ABSTRACT
Beginning with Du mouvement et de l'immobilite de Douve, Yves Bonnefoy's poems, prose texts and penetrating essays have never ceased to stimulate both the writing of French poetry and the discussion of what its deepest purpose should be. Centering his life's work on the elusive concept of "presence", this prolific yet rigorous poet, born in Tours in 1923, is one of the rare contemporary authors for whom writing does not—or should not—conclude in utter despair but rather in the tendering of "hope". As in Robert Frost's poem, "The Road Not Taken", the poet cannot always be sure that he has chosen the right path: the one leading to a vrai lieu, a true or genuine locus of presence. This incessant uncertainty has propelled Bonnefoy to ever-increasing clarity and nuance. In essence Bonnefoy opts, after what sometimes resembles a Kierkegaardian leap of faith, for Rimbaud's "rugged" terrestrial reality.
