Philippe Jaccottet

Keineswegs ein Tagebuch, eher Skizzenhefte nennt Petrarca-Preisträger Jaccottet die Auswahl aus seinen Aufzeichnungen 1954-1979. Die Prosastücke, Meditationen, haiku-ähnlichen Notate über Naturbeobachtungen, Begegnungen, Lektüren und Träume sind weit mehr als nur private Texte; sie sind Zeugnis eines unablässigen Prozesses dichterischer Selbstbefragung, die Chronometrie einer großen Dichterexistenz.

Antworten am Wegrand könnte als Leitwort über vielen von Philippe Jaccottets Texten stehen. Immer wieder sind es Bilder aus der Natur, sind es Farben und Bewegungen, die auf die bedrängendsten Fragen Antwort zu geben scheinen: der Anbruch des Morgens in der Eiseskälte des Berggipfels, das brennende Rot im Abendlicht eines fruchtbeladenen Kirschbaums.

Philippe Jaccottet’s poetry is meditative, immediate and sensuous. It is rooted in the Drôme region of south-east France, which gives it a rich sense of place. This book brings together his re?ections on landscape in the prose pieces of Beauregard (1980) and in the poems of Under Clouded Skies (1983), two thematically linked collections which are remarkable for their lyrical restraint and quiet power. Jaccottet’s poetry is largely grounded in landscape and the visual world, pursuing an anxious and persistent questioning of natural signs, meticulously conveyed in a syntax of great inventiveness. His work is animated by a fascination with the visible world from which he translates visual objects into verbal images and ultimately into figures of language. His poems are highly attentive, pushing the eye beyond what it sees, enacting a rich hesitation between meaning conferred and meaning withheld. Poetry Book Society Recommended Translation. French-English bilingual edition.

Philippe Jaccottet is one of a group of poets who turned away from the Surrealists' sometimes abstruse experiments with form in favor of a muted lyrical expression born of a quasi-fraternal bonding with the wonder of earth, light, water, sky. This lyricism is steeped in an ambiguous sense of our planet's vulnerability in this nuclear age. Jaccottet's work has now developed steadily over nearly four decades as Derek Mahon points out in his introductory essay. In themes and form it will not seem alien to English language readers, yet Jaccottet's voice is his own. The sensuous modulations of imagery, harmony, and mood are strangely moving and haunt the imagination.