Claude Esteban
Encyclopedia
Claude Esteban was a French
poet
.
Author of a major poetic œuvre of this last half-century, Claude Esteban wrote numerous essays on art and poetry and was the French translator, inter alia, of Jorge Guillén
, Octavio Paz
, Borges
, García Lorca
, or again, Quevedo
.
He was a contributor to the Mercure de France
from 1964, then to the Nouvelle Revue Française
, in which he wrote many articles on poets and painters. In 1973, he founded the literary magazine Argile
, at Maeght
, with the moral support of René Char
: its twenty-four issues testified to the complicity between poetry and painting, while granting a new space to translated foreign poetry. He also dedicated a monograph to Chillida
, and to Palazuelo
, and wrote prefaces for many exhibitions catalogs of painters such as Raoul Ubac
, Vieira da Silva
, Arpad Szenes
, Fermín Aguayo, Giorgio Morandi
, Josef Sima
, Bacon
, Giacometti, Braque, Le Brocquy
, Chagall
, etc. (Most of these texts were published again in volumes, see infra).
In 1968, he published his first book of poems, La Saison dévastée (The Season of Davastation), quickly followed by other books made with artists such as Arpad Szenes
, Jean Bazaine and Raoul Ubac
. These books were gathered in his first large collection of poems, published by Flammarion in 1979, Terres, travaux du cœur (Earthes, works of heart). At the same time, he published Un lieu hors de tout lieu (A Place out of any Place), an essay on poetry which, starting from the initial evocation of Virgil
's Georgics, builts a reflection on poetry and a manifesto for new poetics, marked by the nostalgia of "a place out of any place" and by "a duty to seek" a new "conjuncture
" between words and things.
He very early on experienced a deep admiration for the work of the great Spanish poet Jorge Guillén
; they became friends, and he translated in 1977 most of Guillén's major book, Cántico for Éditions Gallimard
— Guillén himself translated into Spanish some of Esteban's poems, which he inserted in his last book, Final (1982). Esteban also translated many Octavio Paz
's works, such as El Mono gramático (The Monkey Grammarian). In 1980, under the title of Poèmes parallèles, he published an anthology of his translations, of which the preface, "Traduire", sets down the principles of an original reflection on poetics and on the translation of poetry. In 1987, he collected his essays on poetry and poetics in Critique de la raison poétique (Critique of Poetic Reason).
In 1984, he received the Mallarmé prize
for the prose poems of Conjoncture du corps et du jardin (Conjuncture of Body and Garden). The same year, he founded the Poésie collection at the Editions Flammarion, in which he published a new generation of poets.
In 1989, three years after the death of his wife —the painter Denise Esteban—, he wrote Elégie de la mort violente (Elegy of the Violent Death), poems about mourning and memory. In 1993, he wrote Sept jours d'hier (Seven Days of yesterday), a remarkable suite of dense short poems that follow the "routes of mourning" and opens up the way of an appeasement. Deeply marked by the figure of King Lear, he published in 1996 Sur la dernière lande (On the last Heath), poems of wandering that evoke the figures of Shakespeare's tragedy. The year after, the Société des gens de lettres
(SGDL) awarded him the Grand Prix of poetry for his whole work.
Painting remained for him a major interest. In 1991, he received the France Culture Prize for Soleil dans une pièce vide (Sun in an empty Room), poetic narrations inspired by Edward Hopper
's paintings. He continued to write essays on art and published some luminous approaches of Velázquez
, Goya, El Greco
, Claude Lorrain
, Rembrandt, Murillo
..., until his last essay dedicated to Caravaggio
, L'Ordre donnée à la nuit (The Order given to the Night), in which he draws the outlines of his art approach.
It is still painting, that of the Faiyum portraits, which caused the writing of a splendid suite of poems, Fayoum, published in 2001 by Gallimard
in Morceaux de ciel, presque rien (Pieces of sky, hardly anything), that earned him the Prix Goncourt
of poetry. In 2004, he published his ultimate reflections on poetry in Ce qui retourne au silence (What returns to silence), which also includes an essay on Robert Bresson
and another on Varlam Shalamov
's Kolyma
Tales.
He had been a student of the prestigious École Normale Supérieure
of Paris, and was professor of Spanish literature at the Paris-Sorbonne University until 1996, and then he became President of the Maison des Ecrivains (the French Writers House) from 1998 to 2004.
Shortly before his death, an anthology of his poems came out — Le Jour à peine écrit (1967-1992) (The Day scarcely written) — while the manuscript of his last book and poetic legacy was completed under the title of La Mort à distance (Death at a distance); it was published by Gallimard
in May 2007.
