Krysinska’s Rythmes pittoresques: Theorizing Poetry before Mallarmé’s Critical Poems

This article examines the intertextual and interartistic dimensions of Krysinska’s first collection of poems in order to highlight the extent to which she theorized her practice. Departing from the oral tradition of the cabarets from which she emerged, she explores literary questions such as how poetic language operates and how readers process it. Building on scholarship that emphasizes the intellectual thrust of Krysinska’s work, the readings that follow highlight her engagement with and contributions to the ideas of evocation and active reading that preoccupied cerebral writers such as Mallarmé, Valéry, and Rimbaud.