Content
Identity construction through external signs
Before knowing the mods, this is before the Renaissance, the powder on the face, the rouges on the grass, the perruque Lourde, the jewelry voyants, the habits tapageurs, tellement je trouvais ça triste de s'habiller en garçon.
Before i die Mods When I first met her, I almost wished for the Renaissance to return, with powder on my face, greasy lipstick, heavy wigs, flashy jewelry and ostentatious dresses, I found it so sad to dress like a boy.
After a three-month depressive episode, during which he remained bedridden and watched a steadily growing pile of clothes accumulate, the unnamed narrator takes a job as a library assistant at the Avignon City Library. His brother supports him during this period of stagnation until he finally finds the strength to dress "socially acceptable" again. He identifies with his disheveled state, wearing only sportswear repurposed as pajamas. His first transformation is purely functional: he chooses simple colors like blue, white, and black to look like a "decent boy" and participate in social life again. But this style is fragile; an orange velour outfit instantly transforms him, in his eyes, into a "neurasthenic clown," underscoring the fragility of his identity. The library offers him a space free from prejudice, where he encounters eccentric colleagues like Michel, whose flamboyant style fascinates him. During this period, he reads about George Brummell and discovers the idea of the dandy, who defines his existence through elegance and discipline.
The decisive turning point came with his encounter with Joe and the Mod subculture at the Place des Corps-Saints, which introduced him to the strict rules of "Modernism" and taught him that clothing was an instrument of intellectual discipline and social distinction. By acquiring an M51 parka and shaving a "French Line," he finally underwent his official initiation into the youth-cultural "order" of the Mods and henceforth defined his existence through the perfection and the "sublime and ridiculous" detail of his outward appearance.
Cyrille Martinez was born in Avignon in 1972 and was himself part of the city's Mods scene in his youth, so he can autofictionally "parler de son expérience passée au sein de cette frange provençale de la fameuse subculture britannique", as the magazine TV ratings announces a contribution by Martinez on the topic. Today, the author lives and works in Paris, where he is, among other things, a librarian at the University of Paris VIII. This proximity to the archive and the "space of knowledge" is often reflected in the structure of his texts. He began his literary career in the early 2000s and was quickly recognized as a voice that blurs the lines between documentation, fiction, and wordplay.
Martinez's ninth book, Comment habiller un garçon (éditions verticales, 2026, cited in CHG), represents a consistent continuation of his project to examine the construction of identity through subcultural codes. As already in Deux young artistes au chômage (about the New York art scene, quoted by DJA) or Fast and slow music (Regarding peripheral rock culture, MRL) Martinez uses a specific social niche as a laboratory for reinventing the self. The novel fits into a series of works that portray the “artist as amateur”—from the unemployed poet in New York to the “modernist” in Avignon who regains his dignity through aesthetic discipline.
Thematically, the work revolves around overcoming existential emptiness through the appropriation of objects. The protagonist, who at the beginning spends months in bed as a "loque" (rag/wreck), literally reconstructs his self by putting on a Mod wardrobe. This theme of self-creation is a recurring motif in Martinez's work: Just as his runners (in Jean-Claude's MarathonWhile some seek a new way of being through physical exhaustion, the Mod finds in the perfection of their appearance a protective shield against anonymity. Clothing here creates a "persona" that not only reflects social status but actually creates it.
Martinez often sets his stories in "scenes" or parallel worlds that follow their own rules. In CHG, it's 1990s Avignon that becomes the "place to be" for the Mods, much like the fictional "New York, New York" for his artist protagonists. With its dogma of "always being better dressed than the boss," the Mod movement offers a tool for reversing power dynamics. This social distinction through "sublime and ridiculous" details allows the characters to break free from a dominated geographical or social position.
Documentary Infralangue, Aesthetics of Inventory
Martinez doesn't write classic novels with psychological depth. His texts are more like experiments or literary collages. Martinez is interested in how artists become icons. He examines the cult of celebrity and the commodification of creativity. Urban spaces or specific locations (like libraries or sports stadiums) often play a central role. He uses elements from advertising, journalism, and bureaucracy to expose the absurdity of modern communication.
In his writing, Martinez remains true to his ideal of "infralangue"—a language that deliberately stays on the surface and avoids any decorative "literariness." He often employs an administrative, advertising, or journalistic style to transform the banality of everyday life into a modern mythology. In CHG, this manifests itself in the almost technical descriptions of fabrics, patterns, and mending instructions. The goal is a "style without style" that calls things by their name without obscuring them with metaphors.
