On the Double-Chain Pantun Structure in Baudelaireʼs Harmonie du soir

On the Double-Chain Pantun Structure in Baudelaire’s Harmonie du soir Benoît de Cornulier What is the use of metrical studies? One legitimate answer is:1 given that metrics is concerned with systematic rhythmic regularities, a search for such regularities may help reveal certain relevant linguistic aspects which would otherwise not be apparent; one such example, concerning prosody, will be briefly evoked below. Or, when applied to a poem, metrical analysis, may help understand its meaning or symbolism; Baudelaire’s famous Harmonie du soir will be examined inthis perspective.2 1. ADAPTED NOTIONS My first example is extracted from a French traditional song, considered as verse (i.e. as read without music). While we might be ‘intellectually’ tempted to analyse it as indicated on the left side of the table given below, the actually observed regularities are those shown on the right side:3 1 This paper is a revised version of a lecture at Charles University in Prague (november 2014). Hereby I thank CEFRES, Jakub Říha, Josef Hrdlička, and other colleagues and students at Charles University for their welcome and suggestions, and particularly Anthony McKenna for the many stylistic improvements of my approximate English. 2 I try to illustrate this method in Cornulier 2009. 3 For ease of understanding, the phonetic form is only suggested here through the orthographic form. — The tonic vowel of a line refers to its last non-feminine vowel. The anatonic form of a sequence of words includes their tonic vowel and all the pre-tonic phonemes; the catatonic form includes the tonic vowel and all (if any) post-tonic phonemes. These notions are defined in the glossary of Cornulier 2009. I suppose here that ‘luneʼ and ‘plumeʼ are dissyllabic, as they are in the song. OPEN ACCESS 14 SLOVO A SMYSL 25 OPEN ACCESS Total graphic form total syllabic length last syllable(s) Anatonic form Catatonic form Anatonic form Catatonic form au clair de la lune 6 lu.ne au clair de la lu- -u.ne 5 2 mon ami Pierrot 5 -rot mon ami Pierro(t) -ot 5 1 prête-moi ta plume 6 plu.me prête-moi ta plu -u.me 5 2 pour écrire un mot. 5 mot pour écrire un mo(t) -ot 5 1 Similar regularities, observed in such corpuses as Danteʼs Divine Comedy or French poetry, lead us to associate the two following sub-lines with a regular 4–6 rhythm, instead of the ‘intellectuallyʼ apparent 5–5 rhythm:4 French: O Vierge mère, fille de ton fils Italian: Vergine madre, figlia del tuo figlio apparent «rhythm» 5 syl 5 syl real rhythm 4 6 Second example: in such nonsensical syllables as shown below (from French traditional song),5 the observed regularity consists in the fact that the end of two sequences, ‘aineʼ and ‘onʼ, contrast against the background of one and the same pre-tonic form ‘Flon flon lariradondʼ, as shown below. The point here is that the precise frontier between the similar background and the contrasting end does not coincide with a syllabic border; rather, within the syllable it occurs just before the vowel (and thus, just before the catatonic form): Total phonemic form Anatonic phonetic form Catatonic form Flon, flon, Larira, dondaine, Flon, flon, Larira, dond- -aine Flon, flon, Larira, dondon Flon, flon, Larira, dond- -on This metrical phenomenon, which I call counter-rhyme (contre-rime in French), confirms the relevance of the concept of catatonic form in the description of both rhyme and counter-rhyme. 4 ‘Vergine madre, figlia del tuo figlioʼ is a so-called endecasillabo of Dante in the last Canto of the Divine Comedy; ‘O Vierge mère, fille de ton filsʼ is a translation of this line in French; both can be felt with a 4–6 rhythm, provided that the last, posttonic vowel of the first hemistich contributes to the anatonic rhythm of the second (otherwise, the rythm of the second hemistich would be 5). 