, 971 (March 2010), texts by Xavier Bruel, Jean-Michel Maulpoix
, Jacques Dupin
, Yves Bonnefoy
, Michel Deguy, Michael Bishop, Pierre Vilar, Michael Brophy, Esther Tellermann, Luis Antonio de Villena, Kadhour Méry, Jean-Baptiste Para, Georges Molinié, Dominique Viart, Laura Legros, Michel Jarrety, etc. L'Espace, l'Inachevé. Cahier Claude Esteban, Farrago/Léo Scheer, 2003, texts by Pierre Vilar, Yves Bonnefoy, Xavier Bruel, Florence Delay
, Michel Deguy, Yves di Manno, Jacques Dupin, Jean Frémon, Emmanuel Hocquard, Gilbert Lascault, Bernard Noël
, Jacqueline Risset
, Jean-Luc Sarré, Jean-Pierre Cometti, etc. Letters from André du Bouchet
, René Char
, Martin Heidegger
, Jorge Guillén
, Henri Michaux
, Octavio Paz
, Raoul Ubac
. Complete bibliography by Xavier Bruel. Robert W. Greene, "Argile and the Poetry of Claude Esteban. An Introduction", Mary Ann Caws (ed.), Writing in a Modern Temper: Essays on French Literature and Thought in honor of Henry Peyre, Saratoga CA, 1984, XII (Stanford French and Italian Studies, XXIII), pp. 188–200. Robert W. Greene, "For Landscapes: Esteban’s Writings on Art", Dalhousie French Studies (Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada), 21 (Fall-Winter 1991), pp. 113–121. Adelia V. Williams, "Poésie critique as Poetics of space. Edward Hopper
and Claude Esteban", Mosaic, XXXI, 4 (Dec. 1998), pp. 123–124. Adelia V. Williams, "Claude Esteban", Sites, III, 1 (University of Connecticut, Spring 1999), pp. 189–191. Adelia V. Williams, "Verbal Meets Visual: an Overview of Poésie critique at the fin-de-siècle", The French Review, LXXIII, 3 (Feb. 2000), p. 488-496.
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
.
Author of a major poetic œuvre of this last half-century, Claude Esteban wrote numerous essays on art and poetry and was the French translator, inter alia, of Jorge Guillén
Jorge Guillén
Jorge Guillén y Álvarez was a Spanish poet, a member of the Generation of '27.-Biography:Jorge Guillén was born in Valladolid. His life paralleled that of his friend Pedro Salinas, whom he succeeded as a Spanish teaching assistant at the Collège de Sorbonne in the University of Paris from 1917 to...
, Octavio Paz
Octavio Paz
Octavio Paz Lozano was a Mexican writer, poet, and diplomat, and the winner of the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature.-Early life and writings:...
, Borges
Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo , known as Jorge Luis Borges , was an Argentine writer, essayist, poet and translator born in Buenos Aires. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland where he attended school, receiving his baccalauréat from the Collège de Genève in 1918. The family...
, García Lorca
Federico García Lorca
Federico del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús García Lorca was a Spanish poet, dramatist and theatre director. García Lorca achieved international recognition as an emblematic member of the Generation of '27. He is believed to be one of thousands who were summarily shot by anti-communist death squads...
, or again, Quevedo
Francisco de Quevedo
Francisco Gómez de Quevedo y Santibáñez Villegas was a Spanish nobleman, politician and writer of the Baroque era. Along with his lifelong rival, Luis de Góngora, Quevedo was one of the most prominent Spanish poets of the age. His style is characterized by what was called conceptismo...
.
Biography
Of Spanish father and French mother, divided between two idioms, Claude Esteban was marked by the painful feeling of a division and an exile in the language, which was at the source of his poetic vocation. He recalled this experiment in Le Partage des mots (The Division of Words), a kind of autobiographical essay about language and the impossible bilingualism, which led him to poetry and to the choice of French as his poetic language. Dominated by this feeling of a "partage", he had as a concern for "gathering the scattered", exceeding separations, and thus joining together poetry and painting, translating foreign poetries into French, writing to find an immediate bond between oneself and the sensitive world.He was a contributor to the Mercure de France
Mercure de France
The Mercure de France was originally a French gazette and literary magazine first published in the 17th century, but after several incarnations has evolved as a publisher, and is now part of the Éditions Gallimard publishing group....
from 1964, then to the Nouvelle Revue Française
Nouvelle Revue Française
La Nouvelle Revue Française is a literary magazine founded in 1909 by a group of intellectuals, including André Gide, Jacques Copeau, and Jean Schlumberger...
, in which he wrote many articles on poets and painters. In 1973, he founded the literary magazine Argile
Argile (magazine)
Argile is a French poetry and art magazine founded in 1973 by the poet Claude Esteban and published in Paris by Maeght until its 24th issue in 1981.-External links:*...
, at Maeght
Aimé Maeght
Aimé Maeght was a French art collector and editor. He founded the Galerie Maeght in Paris and New York, and the Fondation Maeght in Saint-Paul-de-Vence near Nice ....
, with the moral support of René Char
René Char
René Char was a 20th century French poet.-Biography:Char was born in L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue in the Vaucluse department of France, the youngest of four children of Emile Char and Marie-Therese Rouget, where his father was mayor and managing director of the Vaucluse plasterworks...
: its twenty-four issues testified to the complicity between poetry and painting, while granting a new space to translated foreign poetry. He also dedicated a monograph to Chillida
Eduardo Chillida
Eduardo Chillida Juantegui, or Eduardo Txillida Juantegi in Basque, was a Spanish Basque sculptor notable for his monumental abstract works.-Early life and career:...
, and to Palazuelo
Pablo Palazuelo
Pablo Palazuelo was a Spanish painter and sculptor.- Work and Biography :Pablo Palazuelo was born in Madrid in 1916. In 1933 he studied architecture at the School of Arts and Crafts at Oxford University. Upon returning to Madrid in 1939, he began to devote all of his time to painting...
, and wrote prefaces for many exhibitions catalogs of painters such as Raoul Ubac
Raoul Ubac
Raoul Ubac was a French painter, sculptor, photographer and engraver.In 1937, he made Tete du Mannequin, a photograph taken of a mannequin consisting of everyday objects. Another of his work's include the photograph 'La Conciliabule'...
