Correspondance. Tome 1

How to combine the creator's necessary loneliness and the need to build a community of spirits that are brought together by shared expectations? Sharing is the key to poetry, according to Yves Bonnefoy, who deems it quite different from plain literature. One way to do so is to write letters. The edition of his Correspondence joins, when possible, the letters he wrote to the ones he received. It thus unveils the life of a man and poet, with his network of friendships, constant or fluctuating as life brings its share of chance, hurst and ruptures.The first volume, which Bonnefoy himself had started collaborating on, gathers more than nine hundred letters, exchanged from the second half of the 20th century on. Conversations with forty-nine addressees are organised around two main elements : on one hand, relationships from Surrealism - André Breton, Pierre Alechinsky, Christian Dotremont, Georges Henein, Raoul Ubac, Jacqueline Lamba, André Pieyre de Mandiargues, Hans Bellmer, Jean Brun ; on the other hand, friendships that after some fifteen years led to the founding of L'Ephémère (1967-1872), a beautiful magazine published by Maeght Editions : André du Bouchet, Jacques Dupin, Gaëtan Picon, Louis-René des Forêts and Paul Celan. The other authors are by no means secondary characters, surely not because of who they are or because of what they were to Bonnefoy : Gaston Bachelard, Jean Wahl and André Chastel, his masters ; then Gilbert Levy, Salah Stétié, Pierre Jean Jouve, Gabriel Bounoure, François Augiéras, Christiane Martin du Gard, Philippe Jaccottet, Boris de Schloezer, André Frénaud, Michel Butor, Emil Cioran, Monique Wittig, Paul Bénichou, Jean-Pierre Richard or Henry Corbin, just to name a few. How did the poet work? What were th sources of hi aesthetic emotions? Here those question find answers, enhanced by notes with excerpts from the Chronolog of the writer, by Bonnefoy himself, hiherto unpublished.A French poet, translator, critic of art and essayist, Yves Bonnefoy (1923 - 2018) is one of the most important poets of the latter 20th and of the early 21st centuries, a "pre-eminent French poet", according to the New York Times. He was also professor at the Collège de France, holding the Chair of comparative study of poetry.