Bonnefoy

French name Bonnefoy, good faith; while the much more assertive

The Romance of Names Ernest Weekley 1909

Born in Tours in 1923 to a railway worker and a teacher, Mr. Bonnefoy studied mathematics, philosophy and the history of science before turning to full-time teaching, writing and translation notably of Shakespeare.

The Pursuit of Presence Micah Mattix 2012

Poetry, Mr. Bonnefoy suggested in 1959, is "hope," and as "Second Simplicity" shows, he has lost little faith or vigor.

The Pursuit of Presence Micah Mattix 2012

Mr. Bonnefoy identified Eliot's "Waste Land" as the first work to recognize the dead modern spiritual landscape—"that desolate land, where a spell has dried up the springs"—that comes from this rejection of the material world.

The Pursuit of Presence Micah Mattix 2012

Thus modern poetry, according to Mr. Bonnefoy, has tended toward a sort of falsehood, repeatedly denying the very world it should incarnate.

The Pursuit of Presence Micah Mattix 2012

There is nothing to do but keep moving (and writing): "I move forward," Mr. Bonnefoy writes in "The Only Rose" (1991).

The Pursuit of Presence Micah Mattix 2012

This push toward greater simplicity in his own verse has grown as Mr. Bonnefoy has continued translating Shakespeare.

The Pursuit of Presence Micah Mattix 2012

For much of his adult life, Mr. Bonnefoy spent his summers with his wife in an abandoned monastery in Provence.

The Pursuit of Presence Micah Mattix 2012

Like René Magritte, Mr. Bonnefoy would come to see a connection between Catholicism's sacred mysteries and surrealism's worship of the "marvelous" image.

The Pursuit of Presence Micah Mattix 2012

In "Three Recollections of Borges," for example, Mr. Bonnefoy recalls three meetings with Jorge Luis Borges, ending with a visit in Geneva just before Borges's death.

The Pursuit of Presence Micah Mattix 2012