Philippe Jaccottet, Cahier de verdure [Verdure Notebook]

Michael Bishop (Dalhousie University)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1990

Places

France (Publication/ performance)
Switzerland (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Poem collection
Prose Fiction Narrative

Resources

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In his 1957

La Promenade sous les arbres

we read that Philippe Jaccottet’s principal endeavour in writing this early book centres upon a gesture, of necessity filtered through language’s strongly felt relativities, to “define […] what I must in effect call a poetical experience” (LPSLA, 13). It is an endeavour that will occupy most of his life and is, from the outset, to be understood not as an effort to penetrate the strange power of textual matter, but rather one urging upon him the endless enigma of the impact of the physical world, its trees and flowers and birds, its sky and light and air, and the fused sensual and spiritual stirrings occasioned by such a simultaneously constant and shifting impact. The 1990

Cahier de verdure

is a book of central pertinency in this ongoing,…

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2746 words

Citation: Bishop, Michael. "Cahier de verdure". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 25 August 2014 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=31089, accessed 19 April 2024.]

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