Early Poems: 1947–1959

by Yves Bonnefoy, Richard Pevear (Contributor), Galway Kinnell (Contributor)

Yves Bonnefoy is probably the most prominent figure in the generation of French poets who came into public view following World War II. Dedicated to poetry more as a means of spiritual illumination than as a technique for creating artistic monuments, he uses what he conceives to be the brokenness and poverty of language to enable us to glimpse a wholeness lacking in our contemporary world. This excellent translation of Bonnefoy’s early poems represents an enormous contribution to contemporary poetry, serving as an introduction to the work of Bonnefoy for those unfamiliar with his poetry as well as further evidence of his mastery for those who know his work well.

Genres: Poetry, France

303 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

Yves 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.

Reviews

[Edita · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here, in the bright place. It is dawn no more
But full day with its speakable desires.
Of the lure of a song in your dream there remains
Only this glittering of stones to come.

Here, until nightfall. The rose of shadows
Like a dial, on the walls. The rose of hours,
Silent, will lose its color. The marble floor

Will guide our steps towards the light they love.

Here, always here. Stone upon stone
Has built the place of which memory tells.
In you now the sound of simple fruit falling
Hardly troubles time as it begins to heal.

[Steven Godin · Rating 4 out of 5]

TRUE BODY

The mouth shut tight, the face washed,
The body purified, that shining fate
Buried in the earth of words,
And the humblest marriage is consummated.

Silenced that voice which shouted in my face
That we were wild and separated,
Walled up those eyes: and hold Douve dead
In the rasping self locked with me again.

And however great the coldness rising from you,
However searing the ice of our embrace,
Douve, I do speak in you, and I clasp you
In the act of knowing and of naming.

THE IRON BRIDGE

Surely at the end of a long street
Where I walked as a child there is still a pool of oil,
A square of heavy death under a black sky.

Since then, poetry
Has separated its waters from other waters,
No beauty or color can hold it,
It suffers because of iron and night.

It nurses
A dead shore's long grief, an iron bridge
Thrown towards the other, still darker shore
Is its only memory, its only real love.

[M.W.P.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Early Poems 1947-1959 is the first of two volumes (the second is Poems 1959-1975). Together they form a comprehensive introduction to the poetry of Yves Bonnefoy.

From Anti-Plato (1947)...

Monstrous weapon an axe with horns of shadow cast on the stones,
Weapon of pallor and outcry when you turn wounded in your festive dress,
An axe because time must recede on the nape of your neck,
O heavy and with a land's full weight on your hands the weapon falls.

- II, pg. 5

* * *
We come from the same country at the mouth of the earth,
You in one rush of iron among the friendly leaves,
And he who is known as I when day declines
And the door open and there is talk of death

- VI, pg. 13

From On the Motion and Immobility of Douve (1953)...

I saw you running on the terraces,
I saw you struggling against the wind,
The coldness bled on your lips.

And I have seen you break and rejoice at being dead - O more beautiful
Than the lightning, when it stains the white windowpanes of your blood.

- Theatre, I, pg. 25

* * *

Face cut off from its first branchings,
Beauty made of alarms under a low sky,

In what hearth shall I build the fire of your face
Maenad seized and thrown head first?

- Art of Poetry, pg. 91

* * *

Sometimes, you used to say, wandering at dawn
On blackened paths,
I shared the stone's hypothesis,
I was blind like it.
Now that wind has come by which all my games
Are given away in the act of dying.

I longed for summer,
A furious summer to dry my tears,
Now has come this coldness which swells in my flesh
And I was awakened and I suffered.

- Douve Speaks, 1, pg. 103

* * *

Thus until death, faces reunited,
The heart's clumsy gestures on the regained body,
Upon which you fade, absolute truth,
This body given over into your weakening hands.

The smell of blood shall be the good your sought,
Frugal good shining on an orangery.
The sun will turn, in its bright agony
Lighting the place where all was revealed.

- Truth, pg. 149

* * *

Candle of the January night on the flagstones,
When we had said not everything would die!
I could hear further off among like shadows
A step which each evening goes down to the sea.

What I cling to is perhaps but a shadow,
But see how it turns you an eternal face!
So had we taken toward darkened frescoes
The futile path of winter's muddy streets.

- Brancacci Chapel, pg. 157

From Yesterday's Empty Kingdom (1958)...

What did you want to set up on this table
If not the two-fold of our death?
I was frightened, I smashed the bare, glowing table
In this world, where the dead wind declares its war.

Then I grew older. Outside, the truth of words
And the truth of wind have stopped their struggle.
The fire has withdrawn which was my church,
I'm no longer even frightened, I do not sleep.

- Threats of the Witness, 1, pg. 173

* * *
The voices that marked you out fall silent.
You are alone in the enclosure with its dark boats.
While you walk over this shifting ground, you have
A different song than this gray water in your heart,

A different hope than the departure over there,
The cheerless steps, the fire flickering at the bow.
You have no love for the river with its simple earthly waters,
Its path under the moon where the wind is stilled.

Better, you say, on shores more dead than these,
The high dilapidation of the palaces I was.
You love only the night as night, which bears
The torch your destiny, of all renunciation.

- The Sound of Voices, pg. 183

* * *

You will know he keeps you in the dying hearth,
You will know he is speaking to you, stirring
The ashes of your body in the chill of dawn,
You will know he is alone and unappeased.

He who has destroyed so much, who no longer
Can tell his nothingness from his silence,
Sees you, harsh dawn, come in darkness
And burn long over the desert of the tables.

- To Poverty, pg. 197

* * *

Surely at the end of a long street
Where I walked as a child there is still a pool of oil,
A square of heavy death under a black sky.

Since then, poetry
Has separated its waters from other waters,
No beauty or colour can hold it,
It suffers because of iron and night.

It nurses
A dead shore's long grief, an iron bridge
Thrown towards the other, still darker shore
Is its only memory, its only real love.

- The Iron Bridge, pg. 205

* * *

She who lays waste to being, beauty,
Will be tortured, broken on the wheel,
Dishonoured, found guilty, made blood
And cry, and night, stripped of all joy -
O torn on all iron gates before dawn,
Trampled on every road and crossing,
Our high despair will be that you live,
Our heart that you suffer, our voice
To humble you in your tears, to call you
Liar, the black sky's procuress, even though
Our longing is for your crippled body,
Our pity, this heart lading to all mire.

- Beauty, pg. 211

From Devotion (1959)...

To nettles and stones

To "stern mathematics." To the dimly lit trains of each evening. To streets of snow under the limitless star.
I kept going, I was lost. And words barely found their way in the terrible silence. - To patient, saving words.

- I, pg. 293

* * *

And always to waterfronts at night, to pubs, to a voice that says I am the lamp, I am the oil.

To this voice consumed by an essential fever. To the gray trunk of the maple. To a dance. To these two ordinary rooms, for the maintaining of the gods among us.

- IV, pg. 295