No Matter No Fact: Poetry

by Alain Bosquet

“A poem,” according to Alain Bosquet, “is an exacting friend.” Poet, literary editor of  Le Monde , and a central fact of French intellectual life, Bosquet (1919-1998) is himself exacting. He demands a “simple, direct, ambitious poetry” and seeks to invent “new rapports between man and the universe, man and the void, man and himself.” Selected by Bosquet, the poems in  No Matter No Fact  are translated by Samuel Beckett, Edouard Roditi, and the author himself. Denise Levertov as well as Edouard Roditi contribute revised versions of some of the author’s translations. The poems share a poignancy brewed of wit and culture, beauty and sorrow. “Soon,” Bosquet muses in one poem, “there will be a single word/for poem and reality.” Bosquet’s poems “are perfectly beautiful,” André Breton believed, admiring “their contours and their sensitive approach.”

Genres: Poetry

77 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 1988

About the author

Alain Bosquet, born Anatoliy Bisk (Russian: Анато́лий Биск) (28 March 1919 – 17 March 1998), was a French poet.

Reviews

[Peycho Kanev · Rating 5 out of 5]

Poet of the resistance – this title is more valued today than any literary award. Not so many poets today could carry this title more deservedly than Alain Bosquet. He was active not only in the Resistance, but in the actual battles, filled with madness, destruction and immortality.
From the highest sky of poetry he jumped with parachute and submachine straight into this burning bonfire called France. He fought the fascist occupiers and his poems show again and again his heroism to every new reader – they appear suddenly as messengers of faith, armed with cruel tenderness.

[R.K. Cowles · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 1/2 stars

[Erika]

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