Arnauld’s Poèmes à Claires-Voies (Openwork Poems)

Abstract

In the April 1920 issue of the magazine Action, there appeared a short review of a new collection of poetry published in Paris by Céline Arnauld. The review was written by a fellow avant-garde woman writer Renée Dunan and is reproduced here in its entirety, with my translation in English:

Poèmes à claires-voies.—CÉLINE ARNAULT. [sic]—La directrice de m’Amenez’y est une des muses du Dadaïsme. Ce volume serait plutôt dans la «tradition» du cubisme de Jean Cocteau. Il y a là d’exquises choses, de petites merveilles de sensibilité tenue, dansante, cachée et magnétique, dont la lecture est plus savoureux des divertissements.

(Dunan 1920, p. 62)

(Poèmes à claires-voies. —CÉLINE ARNAULT. [sic]—The director of m’Amenez’y is one of the muses of Dadaism. This volume is rather in the “tradition” of Jean Cocteau’s cubism. There are exquisite things in it, little marvels of an eminent, dancing, hidden and magnetic sensibility, the reading of which is the most delicious of diversions.)

In spite of its concision, it can be read as bearing witness both to the creative talents of Arnauld and to the challenge of locating this extraordinary writer in the landscape of the Parisian avant-garde of the early twentieth century.