5 Example from a 1722 vaudeville. A similar catatonic non-syllabic contrast is observed in ‘mironton, mirontaineʼ, ‘tralala, tralalaireʼ, etc. BENOît DE CORNULIER 15 OPEN ACCESS 2. ON THE METRICS AND MEANING OF HARMONIE DU SOIR. A FIRST APPROACH TO BAUDELAIRE’S CHAIN PANTUN I will now try to show by a particular example the potential use of metrical studies for poetic analysis. I present below Baudelaire’s very famous poem Harmonie du soir.6 Normally, all its lines, alexandrines as they are, are printed aligned to the left margin. However, here I employ a particular lay-out, with two different left margins and a few words in bold type, in order to help with the comprehension of the analysis to be proposed here… and, hopefully, with the poem as such. HARMONIE DU SOIR Module-distichs A Module-distichs B A1 Voici venir les temps où vibrant sur sa tige Chaque fleur sʼévapore ainsi quʼun encensoir; B1 Les sons et les parfums tournent dans lʼair du soir; Valse mélancolique et langoureux vertige! A2 Chaque fleur sʼévapore ainsi quʼun encensoir; Le violon frémit comme un cœur quʼon afflige; B2 Valse mélancolique et langoureux vertige! Le ciel est triste et beau comme un grand reposoir. A3 Le violon frémit comme un cœur quʼon afflige, Un cœur tendre, qui hait le néant vaste et noir! B3 Le ciel est triste et beau comme un grand reposoir; Le soleil sʼest noyé dans son sang qui se fige. A4 Un cœur tendre, qui hait le néant vaste et noir, Du passé lumineux recueille tout vestige! B4 Le soleil sʼest noyé dans son sang qui se fige… Ton souvenir en moi luit comme un ostensoir! Let us begin with a fairly traditional metrical description of the French pantun — a French form derived from the Malayan pantun berkait—, as the poet Theodore de Banville tried to codify it in 1872 (and without a reference to Baudelaire’s pantun)7 under the heading ‘pantoumʼ: 6 Number 47 in the 1861 edition of the Fleurs du Mal (my text of reference), first published in 1857. 7 On this story, see Georges Voisset (1997), who insists on recognizing so-called ‘pantoumʼ as a case of the general (chain) pantun family, and Jean-Louis Aroui (2010) about the French ‘pantoumʼ tradition. 16 SLOVO A SMYSL 25 OPEN ACCESS Rhyme: Stanza rhyme schema abab, or sometimes abba, traditionally often analysed as including a distich bb surrounded by a pair of a…a rhymes; hence the name rimes embrassées (dd lines embraced by the a…a lines). Line-repetition between stanzas: Lines 2 and 4 of each stanza become the lines 1 and 3 of the following stanza (line-repetition pattern xAxB AxBx). This very particular repetition pattern is the most obvious — if not the main — characteristics of the ‘pantoum’.8 Semantic alternance: In a regular ‘pantoum’, two distinct semantic sequences are supposed to alternate: a sequence A, constituted by ‘the first two lines’ of each stanza (here A1 to A4), and a sequence B, constituted by the ‘last two lines’ (here B1 to B4).9 Global line-repetition closure: In a regular ‘pantoum’ (as defined by Banville), the last line repeats (or: returns to) the first line. In this description, the semantic alternance and the repetition pattern from stanza to stanza are taken to be unrelated with the supposed ‘embraced’ rhyme schema. It is difficult to understand how such a form could be mastered in oral improvisation (weak cognitive plausibility). It is generally accepted as obvious that the ’semantic alternance’ principle is not observed in Baudelaireʼs pantoum, and it is evident that he did not observe the linerepetition clause. I will try to show that:10 1) The three patterns of rhyme, repetition, and semantic alternance are related; 2) Baudelaire did observe the semantic alternance principle. Relevant metrical notions For a better understanding of the ‘pantoum’, the following notions may be useful. Rhyme structure In French poetry, most ‘classical’ stanzas are constituted by one or two rhyme equivalence groups (in the following: REGs), of which each is a pair of rhyming modules consisting of one to three lines, such as: 8 The so-called ‘pantoumʼ tradition in French originates from a translation of a Malayan poem, published in a note of Victor Hugoʼs Orientales (1829), where ‘pantoumʼ was a misprint for ‘pantounʼ (= pantun). 9 For instance in Banville, Petit Traité de versification française (1872). In such descriptions, the numerical notion ‘the two [first or last] lines’ superficially compensates the lack of a corresponding unit (module) in metrical theory. 