Provisionality and the Poem: Transitions in the Work of Du Bouchet, Jaccottet and Noël

by Emma Wagstaff

Much poetic writing in France in the post-1945 period is set in an elemental landscape and expressed through an impersonal poetic voice. It is therefore often seen as primarily spatial and cut off from human concerns. This study of three poets, Andre du Bouchet, Philippe Jaccottet and Bernard Noel, who have not been compared before, argues that space is inseparable from time in their work, which is always in transition. The different ways in which the provisional operates in their writing show the wide range of forms that modern poetry can take: an insistence on the figure of the interval, hesitant movement, or exuberant impulse. As well as examining the imaginative universes of the poets through close attention to the texts, this book considers the important contribution they have made in their prose writing to our understanding of the visual arts and poetry translation, in themselves transitional activities. It argues that these writers have, in different ways, succeeded in creating poetic worlds that attest to close and constantly changing contact with the real.

244 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

Reviews

[Víctor Bermúdez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Contents


Introduction

Chapter 1 Poetry in Time

Chapter 2 Words in the Air

Chapter 3 Art and the Book: Du Bouchet, Noël and the Visual Arts

Chapter 4 The Foreign Language: Jaccottet, du Bouchet and Translation

Chapter 5 Silence: Noël, Jaccottet and the Limits of Language

Conclusion