A hallmark of Martinez's work is his use of lists and catalogs in a pop-literary style, which he describes as "perfectly objective" yet "sufficiently eloquent." In earlier works, he listed bibliographical data of politicians; in his new novel, it is the meticulous enumerations of sock combinations or the technical terms of tailoring. This form of "documentary fiction" serves to understand the materiality of life—be it in a library, on a running track, or in a wardrobe—as a fundamental truth.
Martinez weaves theory and history directly into his narratives, a process critics call "theoretical fiction." In CHG, figures like Baudelaire, Brummell, and Wittgenstein serve as intertextual anchors, philosophically legitimizing the characters' actions. The book consistently concludes with a list of "inspirations," revealing Martinez's understanding of writing as an open-ended process in which life is "glued together" from texts, films, and pieces of music.
For Martinez, writing is not a mystical act, but physical labor. He states that each book is written "against the previous one" in order to generate diversity through resistance. While MRL explored the acoustic world of rock, CHG shifts the focus to the tactile and visual aspects of fashion. This constant shift in subject matter, coupled with consistent methodological rigor, marks his journey from "poet-performer" to creator of complex novelistic structures.
The novel returns to Martinez's beginnings by portraying fashion as a precursor to poetry. The acquisition of Baudelaire's "black tailcoat" at the end of the book symbolizes the transition from mere "dressing" to actual "writing." The protagonist chooses to become a "poet instead of a DJ," reflecting a yearning for expression beyond masks. Thus, the book concludes as an "intimate history of men's fashion," ultimately answering the question of what it means to be a writing individual in today's world.
Masculinity and fashion
In CHG, masculinity appears not as a biological given, but as an aesthetic project. The novel presents a narrator who finds the traditional male attire—dark suits, uniformity, functional austerity since the 19th century—"sad" and restrictive. Compared to the colorful splendor of earlier eras or the fashionable freedom of women's wardrobes, "dressing as a boy" strikes him as an impoverishment. Only with the discovery of Mod culture does a new realm of possibilities open up: colors like red, yellow, or violet, mascara and powder, meticulous details that are simultaneously "sublime and ridiculous," break through the gray seriousness of conventional virility. Masculinity here is not reduced, but aesthetically charged.
In the Mod context, masculinity is defined primarily through discipline. Physical strength or dominance play almost no role; what matters is uncompromising formal rigor. A "real" Mod knows no laissez-faire attitude—even in the heat, shorts or sneakers remain taboo unless it's for sports. Style becomes a moral category: For Rodriguez, a fashion faux pas is a "faute morale." Elegance thus acquires ethical weight. At the same time, it becomes an instrument of social subversion. The motto of always being better dressed than the boss symbolically reverses hierarchies: The worker elevates himself above the superior through precision and taste. Aesthetics replaces economic power.
The renegotiation of masculinity becomes particularly clear in contrast to the institution of the military. The barracks appear as a counter-world, a place of "virile camaraderie," which the narrator perceives as crude and instinctual—characterized by vulgar behavior and implicit competition for physical superiority. He rejects this form of comradeship. Instead, he seeks refuge in the library: a space of whispering, concentration, and closeness to texts. Here, sensitivity, not muscular mass, is what counts; not command and obedience, but reading and reflection. The choice of this space is a conscious departure from classical virile rituals.
As an alternative ideal, figures of dandyism serve: George Brummell embodies an ascetic masculinity that avoids eccentricity and seeks greatness in radical austerity. His body "thinks"—it is the medium of an intellectual attitude. Charles Baudelaire also provides a model: The "habit noir," the black tailcoat, represents the paradox of being original in the most banal of garments. Here, poetic and political beauty merge. Masculinity does not mean loudness or aggression, but rather controlled presence and calculated disappearance.
The generation gap intensifies this redefinition. While the fathers of the '68 generation—as Joe recounts—despised the tie as a symbol of bourgeois oppression, the Mods reinterpret this accessory. The tie becomes an intimate, affective object, worn not for representation, but for oneself. It loses its function as a status symbol and becomes a personal talisman. Thus, the meaning of masculine symbols shifts: what once signified conformity now becomes an individual gesture.
