Spatial Structure in Saint-Simonian Poetics
103
The rhapsodic charge of the texts under consideration here indicates that the Saint-Simonians sought to pursue their planned reconfiguration of the landscape not just in terms of a utilitarian “travail
public” but as a global project of social transformation drawing on all
the material, lyrical and verbal resources available to them. This ideological ambition, with its implicit dismissal of individual imaginative
consciousness, goes some way to explaining the ostensibly scant appeal of such Saint-Simonian visions of the future as a source of inspiration for creative writers of the period, for in reality, the SaintSimonians were attempting to discover new, more persuasive bases
for the articulation of a discursive regime. Moreover, SaintSimonianism as political force entered a period of decline from the
late 1830s onwards, and a considerable number of one-time members
of the group such as Chevalier and Duveyrier came to be reconciled to
the dominant political power. Yet these individuals continued to pursue and realize the economic, industrial and other projects that had
been their concern during their period as Saint-Simonians; their utopian projects were of course evacuated of the contestatory quality invested in them by militant Saint-Simonianism, and as such became
indissociable from the operations of power in the Second Empire. Yet,
by the same token, many such former Saint-Simonians were responsible for the newspaper, advertizing, credit, exhibition and transport infrastructures which underpinned the Second Empire, to the extent that
what appeared as some of the most visionary elements of the prophetic texts they composed in the 1830s came to be defining features
of the material and social topography of the post-1851 regime, leaving
us with what Pascal Ory calls, “un saint-simonisme lénifié, diffus mais
d’autant plus opératoire”,
27 and confirming Enfantin’s conviction in
the final triumph of the movement’s permeative influence.
In seeking to account for the broader legacy of these SaintSimonian texts to literature, it may be appropriate then to shift attention towards the dispersal of expressive strategies of the type identified in this chapter throughout other contemporary discourses which
respond to changes in the material environment of modernity. Since
poetry, and more particularly, the evolution of poetic form, represents
one of the most striking manifestations of response to such changes, it
should be possible, in the context of a broader study, to determine how
___________________________
27 Pascal Ory, L’Expo universelle (Brussels: Complexe, 1989), p. 10.
103
The rhapsodic charge of the texts under consideration here indicates that the Saint-Simonians sought to pursue their planned reconfiguration of the landscape not just in terms of a utilitarian “travail
public” but as a global project of social transformation drawing on all
the material, lyrical and verbal resources available to them. This ideological ambition, with its implicit dismissal of individual imaginative
consciousness, goes some way to explaining the ostensibly scant appeal of such Saint-Simonian visions of the future as a source of inspiration for creative writers of the period, for in reality, the SaintSimonians were attempting to discover new, more persuasive bases
for the articulation of a discursive regime. Moreover, SaintSimonianism as political force entered a period of decline from the
late 1830s onwards, and a considerable number of one-time members
of the group such as Chevalier and Duveyrier came to be reconciled to
the dominant political power. Yet these individuals continued to pursue and realize the economic, industrial and other projects that had
been their concern during their period as Saint-Simonians; their utopian projects were of course evacuated of the contestatory quality invested in them by militant Saint-Simonianism, and as such became
indissociable from the operations of power in the Second Empire. Yet,
by the same token, many such former Saint-Simonians were responsible for the newspaper, advertizing, credit, exhibition and transport infrastructures which underpinned the Second Empire, to the extent that
what appeared as some of the most visionary elements of the prophetic texts they composed in the 1830s came to be defining features
of the material and social topography of the post-1851 regime, leaving
us with what Pascal Ory calls, “un saint-simonisme lénifié, diffus mais
d’autant plus opératoire”,
27 and confirming Enfantin’s conviction in
the final triumph of the movement’s permeative influence.
In seeking to account for the broader legacy of these SaintSimonian texts to literature, it may be appropriate then to shift attention towards the dispersal of expressive strategies of the type identified in this chapter throughout other contemporary discourses which
respond to changes in the material environment of modernity. Since
poetry, and more particularly, the evolution of poetic form, represents
one of the most striking manifestations of response to such changes, it
should be possible, in the context of a broader study, to determine how
___________________________
27 Pascal Ory, L’Expo universelle (Brussels: Complexe, 1989), p. 10.