, Vieira da Silva
Maria Helena Vieira da Silva
Maria Helena Vieira da Silva was a Portuguese-French abstractionist painter.-Life:Vieira da Silva was born in Lisbon, Portugal. At the age of eleven she had begun seriously studying drawing and painting at that city's Academia de Belas-Artes...
, Arpad Szenes
Árpád Szenes
Árpád Szenes was a Hungarian-Jewish abstract painter who worked in France.He and Portuguese-French painter Maria Helena Vieira da Silva married in 1930 and became French citizens in the 1950s...
, Fermín Aguayo, Giorgio Morandi
Giorgio Morandi
Giorgio Morandi was an Italian painter and printmaker who specialized in still life. His paintings are noted for their tonal subtlety in depicting apparently simple subjects, which were limited mainly to vases, bottles, bowls, flowers, and landscapes.-Biography:Giorgio Morandi was born in Bologna...
, Josef Sima
Josef Sima
Josef Šíma was a renowned Czech painter, an important figure of modern European art.- Biography :After graduating from Academy of Arts in Prague where he was the student of Jan Preisler he was involved in the Devětsil movement and in Umělecká beseda in Prague before travelling to Paris in 1921. He...
, Bacon
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Albans, KC was an English philosopher, statesman, scientist, lawyer, jurist, author and pioneer of the scientific method. He served both as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England...
, Giacometti, Braque, Le Brocquy
Louis le Brocquy
Louis le Brocquy is an Irish painter born in Dublin. His work has received many accolades in a career that spans seventy years of creative practice...
, Chagall
Marc Chagall
Marc Chagall Art critic Robert Hughes referred to Chagall as "the quintessential Jewish artist of the twentieth century."According to art historian Michael J...
, etc. (Most of these texts were published again in volumes, see infra).
In 1968, he published his first book of poems, La Saison dévastée (The Season of Davastation), quickly followed by other books made with artists such as Arpad Szenes
Árpád Szenes
Árpád Szenes was a Hungarian-Jewish abstract painter who worked in France.He and Portuguese-French painter Maria Helena Vieira da Silva married in 1930 and became French citizens in the 1950s...
, Jean Bazaine and Raoul Ubac
Raoul Ubac
Raoul Ubac was a French painter, sculptor, photographer and engraver.In 1937, he made Tete du Mannequin, a photograph taken of a mannequin consisting of everyday objects. Another of his work's include the photograph 'La Conciliabule'...
. These books were gathered in his first large collection of poems, published by Flammarion in 1979, Terres, travaux du cœur (Earthes, works of heart). At the same time, he published Un lieu hors de tout lieu (A Place out of any Place), an essay on poetry which, starting from the initial evocation of Virgil
Virgil
Publius Vergilius Maro, usually called Virgil or Vergil in English , was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He is known for three major works of Latin literature, the Eclogues , the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid...
's Georgics, builts a reflection on poetry and a manifesto for new poetics, marked by the nostalgia of "a place out of any place" and by "a duty to seek" a new "conjuncture
Conjuncture
In general, a conjuncture is a period marked by some watershed event which separates different epochs.In economics, conjuncture is a critical combination of events....
" between words and things.
He very early on experienced a deep admiration for the work of the great Spanish poet Jorge Guillén
Jorge Guillén
Jorge Guillén y Álvarez was a Spanish poet, a member of the Generation of '27.-Biography:Jorge Guillén was born in Valladolid. His life paralleled that of his friend Pedro Salinas, whom he succeeded as a Spanish teaching assistant at the Collège de Sorbonne in the University of Paris from 1917 to...
; they became friends, and he translated in 1977 most of Guillén's major book, Cántico for Éditions Gallimard
Éditions Gallimard
Éditions Gallimard is one of the leading French publishers of books. The Guardian has described it as having "the best backlist in the world". In 2003 it and its subsidiaries published 1418 titles....
— Guillén himself translated into Spanish some of Esteban's poems, which he inserted in his last book, Final (1982). Esteban also translated many Octavio Paz
Octavio Paz
Octavio Paz Lozano was a Mexican writer, poet, and diplomat, and the winner of the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature.-Early life and writings:...
's works, such as El Mono gramático (The Monkey Grammarian). In 1980, under the title of Poèmes parallèles, he published an anthology of his translations, of which the preface, "Traduire", sets down the principles of an original reflection on poetics and on the translation of poetry. In 1987, he collected his essays on poetry and poetics in Critique de la raison poétique (Critique of Poetic Reason).
In 1984, he received the Mallarmé prize
Mallarmé prize
The Mallarmé prize is a poetry prize awarded each year by the Académie Mallarmé to a French speaking poet....
for the prose poems of Conjoncture du corps et du jardin (Conjuncture of Body and Garden). The same year, he founded the Poésie collection at the Editions Flammarion, in which he published a new generation of poets.
In 1989, three years after the death of his wife —the painter Denise Esteban—, he wrote Elégie de la mort violente (Elegy of the Violent Death), poems about mourning and memory. In 1993, he wrote Sept jours d'hier (Seven Days of yesterday), a remarkable suite of dense short poems that follow the "routes of mourning" and opens up the way of an appeasement. Deeply marked by the figure of King Lear, he published in 1996 Sur la dernière lande (On the last Heath), poems of wandering that evoke the figures of Shakespeare's tragedy. The year after, the Société des gens de lettres
Société des gens de lettres
The Sociéte des gens de lettres de France is a writers' association founded in 1838 by the notable French authors Honoré de Balzac, Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, and George Sand...
