M HKA Ensembles

Print, 98 x 98 cm.

Collection: Collection M HKA, Antwerp (Inv. no. S0330_12).

Toute prédication est un attantat à la liberté de l’homme. La poésie comme je la conçois, n’est plus la femme de chambre, des princes, prélats, politiciens, partis, ou encore du people. Elle est enfin elle même. (PDV, 1966)

In his audiovisual poetry Paul De Vree had taken an important step towards a gradual integration into the evolution of the modern art of poetry. He found himself at a crossroads where one road led to the exploration of sounds and the other to the visual. The poem Toute prédication (1966) embodies the manifesto of De Vree’s audiovisual and concrete-visual poetry. It is not a concrete poem in the usual sense, but a statement about this poetry. The poem is set in a circle. De Vree is referring to the obvious way sound poetry was released on LP records. By producing the work on paper instead of on a record he is referring to the potential offered by the visual. In the text he dismisses ‘preaching’, any message communicated by poetry: ‘toute prédication est un attantat à la liberté de l’homme’, (all preaching is an attack on man’s freedom).

Poetry can only refer to its own reality. ‘Ne se referant à rien d’autre qu’à la sensibilité d’être’, (not referring to anything other than the sensitivity of being).