André du Bouchet
Encyclopedia
André du Bouchet was a French
poet
.
, he lived in France until 1941, when his family left occupied Europe
for the United States. He studied at Amherst College
and then at Harvard University
(in comparative literature
). After teaching for a year, he returned to France. He became friends with the poets Pierre Reverdy
, René Char
, Francis Ponge
and the painters Pierre Tal-Coat
and Alberto Giacometti
.
Du Bouchet was one of the precursors of what would come to be called "poésie blanche" or "white poetry" (in 1956 he published a collection of poems intitled Le Moteur blanc or "The White Motor"). He was one of the founders, in 1966, with (among others) Yves Bonnefoy
, Jacques Dupin
, Louis-René des Forêts and Gaëtan Picon
, of the poetry revue L'Ephémère (twenty issues were published from 1966 to 1973).
In 1961, Du Bouchet's first major poetry collection, Dans la chaleur vacante, was published to critical acclaim and he won the Critic's prize for that year.
He also wrote art criticism, most notably on Nicolas Poussin
, Hercules Seghers
, Tal-Coat, Bram van Velde
and Giacometti, and translated works by Paul Celan
, Hölderlin, Osip Mandelstam
, Boris Pasternak
, Laura Riding
, William Faulkner
, Shakespeare and James Joyce
.
In 1983, he won the National Poetry Prize or "Prix national de la poésie".
André du Bouchet died in 2001 at the age of 76, in Truinas
, Drôme
.
, the "banality" of Pierre Reverdy
's images, Arthur Rimbaud
's "abrasive/coarse reality", the work of Henri Michaux
, as well as the philosophical work of Heidegger — is characterized by a valorization of the "mise en page" (with words erupting from the white of the page), by the use of free verse
(absence of rhyme or metrical conventions) and often by difficult grammar and elusive, if not "absent", meaning (since, as he writes in "Notes on Translation", sense "is not fixed"), all of which evoke a sense of an existential
, if not elemental, Heraclitian
present. The natural elements of earth and air reappear constantly in his poems. The world, as he has written, will not end up in a book, as Mallarmé had claimed, since for du Bouchet the world has no end.
Du Bouchet's poetry "con-fronts" (that is to say, it touches with its "front" or "forehead") external reality (mountains, wind, stones...) and the words say and are at the same time a part of that reality (how, then, could sense ever be fixed?, he queried). This confrontation provokes a sense of otherness (not in a purely Heideggerian manner, as Du Bouchet's being is revealed as an object of flesh in its nudity and poverty) and a realization of the presence of objects and elements in the world and of the self as such an object, a "thing among things", as he frequently writes, echoing the phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty
.
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
.
Biography
Born in ParisParis
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, he lived in France until 1941, when his family left occupied Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
for the United States. He studied at Amherst College
Amherst College
Amherst College is a private liberal arts college located in Amherst, Massachusetts, United States. Amherst is an exclusively undergraduate four-year institution and enrolled 1,744 students in the fall of 2009...
and then at Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
(in comparative literature
Comparative literature
Comparative literature is an academic field dealing with the literature of two or more different linguistic, cultural or national groups...
). After teaching for a year, he returned to France. He became friends with the poets Pierre Reverdy
Pierre Reverdy
Pierre Reverdy was a French poet associated with surrealism and cubism.Pierre Reverdy was born in Narbonne and grew up near the Montagne Noire in his father's house. Reverdy came from a family of sculptors. His father taught him to read and write. He studied at Toulouse and Narbonne.Reverdy...
, René Char
René Char
René Char was a 20th century French poet.-Biography:Char was born in L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue in the Vaucluse department of France, the youngest of four children of Emile Char and Marie-Therese Rouget, where his father was mayor and managing director of the Vaucluse plasterworks...
, Francis Ponge
Francis Ponge
Francis Jean Gaston Alfred Ponge was a French essayist and poet. In many ways, he combined the two — essay and poem — into a single art form.-Life:...
and the painters Pierre Tal-Coat
Pierre Tal-Coat
Pierre Tal-Coat was a French artist considered to be one of the founders of Tachisme.-Life and work:...
and Alberto Giacometti
Alberto Giacometti
Alberto Giacometti was a Swiss sculptor, painter, draughtsman, and printmaker.Alberto Giacometti was born in the canton Graubünden's southerly alpine valley Val Bregaglia and came from an artistic background; his father, Giovanni, was a well-known post-Impressionist painter...
.
Du Bouchet was one of the precursors of what would come to be called "poésie blanche" or "white poetry" (in 1956 he published a collection of poems intitled Le Moteur blanc or "The White Motor"). He was one of the founders, in 1966, with (among others) Yves Bonnefoy
Yves Bonnefoy
Yves Bonnefoy is a French poet and essayist. Bonnefoy was born in Tours, Indre-et-Loire, the son of a railroad worker and a teacher....
