| Summary: | Eighteenth-century performances of verse reading were the subject of written reports by contemporary authors attempting to immortalize and share those sublime moments. However, can the oral material be rendered through writing only, while the reader’s stage presence and action must remain elusive? Is there an optimal way to “put on the air” (Jacques Wagner) the written word in order to make the poetic performance heard? Among the amateurs of such performances, many have tried to write down their experiences by proposing a refined analysis of the reader’s voice, its timbre, its ambitus, or its vocal power. Some, like Grétry, went so far as to convert the experience of poetic reading into musical notation accompanied by prose comments. Others preferred to set up strategies of compensation or detour. Accepting the limitations of written language when it attempts to account for the spoken voice, some opted for the citation of fragments they had heard. Wouldn’t it be better, however, to sacrifice an objective account and allow the language to unfold its poetic power in order to render not only the letter of the performance but the spirit? This was the choice made by some writers who decided to move the narrative towards the reception of the reading aloud: they propose a vivid description of the community seized by emotion, paradoxically giving to hear what is properly immaterial and ephemeral in the poetic performance.
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