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In the Shadow's Light
This bilingual edition of the contemporary master's fifth work, Ce qui fut sans lumi, re , will delight, engage, and stir all lovers of poetry. Included here is an extensive new interview with the poet in English translation.
"Included here is a very helpful and touchingly personal interview with the poet. . . . For readers with no prior knowledge of Bonnefoy's work, this volume would be an excellent place to start."—Stephen Romer, Times Literary Supplement
"Included here is a very helpful and touchingly personal interview with the poet. . . . For readers with no prior knowledge of Bonnefoy's work, this volume would be an excellent place to start."—Stephen Romer, Times Literary Supplement
190 pages, Paperback
First published February 26, 1990
55 people want to read
About the author
Yves Bonnefoy
297 books83 followersYves Bonnefoy (1923/6/24-2016/7/1) was a French poet and essayist. Bonnefoy was born in Tours, Indre-et-Loire, the son of a railroad worker and a teacher.
His works have been of great importance in post-war French literature, at the same time poetic and theoretical, examining the meaning of the spoken and written word. He also published a number of translations, most notably Shakespeare and published several works on art and art history, including Miró and Giacometti.
His works have been of great importance in post-war French literature, at the same time poetic and theoretical, examining the meaning of the spoken and written word. He also published a number of translations, most notably Shakespeare and published several works on art and art history, including Miró and Giacometti.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
September 5, 2022
In my dream, yesterday,
The grain of years past was burning in brief flames
The grain of years past was burning in brief flames
March 30, 2022
The bed, the window next to it, the valley, the sky,
The glorious swiftness of the clouds.
The sudden scratching of the rain at the window,
As though nothingness were signing the world.
In my dream, yesterday,
The grain of years past was burning in brief flames
On the tiles of the floor, but without heat.
Our bare feet divided its clear water.
O my beloved,
How slight the distance between our bodies then!
The blade of time's wandering sword
Would have sought out in vain a place to triumph.
January 25, 2022
We were looking at our trees from up
On the terrace we loved, the sun
Lingered near us this time as well,
But at a certain distance, a silent guest
In the doorway of the house in ruins,
Which we had left full of light to his power.
Look, I told you, he slides against the uneven,
Incomprehensible stone we lean upon
The shadow cast by our mingling shoulders,
And the one made by the almond trees close by;
And even the shadow of the tops of the walls that blends
With the others, riddled with holes, charred bark,
Drifting prow, like a surfeit of dream or smoke.
But the oak trees down there are motionless,
Even their shadow does not move, in the light,
These are the shores of Time, that flows
Here where we are,
And on this ground no one can land,
So fast is the current of hope pregnant with death.
For a whole hour we looked at the trees.
The sun tarried, among the stones,
Then felt compassion and stretched out
Towards them, down below in the ravine,
Our shadows, and they seemed to meet,
Just as, reaching out an arm, one can sometimes
Touch, in the distance between two people,
A moment of another person's endless dream.
* * *
Summer passed through the cool rooms, violent,
Its eyes blind, its flanks bare;
It cried out, and its call troubled the dreams
Of those sleeping there in the simplicity of their light.
The shuddered and the rhythm of their breathing changed.
Their hands put down the heavy cup of sleep.
And already the sky was again on the earth,
Bringing the afternoon storms of summer, in the eternal.
* * *
You hear the chain striking the wall
When the bucket goes down into the well, that other star,
Sometimes the evening star, the one that comes alone,
Sometimes the fire without rays that waits at dawn
For the shepherd and his flock to go out.
But the water at the bottom of the well is always closed,
And the star there remains forever sealed.
You can see shadows there, beneath branches,
That are travellers passing by night
Bowed down beneath a load of blackness they go
As if hesitating at a crossroads.
Some seem to wait, others withdraw
Into the glittering that flows without light.
Man's voyage, and woman's, is long longer that life,
It is a star at the end of the road, a sky
That was shining, we thought, between two trees.
When the bucket touches the water that lifts it up,
There is joy, then the chain overwhelms it.
* * *
It rained, during the night.
The path smells of wet grass,
Then, once again, the hand of the heat
On our shoulder, to say
That time will never take anything from us.
But look,
There where the field runs against the almond tree,
A beast of prey has sprung
From yesterday to today through the leaves.
And we stop, it is outside the world,
And I come toward you,
I finish tearing you from the blackened trunk,
Branch, lightning-struck summer
From which yesterday's sap flows, still divine.
* * *
Come, let me whisper to you of
A child I knew,
Separate as he was
From the others, motionless.
Mornings, he never joined
Those at play in the trees,
Adding worlds to worlds,
Nor would he run across the beach
Toward still more light.
