Claude Esteban’s Followers (6)

Claude Esteban

Born

in Paris, France

July 26, 1935

Died

April 10, 2006

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Of Spanish father and French mother, divided between two idioms, Claude Esteban was marked by the painful feeling of a division and an exile in the language, which was at the source of his poetic vocation. He recalled this experiment in Le Partage des mots (The Division of Words), a kind of autobiographical essay about language and the impossible bilingualism, which led him to poetry and to the choice of French as his poetic language. Dominated by this feeling of a "partage", he had as a concern for "gathering the scattered", exceeding separations, and thus joining together poetry and painting, translating foreign poetries into French, writing to find an immediate bond between oneself and the sensitive world.

He was a contributor to the Merc Of Spanish father and French mother, divided between two idioms, Claude Esteban was marked by the painful feeling of a division and an exile in the language, which was at the source of his poetic vocation. He recalled this experiment in Le Partage des mots (The Division of Words), a kind of autobiographical essay about language and the impossible bilingualism, which led him to poetry and to the choice of French as his poetic language. Dominated by this feeling of a "partage", he had as a concern for "gathering the scattered", exceeding separations, and thus joining together poetry and painting, translating foreign poetries into French, writing to find an immediate bond between oneself and the sensitive world.

He was a contributor to the Mercure de France from 1964, then to the Nouvelle Revue Française, in which he wrote many articles on poets and painters. In 1973, he founded the literary magazine Argile, at Maeght, with the moral support of René Char: its twenty-four issues testified to the complicity between poetry and painting, while granting a new space to translated foreign poetry. He also dedicated a monograph to Chillida, and to Palazuelo, and wrote prefaces for many exhibitions catalogs of painters such as Raoul Ubac, Vieira da Silva, Arpad Szenes, Fermín Aguayo, Giorgio Morandi, Josef Sima, Bacon, Giacometti, Braque, Le Brocquy, Chagall, etc. (Most of these texts were published again in volumes, see infra).

In 1968, he published his first book of poems, La Saison dévastée (The Season of Davastation), quickly followed by other books made with artists such as Arpad Szenes, Jean Bazaine and Raoul Ubac. These books were gathered in his first large collection of poems, published by Flammarion in 1979, Terres, travaux du cœur (Earthes, works of heart). At the same time, he published Un lieu hors de tout lieu (A Place out of any Place), an essay on poetry which, starting from the initial evocation of Virgil's Georgics, builts a reflection on poetry and a manifesto for new poetics, marked by the nostalgia of "a place out of any place" and by "a duty to seek" [1] a new "conjuncture" between words and things.

He very early on experienced a deep admiration for the work of the great Spanish poet Jorge Guillén; they became friends, and he translated in 1977 most of Guillén's major book, Cántico for Éditions Gallimard — Guillén himself translated into Spanish some of Esteban's poems, which he inserted in his last book, Final (1982). Esteban also translated many Octavio Paz's works, such as El Mono gramático (The Monkey Grammarian). In 1980, under the title of Poèmes parallèles, he published an anthology of his translations, of which the preface, "Traduire", sets down the principles of an original reflection on poetics and on the translation of poetry. In 1987, he collected his essays on poetry and poetics in Critique de la raison poétique (Critique of Poetic Reason).

In 1984, he received the Mallarmé prize for the prose poems of Conjoncture du corps et du jardin (Conjuncture of Body and Garden). The same year, he founded the Poésie collection at the Editions Flammarion, in which he published a new generation of poets.

In 1989, three years after the death of his wife —the painter Denise Esteban—, he wrote Elégie de la mort violente (Elegy of the Violent Death), poems about mourning and memory. In 1993, he wrote Sept jours d'hier (Seven Days of yesterday), a remarkable suite of dense short poems that follow the "routes of mourning" and opens up the way of an appeasement. Deeply marked by the figure of King Lear, he published in 1996 Sur la dernière lande (On the last Heath), poems of wandering that evoke the figures of Shakespeare's tragedy. The year after, the Société des gens de lettres (SGDL) awarded him the Grand Prix of poetry for his whole work.

Painting remained for him a major interest. In 1991, he received the France Culture Prize for Soleil dans une pièce vide (Sun in an empty Room), poetic narrations insp ...more

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Claude Esteban’s books

Average rating: 3.92 · 92 ratings · 11 reviews · 62 distinct works

	Tomo I: de Munich a Pearl Harbor (Gran Crónica de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, #1) 4.42 avg rating — 24 ratings — published 1965 — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Grande Crónica da Segunda Guerra Mundial - Vol. II - De Pearl Harbor a Estalinegrado by Claude Esteban, Anka Muhlstein 4.30 avg rating — 10 ratings — published 1978 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Grande Crónica da Segunda Guerra Mundial - Vol. III - De Estalinegrado a Hiroshima by Claude Esteban, Anka Muhlstein 4.25 avg rating — 8 ratings — published 1978 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	على ضفة الفراغ كنت أنتظر by Claude Esteban, اسكندر حبش (Translator) 2.75 avg rating — 12 ratings — published 2015	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Conjuncture of Body and Garden: Cosmogony (Modern Poets in Translation, Vol. 4) by Claude Esteban, Kosrof Chantikian (Series Editor), James Phillips (Translator) 4.20 avg rating — 5 ratings — published 1987 — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Transparent God (Modern Poets in Translation, Vol. 2) (French and English Edition) 4.75 avg rating — 4 ratings — published 1982 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Morceaux de ciel, presque rien 4.33 avg rating — 3 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Crónica de una herida 3.67 avg rating — 3 ratings — published 2007	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Sabahın Basamaklarında by Claude Esteban, Gülten Akın (Translator), Cevat Çapan (Translator) 4.50 avg rating — 2 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Grootboek van de Tweede Wereldoorlog... 3.50 avg rating — 2 ratings — published 1975	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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Quotes by Claude Esteban (?)

“Someone, and no matter where, collects the pieces of my shadow.”
― Claude Esteban

6 likes

“Someone, and no matter who, inhabits my head like it’s an empty house, he enters, he leaves, he bangs each door behind him, powerless I put up with this ruckus. Someone, and maybe it’s me, palms my most private thoughts, he crumples them, returns them to dust. Someone, and it’s much later now, slowly walks across the room and, not seeing me, stops to contemplate the havoc. Someone, and no matter where, collects the pieces of my shadow.”
― Claude Esteban

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“One gave oneself time, one
lost oneself, one followed

the sun, one fell asleep so often
on a bed of straw,

and now, how fresh is
the memory of wind

one might say that the rain hissed
a long silence

and it was as if in the evening
gods were born

but so small
that the birds pecked them like grain.”
― Claude Esteban

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Claude Esteban’s Followers (6)

Claude Esteban

Combine EditionsClaude Esteban’s books

Combine Editions
Claude Esteban’s books