10 A first sketch of this analysis was published in Cornulier 2005. I did not then know that Clive Scott (2000), the first to my knowledge, had already proposed a distinct interpretation of the two series of distichs (although substantially different from the interpretation proposed here). BENOît DE CORNULIER 17 OPEN ACCESS REG aa abab aabccb module a a ab ab aab ccb idem, with inversion: ab baaab cbc Chaining:11 [……A] [A……B] [B……C] &c. One familiar example of line repetition chaining of couplets in French traditional song is the following: Verse 1 Verse 2 Verse 3 En passant par la Lorraine Rencontrai trois capitaines Rencontrai trois capitaines Ils mʼont appelée vilaine Ils mʼont appelée vilaine Je ne suis pas si vilaine… Bi-phonic alternance (intertwining) In various oral traditions and in a variety of ways, a systematic alternance between two speakers A and B may be ‘metrifiedʼ in an AB-AB-AB… binary periodic sequence, resulting from the intertwining of two unary periodic sequences, one of A’s and one of B’s. In some literary traditions, e.g. some amoebean verses from the era of classical antiquity, this alternance is metrically realised in a bi-phonic or quasi-bi-phonic alternance. Such a binary periodicity departs from the uni-linear tendency of purely literary metrics. An alternating, bi-phonic structure is obvious in Baudelaire’s Abel et Caïn (1861, Fleurs du Mal 119), where ab-ab rhyme equivalence groups are divided in a sequence of initial ab modules, let us say the initial A’s, adressed to the ‘race of Abel’, and a sequence of concluding ab modules, let us say the B’s, addressed to the ‘race of Cain’. In the immediately following poem Les Litanies de Satan, a series of aa distichs is intertwined with a series of repetitions of a unique line-sentence (refrain), and the combination of each distich with the following refrain occurrence constitutes a single sentence in which the distich is a vocative. For example: Ô toi, le plus savant et le plus beau des Anges, Dieu trahi par le sort et privé de louanges, Ô Satan, prends pitié de ma longue misère 11 Chaining or concatenation (Latin concatenatio), a notion familiar to medievists and folklorists. A child folklore quasi-syllabic example of chaining is: ‘Trois pʼtits chats — Chapeau dʼpaille — Paillasson…’. 18 SLOVO A SMYSL 25 OPEN ACCESS Ô Prince de lʼexil, à qui lʼon a fait tort, Et qui, vaincu, toujours te redresses plus fort, Ô Satan, prends pitié de ma longue misère Here the bi-phonic structure has a metrical reflex: two metrical rules, i.e. the cadenza alternance and the 2-color rule, are violated in a purely uni-linear reading of the whole poem, but are observed in each A or B uni-linear sequence, independently considered: the successive rhyme-words ‘louanges’ and ‘misère’ have feminine, double endings, although they do not rhyme together; and the line ending in ‘misère’ will really rhyme (not by mere repetition) only with the last distich of the poem (‘colère’ and ‘Père’), even though they are separated by much more than one rhyme-color. Double-chain pantun structure These findings allow us to present a coherent formula for the metrics and semantics of the French ‘pantoum’ à la Banville: 1) A modular structure of stanzas: Each stanza is a rhyme equivalence group constituted of two (distich) modules, with the rhyme schema ab ab (or sometimes the variant ab ba). 2) Semantic coherence of module sequences: Let A be the sequence of initial modules (ab…), B the sequence of terminal modules (…ab); each sequence, A or B, tends to be semantically coherent, resulting in a semantic alternance of the distichs along the poem. 3) Repetition-chaining of each module sequence: Within each sequence A or B, any two successive modules are chained according to the repetition schema …a] [a…, with the first line of each module repeating the last line of the preceding one. 4) Semantic parallelism and ultimate convergence of chains: Chains A and B are supposed to be semantically parallel in some poetical way, and, according to Banville, they are supposed to converge in the last line of the ‘pantoum’ by the global repetition schema [A………A], with the last line of the ‘pantoum’ repeating its first line.12 A consequence of (2) and (3): Any two successive stanzas have the repetition schema [xa xb] [ax bx]. From a cognitive point of view, this combination — viewed as the result of two independent principles — seems to be more plausible than the linear repetition rule in the ‘traditional’ metrical description recalled above; in particular, one contribution of the repetition-chaining is to make more obvious the continuity within each sequence. Describing the double-chain structure of the pantun in a purely uni-linear way sounds a bit like trying to provide a purely linear description for the double helix of a DNA molecule.13 12 Aroui (2010) underlines that this line-closure rule is particularly due to Banville. 