(SGDL) awarded him the Grand Prix of poetry for his whole work.
Painting remained for him a major interest. In 1991, he received the France Culture Prize for Soleil dans une pièce vide (Sun in an empty Room), poetic narrations inspired by Edward Hopper
Edward Hopper
Edward Hopper was a prominent American realist painter and printmaker. While most popularly known for his oil paintings, he was equally proficient as a watercolorist and printmaker in etching...
's paintings. He continued to write essays on art and published some luminous approaches of Velázquez
Diego Velázquez
Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez was a Spanish painter who was the leading artist in the court of King Philip IV. He was an individualistic artist of the contemporary Baroque period, important as a portrait artist...
, Goya, El Greco
El Greco
El Greco was a painter, sculptor and architect of the Spanish Renaissance. "El Greco" was a nickname, a reference to his ethnic Greek origin, and the artist normally signed his paintings with his full birth name in Greek letters, Δομήνικος Θεοτοκόπουλος .El Greco was born on Crete, which was at...
, Claude Lorrain
Claude Lorrain
Claude Lorrain, , traditionally just Claude in English Claude Lorrain, , traditionally just Claude in English (also Claude Gellée, his real name, or in French Claude Gellée, , dit le Lorrain) Claude Lorrain, , traditionally just Claude in English (also Claude Gellée, his real name, or in French...
, Rembrandt, Murillo
Bartolomé Estéban Murillo
Bartolomé Esteban Murillo was a Spanish Baroque painter. Although he is best known for his religious works, Murillo also produced a considerable number of paintings of contemporary women and children...
..., until his last essay dedicated to Caravaggio
Caravaggio
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio was an Italian artist active in Rome, Naples, Malta, and Sicily between 1593 and 1610. His paintings, which combine a realistic observation of the human state, both physical and emotional, with a dramatic use of lighting, had a formative influence on the Baroque...
, L'Ordre donnée à la nuit (The Order given to the Night), in which he draws the outlines of his art approach.
It is still painting, that of the Faiyum portraits, which caused the writing of a splendid suite of poems, Fayoum, published in 2001 by Gallimard
Éditions Gallimard
Éditions Gallimard is one of the leading French publishers of books. The Guardian has described it as having "the best backlist in the world". In 2003 it and its subsidiaries published 1418 titles....
in Morceaux de ciel, presque rien (Pieces of sky, hardly anything), that earned him the Prix Goncourt
Prix Goncourt
The Prix Goncourt is a prize in French literature, given by the académie Goncourt to the author of "the best and most imaginative prose work of the year"...
of poetry. In 2004, he published his ultimate reflections on poetry in Ce qui retourne au silence (What returns to silence), which also includes an essay on Robert Bresson
Robert Bresson
-Life and career:Bresson was born at Bromont-Lamothe, Puy-de-Dôme, the son of Marie-Élisabeth and Léon Bresson. Little is known of his early life and the year of his birth, 1901 or 1907, varies depending on the source. He was educated at Lycée Lakanal in Sceaux, Hauts-de-Seine, close to Paris, and...
and another on Varlam Shalamov
Varlam Shalamov
Varlam Tikhonovich Shalamov , baptized as Varlaam, was a Russian writer, journalist, poet and Gulag survivor.-Early life:Varlam Shalamov was born in Vologda, Vologda Governorate, a Russian city with a rich culture famous for its wooden architecture, to a family of a hereditary Russian Orthodox...
's Kolyma
Kolyma
The Kolyma region is located in the far north-eastern area of Russia in what is commonly known as Siberia but is actually part of the Russian Far East. It is bounded by the East Siberian Sea and the Arctic Ocean in the north and the Sea of Okhotsk to the south...
Tales.
He had been a student of the prestigious École Normale Supérieure
École Normale Supérieure
The École normale supérieure is one of the most prestigious French grandes écoles...
of Paris, and was professor of Spanish literature at the Paris-Sorbonne University until 1996, and then he became President of the Maison des Ecrivains (the French Writers House) from 1998 to 2004.
Shortly before his death, an anthology of his poems came out — Le Jour à peine écrit (1967-1992) (The Day scarcely written) — while the manuscript of his last book and poetic legacy was completed under the title of La Mort à distance (Death at a distance); it was published by Gallimard
Éditions Gallimard
Éditions Gallimard is one of the leading French publishers of books. The Guardian has described it as having "the best backlist in the world". In 2003 it and its subsidiaries published 1418 titles....
in May 2007.
Awards
Each year links to its corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:- 19841984 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:*December 19 - Philip Larkin turns down the British Poet Laureateship, and Ted Hughes becomes Poet Laureate....
: Mallarmé prizeMallarmé prizeThe Mallarmé prize is a poetry prize awarded each year by the Académie Mallarmé to a French speaking poet....
, for Conjoncture du corps et du jardin - 19911991 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* Forward Poetry Prize created...
: France CultureFrance CultureFrance Culture is a French public radio channel and part of Radio France. Its programming encompasses a wide variety of features on historical, philosophical, sociopolitical, and scientific themes , as well as literary readings, radio plays, and experimental productions...
prize, for Soleil dans une pièce vide - 19971997 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:*January 20 — Miller Williams of Arkansas reads his poem, "Of History and Hope," at President Clinton's inauguration....
: Grand Prix of poetry of the Société des gens de lettresSociété des gens de lettresThe Sociéte des gens de lettres de France is a writers' association founded in 1838 by the notable French authors Honoré de Balzac, Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, and George Sand...
