Yves Bonnefoy Book order

Focusing on childhood memories and familial relationships, the book presents Yves Bonnefoy's poignant reflections on his father's silence and the melancholy of his parents' marriage. Written as a commemoration shortly before his death, it intertwines fragments from 1964 with his experiences as a solitary boy in Auvergne and Tours. The narrative centers on the lives of his parents, Elie and Hélÿne, offering a deeply personal exploration of memory and anxiety, making it an essential read for those interested in introspective literature.

Yves Bonnefoy's final poetic work, a collection of reflections about poetry, legacy, and life. The international community of letters mourned the recent death of Yves Bonnefoy, universally acclaimed as one of France's greatest poets of the last half-century. A prolific author, he was often considered a candidate for the Nobel Prize and published a dozen major collections of poetry in verse and prose, several books of dream-like tales, and numerous studies of literature and art. His oeuvre has been translated into scores of languages, and he himself was a celebrated translator of Shakespeare, Yeats, Keats, and Leopardi. Together Still is his final poetic work, composed just months before his death. The book is nothing short of a literary testament, addressed to his wife, his daughter, his friends, and his readers throughout the world. In these pages, he ruminates on his legacy to future generations, his insistence on living in the present, his belief in the triumphant lessons of beauty, and, above all, his courageous identification of poetry with hope.

Pisać, wystarczy jedno słowo, a już pojawia się i pracuje język, a wraz z nim nieścisłości, pułapki cała przeszłość mowy. Dla pisarza nie ma nic bezpośredniego, nawet jeśli jest wyczulony na to, co nie posiada jeszcze nazwy ani określonego kształtu. Intuicyjnie rozpoznaje odmienną jakość prawdy, która tkwi w kwitnącej gałązce albo w toczącym się po dnie wąwozu kamieniu. Jednakże próba odtworzenia w słowach nieskończonej gęstości lub kompletnej pustki jest od początku szaleńczym pragnieniem, z którego strona po stronie musi rezygnować żywiąca się takimi doświadczeniami poezja. Jeszcze dziś niektórzy malują w ten sposób: wychodząc od kolorów, które na płótnie rozpraszają nasze wspomnienia i przekraczają znaczenie. Takie malarstwo jest tylko sobą: wydaje się, że kurtyna została rozdarta i mamy dostęp do bezpośredniego doświadczenia.

An intensely personal and profoundly moving review of Bonnefoy's childhood memories. In December 2015, six months before his death at the age of 93, Yves Bonnefoy concluded what was to be his last major text in prose, L'écharpe rouge, translated here as The Red Scarf. In this unique book, described by the poet as "an anamnesis"--a formal act of commemoration--Bonnefoy undertakes, at the end of his life, a profoundly moving exegesis of some fragments written in 1964. These fragments lead him back to an unspoken, lifelong anxiety: "My most troubling memory, when I was between ten and twelve years old, concerns my father, and my anxiety about his silence." Bonnefoy offers an anatomy of his father's silence, and of the melancholy that seemed to take hold some years into his marriage to the poet's mother. At the heart of this book is the ballad of Elie and Hélène, the poet's parents. It is the story of their lives together in the Auvergne, and later in Tours, seen through the eyes of their son--the solitary boy's intense but inchoate experience, reviewed through memories of the now elderly man. What makes The Red Scarf indispensable is the intensely personal nature of the material, casting its slant light, a setting sun, on all that has gone before.

Following on from 2017's celebrated Poems, this is a wide-ranging selection of Bonnefoy's essays on literature, art and life.

Yves Bonnefoys wunderbare Kindheitsgeschichte und ein großes Buch über die Poesie

Eines Tages stößt Yves Bonnefoy in seinen Papieren auf ein unvollendetes Gedicht-Manuskript, „Der rote Schal“. Er beschließt, es zu vernichten. Doch jetzt, ein halbes Jahrhundert nach der Niederschrift, entdeckt er in diesem Gedicht verschüttete Erinnerungen: an die ländlichen Orte seiner Kindheit, Vater und Mutter, an den „Roten Sand“, den Abenteuerroman aus einer geheimnisvollen Wüste, an „La Révolution la nuit, das berühmte Bild von Max Ernst. Er will herausfinden, was ihn angetrieben hat sein ganzes langes Leben. Daher kommt die Dringlichkeit im letzten Buch des über Neunzigjährigen: „Es ist Zeit, jetzt, höchste Zeit, dass ich mir die wirklichen Fragen stelle.“ Entstanden ist ein großes Buch über das Schreiben und eine der schönsten Kindheitsgeschichten der französischen Literatur.

'Po esie et photographie' was originally delivered as the Lezione Sapegno for 2009 at the University of Val d'Aoste, The text of that lecture was subsequently published by Nino Aragno of Turin, Italy. The present version is a greatly amended and developed version of the original lecture, which it supersedes.--Page [vi].

The definitive reader for one of the greatest living French poets and translators.