The Theme Of Death In Bonaventure 's Poems

Yves Bonnefoy(1923-), is a French poet and essayist, generally acknowledged as the most important poet of his generation. Bonnefoy has been honored with a number of domestic and overseas prizes, most notably the Prix des Critiques in 1971, the Balzan Prize(for Art History and Art Criticism in Europe) and hid name is regularly mentioned among the prime favorites for the Noble Prize.His works have been of great importance in post-war French literature, at the same time poetic and theoretical, examining the meaning of the spoken and written word.Central themes in Bonnefoy’s work are existence, nature, death, and the role of poetry. He is a poet who do not see poems merely as verbal constructions, words have a transcendental meaning for him. He uses simple images – house, stone, tree, desert, wind, fire, water,- but they are part of the complex spiritual dimension beyond the present moment and the fleeting perception. Throughout his career, Bonnefoy has been concerned with the relationship between reality and the task of poetry. Conception is deceptive; permanence and immutable identity characterize abstract concept, whereas existence is marked by finitude and death.This essay will do the research into the death theme of Bonnefoy’s works, mostly his poems. Three parts are divided. The first part will briefly introduce the writing and the ideas on death in the history of western literature, analyze the reason which cause the writer’s thoughts of death, and explain his idea on it. The second part will use the method of close reading to analyze three collections of poem written by Bonnefoy, included Du movement et de I’immobilité de Douve, Hier régant désert, and Pierre écrite. By characterizing those images from these collections, this chapter will discuss their performance in explaining the theme of death. The third and last part, integrated with the texts, will interpret the difference and the relationship between these three collections, and make a whole vision about Bonnefoy’s death theme in his poems, furthermore to explain the meaning of life and living during his writing. The conclusion summarizes the whole essay.