, for his whole work - 20012001 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* Immediately after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, W. H...
: Prix GoncourtPrix GoncourtThe Prix Goncourt is a prize in French literature, given by the académie Goncourt to the author of "the best and most imaginative prose work of the year"...
of poetry, for his whole work
Poetry, translated into English
- A Smile between the stones, transl. by John MontagueJohn Montague (poet)John Montague is an Irish poet. He was born in New York and brought up in Tyrone. He has published a number of volumes of poetry, two collections of short stories and two volumes of memoir. He is one of the best known Irish contemporary poets...
, Agenda Editions (Mayfield, UK), 2005. - On the Last Heath, transl. by John Montague, in Poetry (Chicago, Oct.-Nov. 2000), p. 78-83.
- Conjuncture of Body and Garden, in Poetry Network 1 (Claude Esteban and Bernard NoëlBernard NoëlBernard Noël is a French writer and poet. He received the Grand Prix national de la poésie in 1992 and the Prix Robert Ganzo in 2010....
), collective translation (organized by The Tyrone Guthrie Centre and Poetry Ireland/Eigse Éireann, supervised by Theo Dorgan and John Montague), Dublin, Dedalus, 1992. - Conjuncture of Body and Garden – Cosmogony, transl. by James Phillips, Larkspur (CA, USA), Kosmos, Modern Poets in Translation Series, vol. 4, 1988.
- The Season of Devastation, transl. by Stanley CavellStanley CavellStanley Louis Cavell is an American philosopher. He is the Walter M. Cabot Professor Emeritus of Aesthetics and the General Theory of Value at Harvard University.-Life:...
, Pequod, 16-17 (San Francisco, 1984), p. 240-242. - Transparent God, transl. by David Cloutier, Larkspur (CA, USA), Kosmos, Modern Poets in Translation Series, vol. 2, 1983.
- White Road, Selected Poems of Claude Esteban, transl. by David Cloutier, Washington DC, The Charioteer Press, 1979.
Poetry
Each year links to its corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:- 20072007 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* March 5: a car bomb was exploded on Mutanabbi Street in Baghdad. More than 30 people were killed and more than 100 were wounded. This locale is the historic center of Baghdad bookselling, a winding...
: La Mort à distance, Gallimard - 20062006 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* French public notary Patrick Huet unveils Pieces of Hope to the Echo of the World in Lyon...
: Le Jour à peine écrit (1967-1992), Gallimard - 20012001 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* Immediately after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, W. H...
: Morceaux de ciel, presque rien, Gallimard - 20012001 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* Immediately after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, W. H...
: Etranger devant la porte, I. Variations, Farrago - 19991999 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* July 1 — Scotland's Parliament opened with the singing of Robert Burns' "A Man's a Man For A'That", instead of "God Save The Queen"...
: Janvier, février, mars. Pages, Farrago - 19961996 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* National Poetry Month was established by the Academy of American Poets in April 1996 as way to increase awareness and appreciation of poetry in the United States.* The movie Dead Man, written and...
: Sur la dernière lande, Fourbis - 19951995 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* February 16 — Announcement that 300 poems by S.T...
: Quelqu'un commence à parler dans une chambre, Flammarion - 19931993 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* January 20 — Maya Angelou reads "On the Pulse of Morning" at the inauguration of President Bill Clinton* T. S...
: Sept jours d'hier, Fourbis - 19911991 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* Forward Poetry Prize created...
: Soleil dans une pièce vide, Flammarion; Farrago, 2003. - 19891989 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* Dead Poets Society, a film incorporating excerpts from many traditional poets, ending with the title and opening line of Walt Whitman's lament on the death of Abraham Lincoln, "O Captain! My...
: Elégie de la mort violente, Flammarion - 19851985 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* The term "New Formalism" was first used in the article "The Yuppie Poet" in the May 1985 issue of the AWP Newsletter in an attack on the poetry movement...
: Le Nom et la Demeure, Flammarion - 19831983 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* The Frogmore Press founded by Andre Evans and Jeremy Page at the Frogmore tea-rooms in Folkestone...
: Conjoncture du corps et du jardin suivi de Cosmogonie, Flammarion - 19791979 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* The Kenyon Review is restarted by Kenyon College 10 years after the original publication was closed....
: Terres, travaux du cœur, Flammarion
Essays on poetry, literature and language
- Ce qui retourne au silence, Farrago, 2004 (essays on French poetry, poetics, Stanley CavellStanley CavellStanley Louis Cavell is an American philosopher. He is the Walter M. Cabot Professor Emeritus of Aesthetics and the General Theory of Value at Harvard University.-Life:...
, Yves BonnefoyYves BonnefoyYves Bonnefoy is a French poet and essayist. Bonnefoy was born in Tours, Indre-et-Loire, the son of a railroad worker and a teacher....
, Robert BressonRobert Bresson-Life and career:Bresson was born at Bromont-Lamothe, Puy-de-Dôme, the son of Marie-Élisabeth and Léon Bresson. Little is known of his early life and the year of his birth, 1901 or 1907, varies depending on the source. He was educated at Lycée Lakanal in Sceaux, Hauts-de-Seine, close to Paris, and...
and Varlam ShalamovVarlam ShalamovVarlam Tikhonovich Shalamov , baptized as Varlaam, was a Russian writer, journalist, poet and Gulag survivor.-Early life:Varlam Shalamov was born in Vologda, Vologda Governorate, a Russian city with a rich culture famous for its wooden architecture, to a family of a hereditary Russian Orthodox...
