Description
Book SynopsisAn intriguing set of short, deceptively simple poems, "The Book of the Snow" meditates on our relation to the austere beauty and elemental power of the midwinter scene. It is also a subtle, witty, occasionally savage critique of our philosophical and artistic complacency. While pretending to literary defeatism, Francois Jacqmin captivates us with the deft touch of an accomplished poet. Philip Mosley's beautifully modulated translation of the last collection to be published in the poet's lifetime, only two years before his death in 1992, makes available to English-language readers for the first time the work of one of Belgium's foremost francophone poets of the twentieth century.
Table of ContentsSeries Editor's Note, Translator's Preface, Introduction. Snow, The time comes, To return, The landscape is fixed, When we follow, Gentlefolk, What you hear, Hounded by the night, I close my eyes, If we have, In poetry, We raise our eyes, For an inexhaustible instant, The cherries are packed tight, Night, The fog, You suspect, NuNo one gets by with his speech, The snow is everywhere, He who lives, Frozen in its icy crypt, It is midnight, My ruin, I am delighted, It is not the aptness, Night is old, All of a sudden, There has to be a handy slander, Who will make sense of, The role, Literary practice, Beautiful, Heads lowered, We understood that, There is nothing as pointless, What hope is there, The snow was going nowhere, The tendency, We begin a verse, When the snow stopped falling, By dint of, What lesson, The rectilinear distress, He who had a single clear thought, Sometimes, in the night, The fountain, Beneath the snow, Where the snow falls, Being detaches itself from the night, The small scenes, Moved, The boundless is sealed, The mast of nothingness, I no longer stand, Some use the sled,You suffer a little, He who listens, Nothing stifles me too, We await, I cross the enamel, It is not dying, There are men, I open the book, Being, That to which all is given, Night exploits, Nostalgia, Only the dimwitted seraphim, The only thing, We cannot carry on, Let us talk no more, In the clinking, A ferocious blast, We have gone beyond, The contradiction, We see nothing, A first snowfall, There comes an age, There is nothing left, The snow came close, The repose of firs, When I no longer saw anything, Perceptive is he, The forest's low wings, In the white clamour, Everything proven, Since silence, Evening draws in, I can no longer, The impossible, With the snow, We conjugate, What begins, IThere was no landmark, It is eloquent, Being tilts, There is neither forest nor thought, The moon has revealed, After it had snowed, There were several moments, I make myself scarce, The noise, NI am not an author, Cold consumed, Since the frost, JI have had to muster, I do not connect with the world anymore, It is not enough, Day's end, What would be that triumph, In early evening, Biographical Notes.
