Poétique de la ligne: Autour des colonnes sculptées

Pictorial and literary representations of sculpted columns by artist Hubert Robert and poets Chénier, Hugo, Gautier, and Baudelaire reveal, according to Metzidakis, the ambiguous nature of the line as both a sign of mobility and of immobility. He analyzes the poetics of the line in Robert's painting of "La Colonne" dated 1789, Chénier's "colonnes savantes" in the unfinished Hermès, and Hugo's two odes dedicated to the "Colonne Vendôme" in order to propose that the column functions semiotically as a kind of degree zero (axis mundi) or limit-value of movement in sculpture. L'ennui de la ligne droite as a sign of the agonizing state of neoclassicism is brought out in texts by Gautier and Baudelaire. Metzidakis concludes by noting that despite the poetic ennui produced by the immobility of the vertical line (and by extension, of the antique form), the monotony and harmony of the column continue to reassure Baudelaire and his generation. (In French)