) - Etranger devant la porte, II. Thèmes, Farrago, 2001 (essays on Stéphane MallarméStéphane MallarméStéphane Mallarmé , whose real name was Étienne Mallarmé, was a French poet and critic. He was a major French symbolist poet, and his work anticipated and inspired several revolutionary artistic schools of the early 20th century, such as Dadaism, Surrealism, and Futurism.-Biography:Stéphane...
, Pierre ReverdyPierre ReverdyPierre Reverdy was a French poet associated with surrealism and cubism.Pierre Reverdy was born in Narbonne and grew up near the Montagne Noire in his father's house. Reverdy came from a family of sculptors. His father taught him to read and write. He studied at Toulouse and Narbonne.Reverdy...
, René CharRené CharRené Char was a 20th century French poet.-Biography:Char was born in L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue in the Vaucluse department of France, the youngest of four children of Emile Char and Marie-Therese Rouget, where his father was mayor and managing director of the Vaucluse plasterworks...
, André du BouchetAndré du BouchetAndré du Bouchet was a French poet.- Biography :Born in Paris, he lived in France until 1941, when his family left occupied Europe for the United States. He studied at Amherst College and then at Harvard University . After teaching for a year, he returned to France...
, Jacques DupinJacques DupinJacques Dupin is a French poet, art critic, and co-founder of the journal L'éphemère.A resident of Paris since 1944, he is director of publication at Galerie Maeght.- Jacques Dupin's poetry in English :...
, poetic translation and collective translation.) - D'une couleur qui fut donnée à la mer, Fourbis, 1997 (essays on poetic language, on Gérard de NervalGérard de NervalGérard de Nerval was the nom-de-plume of the French poet, essayist and translator Gérard Labrunie, one of the most essentially Romantic French poets.- Biography :...
as HeineHeinrich HeineChristian Johann Heinrich Heine was one of the most significant German poets of the 19th century. He was also a journalist, essayist, and literary critic. He is best known outside Germany for his early lyric poetry, which was set to music in the form of Lieder by composers such as Robert Schumann...
's translator, on García LorcaFederico García LorcaFederico del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús García Lorca was a Spanish poet, dramatist and theatre director. García Lorca achieved international recognition as an emblematic member of the Generation of '27. He is believed to be one of thousands who were summarily shot by anti-communist death squads...
, and translations of VirgilVirgilPublius Vergilius Maro, usually called Virgil or Vergil in English , was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He is known for three major works of Latin literature, the Eclogues , the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid...
and T. S. EliotT. S. EliotThomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...
into French). - Le Partage des mots, Gallimard, 1990.
- Critique de la raison poétique, Flammarion, 1987 (3 essays on poetry, another about translation, others on Hölderlin, Antonio MachadoAntonio MachadoAntonio Cipriano José María y Francisco de Santa Ana Machado y Ruiz, known as Antonio Machado was a Spanish poet and one of the leading figures of the Spanish literary movement known as the Generation of '98....
, Saint-John PerseSaint-John PerseSaint-John Perse was a French poet, awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1960 "for the soaring flight and evocative imagery of his poetry." He was also a major French diplomat from 1914 to 1940, after which he lived primarily in the USA until 1967.-Biography:Alexis Leger was...
, Jorge GuillénJorge GuillénJorge Guillén y Álvarez was a Spanish poet, a member of the Generation of '27.-Biography:Jorge Guillén was born in Valladolid. His life paralleled that of his friend Pedro Salinas, whom he succeeded as a Spanish teaching assistant at the Collège de Sorbonne in the University of Paris from 1917 to...
, Gaston BachelardGaston BachelardGaston Bachelard was a French philosopher. He made contributions in the fields of poetics and the philosophy of science. To the latter he introduced the concepts of epistemological obstacle and epistemological break...
, Yves Bonnefoy, Philippe JaccottetPhilippe JaccottetPhilippe Jaccottet is a poet and translator who publishes in French.After completing his studies in Lausanne, he lived several years in Paris. In 1953, came to live in the town of Grignan in Provence...
, Bernard NoëlBernard NoëlBernard Noël is a French writer and poet. He received the Grand Prix national de la poésie in 1992 and the Prix Robert Ganzo in 2010....
, Adonis and Octavio PazOctavio PazOctavio Paz Lozano was a Mexican writer, poet, and diplomat, and the winner of the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature.-Early life and writings:...
). - Un lieu hors de tout lieu, Galilée, 1979.
Essays on art and monographs
- L'Ordre donné à la nuit, Verdier, 2005.
- La Dormition du Comte d'Orgaz, Farrago, 2002 (essays on GrecoEl GrecoEl Greco was a painter, sculptor and architect of the Spanish Renaissance. "El Greco" was a nickname, a reference to his ethnic Greek origin, and the artist normally signed his paintings with his full birth name in Greek letters, Δομήνικος Θεοτοκόπουλος .El Greco was born on Crete, which was at...
, Le Lorrain, SaenredamPieter Jansz SaenredamPieter Jansz. Saenredam was a painter of the Dutch Golden Age, known for his distinctive paintings of whitewashed church interiors.-Biography:...
, VelázquezDiego VelázquezDiego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez was a Spanish painter who was the leading artist in the court of King Philip IV. He was an individualistic artist of the contemporary Baroque period, important as a portrait artist...
