A poetic and philosophical negotiation of the alternatives of atheism and religious faith. In A Man of Little Faith the French poet and philosopher Michel Deguy reflects on the loss of religious faith both personally and culturally. Disenchanted not only with the oversimplifications of radical atheism but also with what he sees as an insipid sacralization of art as the influence of religion has waned, Deguy refuses to focus on loss or impossibility. Instead he actively suspends belief, producing a poetic (...) deconstruction that, though resolutely a-theistic, makes a plea for an earthly piety and for the preservation of the relics of religion for the world to come. Two essays by Jean-Luc Nancy and a recent interview with Deguy are included, which reveal the impact and implications of Deguy’s ongoing reflection and its significance within his generation of French thought. (shrink)

Contemporary poetry—true to the changes brought about by the poetics of modernity at the turn of the century—far from glorifying the ‘lyrical illusion’ and from favouring ‘romantic’ identifications with heroes standing ‘alone against all’, that madness of a subject believing himself to be the only exception to the law, had in fact to tone down its song, had to pull down its hopes, had to interiorize its failures in order to turn them into paradoxes … What failures? The failures of (...) the poets who thought they were failing. Contemporary poetry has therefore to meditate the different figures of paradoxical failure (the failure that is in no way a simple failure); namely, to distinguish the failures of Baudelaire from that of Rimbaud, from that of Mallarmé …. (shrink)