Performative Utterance in Dans le leurre du seuil

This chapter investigates how Bonnefoy develops a theatrical model of poetic performance in the long sequence of poems ‘La Terre’, published in Dans le leurre du seuil in 1975. Examining how the poet repeatedly stages apostrophes to a flame and acts of address to a lover, it explores how he models his poetic performance on the fleeting movement of the light and the restless interactions between the lovers’ bodies. It analyses how Bonnefoy develops an inherently rhythmic conception of the act of relation, presenting it as an ecstatic gesture that has to be repeated endlessly. Investigating how both Bonnefoy and Nancy present this rhythmic act of relation as a generative worldly dynamic, this chapter scrutinizes how they develop a mobile and relational conception of ontology, conceiving of it as an open-ended and ongoing performance.