Look, though, he has
Made his way at the base
Of the dunes - proof of it
Are these footprints between
The thistles and the sea.
And near them, you can see
That the water that reflects the sky
Is filling the larger footprints
Of an unknown woman going by.
* * *
It has come from further than the roads,
It has touched the meadow, the ochre of the flowers,
With the hand that writes in smoke,
It has vanquished time through silence.
More light this evening
Because of the snow.
You would think the leaves in front of the door were burning,
And there is water in the wood we bring in.
* * *
I
They say a god searched
Over sealed waters
Like a rapacious bird
Its distant prey
And with a raucous,
Solitary cry
Created Time that shines
In the hollows of the wave.
Night covers day
Then withdraws,
Its foam unfurls
Upon the stones close by.
What is God, if his
Only work is time,
Has he wanted to die
Not knowing birth?
In vain his battle
Against absence.
He threw out his net,
Absence held the sword.
II
But the lightning remains
Poised above the world
As though fording a stream
From stone to stone.
Has beauty been
Only a dream,
The face of the light
But with eyes closed?
No, since its reflection
Is in us: the flame
That bathes naked
In the dead wood's water.
It is the body exalted
By a mirror
As a fire catches, suddenly,
In a circle of stones.
And the world joy has meaning
In spite of death
There where the wind will stir
These burning embers.
III
Sufficient the days
That go toward dawn
In burst of light
In the night sky.
The sword, the net now
Make only a single
Hand, that clasps in peace
The fragile neck.
Illuminated, the soul is
Like a swimmer
Who plunges, all at once,
Beneath the light.
And his eyes are closed,
His body naked,
His mouth wants salt,
Not language.
* * *
He dreamed that he was opening his eyes onto suns
As they drew near the harbour; silent,
Without light, but mirrored in the gray water
By the shadow of a colour to be.
Then he awoke. What is light? And what does it mean
To paint here, in the night? To intensify
The blue we see, the ochre, all the reds,
Is this not death even more than before?
And so he painted the harbour, but in ruins,
You could hear the water lapping at beauty's flank
And children crying in closed rooms,
The stars sparkled among the stones.
But in his last painting, only a sketch,
It seems it is Psyche who has returned
And has collapsed in tears, or hums a tune,
In the tangled grasses of the castle of Love.
* * *
I
The child seemed to wander about at the top of the tree.
It was hard to make out the body, enveloped
In a fire, in a smoke, that the light would sometimes
Pierce, like an oar that is striking water.
He would climb up, then come down a little and stop.
He would rove among the pyramids
Of the land of the treetops whose flanks
Are still bathing in the sun's red light.
The child went along singing, dreaming his life.
Was he alone in his garden of palms?
They say that the sun sometimes lingers
For a night, in the harbour of a simple dream.
They also say that the sun is a bark
That crosses the summit of the sky each evening.
The dead are at the prow; they see the world
Endlessly duplicated by other stars.
II
Later, the child climbed down, passing from branch to branch
Through what seemed to us a starry sky.
Nothing made different, in the silence,
The blue summit of the trees of the worlds.
He was singing and laughing, he was naked,
His body was from before the time
When man and woman made themselves distinct so as to find,
With the cry of pleasure, a new hope as well.
He was song itself. The song that breaks off,
Sometimes, its foot feeling for something firm,
Then starts again and seems to speak to itself,
Like two voices at the prow of a drifting boat.
It is said that light is a child
Who plays, who dreams or sings, wanting nothing.
If it comes toward us, it is still just to play,
Touching the ground with a heedless foot, that would be dawn.
* * *
It is dawn. Has this lamp, then, finished
Its task of hope, hand placed
In the clouded mirror, on the fever
Of the one who kept watch, not knowing how to die?
But it is true that he has not put it out,
It still burns for him, in spite of the sky.
The seagulls screech their soul at your frost-covered
Window, morning sleeper, boat from another river.
On the terrace we loved, the sun
Lingered near us this time as well,
But at a certain distance, a silent guest
In the doorway of the house in ruins,
Which we had left full of light to his power.
Look, I told you, he slides against the uneven,
Incomprehensible stone we lean upon
The shadow cast by our mingling shoulders,
And the one made by the almond trees close by;
And even the shadow of the tops of the walls that blends
With the others, riddled with holes, charred bark,
Drifting prow, like a surfeit of dream or smoke.
But the oak trees down there are motionless,
Even their shadow does not move, in the light,
These are the shores of Time, that flows
Here where we are,
And on this ground no one can land,
So fast is the current of hope pregnant with death.
For a whole hour we looked at the trees.
The sun tarried, among the stones,
Then felt compassion and stretched out
Towards them, down below in the ravine,
Our shadows, and they seemed to meet,
Just as, reaching out an arm, one can sometimes
Touch, in the distance between two people,
A moment of another person's endless dream.
