Patches of Sunlight, or of Shadow: Safeguarded Notes 1952-2005 (Swiss List)

Philippe Jaccottet’s newest work follows in some ways the approach of Seedtime, his recent two-volume collection of notebooks. Similarly comprising on-the-spot jottings, philosophical reflections, literary commentary, dream narratives and sundry “notes,” this book nonetheless differs from the preceding volumes in that the Swiss poet includes more personal material than ever before. Drawing on unpublished notebooks from the years 1952–2005, Jacottet offers here passages about his family, the death of his father-in-law and of his mother, his encounters with other major poets—such as René Char, Francis Ponge, Jean Tardieu, and his friends Yves Bonnefoy and André du Bouchet—and his trips abroad, as well as, characteristically, his walks in the countryside around the village of Grignan, in the south of France, where he has lived since 1953. For a poet who has been notoriously discreet about his life, this book offers unexpected glimpses of the private man. Above all, the entries in this notebook show how one of the greatest European poets grapples with the discouraging elements of existence, counterbalancing them by recording fleeting perceptions in which “something else,” almost like a threshold, seems present.
 

Born in Switzerland and a long-time resident of France, Philippe Jaccottet (1925–2021)  is a celebrated European poet. In 2014, Jaccottet’s collected writings were published in Gallimard’s prestigious Pléiade series. He has been awarded several European literary prizes, including the Grand Prix Suisse de littérature, the highest Swiss literary distinction.

John Taylor has translated many key French, Swiss, Italian, and modern Greek writers. His translations include books by Philippe Jaccottet, Georges Perros, Catherine Colomb, and Pierre Chappuis, as well as Pascal Quignard’s The Unsaddled and Dying of Thinking. Taylor is also the author of several books of poetry and poetic prose, including, most recently, What Comes from the Night.