The poetic function

Dance scene from On the Adamant, by Nicolas Philibert, 2022

Nicolas Philibert's award winning film, On the Adamant, ends with a few words written and addressed to the viewer, it is the only place that his voice is clearly articulated: "In a world where thinking is often confined to ticking boxes, and singularity is stifled, some places continue to resist in order to keep the poetic function of mankind and language alive." 

Why such an explicit address at the end of a documentary which has avoided voiceover and gives no guidance to the viewer in any narrative? Everything is concentrated in his style and the way the film is shot and edited. Did he feel that today's audience might need a little direction in their interpretation? His idea permeates his film, as it does all his others: the poetic function of mankind; the poetic function of language. The psychiatric project that Philibert films was conceived by a psychiatrist who oversaw the boat's construction, and the boat's name is in part a nod to the British pop artist of the same name (Oltermann, 2023) who had an encounter with the a less imaginative psychiatric scene in Britain some years ago.  

I had an aunt whose cleft palate really affected the way she spoke and made it very difficult for people who were not in her close circle to understand. She wanted to transmit some of the family history to me. I struggled to understand, so I picked up a pencil and wrote down the sounds that I heard, translating them into letters and punctuation marks as best I could. Later, when I got home, I said these marks out loud, while imitating what I remembered of the contortions of her mouth, face and body as she spoke. The meaning tumbled out from the effort. I was surprised by how easy it was once I engaged my body and voice with the letters on the page in the process.

Charles Dupré's play, Compositor E, was performed for the first time in autumn 2023 at the Omnibus Theatre in Clapham. Its action revolved around setting Shakespeare's plays in type for the First Folio. After the play, a discussion was held with author Charlie Dupré and Shakespeare expert Professor Emma Smith. A man in the audience who had once worked as a newspaper compositor was agitated and needed to speak. He explained how this tradition of work, all but extinct since the shift from Fleet Street to Wapping, involved the body of the compositor. He would have to keep his eyes on the working text, hold a special rod with a groove in his left hand while picking the letters out of an arrangement of boxes with the right. He would not need to look to find the letters as experience had taught him where to find things, so he would neither lose time, nor his place in the written text to be transcribed. He inserted the letters into the groove using the thumb of his left hand to both guide and check. The letters had to be inserted upside down and in reverse in order to produce a line which when inked would be printed on the page in a readable form. His fingers as well as his eyes would be involved in reading the letters. The translation process actively involved his body, and animated him as he spoke on the night. 

Lacan's 1971 text, "Lituraterre," which was published in English in a journal called Hurly-Burly, funnily enough, is another text which demands a little more elbow grease if you want to get something out of it. Compositor E focused on the struggle to write a word describing the three sisters (witches) in Macbeth as "weird" and not "Weyward." Although these were ostensibly alternatives for spelling the 'same' spoken word at the time, the choice of spelling when written skewed the reading and the way readers orient themselves towards these women. "Lituraterre" – which could be translated as 'terrain of erasure' if I can draw your attention to meaning and away from the fun of punning alliteration – brings out the way language and letters work in the human species. The most memorable part of the text is Lacan's description of looking down from an aeroplane as he flew over the Siberian desert on his return from a trip to Japan. He describes the gulleys formed by water rained down from a cloudburst, making the terrain glisten where rivulets run. He evokes the cloud as semblant, bursting and releasing both signifiers and signifieds which rain down and mark the terrain, erasing the traces that were there, cutting new channels, and filling them at the same time. It is an apologue to transmit his idea about language (Jacques-Alain Miller, 1995). A contrast is offered with an image of the highways of Osaka, a little more durable as an example, perhaps.




During his visit in Japan Lacan had been fascinated by the kakemonos which hang on the walls of museums, and he writes about his struggle to determine the singular quality of the hand that writes each kakemono over the universal. Lacan characteristically aims to embody his ideas even as he communicates them, always thinking of the singular human as a member of a species on earth. 

I have a memory of a video on YouTube I watched a few years ago. An elderly man in a park in China on a Sunday afternoon was holding a brush as tall as he with which he writes calligraphy with water on the pavement. I can no longer find the film clip that would support my memory. It seems to have evaporated like the water he was writing with, overlaid with another trace that I found today on YouTube:



Chinese Water Calligraphy in Chengdu


Nicolas Philibert, On the Adamant, 2022, winner of the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival, 2023.

Philip Oltermann, "I'd be a wreck without it: the floating daycare centre where Parisians paint, dance, and heal, "The Guardian, 2 November 2023,  https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/nov/02/nicolas-philibert-on-the-adamant-paris

Charlie Dupré, Compositor E, Methuen Drama, 2023, performed at Omnibus Theatre, Clapham, London Autumn 2023, with Professor Emma Thomas in discussion with author and audience, 27 September 2023.

Jacques Lacan, "Lituraterre" (1971) transl. B. Khiara-Foxton and A.R. Price, Hurly-Burly 9 2013, Journal of the New Lacanian School

Jacques-Alain Miller, "L'or à gueule of Lituraterre" (1995), transl. A.R. Price, Hurly-Burly 9 2013, Journal of the New Lacanian School

NB: Lacan taught himself Chinese during the years the Nazis occupied France.


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