Merleau-Ponty’s Parallel Between Art and Philosophy: The Case of Poetry—from Baudelaire and Akhmatova

Maurice Merleau-Ponty is well known for the argument that phenomenological philosophy and modern arts share fundamental tasks. More precisely, he claims that the phenomenology of perception and the art of painting join forces in the investigation of the constitution of the perceptual thing. The chapter asks if something similar holds for the art of poetry. It demonstrates that even though Merleau-Ponty does not offer an explicit account of the functions of poetry, he provides enough insight for the articulation and defense of a three-fold thesis: first, poetry shares with the other arts the philosophical task of giving expression to the perceptual thing and the perceptual world; second, it shares with prose the metaphysical task of studying the conditions and possibilities of our being-with-others; and finally it also has its own special task of exploring the limits of the fundamental linguistic being—the being of the speaking word.