The Digamma (The French List) - Hardcover

Bonnefoy, Yves

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0857421832 ISBN 13: 9780857421838

Publisher: Seagull Books, 2014

Synopsis

Heralded as one of France's greatest poets, Yves Bonnefoy has been dazzling readers since the publication of his first book in 1953. He remains influential and relevant, continuing to compose groundbreaking new work. Though Bonnefoy recently celebrated his ninetieth birthday, many are calling these past two decades his most impressive yet. His latest book of poetry and prose, The Digamma, fits wonderfully into his impressive oeuvre, offering his signature style of simplistic but powerful language with fresh new grace. A key passage of the title piece of the book depicts the figures of Nicolas Poussin's The Shepherds of Arcadia, which Bonnefoy has identified as crucial to the artist's evolution. The sustained reference to Poussin's iconography serves to ground the text in the lost civilizations of antiquity. Subtly, it brings out the underlying theme of the entire collection-in the ambivalent world we inhabit, being and nonbeing is fundamentally one. As a leading translator of Shakespeare in France, Bonnefoy's fascination with the master playwright is displayed in "God in Hamlet" and "For a Staging of Othello," two poems in prose which belong to an ongoing series of meditations on the plays. The collection also includes haunting reflections on children, nature, the origins of art, and vanished cultures.

About this title

Review:

"Bonnefoy is one of the rare poets in the history of literature to have sustained the highest level of artistic excellence throughout an entire lifetime-now more than half a century of work, and still counting." (Paul Auster)"

About the Author:

Yves Bonnefoy's recent books include Second Simplicity: New Poetry and Prose and The Present Hour. In addition to poetry and literary criticism, he has published numerous works on art history and translated into French several of Shakespeare's plays. Hoyt Rogers is the author of a poetry collection, Witnesses, and a volume of criticism, The Poetics of Inconstancy. He translates from French, German, and Spanish.

About this edition

• Publisher: Seagull Books
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0857421832
• ISBN 13: 9780857421838
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 64