Michel Butor (French:[miʃɛlbytɔʁ]; 14 September 1926 – 24 August 2016) was a French poet, novelist, teacher, essayist, art critic and translator.[1][2]
Michel Marie François Butor was born inMons-en-Barœul, a suburb ofLille, the third of seven children. His parents were Émile Butor (1891–1960), a railroad inspector and Anna (née Brajeux, 1896–1972). He studied philosophy at theSorbonne, graduating in 1947.[3]
In 1950–51, he taught French inMinya, Egypt, followed by teaching assignments inManchester (1951–53),Thessaloniki (1954–55) andGeneva (1956–57). In 1958, he married Marie-Josèphe (née Mas); they had four daughters.
His first novel,Passage de Milan, was published in 1954, followed byL'Emploi du temps (1956), which won thePrix Fénéon, and byLa Modification in 1957, which won thePrix Renaudot. His final novel,Degrés, was published in 1960.
In 1960, he was a visiting professor atBryn Mawr College andMiddlebury College. His travels around the United States at this time resulted in his first experimental book,Mobile, published in 1962 to a controversial reception.[4]
In the following years, he wrote in a variety of forms, from essays to poetry toartist's books.[5] For artist's books he collaborated with artists likeGérard Serée.[6] Literature, painting and travel were subjects particularly dear to Butor. Part of the fascination of his writing is the way it combines the rigorous symmetries that ledRoland Barthes to praise him as an epitome of structuralism (exemplified, for instance, by the architectural scheme ofPassage de Milan or the calendrical structure ofL'emploi du temps) with a lyrical sensibility more akin toBaudelaire than toRobbe-Grillet.
Journalists and critics have associated his novels with thenouveau roman, but Butor himself long resisted that association. The main point of similarity is a very general one, not much beyond that; like exponents of the nouveau roman, he can be described as an experimental writer.[7] His best-known novel,La Modification, for instance, is written entirely in the second person.[8] In his 1967La critique et l'invention, he famously said that even the most literal quotation is already a kind of parody because of its "trans-contextualization."[9][10][11][12]
After meeting in 1977, Butor became a friend of Elinor S. Miller, a French professor atRollins College at the time.[13] They worked collaboratively on translations, catalogues and lectures. In 2002, Miller published a book on Butor entitledPrisms and Rainbows: Michel Butor's Collaborations with Jacques Monory, Jiri Kolar, and Pierre Alechinsky.[14]
In an interview in the Museum of Modern Art, New York, conducted in 2006,[15] the poetJohn Ashbery described how he wanted to sit next to Michel Butor at a dinner in New York.
Michel Butor was a foundational member ofThe Raymond Roussel Society, established in 2016 alongside notable contemporaries includingJohn Ashbery,Miquel Barceló, Joan Bofill-Amargós,Thor Halvorssen, and Hermes Salceda. The society, dedicated to celebrating and studying the works of the innovative and enigmatic writerRaymond Roussel, brought together a group of intellectuals and artists with a shared passion for Roussel's literary legacy. Through this collaboration, Butor's influence and expertise contributed significantly to the society's mission of exploring Roussel's unique literary techniques and promoting a deeper understanding of his innovative contributions to the world of literature.
Passage de Milan (Les Éditions de Minuit, 1954). Chapters VII-X, trans. Guy Daniels inThe Award Avant-Garde Reader (1965).[21] Chapters XI-XII inThe Carleton Miscellany (1963).[22]
L'Emploi du temps (Les Éditions de Minuit, 1956).Passing Time, trans. Jean Stewart (Simon & Schuster, 1960;Faber and Faber, 1961; Pariah Press, 2021).
La Modification (Les Éditions de Minuit, 1957). Trans. Jean Stewart asSecond Thoughts (Faber and Faber, 1958),A Change of Heart (Simon & Schuster, 1959) andChanging Track (Calder, 2017; revised).
Mobile : étude pour une représentation des États-Unis (Gallimard, 1962). Mobile: Study for a Representation of the United States, trans. Richard Howard (Simon & Schuster, 1963; Dalkey Archive, 2004).
Réseau aérien : texte radiophonique (Gallimard, 1962). Commissioned byRTF and broadcast on 16 June 1962.
Description de San Marco (Gallimard, 1963).Description of San Marco, trans. Barbara Mason (York Press, 1983).
6 810 000 litres d'eau par seconde : étude stéréophonique (Gallimard, 1965).Niagara: A Stereophonic Novel, trans. Elinor S. Miller (Regnery, 1969).[24] Also adapted as an English-language broadcast forBBC Home Service on 1 December 1965, translated byRayner Heppenstall.[25]
Intervalle : anecdote en expansion (Gallimard, 1973)
Histoire extraordinaire : essai sur un rêve deBaudelaire (1961).Histoire extraordinaire: Essay on a Dream of Baudelaire's, trans. Richard Howard (Cape, 1969).[26]
Improvisations sur Michel Butor : l'écriture en transformation (1993).Improvisations on Butor: Transformation of Writing, trans. Elinor S. Miller (University Press of Florida, 1996).
Portrait de l'artiste en jeune singe (Gallimard, 1967).Portrait of the Artist as a Young Ape: A Caprice, trans. Dominic Di Bernardi (Dalkey Archive, 1995).
La Banlieue de l’Aube à l’Aurore (Fata Morgana, 1968).The Suburbs from Dawn to Daybreak, trans. Jeffrey Gross (2013)[28][29]
Inventory: Essays by Michel Butor, edited by Richard Howard (Simon & Schuster, 1968; Cape, 1970). Twelve essays fromRépertoire andRépertoire II, as well as five other pieces.[30]
Selected Essays, ed. Richard Skinner, trans. Mathilde Merouani (Vanguard Editions, 2022). Eight essays fromEssais sur le roman.
^His DES thesis (diplôme d'études supérieures [fr], roughly equivalent to anMA thesis) underGaston Bachelard was titledLes Mathématiques et l'idée de nécessité, "Mathematics and the Idea of Necessity" (see Mary Lydon,Perpetuum Mobile: A Study of the Novels and Aesthetics of Michel Butor, University of Alberta, 1980, p. 156 n. 31).
La citation la plus littérale est déjà dans une certaine mesure une parodie. Le simple prélèvement la transforme, le choix dans lequel je l'insère, sa découpure (deux critiques peuvent citer le même passage en fixant ses bords différemment), les allégements que j'opère à l'intérieur, lesquels peuvent substituer une autre grammaire à l'originelle et naturellement, la façon dont je l'aborde, dont elle est prise dans mon commentaire
A whole ideology of ownership and transmission is implied by the commercial promotion of books and a certain kind of discourse in newspapers, schools and universities, with its emphasis on greatness, uniqueness, and influence—often via quotation—as a one-way process. This ideology has received a battering for many years now at the hands of authors such as James Joyce, Ezra Pound, Jorge Luis Borges (Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote) and Butor himself.
Media related toMichel Butor at Wikimedia Commons