ABSTRACT
The poet Stephane Mallarme remarked, as Goffette reminds people in an epigraph, that "Verlaine is hidden in the grass", an observation to which Paul Claudel added that Verlaine is "as fragile and glowing as a poppy flower in the fog". The poet's life, nevertheless a "good route with death at the end", takes on powerful allegorical significance in Goffette's sympathetic interpretation. Christian images occasionally mark Goffette's explorations of daily life, romantic yearning and gray, rain-drenched farmland. The very idea of a "promised life" calls to mind redemption and resurrection. The author does visit Rumania and Yugoslavia, two journeys each related in a series of amusing vignettes. Yet the best, more meditative pieces of Partance examine the phenomenon of "leaving without moving", as the writer puts it in the title essay. Beginning with touching memories of his seafaring grandfather, Goffette continues to ruminate on traveling in a camping trailer left to rust at the end of an unproductive fruit orchard.
