The Personified Sea: A Symbolic and Mystical Dimension

Extract

[...] On the one hand, she may seem mysterious, distant, bewildering, on the other hand, she is also welcoming: 'She opens her arms wide to the children crouched on the shore', the mother clearly takes on a maternal and protective aspect that balances with the notion of instability evoked so far. The mother is here a reassuring figure. This is the idea developed in the second part of this sixth paragraph, in which the sea is still personified, of course: 'She likes to excite their laughter and splashes, to bathe bare feet, to lick pale skin'. The sea presents itself as a sympathetic and endearing figure through this enumeration on a ternary rhythm. [...]

[...] Indeed, we find in the different images proposed by the poet a certain notion of fragility, a fragility both physical and psychological. The sea is presented as seeking a form of appeasement: 'seeking in the calm night ideas of dawns and emotion' (line 5). We find in this formula the juxtaposition between these certainly strongly symbolic elements, here the 'dawns' (line with a more abstract or psychological notion 'emotion' (line 5). The comparison 'like a memory' presents the sea again as something fragile, evanescent. [...]

[...] Thus the mother is personified in this text. She presents an ambivalent figure of a woman who is both attentive and distant, ultimately mysterious. It will be interesting to analyze now the attention paid to the poetic dimension of the text. The sea does not seem to be the master of its destiny: 'sky that handles it, flatters it or scorns it'. It is thus that the ambivalence of the sea would stem from a sort of manipulative power that can flatter it as well as criticize it in a kind of perversity. [...]

[...] The play on sonorities is very important in this prose text. It is what gives it its poetic character, the attention paid to the signified to use the vocabulary of linguistics. Thus, we find an alliteration in in 'her servitude begs her salary of salt'. This alliteration supports the strong musicality of the text again. The play on sonorities is truly found throughout the text and notably in the central paragraph; 'it is claimed that the blue pearl lies under her eyelid' with the alliteration in as well as the homoeoteleuton 'mad' 'sorrow' in the same line with the repetition of the sound We then find an alliteration in in 'dreaming for nothing of branches and roots' (line 16-17) and again a bit further on in 'It pleases her to excite their laughter and splashes'. [...]

[...] Far from being a possibility of landmarks, the sea is in perpetual motion and presents itself as an eternal power of destruction and chaos that sweeps everything in its path. The author indeed gives the sea a mystical and symbolic dimension through particularly strong images. It is the poet's strength to know how to play on both figures of speech and traditional literary themes to take them up in his own way. Jean-Michel Maulpoix presents himself well, as he wishes, as the poet-critic par excellence. [...]