Paul De Vree
(c)image: M HKA
There is a noticeable evolution in De Vree’s audiovisual poetry in which the language is systematically set in a rhythmic arrangement, expressly focused on the optical and the figurative, understood in an arrangement of exclusively spatial-typographical items. The poem Het leven is een baccarat (1966/1967) is the most striking illustration of this. This single sentence typographically forms the shape of a wheel: a wheel at the fairground or a roulette wheel. One could interpret the figure as a question mark, which puts the sentence into perspective. An initial interpretation suggests that De Vree is presenting life as a game of chance. When De Vree published this poem a year earlier it did not include the aforementioned figurative element at all. The poem was also released on record and this form creates completely different associations evoked by the sounds of the words: ‘baccarat’ becomes ‘bac à rats’ (box of rats): people are imprisoned like rats in a box. Changing the emphasis (bac/bah, rat/rad, rada/dada, etc.), the superimposition of several levels of sounds, rolling the ‘r’ sounds and emphasising the ‘a’ vowels expresses De Vree’s aversion to the disastrous systems of life and the absurdity of existence, a life he compares to a rat’s cage. The text and sound image that ‘Het leven is een baccarat’ initially creates is transformed into visual text at a later stage. click here to listen to the poem.