Yves Bonnefoy, Selected Prose Works in Translation

517 Pages·2017·15.06 MB·English

by  Susanna Lang

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Master's Theses Theses and Dissertations
1982
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Susanna Lang
Loyola University Chicago
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Copyright © 1982 Susanna Lang
YVES BONNEFOY: SELECTED PROSE WORKS
IN TRANSLATION
By
Susanna Lang
A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School
of Loyola University of Chicago in Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements for the Degree of
Master of Arts
December
1982
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
-
Dr. Andrew J. McKenna, who directed my thesis,
and Dr. Anne M. Callahan, my second reader, have both
been enormously supportive throughout my degree program
and especially as I struggled with this translation.
The ::;roject was initially conceived by the University
of Chicago Press, who hope to get a book out of it,
and would not have been ppssible without the cooperation
of Yves Bonnefoy. I would also like to thank Richard
Vernier for his encouragement and my husband, Henry C.
Ricks, for long hours spent checking the accuracy of
translations and notes.
ii
PREFACE: A POET'S PROSE
"If there is a poetry today that speaks for us
all, in the center of all, speaking with a single voice,
born of itself, solitary in the space which it opens.
!! So Gaetan Picon opens a moving tribute to Yves
Bonnefoy in the issue of L'Arc dedicated to Bonnefoy's
wrl• t•l ng. 1 Picon is not alone in feeling an adherence
to Bonnefoy's words, or in feeling that Yves Bonnefoy
speaks for us, for what we would like to believe.
There is no other writing, no voice, among
those we know today, which bears to this
degree the personal mark of the man who speaks
to us. No one offers himself as faithfully as
Yves Bonnefoy, in the service of his own be
liefs. Reread his prose ••••
2
This is Jean Starobinski, again in L'Arc. Yet, as
Picon noted, Bonnefoy's voice is solitary. It is in
fact difficult to define his position in contemporary
French literature. Though he has published consistently
1 /
"S'il est aujourd'hui une poesie • ,"in
L'Arc (Aix-en-Provence), 66 (1976), p. 41. [All trans
lations are my own unless otherwise noted. S.A.L.]
2nLa prose du voyage," also in L'Arc, 66, p. 3.
iii
in the same reviews, beside others who are concerned,
perhaps, with similar issues; though he has gathered
around himself a group of young poets who will always
bear his mark as he bears the mark of his early associ-
ation with Breton and Surrealism; still he cannot be
located by reference to-any known "school," literary or
philosophical.
Today his concerns are current in this country
as well. American scholars are increasingly interested
in French answers to familiar questions. Can art over-
come the sense of loss we have inherited from Romantic-
ism? Can writing restore human meaning to a world
~n
which we feel isolated? Or does writing itself estrange
us from our world and even from our lives? Yves Bonne-
foy is more optimistic than Jacques Derrida, for example,
whose writings question presence, being, ontology--the
1ca tegories" which allowed Bonnefoy to move beyond
'
3
Surrealism. But their voices are raised in the same
debate. With his early training in philosophy, and his
extensive reading in Platonic and Heideggerian thought,
Bonnefoy's approach to questions which have traditionally
been in the domain of philosophy is sophisticated, if
unorthodox.
3
"rnterview with John E. Jackson," p. 394 below.
iv
starobinski tells us to reread Bonnefoy's
prose. Richard Vernier has also reminded us of the
essential unity of "a work which constantly progresses
along several paths, paths which are parallel but always
within call of each other, within range of the echoes
4
which reverberate endlessly." We have already admitted
the difficulty of placing Yves Bonnefoy within what
5
Vernier hesitantly calls "the poetic horizon"; but what
is the place of prose in this poet's oeuvre? How should
we approach this particular selection of works in prose?
Are these texts no more than the scattered thoughts of
a sensitive, cultured individual who is faced with the
same world we face, of a craftsman who may find the
right words to express the misgivings we all share,
or our sense of wonder before the illuminated facade
)
of a church, the faded canvas of a master? Or is Bonne-
foy's prose of interest, above all, to those who study
his poetry: is it the clue which will bring his verse
within our grasp? What exactly is the nature of the
"echoes" Vernier evokes so convincingly?
4
"Dans la certitude du seuil: "Yves Bonnefoy,
"
aujourd'hui in Stanford French Review, 2:1 (Spring
4
1978)' p. 1 0.
5rbid., p. 146.
v
The selection of texts to be translated was
essentially made by the poet himself, and so a review of
his choices may help us to answer these questions. ·In
January of 1982, the University of Chicago Press asked me
to submit a proposal for a selection of Bonnefoy's
essays. :VJY initial proposal began with "Devotion," a
prose poem which "responds" to Rimbaud's "Devotion" in
6