- The Trees, pg. 13
* * *
Summer passed through the cool rooms, violent,
Its eyes blind, its flanks bare;
It cried out, and its call troubled the dreams
Of those sleeping there in the simplicity of their light.
The shuddered and the rhythm of their breathing changed.
Their hands put down the heavy cup of sleep.
And already the sky was again on the earth,
Bringing the afternoon storms of summer, in the eternal.
- A Stone, pg. 25
* * *
You hear the chain striking the wall
When the bucket goes down into the well, that other star,
Sometimes the evening star, the one that comes alone,
Sometimes the fire without rays that waits at dawn
For the shepherd and his flock to go out.
But the water at the bottom of the well is always closed,
And the star there remains forever sealed.
You can see shadows there, beneath branches,
That are travellers passing by night
Bowed down beneath a load of blackness they go
As if hesitating at a crossroads.
Some seem to wait, others withdraw
Into the glittering that flows without light.
Man's voyage, and woman's, is long longer that life,
It is a star at the end of the road, a sky
That was shining, we thought, between two trees.
When the bucket touches the water that lifts it up,
There is joy, then the chain overwhelms it.
- The Well, pg. 39
* * *
It rained, during the night.
The path smells of wet grass,
Then, once again, the hand of the heat
On our shoulder, to say
That time will never take anything from us.
But look,
There where the field runs against the almond tree,
A beast of prey has sprung
From yesterday to today through the leaves.
And we stop, it is outside the world,
And I come toward you,
I finish tearing you from the blackened trunk,
Branch, lightning-struck summer
From which yesterday's sap flows, still divine.
- The Lightning, pg. 45
* * *
Come, let me whisper to you of
A child I knew,
Separate as he was
From the others, motionless.
Mornings, he never joined
Those at play in the trees,
Adding worlds to worlds,
Nor would he run across the beach
Toward still more light.
Look, though, he has
Made his way at the base
Of the dunes - proof of it
Are these footprints between
The thistles and the sea.
And near them, you can see
That the water that reflects the sky
Is filling the larger footprints
Of an unknown woman going by.
- A Stone, pg. 51
* * *
It has come from further than the roads,
It has touched the meadow, the ochre of the flowers,
With the hand that writes in smoke,
It has vanquished time through silence.
More light this evening
Because of the snow.
You would think the leaves in front of the door were burning,
And there is water in the wood we bring in.
- The Snow, pg. 63
* * *
I
They say a god searched
Over sealed waters
Like a rapacious bird
Its distant prey
And with a raucous,
Solitary cry
Created Time that shines
In the hollows of the wave.
Night covers day
Then withdraws,
Its foam unfurls
Upon the stones close by.
What is God, if his
Only work is time,
Has he wanted to die
Not knowing birth?
In vain his battle
Against absence.
He threw out his net,
Absence held the sword.
II
But the lightning remains
Poised above the world
As though fording a stream
From stone to stone.
Has beauty been
Only a dream,
The face of the light
But with eyes closed?
No, since its reflection
Is in us: the flame
That bathes naked
In the dead wood's water.
It is the body exalted
By a mirror
As a fire catches, suddenly,
In a circle of stones.
And the world joy has meaning
In spite of death
There where the wind will stir
These burning embers.
III
Sufficient the days
That go toward dawn
In burst of light
In the night sky.
The sword, the net now
Make only a single
Hand, that clasps in peace
The fragile neck.
Illuminated, the soul is
Like a swimmer
Who plunges, all at once,
Beneath the light.
And his eyes are closed,
His body naked,
His mouth wants salt,
Not language.
- There in the Hollows of the Wind, pg. 87-91
* * *
He dreamed that he was opening his eyes onto suns
As they drew near the harbour; silent,
Without light, but mirrored in the gray water
By the shadow of a colour to be.
Then he awoke. What is light? And what does it mean
To paint here, in the night? To intensify
The blue we see, the ochre, all the reds,
Is this not death even more than before?
And so he painted the harbour, but in ruins,
You could hear the water lapping at beauty's flank
And children crying in closed rooms,
The stars sparkled among the stones.
But in his last painting, only a sketch,
It seems it is Psyche who has returned
And has collapsed in tears, or hums a tune,
In the tangled grasses of the castle of Love.
- Psyche before the Castle of Love, pg. 103
* * *
I
The child seemed to wander about at the top of the tree.
It was hard to make out the body, enveloped
In a fire, in a smoke, that the light would sometimes
Pierce, like an oar that is striking water.
He would climb up, then come down a little and stop.
He would rove among the pyramids
Of the land of the treetops whose flanks
Are still bathing in the sun's red light.