Thus, the novel portrays masculinity as a search for dignity in an industrialized, standardizing world. Clothing acts as a second skin, a protective shield against social invisibility and inner emptiness. By meticulously constructing his appearance, the narrator creates a form of identity based neither on physical dominance nor on institutional power, but on aesthetic integrity. Masculinity, therefore, becomes the art of self-formation.
Style activism: the Mods scene of Avignon
The narrative culminates in a chaotic journey to Barcelona on an old Vespa, marked by breakdowns and an LSD trip. In a dark alley, the narrator is attacked by rival "Sudistes" and returns a changed man. He ultimately pulls off a spectacular barter with the Mod leader Walter: he trades a supposedly extremely rare soul record for Walter's "black tailcoat," allegedly belonging to Charles Baudelaire. In this garment, he finds his ultimate calling as a poet.
As indicated, the novel explores the construction of identity through textiles and clothing as a protective shield against existential emptiness. The "pile of clothes" at the beginning symbolizes the collapse of the self, while the gradual acquiring of the Mod wardrobe represents a reconstruction of the personality. Each garment acts as a relic or mask, allowing the narrator to slip into or subvert different social roles. Clothing is an instrument of self-assertion against a normative society.
Martinez explores the dandyism of the working class, which subverts traditional class barriers through aesthetics. The Mods, often sons of immigrants or low-level employees, use "sublime and ridiculous" details to demonstrate their superiority over their superiors. This "style activism" is a form of peaceful resistance, expressed in the rejection of jeans (as a symbol of uniformity) and the precision of trouser cuffs. It is an attempt to find a form of perfection in the "nothingness" of one's own existence.
Mod, advertising the gars aux cheveux courts with raie de côté tracee au rasoir, mod, diminutif de modernist. The mod or the mod is a variety of champion or champion of élégance. Effort vestimentaire at maximum level. Effort maximally significant: jamais de laisser-aller. Examples Chaleur infernale de type canicule, eh bien, on se sape. Par grand froid, même chose, pas la moindre négligence. Shorts, survetements, baskets, d'accord, mais attention, unique in the cadre of sporting activities.
"Mod," the guy with the short hair and shaved side parting proudly announces. "Mod," short for Modernist. A Mod is a kind of champion of elegance. Maximum effort when it comes to clothing. Maximum effort means: never be careless. For example: in scorching heat like a heat wave, you dress smartly. The same applies in extreme cold—no sloppiness. Shorts, tracksuits, sneakers, okay, but be careful, only for athletic activities.
The real turning point is the encounter with Joe in the Place des Corps-Saints, through whom the protagonist learns that fashion is a form of mental discipline. The rules of the "Modernists" demand maximum effort, leaving no room for negligence, with the goal of always being better dressed than the boss in order to aesthetically subvert power structures. The gradual transformation manifests itself in specific objects such as the "demilitarized" US M51 parka, which serves as a new, spacious shell for the protagonist's body, in which he initially feels lost. Joe eventually shaves his head and draws a precise parting line, the so-called "French Line," which functions as his official initiation into the Mod movement and "entry into the order."
Ils apportent a soin maniaque à leur apparence. Coupe de cheveux courts-mi-longs, with a raie de côté très marquée qu'on appealait the french line. It doesn't matter if you use the mascara, your complexion, you're fard à paupières. Les boucles d'oreilles c'est encore un peu trop pour la société de l'époque mais ils osent des bagues énormes et des bijoux en toc. This is why the mods appeal to the sublime and ridiculing details, an essential notion for understanding the style. Sublime and ridicule. In my time, on my plan, without hierarchy.
They pay close attention to their appearance. They wear their hair medium-length with a pronounced side part, known as a "French line." They don't hesitate to use mascara, foundation, and eyeshadow. Earrings were still considered somewhat daring by society at the time, but they dared to wear huge rings and inexpensive jewelry. This is what the Mods describe as "sublime and ridiculous," an essential concept for understanding their style. Sublime and ridiculous. Simultaneously, on the same level, without hierarchy.
Another key element is the reproduction of Roger Daltrey's 1965 Who shirt, a gift from Rodriguez, which marks the transition to the "sublime and ridiculous" detail. The protagonist uses this extremely conspicuous garment during his military conscription examination to deliberately display his incompatibility with the institution. The clothing functions as an encrypted code, which the military psychologist interprets as a sign of incompatibility, ultimately leading to his classification as unfit for service. Thus, the garment becomes an instrument of social resistance against normative expectations and the anonymity of societal "zones."
The transformation reaches a technical level of perfection through the tailor-made trousers by José Roblès, where a hem must measure exactly 17,5 centimeters. Roblès, formerly of Balenciaga, conveys to the narrator that fashion is a matter of perfect lines and precise vocabulary. The wardrobe acquires a magical dimension through the "Cartoufles," the white moccasins belonging to his deceased friend Paul, with which the narrator develops an almost animistic relationship. In the world of Northern Soul at the club "Love's," body, rhythm, and clothing finally merge into a single entity, where the moccasins take the lead in the dance.
intertextuality
Intertextuality in CHG constitutes the narrative's actual constructional structure. The protagonist doesn't build his new identity from spontaneous feelings, but rather from models he has read, heard, and observed. Clothing, music, and theory merge into a kind of archive from which he reassembles himself. The novel functions like an archaeology of style: every article of clothing refers to an idea, every hairstyle to a historical event, every gesture to an aesthetic tradition. Identity appears as a assembled structure—not as essence, but as quotation.
On a philosophical level, Ludwig Wittgenstein provides a conceptual framework for this fragmented self-perception. Paul's assertion that no two things are perfectly identical legitimizes the famous mismatched socks: difference becomes a principle. Tristan Tzara's influence is also evident—his skeptical stance toward the abolition of conventions paradoxically justifies the Mods' strict code of conduct. And with Emil Cioran, even the necktie acquires metaphysical gravity: it becomes an existential talisman, a symbol of formal assertion in the face of mortality. Here, philosophy is not an abstract system, but an aesthetic instruction manual.
Pop culture functions analogously as a living text. The Who, with their iconic 1965 shirt, provides a wearable quotation from subcultural history, which the narrator uses as an act of silent resistance during his military conscription. The Monks, in turn—American GIs who radically stylized themselves in Germany—provide the script for his shave; their song "Black Monk Time" becomes an acoustic manifesto against war and conformity. Even the punk movement of the Sex Pistols is critically examined: the skinny tie appears as an ironic "hangman's noose," the "No Future" as an ambivalent promise poised between nihilism and posturing.
Historically, the novel expands upon this aesthetic self-conception. In a lecture on Roman antiquity, the narrator learns that clothing not only reflected social order but also created it – the person It was both mask and status symbol. This insight confirms his conviction that a new look can bring forth a new person. Particularly formative is the discovery of the "Fanfarons" in 17th-century Avignon: Jewish youths transformed the yellow hat imposed upon them into a fashionable symbol, the "Lou Capéou." A stigma became distinction. For the narrator, the Mods thus become symbolic descendants of these early style rebels.
Ultimately, all of this coalesces into a poetics of self-assembly. The numerous references—from literary classics to rock icons—form a dense network that transforms the seemingly banal act of dressing into an existential practice. The novel concludes with a list of "inspirations," thus making it clear that the narrator's self is composed of texts, sounds, and fabrics. Intertextuality here is a technique of self-creation: one becomes what one reads, hears, and wears.
Baudelaire and Mod
L'arbitre des élégances était un homme de rien, il s'habillait d'un rien, il ne disait rien ou presque rien. Et pour enfoncer le clou, il ne faisait rien ou vraiment pas grand-chose de sa vie. Il se contentait d'être lui-même, c'est-à-dire personne. Brummell is the opposite of an eccentricity. À l'excentrique, l'outrage au bon goût, l'excès, la Folie, la surcharge ; à Brummell la sobriété, l'épure, l'ascèse, l'absence de style comme style ultime. There is no distinct element in this part of this mania de râper ses clothing avant de les porter. Homme de l'effacement, pourvoyeur de signes vides. Brummell tends to be invisible. Personne n'a de prize sur le rien.
The arbiter of elegance was a man of nothing; he dressed in nothing, he said nothing, or almost nothing. And to top it all off, he did nothing, or really very little, in his life. He was content to be himself, that is to say, nobody. Brummell was the very antithesis of an eccentric. The eccentric, the affront to good taste, the exaggeration, the madness, the excess; Brummell, on the other hand, was sobriety, simplicity, asceticism, the absence of style as the ultimate style. The only thing that distinguished him was his mania for rubbing his clothes before wearing them. A man of restraint, a purveyor of empty signs. Brummell strove for invisibility. Nobody has any influence over nothingness.
