nouveaux; the spatial qualities of the open
ruin, in concert with the spatial conditions underlying the Commune,
generate a mimetic model for revolutionary aesthetics in "Qu'est-ce
pour nous mon c�ur." As Rimbaud defiantly strips the metrical
identity of the alexandrine line, leaving only its walls intact, his
"catastrophe" (Roubaud) foregrounds the spatial qualities inherent in
metrical forms. Just as so many images looking out through Commune ruins
constructed a new perspective, so Rimbaud imparts to the next poetic
generation a view to a different verse spatiality, that of the vers
libre. (DL)
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