The Search for Transcendence in Yves Bonnefoy's Un feu va devant nous.
[In the following essay, Hofstadter examines “experiences of transcendence” in “Un feu va devant nous,” the third section of Pierre écrite.]
Death is an almost overwhelming reality in Yves Bonnefoy's poetry. In his vision of things, death undermines all happiness and all permanence. Not something we encounter at the end of life only, it is indistinguishable from the actual world around us. Pervading all things, it often causes reality to become silent and barren for us, alien in its otherness. It may seem to be the prime force in existence, to dominate our lives.
But there are times when reality turns and reveals another face. Such occasions are described in a number of places in Bonnefoy's prose. The world turns slowly within the moment, leaving time and space behind. All that we had seemed to lose, through death, is returned to us. Nothingness is replaced by a fullness of being, and we begin to live the “vraie vie” which Rimbaud, one of Bonnefoy's masters, sought. Bonnefoy calls what happens in these moments “présence,” a condition in which all seems part of an illuminated, vital unity. It is because of such experiences that life is worth living after all; they give us hope and a possibility of fulfillment. Presence, not death, though he writes of death so much, is the goal and heart of Bonnefoy's efforts.
We can come near to such presence or illumination, though, only through mortal things, through the things of our world. Since finitude is the only realm we live in, it must be the object of transformation if we are to attain to a sacred condition. Bonnefoy therefore writes a great deal of things of the earth: stones, birds, stars, leaves, water, blood—and of humble, domestic objects: tables, lamps, hearths. However, it is not particular, concrete things in which he is interested—this red porcelain cup in front of me, that stained window-shade. It is generalized, elemental presences—L'eau, La pierre, L'étoile, La table. These are not abstract universals, though—not concepts. Concepts are not adequate to the experiences he reveals, and Bonnefoy believes in general that they turn us away from reality, are set apart from the world. Instead of showing us sensuous particulars, or ideas, Bonnefoy reveals the mythic and permanent aspects of objects, the region in which they take on shape as elemental presences. We are transported to worlds of significance and resonance beyond our normal perceptions. All being suffused with a hushed, other-worldly beauty, we are spoken to, a truth fills us with its being. The world becomes thoroughly meaningful, with a meaning beyond mere reference, and we feel liberated and transformed. Such a moment passes, and we are returned to our world of limitation and death, but poetry can keep awake the moment's memory. Poetry is of the past—of those images that have retained their significance for us—and of the future—of a possibility hovering over the horizon. But it helps us wait for the decisive moment. It is a proximity and a hope of things to come.
One section of Bonnefoy's book Pierre écrite is pervaded more perhaps than any other with the revelation of a sacredness: “Un feu va devant nous.” The third of four sections of which the volume is composed, “Un feu va devant nous” follows on a division, “Pierre écrite,” which has at its core death and suffering. Many of the poems in that part bear the title “Une pierre,” and most of these are desolate or sad. To Bonnefoy stones suggest impenetrability, the impossibility of the entry or embrace of thought. In this sense they resemble death, which too is impenetrable, unthinkable. However, “Un feu va devant nous” shifts the focus of the book. While containing such poems of dark waiting as “La patience, Le ciel” and “Le jour au fond du jour sauvera-t-il …,” its main thrust is the nearness of a plenitude. Poems like “La chambre,” “L'epaule,” “L'arbre, La lampe,” “Les chemins,” “Le myrte,” “La lumière, changée,” “Le cœur, L'eau non troublée” and the culminating “Le livre, pour vieillir” convey us to realms characterized by silence, immobility and a suffusing light, qualities central for Bonnefoy, I will try to show, to experiences of transcendence. The poems embody faithfully in their structures Bonnefoy's descriptions of the coming of presence, which involves a slow turning within the moment—a gliding, gradual transition that takes place almost outside of time, in an expanded instant, as though in a dream. This kind of experience is repeated, in differing ways, in many of the poems of “Un feu va devant nous.” Each constitutes a moment of special insight and revelation.
A careful though necessarily brief study of a few of these poems will suggest the essential nature of Bonnefoy's vision of the proximity of presence. One may well start with the first poem of the section, “La chambre.” The poem's scene is a mythic bedroom at morning. An endless ebb and flow as of waves in the sea prevails, “Toujours se reformant, toujours brisé,” a movement resembling the ebb and flow of sleep. Everything dozes and perhaps dreams, or else is in a state between sleep and waking. Like the mirror and the overflowing river, which call to each other across the room and merge their lights in the darkness, the speaker and the being he addresses (a lover?) communicate within sleep through solid stone steps whose density normally would prevent such interchange. The elements of the scene are transparent; there is an endless flow of light, a clear, dreamlike interpenetration of beings and objects. All lives and has meaning, even sleeping and inanimate things. The “main pure” comforts and protects the “main soucieuse,” and the red robe, like a holy object, is magically radiant in its sleep. Filled with peace, the poem gives a sense of a world made finally real and significant.
The world of “La chambre” is characterized by immobility, silence and light. It is full of activity and communication but these take place as though in a dream, enclosed within the slow stillness of a single moment. The qualities of the earth are there, but they exist on a new plane. Moving slowly in a duration that unfolds within a timeless instant, we virtually turn away from the domain of time to approach a condition of permanence. We are in a visionary state in which stillness dominates despite movement, silence prevails in spite of speech, and light renders everything transparent. With a slow turning we move away from the ordinary, mortal world to live in radiance and serenity.
A great many of the poems in “Un feu va devant nous,” in their various ways, embody similar types of experience. Described in “L'arbre, La lampe” is a summer dawn or sunset—the poem is ambiguous as to time—that lasts an almost eternal second, perhaps the seemingly limitless duration of the sun's rising or falling. Light disperses grief and the darkness is healed, while all is virtually still with a stillness of dream. Drowsiness dominates: sleep comes on “dans la sève du monde” (suggesting sunset) and “la lumière des lampes … rêve dans le jour” (implying it is dawn). Is the morning sun bringing a growing brightness, or is this red robe's light that of the end of day? As at twilight, the birds cease their singing; nothing in the scene disturbs the silence. The poem's movement is that of a very slow change of light and wakefulness, a barely perceptible growth or fading away. Vulnerable and delicate, the moment is “Comme la flamme d'une lampe que l'on porte.” With light glowing and the soul throbbing with feeling, the sickness of mortality that assails us is made well. “La barque … rejoint le rivage et tombe” into a peacefulness at the end, as back into sleep. Like “La chambre,” “L'arbre, La lampe” demonstrates a gradual turning from duration towards a condition of timelessness, a turning enclosed within a moment.
“L'epaule,” “Le myrte,” and “La lumière, changée,” among other poems in “Un feu va devant nous,” display the same slow shifting within the instant, the same silence, stillness and light. The structure of “L'epaule” expresses a gradual and continuous progression from a hope (first stanza) to a sparkling dream (stanza two) to the beginning of an actual merging with eternity (third stanza). Having endured his “obscur déchirement de nuit” the speaker in the end comes near to a transcendent “gave Qui s'apaise, ou se perd, dans notre éternité.” There is no sound or motion but the gliding of “L'eau d'un rêve” and the “bruissement du feuillage.” Light grows from the dawn of the first line through the mirroring dazzle of the waters' afflux in stanza two to the putting down of the light-excluding mask in stanza three. We move closer and closer to a new source of breath and illumination with a slow-gliding opening up to being. Like “L'epaule,” “Le myrte” describes an approach to an eternity—a seemingly endless summer, “un grand été.” The speaker's contact with a loved one becomes in stanza two a purgative transformation which leads to the state of ecstasy of the third strophe. There the bed, turning slowly, gains the freedom and majesty of the high seas. The scene is permeated by light—the summer sun, the flashes from the burning of the tree—and by the miraculous lingering continuation of the summer. In “La lumière, changée,” too, one finds a gradual motion away from everyday life—this time a seeking for something primal, sacred: “L'arbre est plus proche et la voix des sources plus vive.” The participants move by tiny, unseen steps towards this “Dieu qui n'est[t] pas.” There is no sound except for the mysterious “voix des sources” and the “cris d'oiseaux.” The poem has little light—like some other poems in “Un feu va devant nous” such as “Une voix” and “Un feu va devant nous” itself—for it is an enigmatic presence that is nearby. But like the other poems we have been discussing, it embodies a dreamlike, hushed, visionary state.
In the transcendently moving “Le livre, pour vieillir,” more than in the other poems, Bonnefoy seems to have actually found what he has been seeking. The stars—transhumant like sheep—and the shepherd bend protectively over earthly happiness. There is “tant de paix,” a peace which is great in its very, irregular, earthliness and humanness. Instead of words, it is silence that rises from the book towards the heart; no words are needed for this communication. A wind stirs, also silently, at the center of the meaningless sounds of the world. Time smiles willingly at its own end and the orchard's simplicity of fruition caps the fulfillment that the speaker feels. “Tu vieilliras,” yes, time still exists. You will be, finally, “la terre menacée,” like it, threatened by death. But “Tu reprendras le livre à la page laissée, Tu diras, C'étaient donc les derniers mots obscurs”: you will pick up the book again, you and it continuing to exist in time, but now able to say that all is clear, that you understand, that you can face this death that will come. The poem conveys an absolute serenity in which one sees into the heart of things. Set within a perfect moment which is wholly silent and suffused with light, it offers a glimpse of something that makes our life completely peaceful.
These poems, and many others in “Un feu va devant nous,” display a common type of transcendence. Time slows down, space expands, everything seems to glide motionlessly and silently, bathed in light. Instead of being opaque, dark, dominated by death, the world becomes transparent, illuminated, alive. Solid objects swell with the presence of something divine and become permeated with meaning. We ourselves lose some portion of our mortality and live in what for a moment seems permanence. Eventually we fall back into time and finitude. However, we have the memory of our experience, and the hope that it will come again. We can wait with patience, and in this, poetry can help. Poetry is a metaphor for transcendence, and aids us in preparing for its coming.
Get Ahead with eNotes
Start your 48-hour free trial to access everything you need to rise to the top of the class. Enjoy expert answers and study guides ad-free and take your learning to the next level.
Already a member? Log in here.