Tim, I read his essay "French poetry & the principle of identity" last
night (or most of it). There he outlines more clearly his notion of
"presence". He compares English & French poetry/languages, contrasting
the way the huge english vocabulary grasps immediately upon the theatre
of appearances & particulars & moves "inward", whereas French, built
on Latin, is sort of substantial-cathedral-like & given to an intense
drive toward unity & the absolute - extremely traditional.
Anyway in a very French way he proposes a specifically poetic project
he calls "presence" which reminds me a lot of Bachelard's phenomenology:
the poet builds on intense perception (he uses the example of looking
at a single salamander until its living being interconnects all existence
in a presence or place), rather than verbal or conceptual unities (ideas).
I can sort of see how this kind of thinking might seem by-the-way to
a poet in English; we sort of take for granted that the project of
poetry is the humanization of reality. But the French have a way of
conceptualizing these ideals or absolutes. & I'm interested in how
Bonnefoy contrasts with that other big French project of dissolving
"essentialism"...
Henry
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