Tag: Philippe Jaccottet

A bell in the distance: ‘La Clarté Notre-Dame’ and ‘The Last Book of the Madrigals’ by Philippe Jaccottet

When Swiss Francophone writer Philippe Jaccottet died in 2021 at the age of ninety-five, he left two final manuscripts, finished in the final year of his life with the assistance of his friend, poet José-Flore Tappy. These two works, La Clarté Notre-Dame, a sequence of prose pieces, and The Last Book of the Madrigals, a selection of verses, have now been published together in John Taylor’s translation and, in them, we see the poet looking back over certain past experiences, ever asking questions of himself and the world he observes, even as his age weighs heavily on his thoughts.

The first work opens with a remembered outing with friends, when, as they walked down a gentle slope under grey skies, the silence or “deep absence” of the vast open space surrounded them:

Until the little vesper bell of La Clarté Notre-Dame Convent, which we still couldn’t see at the bottom of the valley, began to ring far below us, at the heart of all this almost-dull greyness. I then said to myself, reacting in a way that was both intense and confusing (and so many times in similar moments I’d been forced to bring together the two epithets), that I’d never heard a tinkling—prolonged, almost persistent, repeated several times—as pure in its weightlessness, in its extreme fragility, as genuinely crystalline . . . Yet which I couldn’t listen to as if it were a kind of speech—emerging from some mouth . . . A tinkling so crystalline that it seemed, as it appeared, oddly, almost tender . . .

This bell is the initiation and the subtle motif that binds a series of reflections that carry Jaccottet back to childhood, to earlier travels and, along the way, to inspirations and writings from his past. There is an element of reassessment to this sequence, a restless questioning of the poetic and the political, with frequent parenthetical asides. And though many of the passages date back to 2012, the image of being “at the very end of my life’s path” is ever present. Doubt, not of his accomplishments, but of their faithfulness to some kind of truth and ethical value, creeps into his musings.

There is a slowness, a patience, and willingness to set aside reflections for a time, to let them rest, that lends La Clarté Notre-Dame an organic wholeness in its final form, even if its genesis was more fragmentary. The vesper bells seem to effortlessly feed Jaccottet’s ongoing concerns about the situation in Syria, thoughts about his own poetic influences, memories of subtle details and interconnections arising from his long life of experiences and human interactions, and uncertainty about what lies beyond but, in the end, he is willing to close on an open, unfinished note. This is true to form. When asked what Jaccottet’s writing has to offer to a new generation of readers, John Taylor, one of his long-time translators suggests:

We have entered an age of unequivocal partisan discourse, of linguistic robotization, of tiny symbols standing for complex emotions. In total contrast to this, Jaccottet’s writing constantly shows nuance, attentiveness, perseverance, circumspection, and a genuine quest for essential truths. His hesitations and doubts are salutary because they bring us to a halt and help us to observe and ponder anew, sometimes against our own preconceptions and wishful thinking, as we learn to cast away chimeras but also not to abandon all hopes.

The Last Book of the Madrigals, Jaccottet’s final poetic offering is a return to verse, a form he had moved away from in favour of prose poetry in the 1990s. The dual language text opens with a piece entitled “While Listening to Claudio Monteverdi” which imagines an encounter with the most influential madrigalist of the early 17th century. It opens:

When singing he seems to call to a shade
whom he glimpsed one day in the woods
and needs to hold on to, be his soul at stake:
the urgency makes his voice catch fire.

Then by its own blazing light, we spot a moist
night-time meadow and the woods beyond
where had come across that tender shade
or much better and more tender than a shade:

now there’s nothing but oaks and violets.

The voice that has brightened the distance fades.

I don’t know if he has crossed the meadow.

Their long summer night together continues under the starry sky, becoming a transformative  experience for the speaker.

The poems that follow in this sequence draw on mythic, celestial and natural interactions. Other voices are invited into conversation with the poet on his journey, but an image of a writer nearing the end of his time recur—these are the last madrigals, an allusion to Monteverdi, perhaps—invoking the same sense of solemn awareness haunting La Clarté Notre Dame. After an encounter with an old blacksmith he asks:

Was he delirious when I heard him murmur:

‘If this lamp that is like a beehive
is removed from me,
if this perfume drifts away, companions,
you can carry off these quills and bundles of paper:
where I’m being led, I’ll have no more use for them . . .’

Later in another madrigal, as a summer evening falls, the poet again recalls the “blacksmith of volutes and flames,” whom imagines wishing away temptation only to then wonder of himself:

And he who still writes on the last staffs,
perhaps, of his life:

‘That unknown woman fishing in her lightweight skiff
has struck me as well.

I first thought it sweet to be her prey,
but now the hook tugs at my heart
and I don’t know if it’s the daylight or me
bleeding in these pearly waters.’

