Hans-Jost Frey
Studies in Poetic Discourse: Mallarmé, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Hölderlin.
Stanford University Press, 1996. Meridian: Crossing Aesthetics. First printing. Translation by William Whobrey of "Studien über das Reden der Dichter" (Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1996); translations from the French and Latin by Bridget McDonald. 0804726000 198 pages.
Softcover volume, measuring approximately 5.5" x 8.5", is like new.
"This study of four major poets -- Mallarmé, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, and Hölderlin -- examines the self-reflexivity of modern poetry, exploring questions concerning what it means for a poem to be "about" its own process of saying. What does it mean to read and understand a text that is focused not on its content but on its saying? What kind of relation does a writer have to the language used in a text? How are we to think about the relation of content to the saying?
In the chapter on Mallarmé, the author uses several close readings to investigate the referentiality of literature in general and the concept of "undecidability" in Mallarmé. The chapter on Rimbaud explores the significance of he poet's famous statement "JE est un autre" ("I is an other"), leading to a meditation on the question of the control of the author, the relationship between saying and that which is said, the way in which language overwhelms the speaker.
In the Baudelaire chapter, the author analyzes the themes of memory and imagination in Baudelaire's writings on painting and Victor Hugo, showing how these themes reveal the writer's thoughts on artistic conception and execution. The author then reads Hölderlin's hymn "Der Rhein" with the fifth of Rousseau's "Rêveries du promeneur solitaire," showing how in Hölderlin's poem and other texts the crucial issue is a paradoxical relationship between lack and fullness or perfection. The final Hölderlin chapter presents a sustained critique of Heidegger's  exegesis of Hölderlin, opening new avenues in the discussions of both Hölderlin and Heidegger."