13 The fact that the chain-pantun is a result of a combination of different partly independent properties is clearly revealed in Jean-Louis Aroui’s historical study in a chart of the realization (or not) of these properties in a series of French ‘pantoums’ (Aroui 2010, p. 345). BENOît DE CORNULIER 19 OPEN ACCESS The ‘pantoum’ or chain pantun combination can be observed in various apparently independent oral traditions of the world, for instance in some 13th-century Galician cantigas d’amigo by Martin Codax. This quasi bi-phonic structure can arise in oral traditions where two persons improvise alternately. A non-pantun pantun in Baudelaire’s Fleurs du Mal? Baudelaire was an intellectual, an admirer of Edgar Allan Poe, and a careful metrician and poet. It seems rather paradoxical that he should be seen as having chosen the fairly complicated form of a chain-pantun while neglecting its fundamental principle — i.e. semantic alternance with parallelism — and without seriously exploiting it. In this respect, it would not make much sense simply to claim that his poem is ‘musical’ or even that its form is related to ‘valse’ rhythm. In what follows, in lieu of pursuing a systematic argument from metrical form to meaning, I will try to relate these two aspects informally. A remarkable lexical/rhyme set It is often admitted that, in good poetry, the most efficient word in a line is its last, rhyming word. As Banville (1872, p. 42) puts it: On nʼentend dans un vers que le mot qui est à la rime […]. Le rôle des autres mots contenus dans le vers se borne donc à ne pas contrarier lʼeffet de celui-là et à bien sʼharmoniser avec lui […]. This suggests we ought to attribute stylistic importance not only to the rhyming word which concludes a line, but also to the rhyming-words which conclude larger metrical units, thus: Line rhyme-word, concluding any line; a lower degree could be a hemistich word even if, at the cæsura, it does not even rhyme. Module rhyme-word: rhyming word concluding not only a line, but a module (as b1 and a2 in ab ba). Stanza rhyme-word (or at least rhyme-equivalence-group word): rhyming word concluding not only a module, but a stanza (or at least an r. e. g.). And even poem rhyme-word, concluding a poem (as ‘ostensoir’). In Baudelaire’s Harmonie du soir, there are four modules ending in ‘ige’ and four modules ending in ‘oir’, and as many module rhyming-words. The ‘oir’ series is particularly important for the following reasons: — Three of the four ‘oir’ module rhyming-words, namely ‘encensoir’, ‘reposoir’ and ‘ostensoir’, share certain very obvious similarities: • Not only are they 3-syllable words (as could also be ‘passoire’), but, more relevantly, they have the same anatonic rhythm (3 anatonic vowels) and the same cadenza or catatonic rhythm (1 catatonic vowel, i. e. they all have a simple, prosodically ‘masculine’ ending). Moreover, unlike in ‘soir’ [= evening], this common 20 SLOVO A SMYSL 25 OPEN ACCESS phonic ending is associated to one and same nominal suffix ‘oir’, characterizing the referent as a functional object. • In these three words, while this common suffixal and catatonic ending already contains three phonemes (/war/), it is (graphically) preceded by the same letter ‘s’, and (phonetically) by the same ± voiced consonant /S/; this /S/ is similarly un-voiced in the first and last words ‘encensoir’ and ‘ostensoir’, in which, morever, the longest common ending ‘ensoir’ includes the same vowel spelled, with the same spelling ‘en’.14 • These last two words freely ‘rhyme’ with the title Harmonie du soir, whose last word, or last syllable, is included in the end of ‘encensoir’ and ‘ostensoir’, and graphically in ‘reposoir’ (same final syllable). • These three word belong to a very specific common lexical field: they are liturgical instruments (in the Catholic Christianity, dominant in Baudelaireʼs culture), the use of which can be related to certain rites, as will be specified later. — The module rhyming-words ‘encensoir’ and ‘ostensoir’ occupy key positions of the poem. This is most obvious for ‘ostensoir’ which, together with the final line (and final sentence), obviously concludes the final module, the final stanza, and the whole poem. ‘Encensoir’, its most similar rhyming word, concludes the first module and sentence of the poem. Now it so happens that the first and last sentences are semantically more or less clearly detached. The first sentence is an announcement of something important about to happen in an already religious tone (‘Voici venir les temps où…’), where the definite plural ‘les