Description
Book Synopsis'A la lumiere d'hiver' (1977) is a central work in the writing of the Swiss French poet Philippe Jaccottet (1925-2021). Written in middle age, it forms a bridge between the poet's intricate early lyrics and his more expansive and meditative later work. Starting from a direct confrontation with the raw facts of mortality, its three poem-sequences strip away further layers of illusion until a glimmer of meaning starts to appear in the 'winter light' of the landscape of the Drome area of northern Provence, where Jaccottet made his home from 1953 until the end of his life. Tim Dooley's translation, 'In Winter Light', is the product of a long relationship with the original, which he first read at the time of its publication. His English version mirrors the tentative, scrupulous exploration of being he finds in Jaccottet's French, both its hesitancies and circular movements and, finally, its 'unblinking eyes'.
Trade Review'In this fine translation of Phillipe Jaccottet's elegiac three-part collection Tim Dooley wonderfully combines the grace of his own attentive poetics with a clear intimacy of understanding. In his hands, In Winter Light relays Jaccottet's lucidly charged journey through loss and mourning in language that's as close to the ear as it is to the imagination and the heart' - Jane Draycott; 'Philippe Jaccottet often employs a negative theology in which attempts at simile are discarded in the imperative to arrive at the mot juste - considered both as language and as philosophical position. Tim Dooley is alert to this ascesis, and his translations seem to me quite excellent: they are chaste, rhythmically sound, and retain the constant decorum that is a chief quality of this quiet, essential voice' - Stephen Romer
Table of ContentsIntroduction: 'In the old days it would be called song' The Lessons Songs from down there In Winter Light