, Rembrandt, MurilloBartolomé Estéban MurilloBartolomé Esteban Murillo was a Spanish Baroque painter. Although he is best known for his religious works, Murillo also produced a considerable number of paintings of contemporary women and children...
, GoyaFrancisco GoyaFrancisco José de Goya y Lucientes was a Spanish romantic painter and printmaker regarded both as the last of the Old Masters and the first of the moderns. Goya was a court painter to the Spanish Crown, and through his works was both a commentator on and chronicler of his era...
, PicassoPablo PicassoPablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...
). - Traces, figures, traversées. Essais sur la peinture contemporaine., Galilée, 1985 (essays on BraqueGeorges BraqueGeorges Braque[p] was a major 20th century French painter and sculptor who, along with Pablo Picasso, developed the art style known as Cubism.-Early Life:...
, ChagallMarc ChagallMarc Chagall Art critic Robert Hughes referred to Chagall as "the quintessential Jewish artist of the twentieth century."According to art historian Michael J...
, MorandiGiorgio MorandiGiorgio Morandi was an Italian painter and printmaker who specialized in still life. His paintings are noted for their tonal subtlety in depicting apparently simple subjects, which were limited mainly to vases, bottles, bowls, flowers, and landscapes.-Biography:Giorgio Morandi was born in Bologna...
, SimaJosef SimaJosef Šíma was a renowned Czech painter, an important figure of modern European art.- Biography :After graduating from Academy of Arts in Prague where he was the student of Jan Preisler he was involved in the Devětsil movement and in Umělecká beseda in Prague before travelling to Paris in 1921. He...
, De KooningWillem de KooningWillem de Kooning was a Dutch American abstract expressionist artist who was born in Rotterdam, the Netherlands....
, Fernández, Aguayo, LamWifredo LamWifredo Óscar de la Concepción Lam y Castilla , better known as Wifredo Lam, was a Cuban artist who sought to portray and revive the enduring Afro-Cuban spirit and culture...
, SzenesÁrpád SzenesÁrpád Szenes was a Hungarian-Jewish abstract painter who worked in France.He and Portuguese-French painter Maria Helena Vieira da Silva married in 1930 and became French citizens in the 1950s...
, Bazaine, Ubac, Tal-CoatPierre Tal-CoatPierre Tal-Coat was a French artist considered to be one of the founders of Tachisme.-Life and work:...
, Hayter, BaconFrancis BaconFrancis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Albans, KC was an English philosopher, statesman, scientist, lawyer, jurist, author and pioneer of the scientific method. He served both as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England...
, Le BrocquyLouis le BrocquyLouis le Brocquy is an Irish painter born in Dublin. His work has received many accolades in a career that spans seventy years of creative practice...
, Nasser Assar, Palazuelo, AppelKarel AppelChristiaan Karel Appel was a Dutch painter, sculptor, and poet. He started painting at the age of fourteen and studied at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam in the 1940s...
et AlechinskyPierre AlechinskyPierre Alechinsky is a Belgian artist. He has lived and worked in France since 1951. His work is related to Tachisme, Abstract expressionism, and Lyrical Abstraction.Alechinsky was born in Brussels...
). - PalazueloPablo PalazueloPablo Palazuelo was a Spanish painter and sculptor.- Work and Biography :Pablo Palazuelo was born in Madrid in 1916. In 1933 he studied architecture at the School of Arts and Crafts at Oxford University. Upon returning to Madrid in 1939, he began to devote all of his time to painting...
, Maeght, 1980. - UbacRaoul UbacRaoul Ubac was a French painter, sculptor, photographer and engraver.In 1937, he made Tete du Mannequin, a photograph taken of a mannequin consisting of everyday objects. Another of his work's include the photograph 'La Conciliabule'...
, Maeght, 1978. - L'Immédiat et l'Inaccessible, Galilée, 1978 (essays on Baudelaire and painting, MatisseHenri MatisseHenri Matisse was a French artist, known for his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known primarily as a painter...
, Morandi, GiacomettiAlberto GiacomettiAlberto Giacometti was a Swiss sculptor, painter, draughtsman, and printmaker.Alberto Giacometti was born in the canton Graubünden's southerly alpine valley Val Bregaglia and came from an artistic background; his father, Giovanni, was a well-known post-Impressionist painter...
, Vieira da Silva, Szenes, Ubac, Aguayo, Picasso, DubuffetJean DubuffetJean Philippe Arthur Dubuffet was a French painter and sculptor. His idealistic approach to aesthetics embraced so called "low art" and eschewed traditional standards of beauty in favor of what he believed to be a more authentic and humanistic approach to image-making.-Life and work:Dubuffet was...
, PaulhanJean PaulhanJean Paulhan was a French writer, literary critic and publisher, director of the literary magazine Nouvelle Revue Française from 1925 to 1940 and from 1946 to 1968. He was a member of the Académie Française...
, Bacon, BretonAndré BretonAndré Breton was a French writer and poet. He is known best as the founder of Surrealism. His writings include the first Surrealist Manifesto of 1924, in which he defined surrealism as "pure psychic automatism"....
and surrealismSurrealismSurrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
, Yves Bonnefoy and painting). - Veilleurs aux confins (Fernández, Morandi, Sima, Szenes, Tal-Coat, Ubac, Vieira da Silva), Fata Morgana, 1978.
- ChillidaEduardo ChillidaEduardo Chillida Juantegui, or Eduardo Txillida Juantegi in Basque, was a Spanish Basque sculptor notable for his monumental abstract works.-Early life and career:...