temps’ potentially has more religious resonance than simply ’season’ or ‘part of the day’ (cf. the eschatological notion of the end of the world, when God will manifest himself to the whole mankind). The last sentence is detached by the five suspension points, and at last introduces the adressee (‘toi’) implied in ‘ton souvenir’ (= ‘le souvenir de toi’) and the subject ‘moi’. Thus, in a way, the poem is initiated by an encensoir and concluded by an ostensoir. The final appearance of the subject, in the last line, is all the more striking since it follows the indefinite ‘Un cœur tendre…’, revealing that this heart was the heart of the subject. — It might then be relevant that ‘reposoir’, the other element of this lexical and liturgical trio, concludes the first half of the poem, so that the two halves of the poem are respectively concluded by a ‘reposoir’ and an ‘ostensoir’. Liturgical symbolism Do the ‘encensoir’, ‘reposoir’ and ‘ostensoir’ simply constitute a sort of bric-à-brac borrowed from ‘la religion la plus fadasseʼ (Étiemble)15 and belonging to ‘un fonds romantique assez communʼ (Crépet and Blin, quoted approvingly by Pichois 1975, p. 919)? 14 The longest common ending is not to be confused with the minimal regular common ending or rhyme (= catatonic form). 15 Quoted by G. Voisset (1997, p. 99). BENOît DE CORNULIER 21 OPEN ACCESS Let us, instead, question this set of liturgical instruments, as it is framed in the architecture of the poem, and only then examine whether the semantic alternance principle of the chain-pantun is really neglected. Encensoir, first module rhyme-word: The censer (‘encensoirʼ) swayed by humans here below, on earth, can send perfumes (‘encensʼ) in the air towards the divinity above. For instance, during the Offertory part of a Catholic solemn mass (eucharistic service), before being consecrated, the bread and wine were offered to the divinity and incensed with codified gestures, with the following words (italics mine): ‘Incensum istud […] ascendat ad te, Domine, et descendat super nos misericordia tuaʼ (= Let this incense ascend towards you, Lord, et let your pity descend on us). Note the double direction, human offerings with incense upwards towards Heaven, calling for divine pity downwards towards the Earth. Only in the following part of the service (Canon) were the bread and wine transformed by ‘consecrationʼ into the blood and body of Jesus (Corpus Christi), who had thus descended from Heaven into the consecrated wine and bread. Ostensoir, final module rhyme-word: After the mass in which it was consecrated (‘transsubstantiatedʼ into the body or flesh of Jesus), the white host could be exposed to worship in a monstrance (‘ostensoirʼ), an instrument generally made of gold throwing out beams around the white host, in such a way that the now Holy Host (Corpus Christi, divine body) looked like a beaming sun.16 As Giles Dimock, a Dominican, recalls in Questions and Answers on the Eucharist (New Jersey, 2006, p. 86): At the end of Vespers or Compline [Evening Prayer and Night Prayer respectively], which were well attended in religious-order and even parish churches, the priest at the end of the service would take out the Blessed Sacrament [the consecrated host] in the monstrance and the congregation would salute it with a hymn (hence the French term salut for Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament) and often salute the Blessed Virgin Mary with the ‘Salve Reginaʼ or other Marian hymn. The priest would then bless the people with the Blessed Sacrament […] In the course of time, Benediction became an independent ceremony […] and […] became very popular in itself. Thus, in the preparation of the holy sacrifice (Offertory), the ‘encensoirʼ sent a message upwards, ascending from the humans on earth towards God in heaven; and by the consecration, the divinity descended on earth into the host, in which he could be ‘receivedʼ (ingested) in Communion, or exposed and worshipped as, for instance, in the evening Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, during the Vespers, commonly attended by laymen in churches where the Holy Sacrament was exposed; Vespers, that is, the evening office (‘office du soirʼ), where the etymological notion, soir, is 16 The censer was often named ‘soleilʼ before the 19th century. The beaming sun was a very common, traditional, analogy of God in his glory in religious texts, painting, & etc., but like a rising sun rather