What do you think?
Rate this book
Obscurity
The story of an intense encounter between two men who were once very close and now must grapple with the fractured ideals that separate them.
After several years abroad, a young man returns to his hometown to seek the man he calls master. This master, a brilliant philosopher, had made the young man into a disciple before sending him out into the world to put his teachings into practice. Returning three years later, the disciple finds his master has abandoned his wife and child and moved into a squalid one-room flat, cutting himself off completely from his former life. Disillusioned and reeling from the discovery, the young man spends an entire night listening to his master’s bitter denunciation of the ideals they once shared. Written in 1960 during Jaccottet’s period of poetic paralysis, the novel seeks to harmonize the best and worst of human nature—reconciling despair, falsehood, and lethargy of spirit with the need to remain open to beauty, truth, and the essential goodness of humankind. Translated by Tess Lewis, Obscurity is Jaccottet’s only work of fiction, one that will introduce new readers to the multifaceted skills of this major poet.
After several years abroad, a young man returns to his hometown to seek the man he calls master. This master, a brilliant philosopher, had made the young man into a disciple before sending him out into the world to put his teachings into practice. Returning three years later, the disciple finds his master has abandoned his wife and child and moved into a squalid one-room flat, cutting himself off completely from his former life. Disillusioned and reeling from the discovery, the young man spends an entire night listening to his master’s bitter denunciation of the ideals they once shared. Written in 1960 during Jaccottet’s period of poetic paralysis, the novel seeks to harmonize the best and worst of human nature—reconciling despair, falsehood, and lethargy of spirit with the need to remain open to beauty, truth, and the essential goodness of humankind. Translated by Tess Lewis, Obscurity is Jaccottet’s only work of fiction, one that will introduce new readers to the multifaceted skills of this major poet.
- GenresFictionFrench Literature
160 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1961
4 people are currently reading
102 people want to read
About the author
Philippe Jaccottet
180 books48 followersPhilippe Jaccottet was a Swiss Francophone poet and translator.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
October 21, 2016
A regrettably under-reviewed book! Jaccottet is well known as a poet, but from what little I've seen, he's managed to reverse the usual nature of things. For his poetry is fairly clear, and not all that difficult. This novel, however, is a complex, thoughtful meditation on how we relate to our mentors/teachers/svengalis/etc, and, more importantly, on the importance of thinking through, of thinking past, both fatuous optimism (everything is love!!!) and fatuous pessimism (everything is death!!!). It does this without descending into fatuous mediocrity (everything is love AND death!!!). I look forward to re-reading it more closely.
March 31, 2016
"Abandoning this book is something I've wanted to do more than once since I began it. Tired of drifting between elusive thoughts and unable to put them in any order, how often the prospect of burning these pages seemed a relief!" NAIL.ON.THE.HEAD.
I hesitate to leave a review because it doesn't seem like many people here on goodreads has actually read this, and I am certainly not a professional reviewer nor would I consider myself someone who is well seasoned in poetic literature, but here are my thoughts regardless.
To begin with I feel that the style this book was written is just isn't to my preference. It took me far too long to get the hang of things, and I found myself getting very bored quite frequently because I kept trying to make literal sense of absolutely everything. I was just taking far too much time with the poetry of the piece that I was becoming frustrated that the story was coming along in the way I was expecting it to. I don't read poetry so already this book was going to be a miss, but this was a random pick up from my library and the blurb on the inside dust jacket sounded convincing enough. I was pretty wrong there.
To the actual story, it's basically a tell-all of a student who is dissecting his master's life, and stripping back the gilded mask with which he had covered him with. It's a nice way of showing us how we idolise and create fantasy about certain people we encounter in our past, who we beleve have made such a dramatic impact, to actually be stripped down and find you don't want to emulate them at all anymore and that maybe the impact they made on your life was right for that time you shared, but cannot be anymore. Like the saying goes: you should never really get to know your heroes. That's how this all came across to me. The student, through conversation with the master, decides he needs to figure how his master screwed up his life to such a point of no-return, to ensure he doesn't follow his steps.
To be completely honest, although a short book, I found this to be a frustrating read. The master was just such a whiny and 1 dimensional character, that I didn't even care about his dialogue at all. Then when the student starts putting it altogether, there doesn't seem to be any offer of new insight. Just a rehashing of what I just read, but in a "oh I better not do that!" tone. Meh. Not my thing.
I think I found myself complaining more about this than I did reading it xD Oh well, you win some, you lose some. In the end, I just think this is not the type or style of book for me, and is just a touch too whimsical in it's language at times that it truly turns me off.
Solid 2.75/5. Yes I know goodreads doesn't rate in .25 increments, but this was truly an inbetween 2.5 and 3 for me, so bumped it up to the 3 star mark because maths, lol.
I hesitate to leave a review because it doesn't seem like many people here on goodreads has actually read this, and I am certainly not a professional reviewer nor would I consider myself someone who is well seasoned in poetic literature, but here are my thoughts regardless.
To begin with I feel that the style this book was written is just isn't to my preference. It took me far too long to get the hang of things, and I found myself getting very bored quite frequently because I kept trying to make literal sense of absolutely everything. I was just taking far too much time with the poetry of the piece that I was becoming frustrated that the story was coming along in the way I was expecting it to. I don't read poetry so already this book was going to be a miss, but this was a random pick up from my library and the blurb on the inside dust jacket sounded convincing enough. I was pretty wrong there.
To the actual story, it's basically a tell-all of a student who is dissecting his master's life, and stripping back the gilded mask with which he had covered him with. It's a nice way of showing us how we idolise and create fantasy about certain people we encounter in our past, who we beleve have made such a dramatic impact, to actually be stripped down and find you don't want to emulate them at all anymore and that maybe the impact they made on your life was right for that time you shared, but cannot be anymore. Like the saying goes: you should never really get to know your heroes. That's how this all came across to me. The student, through conversation with the master, decides he needs to figure how his master screwed up his life to such a point of no-return, to ensure he doesn't follow his steps.
To be completely honest, although a short book, I found this to be a frustrating read. The master was just such a whiny and 1 dimensional character, that I didn't even care about his dialogue at all. Then when the student starts putting it altogether, there doesn't seem to be any offer of new insight. Just a rehashing of what I just read, but in a "oh I better not do that!" tone. Meh. Not my thing.
I think I found myself complaining more about this than I did reading it xD Oh well, you win some, you lose some. In the end, I just think this is not the type or style of book for me, and is just a touch too whimsical in it's language at times that it truly turns me off.
Solid 2.75/5. Yes I know goodreads doesn't rate in .25 increments, but this was truly an inbetween 2.5 and 3 for me, so bumped it up to the 3 star mark because maths, lol.
August 20, 2017
The narrator is in constant peroration, but alas cannot bring himself to finish soon enough.
October 14, 2017
"È il terrore del vuoto a guidarci, ed è per questo che bisogna diffidare molto delle teorie che tendono sia a negare, sia a nascondere, sia a oltrepassare il vuoto: noi siamo troppo interessati al loro successo." (p. 37)
May 16, 2023
A book that life will doubtlessly steer me towards many times again.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews