“Nous avons enlacé le globe de nos réseaux…”:
Spatial Structure in
Saint-Simonian Poetics
Greg Kerr
Abstract: The early nineteenth century saw major developments in
civil engineering and in cartography in France offering a new empirical relation to geographical space both within the French nation and
further afield. These developments also offered a model for the elaboration of utopian political spaces which could dissolve the traditional
opposition between nature and technology, a model that the SaintSimonians in particular were keen to adopt. This chapter, then, explores a neglected source of inspiration for the Saint-Simonian reconfiguration of (largely urban) political space, through an increasingly
abstract symbolism in the figurative use of telluric references and
terms, developing a “panoramic” poetry.
With the recording of new topographical information at the beginning
of the nineteenth century, cartographers were able to produce an authoritative new map depicting France as a unified spatial entity. As
Antoine Picon has shown, the task of developing this newly-defined
territory fell to the modern corps of civil engineers.
1 During the Restoration and the July Monarchy, some of the most notable advocates of
the development of the landscape were the utopianist SaintSimonians, many of whom were engineers by training. Their project
of social regeneration centred on a vast programme of public works,
___________________________
1 Antoine Picon, French Architects and Engineers in the Age of the Enlightenment,
trans. by Martin Thom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 101.
Spatial Structure in
Saint-Simonian Poetics
Greg Kerr
Abstract: The early nineteenth century saw major developments in
civil engineering and in cartography in France offering a new empirical relation to geographical space both within the French nation and
further afield. These developments also offered a model for the elaboration of utopian political spaces which could dissolve the traditional
opposition between nature and technology, a model that the SaintSimonians in particular were keen to adopt. This chapter, then, explores a neglected source of inspiration for the Saint-Simonian reconfiguration of (largely urban) political space, through an increasingly
abstract symbolism in the figurative use of telluric references and
terms, developing a “panoramic” poetry.
With the recording of new topographical information at the beginning
of the nineteenth century, cartographers were able to produce an authoritative new map depicting France as a unified spatial entity. As
Antoine Picon has shown, the task of developing this newly-defined
territory fell to the modern corps of civil engineers.
1 During the Restoration and the July Monarchy, some of the most notable advocates of
the development of the landscape were the utopianist SaintSimonians, many of whom were engineers by training. Their project
of social regeneration centred on a vast programme of public works,
___________________________
1 Antoine Picon, French Architects and Engineers in the Age of the Enlightenment,
trans. by Martin Thom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 101.