than a setting sun as in Harmonie du soir. 28 SLOVO A SMYSL 25 OPEN ACCESS could represent the whole body of Jesus. In the last module, the blood and bread (host) respectively conclude the two lines (‘son sang qui se figeʼ, ‘un ostensoirʼ). Yet in the last line, the host alone (in the monstrance) can represent the divinity. This double revelation, linked by ‘commeʼ, makes explicit the analogy between the (say) sentimental or lyrical and the religious aspects of the poem. The presence of the lost loved person (through ‘ton souvenirʼ) in my heart is analogous to the presence of Jesus (dead and resurrected) in the host; the relation ‘you in me’ (‘ton souvenir en moiʼ), following the idea that ‘un cœurʼ (me) ‘recueille tout vestigeʼ of the sun (you), may evoke, more specifically, the communion rite. The five suspension-point before the last line, and its present tense (‘luitʼ) after ‘s’est noyéʼ, suggest that the gleaming of your memory in my heart is the present result of this ’sorcellerie évocatoireʼ. The ‘harmonyʼ of Baudelaire’s pantun The ‘harmonyʼ in the title of Baudelaire’s pantun is not a vague metaphor, according to which the poem or what it evokes would be just as beautiful as music. It aptly suits the progressive analogy between the two series of initial and terminal modules, their final convergence, and the eucharistic symbol of a union of human and divine. LITERATURE Aroui, Jean-Louis: Métrique et intertexte dans le Pantoum négligé. In: Seth Whidden (ed.): La Poésie jubilatoire, Rimbaud, Verlaine et l’Album zutique. Edition Classiques Garnier, Paris 2010, pp. 327–360. Banville, Théodore de: Odes funambulesques. 1856. Banville, Théodore de: Petit Traité de poésie française. Bibliothèque de l’Écho de la Sorbonne, Paris 1872. Cornulier, Benoît de: Métrique des Fleurs du Mal. In: Claude Pichois — Jacques Dupont (eds.): L’Atelier de Baudelaire: «Les Fleurs du Mal». Édition diplomatique. Champion, Paris 2005, vol. 4, pp. 3543–3565 [ = a sketch of the present analysis]. Cornulier, Benoît de: De la métrique à lʼinterprétation. Essais sur Rimbaud. Classiques Garnier 2009. Cornulier, Benoît de: Sur la valeur taratantara du mètre 55 chez Verlaine, Corbière et Baudelaire. Revue Verlaine, 2015, Nr.13, pp. 195–213. Falise, Jean-Baptiste: Cours abrégé de liturgie pratique. Leroux & Jouby, Paris 1855. Jouet, Jacques: Êchelles et papillons. Le pantoum. Les Belles Lettres, Paris 1998. Metzer, Françoise: Seeing double. Baudelaire’s Modernity. University of Chicago Press, Chicago 2011. Pichois, Claude — Dupont, Jacques: L’Atelier de Baudelaire: «Les Fleurs du Mal», Édition diplomatique. Champion, Paris 2005. Scott, Clive: Translating Baudelaire. University of Exeter Press, Exeter 2000. Voisset, Georges: Histoire du genre pantoun. Malaisie, Francophonie, Universalie. L’Harmattan, Paris 1997. RESUMÉ / RÉSUMÉ Ke struktuře dvojího (z)řetezení v Baudelairově pantunu Harmonie večera Baudelairova báseň Harmonie večera má všechny znaky pantunu. Analýza metrické alternance v této básnické formě ukazuje, že pantun obnáší sémantickou alternanci mezi dvěma alternujícími sériemi dvouveršových modulů. K porozumění této alternanci je zapotřebí pečlivě objasnit pojmy BENOît DE CORNULIER 29 OPEN ACCESS katolické liturgie, jež se v básni nacházejí na rýmové pozici, tj. ‘encensoirʼ, ‘reposoirʼ a ‘ostensoirʼ, a vzít v úvahu jejich přesné užití při svátosti eucharistie. V básni však nejde o náboženskou svátost jakožto uskutečnění Ježíšovy smrti a Boží přítomnosti, nýbrž o zpřítomnění ztracené milované v básníkově paměti. On the Double-Chain Pantun Structure in Baudelaireʼs Harmonie du soir Baudelaireʼs poem Harmonie du soir is a real pantun. The metrical structure of this poem-form is analysed: it implies a semantic alternance between two alternating series of distich-modules. Understanding this alternance requires a careful interpretation of the Catholic liturgical rhyming-notions in the poem, ‘encensoirʼ, ‘reposoirʼ, ‘ostensoirʼ, and precisely taking into account the Eucharist sacrament in which they were used. But, instead of a religious Sacrament realizing the death of Jesus and presence of God, this is a poem realizing the presence of a lost, beloved person in the poetʼs memory. KLÍČOVÁ SLOVA / KEYWORDS metrická analýza; pantun; sémantická alternance; katolická metaforika metrical analysis; pantun; semantic alternance; catholic imagery Benoît de Cornulier | Laboratoire de Linguistique de Nantes, UMR 6310 [email protected]