, Maeght, 1972.
Further reading
"Cahier Claude Esteban", EuropeEurope (magazine)
- History :Created by Romain Rolland and a group of French writers, the literary magazine Europe began on 15 February 1923. It is still published by Éditions Rieder....
, 971 (March 2010), texts by Xavier Bruel, Jean-Michel Maulpoix
Jean-Michel Maulpoix
Jean-Michel Maulpoix was born on November 11, 1952 in Montbéliard, Doubs.The author of more than twenty volumes of French poetry and of several volumes of essays and criticism, he teaches modern French literature at the University Paris X Nanterre and is the director of the quarterly literary...
, Jacques Dupin
Jacques Dupin
Jacques Dupin is a French poet, art critic, and co-founder of the journal L'éphemère.A resident of Paris since 1944, he is director of publication at Galerie Maeght.- Jacques Dupin's poetry in English :...
, Yves Bonnefoy
Yves Bonnefoy
Yves Bonnefoy is a French poet and essayist. Bonnefoy was born in Tours, Indre-et-Loire, the son of a railroad worker and a teacher....
, Michel Deguy, Michael Bishop, Pierre Vilar, Michael Brophy, Esther Tellermann, Luis Antonio de Villena, Kadhour Méry, Jean-Baptiste Para, Georges Molinié, Dominique Viart, Laura Legros, Michel Jarrety, etc. L'Espace, l'Inachevé. Cahier Claude Esteban, Farrago/Léo Scheer, 2003, texts by Pierre Vilar, Yves Bonnefoy, Xavier Bruel, Florence Delay
Florence Delay
Florence Delay is a French academician and actress.-Biography:The daughter of Marie-Madeleine Carrez and Jean Delay, Delay studied at the Lycée Jean de La Fontaine and then the Sorbonne....
, Michel Deguy, Yves di Manno, Jacques Dupin, Jean Frémon, Emmanuel Hocquard, Gilbert Lascault, Bernard Noël
Bernard Noël
Bernard Noël is a French writer and poet. He received the Grand Prix national de la poésie in 1992 and the Prix Robert Ganzo in 2010....
, Jacqueline Risset
Jacqueline Risset
Jacqueline Risset is a French poet noted for her work on the board of the literary journal Tel Quel along with Julia Kristeva and Philippe Sollers, and for her translations of Italian poetry into French. Risset's books include Sleep's Powers and The Translation Begins.Risset was born in Besançon,...
, Jean-Luc Sarré, Jean-Pierre Cometti, etc. Letters from André du Bouchet
André du Bouchet
André du Bouchet was a French poet.- Biography :Born in Paris, he lived in France until 1941, when his family left occupied Europe for the United States. He studied at Amherst College and then at Harvard University . After teaching for a year, he returned to France...
, René Char
René Char
René Char was a 20th century French poet.-Biography:Char was born in L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue in the Vaucluse department of France, the youngest of four children of Emile Char and Marie-Therese Rouget, where his father was mayor and managing director of the Vaucluse plasterworks...
, Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger was a German philosopher known for his existential and phenomenological explorations of the "question of Being."...
, Jorge Guillén
Jorge Guillén
Jorge Guillén y Álvarez was a Spanish poet, a member of the Generation of '27.-Biography:Jorge Guillén was born in Valladolid. His life paralleled that of his friend Pedro Salinas, whom he succeeded as a Spanish teaching assistant at the Collège de Sorbonne in the University of Paris from 1917 to...
, Henri Michaux
Henri Michaux
Henri Michaux was a highly idiosyncratic Belgian-born poet, writer, and painter who wrote in French. He later took French citizenship. Michaux is best known for his esoteric books written in a highly accessible style, and his body of work includes poetry, travelogues, and art criticism...
, Octavio Paz
Octavio Paz
Octavio Paz Lozano was a Mexican writer, poet, and diplomat, and the winner of the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature.-Early life and writings:...
, Raoul Ubac
Raoul Ubac
Raoul Ubac was a French painter, sculptor, photographer and engraver.In 1937, he made Tete du Mannequin, a photograph taken of a mannequin consisting of everyday objects. Another of his work's include the photograph 'La Conciliabule'...
. Complete bibliography by Xavier Bruel. Robert W. Greene, "Argile and the Poetry of Claude Esteban. An Introduction", Mary Ann Caws (ed.), Writing in a Modern Temper: Essays on French Literature and Thought in honor of Henry Peyre, Saratoga CA, 1984, XII (Stanford French and Italian Studies, XXIII), pp. 188–200. Robert W. Greene, "For Landscapes: Esteban’s Writings on Art", Dalhousie French Studies (Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada), 21 (Fall-Winter 1991), pp. 113–121. Adelia V. Williams, "Poésie critique as Poetics of space. Edward Hopper
Edward Hopper
Edward Hopper was a prominent American realist painter and printmaker. While most popularly known for his oil paintings, he was equally proficient as a watercolorist and printmaker in etching...
and Claude Esteban", Mosaic, XXXI, 4 (Dec. 1998), pp. 123–124. Adelia V. Williams, "Claude Esteban", Sites, III, 1 (University of Connecticut, Spring 1999), pp. 189–191. Adelia V. Williams, "Verbal Meets Visual: an Overview of Poésie critique at the fin-de-siècle", The French Review, LXXIII, 3 (Feb. 2000), p. 488-496.