Yves Bonnefoy Comments

Yves Jean Bonnefoy, poet and essayist, born 24 June 1923; died 1 July 2016. “I would like to bring together, almost identify, poetry and hope.” Poet, essayist, art and literary critic, translator and editor, Yves Bonnefoy sought throughout to make clear the ground on which this hopefulness was to be built.

Bonnefoy spent his career contesting the way that we tend to replace the reality of things and other people with an image or concept, which deprives us of a more direct and immediate experience he called the experience of “presence”, in which one has a fleeting apprehension of the essential oneness of all being. Supreme poet of the earth, Bonnefoy sought to bring a world smothered by abstraction back to life:

God who are not, put your hand on our shoulder, Rough-cast our body with the weight of your return, Finish blending our souls with these stars, These woods, these bird cries, these shadows and these days. Give yourself up in us the way fruit tears apart, Have us disappear in you. Reveal to us The mysterious meaning in what is merely simple And would have fallen without fire in words without love.

Bonnefoy was elected to the Collège de France in 1981, the first poet since Paul Valéry. Often spoken of as a potential Nobel prizewinner, he received many literary awards, doctorates and other honours.