The Red Scarf: Followed by "Two Stages" and Additional Notes (The French List) Hardcover – February 13, 2021

Having translated five books by Yves Bonnefoy, including three (The Curved Planks, Together Still, and Rome, 1630) which are relevant to The Red Scarf, I greet this brilliant translation by Stephen Romer with admiration and enthusiasm. In this volume, Bonnefoy’s last work in prose, he expands on the autobiographical themes which first came to the fore in ‘The House Where I Was Born’, a sequence of poems in The Curved Planks, and which were continued in Together Still, the author’s final collection of poetry. In particular, The Red Scarf develops the contrast between his father’s silence and his mother’s communicative role as a teacher. This ‘primal’ opposition is skilfully underlined by Romer’s eloquent essay at the end of the volume. At the same time, Bonnefoy advances the aesthetic meditation undertaken in The Arrière-Pays, another prose-work beautifully translated by Romer. Like the latter, Two Stages and Additional Notes, a shorter work which accompanies The Red Scarf, traces the poet’s evolution from his childhood in the provinces of France to his coming of age in Italy. His devotion to that country reaches its lengthiest expression in Rome, 1630 and the five further essays on the Seicento attached to that volume. Altogether, the various books mentioned here afford an ample vision of Bonnefoy’s poetic vocation, as well as his philosophy of literature and art. Like The Red Scarf, most of them owe their existence in English to the editorial expertise of Naveen Kishore and his team at Seagull Books.