These poems are filled with beauty and longing, calling on the stars in the heavens for silent answers and anticipating the turning of the seasons toward autumn and winter. One can well imagine a chorus of voices carrying the final songs of a poet who looked at the world closely, listened to silences and distant bells, and sought the meanings in it all on the page. This volume with his two final works is not only a fitting literary addition to a life of great accomplishments, but can serve as an introduction for those who wish to read more.

‘La Clarté Notre-Dame’ and ‘The Last Book of the Madrigals’ by Philippe Jaccottet is translated from the French by John Taylor, with an Afterword by José-Flore Tappy, and published by Seagull Books.

Each to his own “green truth”: Ponge, Pastures, Prairies by Philippe Jaccottet

Ponge, Pastures, Prairies is more than a simple tribute to French poet and essayist Francis Ponge by fellow poet Philippe Jaccottet, it is a deeper examination of the way creative influences sift through a writer’s own process of literary development. The two men first met in 1946, when the latter was barely twenty years-old and, as Jaccottet recounts, he imagines that, though he said nothing, the older man likely had his reservations about his youthful lyric enthusiasms. Nonetheless, a friendship between them would form and continue for over forty years. When Ponge died in 1988 at the age of 89, Jaccottet was among the mourners at his funeral in a rustic graveyard in Nîmes. It is with his reflections that day—a piece intended to stand alone—that this small, special book has its origin.

The funeral was a modest affair on a bright summer day, but it was not one without qualities that seem to Jaccottet oddly fitting for his friend. The pastor arrived quietly by bicycle and chose to recite the 23rd Psalm beside the family vault, “because the deceased was a poet.” King David’s ode to his heavenly shepherd and “green pastures” was followed by a simple reading of Ponge’s “The Meadow” by actor Christian Rist:

“Carried away suddenly by a sort of peaceful enthusiasm / In favor of a truth, today, which is green. . .” This kind of albeit distorted echo, over some thirty centuries, was thus perhaps even stranger and more striking than the rest (the vast, noble, abandoned cemetery and this burial, as if for an unknown person, of a writer so legitimately famous).

This juxtaposition sets the scene for Jaccottet’s homage to Ponge—a poet whose domain was the minute examination of the everyday—calling attention to his commitment to a “green truth” and the remarkable vigour with which he defended it. A sketch of a strong character, given to both “excessive intolerance” and “most generous enthusiasms” emerges, composed in the emotion of the moment of loss. It is not surprising, then, that despite the many formal arguments he had offered in praise of his friend over the years, Jaccottet felt a personal need to articulate what essentially separated him from Ponge’s work. So he started to write a follow up.

However, the expansion of this text into its final form was not an immediate or obvious project. In his Postface, written in 2013 when he was preparing for the original French publication, Jaccottet admits that he was not inclined to work his sentiments through to a natural end. Others encouraged him to think otherwise, but still he delayed, out of laziness or, perhaps, out of fear that entertaining his reservations might be disrespectful to a man he had continued to admire and think of with great affection. But this recognition of the complex interplay of influence and divergence, explored with a perspective stretching over more than two decades lends depth to this slender volume.

Jaccottet begins with a consideration of two of Ponges’ heroes: François de Malherbe (1555-1628), the French poet and critic who insisted on strict form, restraint and purity of expression, and composer Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683-1764) whom Ponge proclaimed as the artist who interested him more than any other with a style “of the kind that awakens: male, energetic, and  ardent.” If these men spoke to the inspiration that charged his friend, Jaccottet takes care to look at how his own response and tendencies diverge. As he moves on to discuss the way their approaches to writing start from contrasting points of view or ways of looking—one precise and object-oriented, the other lyrical trial-and error experimentation open to the “fleeting impression.” However, even if the origin and ends differ, he can acknowledge that his thinking on questions, such as the “enigma of purity” has been influenced by Ponge’s concern with that which is “pure” or “true.” One’s questing can be furthered, after all, in discourse with those whose creative inclinations deviate from one’s own. And throughout this text, Jaccottet is careful to reiterate his respect and fondness for Ponge, a feeling that he is assured in reviewing the volume of correspondence they exchanged over the years, was returned.

Ponge, Pastures, Prairies offers a tribute and a uniquely honest, yet sensitive critique. Jaccottet writes very thoughtfully, entertaining ideas about poetry, death, and the particular dynamics of the relationship between himself and Ponge in a manner that does not require a deep familiarity with the work of either man. In this regard, the extensive footnotes, based on Jaccottet’s own but expanded by translator John Taylor, are helpful and informative. I will confess that I have acquired more than a few volumes of Jaccottet’s work over the years, but until this time I’ve not seriously engaged with any, feeling, perhaps, a little intimidated or uncertain where to start. This book has ignited my interest and opened the door or, as Jacottet might say, a crack in that wall.

Ponge, Pastures, Prairies by Philippe Jaccottet is translated by John Taylor and published by Black Square Editions.