, Jacques Dupin
Jacques Dupin
Jacques Dupin is a French poet, art critic, and co-founder of the journal L'éphemère.A resident of Paris since 1944, he is director of publication at Galerie Maeght.- Jacques Dupin's poetry in English :...
, Louis-René des Forêts and Gaëtan Picon
Gaëtan Picon
Gaëtan Picon was a French essayist and art crtitic. He was director of the Mercure de France and Director-General of Arts and Letters under André Malraux....
, of the poetry revue L'Ephémère (twenty issues were published from 1966 to 1973).
In 1961, Du Bouchet's first major poetry collection, Dans la chaleur vacante, was published to critical acclaim and he won the Critic's prize for that year.
He also wrote art criticism, most notably on Nicolas Poussin
Nicolas Poussin
Nicolas Poussin was a French painter in the classical style. His work predominantly features clarity, logic, and order, and favors line over color. His work serves as an alternative to the dominant Baroque style of the 17th century...
, Hercules Seghers
Hercules Seghers
Hercules Pieterszoon Seghers or Segers was a Dutch painter and printmaker of the Dutch Golden Age. Segers is in fact the more common form in contemporary documents, and was used by the painter himself...
, Tal-Coat, Bram van Velde
Bram van Velde
Bram van Velde was a Dutch painter known for an intensely colored and geometric semi-representational painting style related to Tachisme, and Lyrical Abstraction...
and Giacometti, and translated works by Paul Celan
Paul Celan
Paul Celan was a poet and translator...
, Hölderlin, Osip Mandelstam
Osip Mandelstam
Osip Emilyevich Mandelstam was a Russian poet and essayist who lived in Russia during and after its revolution and the rise of the Soviet Union. He was one of the foremost members of the Acmeist school of poets...
, Boris Pasternak
Boris Pasternak
Boris Leonidovich Pasternak was a Russian language poet, novelist, and literary translator. In his native Russia, Pasternak's anthology My Sister Life, is one of the most influential collections ever published in the Russian language...
, Laura Riding
Laura Riding
Laura Jackson was an American poet, critic, novelist, essayist and short story writer.- Early life :...
, William Faulkner
William Faulkner
William Cuthbert Faulkner was an American writer from Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner worked in a variety of media; he wrote novels, short stories, a play, poetry, essays and screenplays during his career...
, Shakespeare and James Joyce
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
.
In 1983, he won the National Poetry Prize or "Prix national de la poésie".
André du Bouchet died in 2001 at the age of 76, in Truinas
Truinas
Truinas is a commune in the Drôme department in southeastern France.-Population:...
, Drôme
Drôme
Drôme , a department in southeastern France, takes its name from the Drôme River.-History:The French National Constituent Assembly set up Drôme as one of the original 83 departments of France on March 4, 1790, during the French Revolution...
.
Poetry
André du Bouchet's poetry — greatly and conflictually influenced by the poetic and hermeneutical preoccupations of Stéphane MallarméStéphane Mallarmé
Stéphane Mallarmé , whose real name was Étienne Mallarmé, was a French poet and critic. He was a major French symbolist poet, and his work anticipated and inspired several revolutionary artistic schools of the early 20th century, such as Dadaism, Surrealism, and Futurism.-Biography:Stéphane...
, the "banality" of Pierre Reverdy
Pierre Reverdy
Pierre Reverdy was a French poet associated with surrealism and cubism.Pierre Reverdy was born in Narbonne and grew up near the Montagne Noire in his father's house. Reverdy came from a family of sculptors. His father taught him to read and write. He studied at Toulouse and Narbonne.Reverdy...
's images, Arthur Rimbaud
Arthur Rimbaud
Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud was a French poet. Born in Charleville, Ardennes, he produced his best known works while still in his late teens—Victor Hugo described him at the time as "an infant Shakespeare"—and he gave up creative writing altogether before the age of 21. As part of the decadent...
's "abrasive/coarse reality", the work of Henri Michaux
Henri Michaux
Henri Michaux was a highly idiosyncratic Belgian-born poet, writer, and painter who wrote in French. He later took French citizenship. Michaux is best known for his esoteric books written in a highly accessible style, and his body of work includes poetry, travelogues, and art criticism...
, as well as the philosophical work of Heidegger — is characterized by a valorization of the "mise en page" (with words erupting from the white of the page), by the use of free verse
Free verse
Free verse is a form of poetry that refrains from consistent meter patterns, rhyme, or any other musical pattern.Poets have explained that free verse, despite its freedom, is not free. Free Verse displays some elements of form...