Les Illuminations. First published at the close of an
early volume of essays,7 it has more recently been in-
eluded in the collected edition of Bonnefoy's poems.
As a lyrical dedication to the places and moments
which have been significant to Bonnefoy in his search
for meaning--many of which are the subjects for essays--
it seemed a fitting introduction to a collection of
essays written by a poet.
Following "Devotion," the first section of the
book consisted of theoretical works, discussing the
6
James Lawler, "Celebrating the Obscure," in
World Literature Today (Norman, Oklahoma), 53:3. (Summer
1979)' p. 405.
7L'improbable (1959). For all references to
Yves Bonnefoy's works, cf. the Selected Bibliography
appended to this collection.
vi
8
principles of artistic creation. The second section
was devoted to Baudelaire and Mallarme, guardian angels
with whom the contemporary poet has maintained a con
9
stant dialogue. The last group of essays applied the
principles developed in the theoretical works and tested
against the two great predecessors to interpret the art
1
and writing of several twentieth-century figures. 0
Finally, the volume was to have concluded with a lyrical
essay written out of the poet's personal experience, so
that the collection would have opened and closed under
11
the sign of poetry, if still in prose.
8
The five theoretical essays were: "L'acte et
le lieu de la ~oesie" (1959), "Sur la peinture et le
lieu" (1961), 'La poesie fran~aise et le principe ·
d' identi te" ( 1965), "Peinture; poesie: vertige, paix"
(1975) and "Terre seconde" (1976). All but the first
and third were retained in the final list.
9
The second section: "Les Fleurs du Mal" (1955),
"Baudelaire parlant ~ Mallarme" (1967), "La poetique de
Mallarme" (1976), and "Baudelaire contre Rubens" (1977).
None of these texts appears in the final selection.
10
The third section: "Dans la lumiere d' octobre,"
preface to Seferis' poems (1963); two essays on the art
of Raoul Ubac, a friend and collaborator since the days
of Surrealism (''Des fruits montant de 11 abime" from 1964
and "Proximite du visage" from 1966); "L'etranger de
Giacometti" (1967); "L'obstination de Chestov" (1967);
"Pierre Jean Jouve" (1972); and "Quelques notes sur
Mondrian" (1977). None of these texts appears in the
final selection.
11
"sept feux (1967), now the opening text of this
selection.
vii
Bonnefoy refused this first proposal as uncharac-
teristic of his work, and as too allusive for an American
audience. His letter all but designed the book I have
translated:
so it is better to concentrate on an aspect of
my essays .••• Evidently, it must be those
which touch on the places and even on my life.
. . .
The most important of these texts is The Back
country •••• To that would be added Seven Flres
and all of Cross Street. To tell the truth,
these are not ''essays" in the sense that the
University of Chicago Press may understand this
word. • • • We would also have to add The Tombs
of Ravenna, Byzantium, Of Painting and the Place,
The Second Simplicity, Humor and the Cast
Shadows, A Dream in Mantua, Second Earth. This
would make for a very coherent cook, to which
could be added, if necessary, a few real essays
(Painting, Poetry: Vertigo, Peace, the pages on
h8.iku, and the three Remarks' on Color, or perhaps
even The Origin of Language). From the perspec
tive of references and allusions, this book
would be perfectly accessible to an American
reader. It would certainly be my most character
istic book, except for the Poems (where we must
leave Devotion).l2
Well aware that this selection was not really a selection
of essays, as an academic press would understand this
word, Bonnefoy focused his book on The Back Country, an
autobiographical account of the poet 1's search--through
12
Letter to Susanna Lang, February 8, 1982. Not
included in the final selection are the "pages on haiku"
("La fleur double, la sente etroite: la nuee" from
1972) and the Trois remarques sur la couleur (1977). I
added the recently published discussions with Bernard
Falciola and with John E. Jackson.
viii
rtaly, Italian art and his own writing--for a possible
meaning; on "seven Fires," a sequence of dreams which
fade into childhood memories and return to dream; arid
on cross street, a book of prose poems. As an after
thought, he suggested adding four "real essays," includ
ing the introduction to an exhibit of works by Claude
Garache, a discussion of haiku--and two more series of
poems!
Clearly the question of genre is subordinate,
for Bonnefoy, to other considerations. He demanded,
above all, that the book be coherent and characteristic.
Coherence has been a persistent concern of his: in 1972,
he told Bernard Falciola that he does not write poems,
"that is to say, brief texts, isolated and even rein
forced, often, in their particularity, and one could
well say in their difference, by the presence of a title."
Rather, the books he writes "form a whole in which each
1
text is only a fragment •••• " 3 As we will see, each
book, whether poetry or prose, recounts a stage in a
continuing journey; and as a journey has a first step
and a goal if not an end, so each day's progress begins
and comes to rest.
13
Cf. p. 253 below.
ix