Abstract

Michel Houellebecq is best known for his novels, particularly Les Particules élémentaires, with which he achieved literary fame in the late nineteen nineties. However, Houellebecq began his creative life as a poet and a writer of occasional pieces for obscure literary journals. The first of these was a magazine he founded himself, Karamazov, devoted almost entirely to poetry. Following this, he went on to publish three short collections of poetry, mostly in the lyric style, prefaced by a manifesto entitled Rester vi- vant [Staying Alive]. Somewhat surprisingly, given Houellebecq’s notoriety, and given the publishing house’s taste for scandal, these three volumes have never really seen the light of day outside France. This has as much to do with the almost absolute unmarketability of lyric poetry today as it does a certain change in the structure of experience which has affected our capacity to receive lyric poetry, perhaps irrevocably. In his essay on Baudelaire, Walter Benjamin writes: “If conditions for the positive reception of lyric poetry have become less favorable, it is reasonable to assume that only in rare instances is lyric poetry in rapport with the experience of its readers”. For just as it was with Baudelaire, the last great lyric poet, certain motifs in Houellebecq’s poetry continue to render the lyric form increasingly dubious