(absence of rhyme or metrical conventions) and often by difficult grammar and elusive, if not "absent", meaning (since, as he writes in "Notes on Translation", sense "is not fixed"), all of which evoke a sense of an existential
Existentialism
Existentialism is a term applied to a school of 19th- and 20th-century philosophers who, despite profound doctrinal differences, shared the belief that philosophical thinking begins with the human subject—not merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human individual...
, if not elemental, Heraclitian
Heraclitus
Heraclitus of Ephesus was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, a native of the Greek city Ephesus, Ionia, on the coast of Asia Minor. He was of distinguished parentage. Little is known about his early life and education, but he regarded himself as self-taught and a pioneer of wisdom...
present. The natural elements of earth and air reappear constantly in his poems. The world, as he has written, will not end up in a book, as Mallarmé had claimed, since for du Bouchet the world has no end.
Du Bouchet's poetry "con-fronts" (that is to say, it touches with its "front" or "forehead") external reality (mountains, wind, stones...) and the words say and are at the same time a part of that reality (how, then, could sense ever be fixed?, he queried). This confrontation provokes a sense of otherness (not in a purely Heideggerian manner, as Du Bouchet's being is revealed as an object of flesh in its nudity and poverty) and a realization of the presence of objects and elements in the world and of the self as such an object, a "thing among things", as he frequently writes, echoing the phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Maurice Merleau-Ponty was a French phenomenological philosopher, strongly influenced by Karl Marx, Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger in addition to being closely associated with Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir...
.
List of works
- Published by Mercure de FranceMercure de FranceThe Mercure de France was originally a French gazette and literary magazine first published in the 17th century, but after several incarnations has evolved as a publisher, and is now part of the Éditions Gallimard publishing group....
:- Dans la chaleur vacante
- Ou le soleil
- Qui n'est pas tourné vers nous
- Ici en deux
- ... Désaccordée comme par de la neige
- Axiales
- Poèmes et proses
- Poèmes
- Poems of Paul CelanPaul CelanPaul Celan was a poet and translator...
- Voyage in Armenia by Osip MandelstamOsip MandelstamOsip Emilyevich Mandelstam was a Russian poet and essayist who lived in Russia during and after its revolution and the rise of the Soviet Union. He was one of the foremost members of the Acmeist school of poets...
- The TempestThe TempestThe Tempest is a play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1610–11, and thought by many critics to be the last play that Shakespeare wrote alone. It is set on a remote island, where Prospero, the exiled Duke of Milan, plots to restore his daughter Miranda to her rightful place,...
by Shakespeare - L’Emportement du muet
- Published by Fata MorganaFata MorganaFata Morgana may refer to:* Fata Morgana , an optical phenomenon* Morgan le Fay or , a sorceress in Arthurian legend-Film and television:* Fata Morgana , a film by Vicente Aranda...
:- Air suivi de défets 1950-1953
- Laisses
- L'incohérence
- Rapides
- Peinture
- Aujourd'hui c'est
- Une tache
- Matière Carnet (l et 2)
- Pourquoi si calmes
- D'un trait qui figure et défigure
- Annotations sur l'espace non datées
- Tumulte
- Published by other publishing houses :
- De plusieurs déchirements, éditions Unes
- Dans la chaleur vacante suivi de Ou le soleil, Poésie-Gallimard
- L'ajour, Poésie-Gallimard
- Alberto GiacomettiAlberto GiacomettiAlberto Giacometti was a Swiss sculptor, painter, draughtsman, and printmaker.Alberto Giacometti was born in the canton Graubünden's southerly alpine valley Val Bregaglia and came from an artistic background; his father, Giovanni, was a well-known post-Impressionist painter...
— dessin, éditions Maeght. - Where Heat Looms, Sun & Moon
- The Uninhabited, Living Hand
Further reading
- P. Chappuis, André du Bouchet, Seghers, "Poètes d'aujourd'hui", 1979.
- M. Collot, "André du Bouchet et le pouvoir du fond", in L'Horizon fabuleux, tome II, José Corti, 1988.
- J. Depreux, André du Bouchet ou la parole traversée, Seyssel, Champ vallon, "Champ poétique", 1988.
- Jean-Pierre RichardJean-Pierre RichardJean-Pierre Richard, is a French writer and literary critic.- Biography :Jean-Pierre Richard began his advanced studies at the École normale supérieure in the rue d'Ulm in 1941, passed the "agrégation" in literature in 1945, and got his doctoral degree in 1962...
, André du Bouchet, Onze études sur la poésie moderne, Paris, Seuil, 1964.