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oa Peter Verhelst en de bevraging van het teken
Enkele casussen uit Wij totale vlam (2014)
- Amsterdam University Press
- Source: Internationale Neerlandistiek, Volume 62, Issue 3, Dec 2024, p. 260 - 277
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- 31 Dec 2024
Abstract
In this article, I investigate the use of signs in poems from the Flemish poet Peter Verhelst’s collection Wij totale vlam (‘We totally in flame’, 2014) in the light of Derrida’s critique of the sign and the metaphysics of presence. I investigate three prominent sign usages in the collection, namely de-contextualization in the case of ‘Uur en dag’ (‘The hour and the day’), far-reaching abstraction in the case of ‘Aurelia aurita/Felix Baumgartner’, and permutation in the case of ‘Ik ben blij dat je’ (‘I am glad that you’) and the section ‘Blijf’ (‘Stay’). In the end, I conclude that in these poems Verhelst uses many indexical signs that point to a non-existent possible world, that his signs are transformable, and that the many ellipses and haplographies serve to indicate a vague and non-existent possible world that denies but nevertheless maintains a metaphysics of presence.