Yves Bonnefoy, 1923–2016

We are sad to share the news that renowned French poet, translator, and critic Yves Bonnefoy died on Friday, at the age of 93. "Admirers from around the world took to Twitter to mourn Bonnefoy, known for his piercing gaze and mop of white hair, many of them quoting lines from his most famous works," reports the AFP. "President Francois Hollande paid tribute to 'one of the greatest poets of the 20th century' and a 'total artist, curious about the world and all its arts, generous with his time and his talent.'"

The BBC has more on the poet:

Born in 1923 in Tours, he was also an art critic who wrote on such modern masters as Pablo Picasso, Alberto Giacometti and Piet Mondrian.

He also translated the works of his friend, the Greek poet George Seferis.

Bonnefoy published his first volume of poetry in 1946 and first achieved wider fame seven years with his third book.

In his writing he said he tried to capture some of primal emotions that he associated with his own happy childhood.

In his poetry he tried to seek "what is immediate in life" by staying faithful to the "truth of language".

"A poet's job is to show us a tree, before our mind tells us what a tree is," said Bonnefoy.

He taught comparative poetics at the prestigious College de France from 1981 to 1994, as well as teaching at a number of US universities.

At The Chicago Blog, published by the University of Chicago Press, Kristi McGuire notes that Bonnefoy was "frequently speculated to be a candidate for the Nobel Prize, [and] was the recipient of many prizes in his lifetime, including the Prix Goncourt and the Griffin Lifetime Recognition Award."

Bonnefoy was the author of more than 100 books, among them original collections of poetry, art and literary criticism, compilations on mythology, and works in translation (those of Shakespeare and Yeats, most prominently).

The University of Chicago Press published four of those books—The Act and the Place of Poetry: Selected Essays (1989), In the Shadow’s Light (1991), New and Selected Poems (1995), Shakespeare and the French Poet (2004)—along with several volumes in his Mythologies series. In recent years, Seagull Books has published several additional works, including The Arrière-Pays (2012), The Present Hour (2013), Rue Traversière (1972; 2015), The Digamma (2014), The Anchor’s Long Chain (2015), and Ursa Major (forthcoming 2016).

The July 1962 issue of Poetry featured Bonnefoy--many of the poems included therein can be read, in French and English translation, here.