Here, the philosophical counterpart to the flamboyant Mod aesthetic is introduced: the dandyism of invisibility. While the Mods stand out through color, Brummell seeks perfection in the inconspicuous. This is of central importance to the novel, as it foreshadows the protagonist's ultimate goal: at the end of the book, he wants to be "sublime and ridiculous," but in such a way that no one sees him. Brummell provides the theoretical foundation for the transformation of the self into an "empty" yet perfectly formed work of art. He appears as an ascetic saint of form, as the embodiment of a "beauty of nothingness" that aims for complete invisibility. For the narrator, who experiences himself as "nobody," Brummell becomes a projection model for a controlled self-dissolution. In contrast, there is Charles Baudelaire, whose "habit noir" becomes a mythical relic in the novel. The black suit transforms the everyday into a symbol of aesthetic and political distinction. By acquiring this garment, the narrator stages his symbolic metamorphosis: from a disoriented boy to a self-confident poet.
The final metamorphosis doesn't occur in the Mod style, but rather in the identity of a poet, sealed by the acquisition of the habit noir. The narrator trades a rare soul record for this garment, supposedly belonging to Charles Baudelaire, and finds in it his ultimate purpose beyond mere fashion. The tailcoat becomes his "prison and his signature," as he wears it permanently to embody an absolute, albeit invisible to others, elegance in a world of triviality. In the end, the protagonist is no longer just a boy learning how to dress, but an artist who understands life as an aesthetic project.
The narrator's metamorphosis culminates in the fusion of fashion and poetry. The black tailcoat becomes a symbol of the "beauty of obliteration" and the search for a style that is both absolute and invisible. In the end, the narrator is no longer just a boy learning how to dress, but an artist who understands life as an aesthetic project that finds its fulfillment in silence and the "round point" of existence.
The Mod clothing in the novel appears as a consistent literary continuation of Charles Baudelaire's theory of modernity. It is not superficial vanity, but an instrument of conscious self-creation. At the beginning, the narrator is in a state of raw, unformed "nature": unwashed, apathetic, in a tracksuit reduced to pajamas, he describes himself as "loque," a wreck. This state corresponds precisely to the formless naturalness that Baudelaire despises. Entering Mod culture therefore marks a radical shift—away from passive existence, toward calculation, discipline, and artificiality. When Joe speaks of the "demon of appearances" to which he has sworn allegiance, fashion becomes an ascetic exercise against indolence and decay.
The Mods' strict rules—no denim, no sloppiness, complete elegance even in the heat—embody this struggle against nature. Clothing becomes a daily exercise in self-mastery. The ideal is not to appear comfortable or authentic, but controlled and precise. This is precisely where the connection to Baudelaire's "In Praise of Makeup" lies: all that is noble arises against nature, not from it. The suit replaces the chaos of the body with line, structure, and form. The depressed body is transformed into a silhouette that provides support.
At the same time, the novel follows Baudelaire's concept of beauty as a union of eternity and transience. The Mods seek the "stamp of the present" by reconstructing the aesthetics of the 1960s in 1990s Avignon. The past is updated, the ephemeral preserved. The obsession with details—a trouser cuff of exactly 17,5 centimeters, the precisely drawn "French line" in the hair—reveals the hunt for the fleeting moment that could vanish in an instant. Beauty exists only in its enactment. A costume in a museum remains lifeless; only on the body does it gain meaning. Fashion is not an object, but an event.
In this practice, the dandy no longer appears as an aristocratic figure of the 19th century, but as a working-class figure with aristocratic aspirations. The motto of always being better dressed than one's boss is an act of symbolic reversal of social hierarchies. Elegance becomes a moral category: a fashion faux pas is considered a transgression. Like George Brummell, the narrator strives for a perfection that paradoxically leads to invisibility—a controlled self-dissolution in its purest form. Distinction arises not from eccentricity, but from flawless precision.
