Yves Bonnefoy or when the writing (écriture) is not anymore writing (écriture) but things and colour

Abstract

In Une autre époque de l’écriture (1993), two characters – a he that an I hesitates even though he will to call master – dialogue as they wander along a path in the wood. Their subject: writing or even the language. Before arriving at a cottage by a crook, that he, whose voice is quite heard, explains to his interlocutor that letters and words had acquired other evidence able to get away “little by little” from the very idea of word”. And he states: “Say that we invent painting”. All the strategy of literary practice by Yves Bonnefoy is there inscribed: both in his poetry and in his work of art criticism, it is about to ask about the means by which the artist invents the “world order” and the world itself. It means that is the relation with the world – and with his presence – that dominates the scene of poetry and poetic prose – what would La longue chaîne de l’ancre be but indeed one of the most beautiful examples of contemporary poetic prose? Thus, when the world colonized by the words comes to an end. It is undeniable that, despite the dangers that the language carries (and that haunts all its faithful devotees), Yves Bonnefoy’s work seeks to get rid of it by using the practice of what might be called désécriture. Désécriture dedicated to the visible. Désécriture that has the task of highlighting “all the dimensions of the object, of the world” with their odours, their noises, their smallest characters. Thus, the aim of this article is to present some ideas on the procedure related to a poetic and critical time put into movement in La vie errante suivi de Remarques sur le dessin (1993) and in La longue chaîne de l’ancre (2008), as a way to reveal a network of images full of poetic colour.