The child went along singing, dreaming his life.
Was he alone in his garden of palms?
They say that the sun sometimes lingers
For a night, in the harbour of a simple dream.
They also say that the sun is a bark
That crosses the summit of the sky each evening.
The dead are at the prow; they see the world
Endlessly duplicated by other stars.
II
Later, the child climbed down, passing from branch to branch
Through what seemed to us a starry sky.
Nothing made different, in the silence,
The blue summit of the trees of the worlds.
He was singing and laughing, he was naked,
His body was from before the time
When man and woman made themselves distinct so as to find,
With the cry of pleasure, a new hope as well.
He was song itself. The song that breaks off,
Sometimes, its foot feeling for something firm,
Then starts again and seems to speak to itself,
Like two voices at the prow of a drifting boat.
It is said that light is a child
Who plays, who dreams or sings, wanting nothing.
If it comes toward us, it is still just to play,
Touching the ground with a heedless foot, that would be dawn.
- The Land of the Treetops, pg. 133-135
* * *
It is dawn. Has this lamp, then, finished
Its task of hope, hand placed
In the clouded mirror, on the fever
Of the one who kept watch, not knowing how to die?
But it is true that he has not put it out,
It still burns for him, in spite of the sky.
The seagulls screech their soul at your frost-covered
Window, morning sleeper, boat from another river.
- The Task of Hope, pg. 157
February 21, 2023
(I read the paperback version of this)
A really helpful entry to Bonnefoy. But that makes it sound as if it is simplified, and that isn't the case at all. There are a lot of things in here, suggestions of the influences he has experienced. There is just a touch of surrealism, a lot about his place in the south of France (which he had just left after his move back to Paris), his sense of the natural world, the legacy of symbolism (the blessing and curse of modern French poetry?), his knowledge of the sensual nature of experience, etc. Occasional poems remain difficult, as if I can't quite follow him through his wild associations. Others read very directly, forcefully. Here's one called "The Lightning" from near the center of the book, one of several addressed to a branch, although the pronouns blur along the edges of Bonnefoy's anthropomorphizing:
It rained, during the night.
The path smells of wet grass,
Then, once again, the hand of the heat
On our shoulder, to say
That time will never take anything from us.
But look,
There where the field runs up against the almond tree,
A beast of prey has sprung
From yesterday to today through the leaves.
And we stop, it is outside the world,
And I come toward you,
I finish tearing you from the blackened trunk,
Branch, lightning-struck summer
From which yesterday's sap flows, still divine.
The translation reads well, and is a helpful crib to the French en-face. I might have made a few different choices, but never found this jarring.
A really helpful entry to Bonnefoy. But that makes it sound as if it is simplified, and that isn't the case at all. There are a lot of things in here, suggestions of the influences he has experienced. There is just a touch of surrealism, a lot about his place in the south of France (which he had just left after his move back to Paris), his sense of the natural world, the legacy of symbolism (the blessing and curse of modern French poetry?), his knowledge of the sensual nature of experience, etc. Occasional poems remain difficult, as if I can't quite follow him through his wild associations. Others read very directly, forcefully. Here's one called "The Lightning" from near the center of the book, one of several addressed to a branch, although the pronouns blur along the edges of Bonnefoy's anthropomorphizing:
It rained, during the night.
The path smells of wet grass,
Then, once again, the hand of the heat
On our shoulder, to say
That time will never take anything from us.
But look,
There where the field runs up against the almond tree,
A beast of prey has sprung
From yesterday to today through the leaves.
And we stop, it is outside the world,
And I come toward you,
I finish tearing you from the blackened trunk,
Branch, lightning-struck summer
From which yesterday's sap flows, still divine.
The translation reads well, and is a helpful crib to the French en-face. I might have made a few different choices, but never found this jarring.
May 21, 2017
This is one of the best books of poetry I've ever had the pleasure of reading. Yves Bonnefoy has become my favorite poet.
January 15, 2015
Notable excerpts:
p. 5: I do not want to know the question rising.
p. 7: This face that is the earth itself.
p. 13: One can sometimes/ touch, in the distance between two people,/A moment of another person's endless dream
p. 19: The work of mending in the world never ends.
>>Note to self: I need to return to this again (to finish, to dream).<<
p. 5: I do not want to know the question rising.
p. 7: This face that is the earth itself.
p. 13: One can sometimes/ touch, in the distance between two people,/A moment of another person's endless dream
p. 19: The work of mending in the world never ends.
>>Note to self: I need to return to this again (to finish, to dream).<<
January 11, 2014
Really beautiful verse about an old guy wandering around his property, looking at the fire place, snow, etc whilst having subtle recollections
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews