ABSTRACT
Poets and poetry mark some of the most important chapter headings in Riffaud’s life-story: Marcel Gagliardi introduced her to poetry and resistance at the sanatorium in 1941; Louis Aragon’s verses fired her imagination during the war; Paul Éluard helped publish her first volume of verse when the war was over; and Ho Chi Minh invited her to Vietnam, where poetry seemed as much a part of life as the daily bowl of rice. Last, and most dear, Thi, her Vietnamese soldier-poet, opened her heart to love with the poems they exchanged from the time of their meeting until his death in 2004. Riffaud’s whole biography could be retold through poetry, which has served as a personal journal, professional tool and weapon of protest, constituting some of the primary material through which she has fashioned her identity. In the 1990s, she wrote a poem about her poet-ancestor, Liron, whose influence on her was such that she claimed he had ‘invented her’.2 In light of the claims she has made about poetry’s role in shaping her life, therefore, some reflection on the shading it lends her portrait is essential to the present attempt to capture her likeness in words.
