Yves Jean Bonnefoy (24 June 1923, Tours – 1 July 2016 Paris) was a French poet and art historian.[1] He also published a number of translations, most notably the plays of William Shakespeare which are considered among the best in French.[2][1] He was a professor at the Collège de France from 1981 to 1993 and is the author of several works on art, art history, and artists including Miró and Giacometti, and a monograph on Paris-based Iranian artist Farhad Ostovani.[2]The Encyclopædia Britannica states that Bonnefoy was ″perhaps the most important French poet of the latter half of the 20th century.″[3]
Bonnefoy was born in Tours, Indre-et-Loire, the son of Marius Elie Bonnefoy, a railroad worker, and Hélène Maury, a teacher.[4][5] He studied mathematics and philosophy at the Universities of Poitiers and the Sorbonne in Paris.[2] After the Second World War he travelled in Europe and the United States and studied art history.[4] From 1945 to 1947 he was associated with the Surrealists in Paris (a short-lived influence that is at its strongest in his first published work, Traité du pianiste (1946)). But it was with the highly personal Du mouvement et de l'immobilité de Douve [fr] (On the Motion and Immobility of Douve, 1953) that Bonnefoy found his voice and that his name first came to public notice.[6] Bonnefoy's style is remarkable for the deceptive simplicity of its vocabulary.[4][7]
One should not call oneself a poet. It would be pretentious. It would mean that one has resolved the problems poetry presents. Poet is a word one can use when speaking of others, if one admires them sufficiently. If someone asks me what I do, I say I'm a critic, or a historian.[6][8]
Bonnefoy continued to work closely with painters throughout his career and wrote prefaces for artists’ books, including those by his friend Miklos Bokor.[10]
Bonnefoy died on 1 July 2016 at the age of 93 in Paris. President François Hollande stated of Bonnefoy on his death that he would be remembered for "elevating our language to its supreme degree of precision and beauty".[11]
2011: Second Simplicity: New Poetry and Prose, 1991-2011. Selected, translated, and with an introduction by Hoyt Rogers. (Yale University Press: ISBN 978-0-300-17625-4). – poetry
2014: The Digamma; with an introduction by Hoyt Rogers. Translated by Hoyt Rogers. (Seagull Books: ISBN 978 0 8574 2 183 8). – poetry
2015: The Anchor's Long Chain; with an Introduction by Beverley Bie Brahic. (Seagull Books: ISBN 978-0857423023) – includes both poems and short stories[3]
2017: Together Still [followed by Perambulans in Noctem]; with an afterword by Hoyt Rogers. Translated by Hoyt Rogers with Mathilde Bonnefoy. (Seagull Books: ISBN 978 0 8574 2 424 2). – poetry
Notesedit
^a restructured translation of Dictionnaire des mythologies et des religions des sociétés traditionelles et du monde antique ("Dictionary of Mythologies and Religions of Traditional Societies and the Ancient World"). Compiled by Yves Bonnefoy and prepared under the direction of Wendy Doniger; translated by Gerald Honigsblum [and others]
Referencesedit
^ ab"Dictionary of Art Historians - Yves Bonnefoy".
^ abcde"Yves Bonnefoy, Pre-Eminent French Poet, Dies at 93". The New York Times. 6 July 2016.
^ abcThe Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica (updated 3 July 2016) "Yves Bonnefoy - French author". Encyclopædia Britannica.
^ abcd"2011 – Yves Bonnefoy". Griffin Trust. Archived from the original on 17 November 2019. Retrieved 10 July 2012.
^Publications, Europa (1 January 2003). The International Who's Who 2004. Psychology Press. ISBN 9781857432176 – via Google Books.
^ abShusha Guppy, "Yves Bonnefoy, The Art of Poetry No. 69", The Paris Review. Retrieved 1 June 2013.
^Naughton, John (1984). The Poetics of Yves Bonnefoy. University of Chicago Press. pp. 43–. ISBN 978-0-226-56947-5. Retrieved 1 June 2013.
^Harry Eyres, "The quest of a lifetime", Financial Times, 31 May 2013. Retrieved 1 June 2013.