Poésie, paysage et sensation

Abstract

This paper ponders theoretically over landscape, a question that turned out to be a considerable challenge in the field of contemporary human sciences and social practices, as well as for modern art and poetry. This is a notion that places itself, historically and structurally, between a symbolic thought on Place, which dominated classical Antiquity and Middle Age, and a scientific knowledge of space that develops till modern times. From Romanticism on, especially lyric poetry has transformed landscape in a place of expression of sensibility. As a counterpart, art and literature in the XXth century tended to deviate from the outside world to explore their own resources and means of expression. Thus, landscape seems to have lost its place in the esthetic scene, which is not true, since it keeps on inspiring lots of artists and writers. Controversial by nature, the idea of landscape arises a series of questions, like the concepts of sensation and perception, gathered in Paul Valéry, which are brought to this text, as a proposal of fruition of poetry understood as a place of reactivation of sensations and affections.