About the Author
Born in Tours in 1923,
Yves Bonnefoy graduated in history of science and philosophy. He is first and foremost, however, a writer, and has devoted himself primarily to the analysis of poetry and art. He published his first volume of poems,
Du Mouvement et de l'immobilité de Douve, in 1953. He has also written numerous essays, including
Rome 1630,
L'Improbable,
L'Arrière-pays and
Entretiens su la poésie, and has translated Shakespeare and Yeats into French. Many of his poetic works have been translated into English (
In the Shadow's Light, 1990;
New and Selected Poems, 1996) along with a number of his essays (
The Act and the Place of Poetry, 1989;
The Lure and Truth of Painting, 1995), all published by the University of Chicago Press. He was awarded the Prix Montaigne in 1978 and the Bennett Award in New York in 1988. He has been invited to teach at numerous American universities, among them Yale, Princeton, the University of California and City University, New York. He was elected in 1981 to a Chair of Comparative Poetry at the Collège de France, and is a doctor
honoris causa at various universities, including the University of Chicago.