On Bonnefoy

Abstract

Book review of English translation of French poetry by Yves Bonnefoy

With these narrative artefacts, fragmented and unfinished, Yves Bonnefoy begins to show us a world without conclusion. His act of defiance towards the narrative pressures inherent in both the French and English languages sets up a tension, even a violence in this book of poems. Ostensibly, the volume is about a female lover, Douve. Douve, though, is the French word for a moat, that uncrossable body which separates us from safety and from danger. With this undercurrent at work we read the poems as if they are about the divide between us and death as much as they are about the divide between us and the untouchable reality of text. This is dangerous writing, fulfilling Derrida's "fatal necessity" by making us substitute the textual sign for reality.