Yves Bonnefoy

Biography

The father of Yves Bonnefoy is workman-assembler with the workshops of the railroads Paris-Orleans, and his/her mother is nurse, it will become later teacher. He has an older sister, fore-mentioned Suzanne. Young person, Bonnefoy passes to Tours dull years, during which it goes often on vacation to Toirac, in the Lot, in his/her maternal grandparents; place which it described as place of exile: the true place . In 1936, the death of his/her father upsets his life deeply. It is then 13 years old, and, from now on, it will not go on vacation any more in Toirac, but will remain at his place to study. It carries out its secondary studies with the college Descartes de Tours, passes a baccalaureat of mathematics and philosophy, then is registered in preparatory classes with Tours (mathematical higher and mathematical special). It begins higher learning of mathematics to the Université of Poitiers, then with the Université of Paris, where it settles in 1944. Since this date, it accomplishes many voyages, in the Mediterranean and America.

From 1943 to 1953, it gives up the study of mathematics, to devote itself to the Poésie, philosophy and the Histoire of art. It binds first of all to the Surréalisme, having read the Petite anthology of surrealism of Georges Hugnet, and after its meeting with Christian Dotremont, before being detached some in 1947, criticizing the exemption from payment of imaginary surrealist. In addition to surrealism, its principal influences are Charles Baudelaire, Arthur Rimbaud, Stephan Mallarmé and Gerard de Nerval, which achieved according to him the true poetic revolution of our modernity .

In addition, Yves Bonnefoy is the author of many translations (mainly English), in particular of Shakespeare. Since 1960, it is invited by many universities, Frenchwomen and foreign, and, in 1981, it is named with the pulpit of Comparative studies of the poetic function with the Collège de France, where it teaches until 1993. Its collection the curved Boards , appeared in 2001, is regarded as a chief of work; three of the sections of this collection appear in the program of the courses of literature of the classes of Terminale arts person for the school years 2005-2006 and 2006-2007: In the lure of the words , the Native house and the curved Boards , section in prose (that the author qualifies “account in dream”) which gave its name to the collection. Yves Bonnefoy received the Prix Kafka with Prague the October 30th 2007.

Comments on work

The Presence

Bonnefoy is regarded as one poet of the place and the presence , to the sides of Andre of Bouchet and Philippe Jaccottet, enter others. The Presence is, according to him, the immediate, pure and plain experiment of the world, such that which with the child, who is not corrupted yet by the Langage ( infans , in Latin, means which does not speak ). Indeed, Yves Bonnefoy fights the concept and the abstraction which separate according to him the men from the Réalité and of the sensitive one. He is opposed to Plato and his theory of the world of the Ideas: things from here heavier in the head of the man than the perfect Ideas by posing the theory which the concept is an obstacle which prevents us from seeing the true face of the being. The words and the language using the concept and breaking the unit of our perception of the world, they betray what they are supposed to express: Bonnefoy thus regards them as lures , of lies . The language is our fall, and it is its use even which is the cause of the anguish, i.e. as well of the violence, which crosses the human history .

Poetry makes it possible according to him to give up our usual Rationalité and with the concept, it only can thus bring us closer and make us foresee the Presence. The ambiguity of the thesis of the poet is that poetry itself is built on the words. Perhaps is it thus only about the illusory one still/we redraw under other iridescent features/But of the same misleading glare/the form and the shades which are tightened? , perhaps poetry does not make it possible it to reconquer the presence. Bonnefoy admits this assumption in its collection the curved boards , where it appears clearly that, if it doubts capacity of its poetry, it carries in this one a great hope. He writes in 1959, I would like to join together, I would like to identify almost, poetry and the hope , because to write poetry, it is to return the world to the face of its presence .

Style

That poetry lends itself to the role to make reach the reader threshold of the Presence suppose conditions. The Common noun, too general and conceptual, is an obstacle with the presence. To avoid the lure of the words, it is necessary that those are used in poetry with the manner of the proper names or even like Prénom S. For him, the relations of sonorities, to rates/rhythms, bring closer the words to a way which preserves their material quality the reports/ratios which proceeded of the concept are erased . The surrealist influence gives to the poems of Bonnefoy a not very traditional Syntaxe, characterized by many ellipses and inversions. One can also notice the use of the bracket, which frames sometimes several stanzas or most of the poem. The majority of the poems are short or enough courts. All these elements contribute to the feeling of presence: the poem is Difficulty and Nunc , here and now…

Works

Poetry, accounts

Treated of the pianist (1946)
Of the movement and the immobility of Ditch (1953)
Yesterday reigning deserted (1958)
Anti-Plato (1953)
Pierre written (1965)
the Back-country (1971)
In the lure of the threshold (1975)
Cross Street (1977)
Poems (1947-1975) (1978)
Talks on poetry (1980)
What was without light (1987)
Récits dreams (1987) of it
Début and end of snow , followed Where the arrow (1991) falls down
the wandering Life , followed Another time of the writing (1993)
Still the Blind man (1997)
Rain of summer (1999)
the Theater of the children (2001)
Heart-space (2001)
Boards curves (2001)

Tests

Murals of Gothic France (1954)
Drawing, color, light (1995)
Improbable the (1959)
Arthur Rimbaud (1961)
the Second Simplicity (1961)
a dream made with Mantoue (1967)
Rome, 1630: the horizon of the first baroque (1970), Price of Criticisms 1971
Ordalie (1975)
the red Cloud (1977)
Three remarks on the color (1977)
Improbable the , followed a dream made in Mantoue (1980)
the Presence and the image (inaugural lesson at the Collège de France) (1983)
the Truth on Word (1988)
On a sculptor and painters (1989)
Talks on poetry (1972-1990)
Alberto Giacometti, Biography of a work (1991)
Aléchinsky, the Crossings (1992)
Remarks on the drawing (1993)
Palézieux (1994), with Florian Rodari
the Truth of word (1995)
Drawing, color and light (1999)
the Day of Alexandre Hollan (1995)
Theater and poetry: Shakespeare and Yeats (1998)
Places and destinies of the image (1999)
the Community of the translators (2000)
Baudelaire: the temptation of the lapse of memory (2000)
the Teaching and the example of Leopardi (2001)
André Breton in front of oneself (2001)
Poetry and architecture (2001)
Under the horizon of the language (2002)
Remarks on the glance (2002)
Obsession of the ptyx (2003)
the Poet and “the flood driving of the multitudes” (2003)

the Name of the king d' Asiné (2003)

the Tree beyond the images, Alexandre Holan (2003)

Goya, Baudelaire and poetry , discussions with Jean Starobinski (2004)

Broken into leaf , with Gerard Titus-Carmel (2004)

the Sleep of anybody (2004)

Approvals and divisions , exposure of the Museum of the Art schools de Tours (2004)

Imaginary metaphysics (2006)

Goya, black paintings , ED. William Blake And Co, (2006)

What alarmed Paul Celan , Galileo, (2007)

Poetry with high voice , the Line of shade (2007) ISBN 978-2-9528603-0-7

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