Ensuite Charles decided to pour the black habit. A drôle d'idée. Car il faut bien avoir à l'esprit ce que représente l'Habit noir à this époque. Les dandys l'associent au conformisme bourgeois. Mais, in the tête of Baudelaire, the s'agit d'être original in the plus banal tenues. The world's habit is an element of distinction. Associate 'beauté poétique' and 'beauté politique'. Baudelaire has an infernal watch, the sky is clear, he controls the movement of the gestures just like in these fins: a sobre jacket, simple, without éclat, not ostentatious, in a parable coupe, taillee in a linge comfortable. A pure line, just a trait.
Then Charles decides on the black suit. A strange idea. Because one has to consider what the black suit represented at that time. The dandies associated it with bourgeois conformity. But in Baudelaire's mind, it was about being original in the most banal clothing. He wanted to make everyone's clothing an element of distinction. To unite "poetic beauty" and "political beauty." Baudelaire proves relentless; he doesn't give in, he controls his every move until he achieves his goal: a simple, understated, unpretentious jacket with a perfect cut, made of comfortable fabric. A clean line, just one stroke.
At the heart of this aesthetic is the "habit noir," that black tailcoat imagined as a relic of Baudelaire. It embodies the paradox of achieving the highest originality in the most banal of all outfits. The black suit is everyone's attire—and precisely for that reason, it lends itself to subtle differentiation. By exchanging his most treasured soul record for this tailcoat, the narrator symbolically chooses against merely playing music and for a poetic existence. The tailcoat becomes a signature, but also an obligation: it binds him to an ideal that demands discipline.
In the novel, mod clothing becomes the medium of an existential strategy. Against the "anonymity of the zones," the narrator sets the heroic gesture of form. Artificiality here is not deception, but salvation. By dressing himself, he rewrites himself. Fashion becomes the poetics of the body—and the practical realization of Baudelaire's concept of modernity in the present day.
The path to becoming a poet
The ending of Cyrille Martinez's CHG stages a final metamorphosis: the listless, apathetic boy becomes a self-proclaimed poet. This transformation is not psychological, but ritualistic—a transaction that resembles a modern myth. The narrator offers Walter, the Mods' "genius," an extremely rare soul single: Darrell Banks' "Open the Door to Your Heart." The record, supposedly once acquired for a euro by Lemmy Kilmister at a flea market in Avignon, is the ultimate fetish object of the subculture. In return, he demands the highest symbol of poetic authority.
This exchange is a conscious life choice. Walter wants to make a career with the record, to rise to number one as a DJ, to triumph within the subculture. The narrator, however, makes a break: "I'd rather become a poet than a DJ." With this sentence, he abandons the logic of collecting, playing, and rating, and chooses a way of life based on language, not sound. The circle closes back to the beginning of the novel—back then, his brother read him poems while he lay powerless in bed. Now he appropriates this poetic sphere as his own destiny.
In Baudelaire's theory, the black tailcoat is the most banal of all outfits—precisely for this reason, it lends itself to the highest distinction. It combines poetic and political beauty: anyone can wear it, but not everyone can imbue it with meaning. For the narrator, the tailcoat becomes a "signature and a prison." He wears it constantly, even on rainy Sundays at home. The garment obliterates individuality, rendering him "imperceptible, impersonal, without gender and without country." Visibility here arises through calculated disappearance.
In this gesture, the novel also takes up the quoted ideal of George Brummell, who strove to be "nobody." The longed-for identity is not expressive self-realization, but a form of aesthetic obliteration. The narrator plans to stroll around his beloved roundabout, appearing "sublime and ridiculous"—knowing that no one will notice him. This is precisely where the perfection of the Mod ideal lies: in the perfect detail that exists even if it goes unnoticed. Greatness is not manifested in applause, but in inner formal rigor.
At the same time, the ending undermines any naive interpretation. The story of the flea market find and of Lemmy Kilmister has the hallmarks of a legend, perhaps even a hallucination. Equally mythical is the claim that the tailcoat actually belonged to Baudelaire. Reality and fiction merge completely. Objects—the record and the tailcoat—form the material anchors of a self-created mythology. The protagonist's life is now a staged narrative in which style possesses more truth than verifiable facts.
In the end, appearance triumphs over reality—not as deception, but as a chosen form of existence. The narrator is "empty of himself," but this emptiness signifies not loss, but liberation. Through the tailcoat, he has found an absolute form that simultaneously protects and binds him. As a poet, he henceforth exists in the world without surrendering to it: visible in the garment, invisible as a person.
This article is written in German and can be found at https://rentree.de. Automatic translations into English and French are available. English, French.
