On Baroque Intensity and the Reading of Pascal Quignard

In an interview that eludes my current search, Pascal Quignard once remarked, “I am a Baroque artist. I seek intensity of emotion by any means necessary. I am not a classicist, I do not seek perfection. Baroque artists seek intensity, not beauty. If we can make people cry, we are happy.”

This reflection recurs in my thoughts and serves as a framework when approaching Quignard’s works. It seems that within the writings of any serious author lies a manual on how to read their work. Quignard’s prose recalls painting: fluid, unstable, occupying a space between philosophical discourse and fiction.

Many of the writings I most closely value share this expressive Baroque quality. In the introduction to <em>The Burglar</em>, Brigid Brophy writes, “Baroque is an open, sometimes explosive embrace of contradictions—intellectual and of feeling. Ambiguity and fun are its raw material merely. Its essence is the ambivalence, in full, deep psychoanalytic import, of emotions. It is a pair of giant curly brackets that clip together things irreconcilable.” This formulation captures the profound sense of astonishment central to the Baroque.

In <em>Passions of the Soul</em>, Descartes examines the initial moment of astonishment and the way it leads to other emotions: “Upon encountering an object that surprises us, something we consider new or vastly different from our previous knowledge, we are filled with marvel and astonishment. Since this can occur before we possess any knowledge about the object’s suitability or unsuitability, I believe that admiration is the first of all passions. Moreover, it has no contrary; if the object lacks surprise, we remain unmoved and regard it without passion.”

This sense of astonishment is what I look for in prose and poetry: an encounter with the unfamiliar, the unknown, engaging with questions of memory, existence, and the nature of consciousness. While this position may broadly align with the modernist tradition, the reading experience I seek is more accurately described as Baroque, a style apt for an era marked by the collapse of old certainties and a corresponding desire for re-enchantment and wonder.