Notes Guillevic Notes (E-Journal, York University)

Villani, Sergio

French

Bibliographie

Notes Guillevic Notes IX (Fall/Automne 2019)    47 
 
 
 
 
 
Claudel, Guillevic and the City 
 
Sergio Villani 
 
ne doesn’t usually associate Claudel and Guillevic, the former best known 
as a Catholic poet and dramatist; the other as a poet and left-wing social 
activist. Yet the two writers share a common poetic tradition especially that of 
19th century poetry, and they share as well a religious formation and frame of 
reference. If Claudel converted to Catholicism after a religious experience at 
Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris Christmas Eve of 1896, Guillevic, a devoted 
Catholic, abandoned his faith in the mid 1930s in order to pursue the social 
ideals of Marxism. The young Guillevic admired Claudel. It is said that, in the 
early 1920s, he sent Claudel a poem inspired by the Virgin Mary. This poem 
remains unknown and there is no evidence that Claudel even received it. More 
tangible literary correspondence is evident in the works of the two writers; for 
example, their use of religious language and symbolism; their use of the image 
of the cathedral of the wall, and most of all their literary exploitation of the 
image of the city. Claudel writes two versions of the play La Ville (1893 and 
1901).1  Guillevic writes a collection of poems which he titles Ville in 1969.2 
Claudel represents the city as an ethical and moral space; Guillevic, on the 
other hand, conceives his city as a social structure. For Claudel, the city is 
shaped by the energies and drive of strong and powerful individuals; for 
Guillevic, the city is a space defined by collective action and values. Two 
divergent images shaped one by a religious faith, the other by a political 
ideology.    
 
It is said that Claudel’s image of the city destroyed by insurrection and 
fire was inspired by the events of the Commune. This influence is quite 
plausible since during the gestation period of the play there were still visible 
signs of the destruction and burning of Paris during the Commune. For many 
it was still a vivid memory. It seems to me, however, that his representation in 
O 
Notes Guillevic Notes IX (Fall/Automne 2019)    48 
La Ville, especially in the second version, corresponds more to Biblical images 
such as that of Sodom and Gomorra in the Old Testament, cities that had lost 
their faith in God and were steeped in moral corruption. During the closing 
years of the 19th century, in the spiritual zeal he experienced following his 
conversion, Claudel read avidly the Bible, as well as texts of Church 
luminaries, such as St. Augustine’s City of God.  
 
The city he portrays is designated mostly in negative terms, its 
character marked by moral turpitude. In the first version of the play, the 
reference to the city are almost curses “Cette rambleur inique” (309)4, Ce lieu 
maudit” (346), ce lieu détestable” (351). As the wrath of God destroys by fire 
and brimstone the biblical sinful cities, Claudel’s city is razed by fire by the 
vengeance of an angered individual. “Je t’ai détruite” (372), cries Avare, 
moved by a spirit of anarchism. Ivors, the soon to be king, praises this 
individual zeal and accomplishment “Quand tous les homes se mettraient 
ensemble, il n’en ont pas plus de droits, contre un seul” (372). 
 
After his victory, Avare refuses to remain in the city “Je ne veux plus 
de communauté” (379), states Avare, as he departs alone from the city. Other 
individual efforts take up the task of rebuilding the city “Faisons une race 
d’hommes” (373) cries Graillard (to the victorious army). And Pasme echoes 
the call for reconstruction “Formons une ville et qu’elle existe comme une fête” 
(383). It is under the leadership of the new and just king, Ivors, that this ideal 
city will rise from the ashes.  
 
The second version of the play also emphasizes the moral turpitude of 
the city, a corruption that justifies its destruction. The city is referenced as “ce 
lieu de mensonge”, “cette habitation de corruption” (422), and “ce lieu 
méprisable” (472). In his disgust of this state of affairs, Avare describes it as a 
kind of pigsty. 
 
Ça bouge, ça vit! Ces longues lignes de lumière 
En long et large indiquent les canaux ou coule la matière humaine. Ca 
parle! Ils grouillent ensemble, âmes et membres, 
Confondants leurs haleines et leurs excréments.  
O Ville! O Ville! (421) 
Notes Guillevic Notes IX (Fall/Automne 2019)    49 
 
This disgust explains his victorious cry, after the city burns “comme une vieille 
paillasse” (421): 
 
“Je t’ai détruite, Cité” 
 
The urban space is restored and purified by fire. “L’eau et l’ardeur du 
ciel ont nettoyé les latrines et les théâtres” (471). Like in the ending of the first 
version, the task of rebuilding and restoring civil order is given to the new king, 
Ivors.  
 
Pour nous, nous établissant dans la ville, nous 
Constituerons les lois” (490). 
 
With this ending, Claudel suggests that the city as a socio-political structure is 
maintained orderly by laws enacted by the strength and vision of a morally 
sensitive and idealistic individual.    
 
Guillevic writes  that the city is like a word that he doesn’t know.5 And 
yet, during several years, and in many places during his travels, he meditated, 
“ruminated” the idea of the city.  The result was Ville, one of his major 
collection of poems. He also relates that the city had been for a long time an 
“obsession” and that in writing Ville he experienced a kind of catharsis, a sense 
of “deliverance”. This seems to contradict what he states much later in the 
1990-91 poem “En ville”; namely that he writes always to “possess”, but what 
he has retained in this particular poem is only the “silence” of the city at night: 
“c’est comme si je le mangeais.” .5 
 
Writing on Ville some years ago,6 I noted, in particular, that in this 
volume of poems, as in earlier ones, to some degree, in Carnac (1961) for 
example, Guillevic is invigorated by his social activism. After all, published in 
1969, Ville could be considered a by-product and, perhaps, even a reflection of 
the social unrest of May 68. The major stylistic aspect of this poetic meditation 
is Guillevic’s use of the city as a trope, indeed as an exercise in writing. The 
image of the city is elaborated as an extended metaphor, as a figure with 
anthropomorphic qualities: it has a skeletal form, sinews and blood flowing in 
Notes Guillevic Notes IX (Fall/Automne 2019)    50 
sinusoid arteries. It is a living organism. This metaphor gives unity to the 
sequence of poems which, individually, could stand alone as integral poetic 
pieces. This sequential composition, many forming one, is essentially the 
structural newness of this volume, a composition which Guillevic later adopts 
in several other publications, (such as in the volume of his “quanta” 
sequences.) 
 
A great poem never stops generating meaning and new associations. 
Such is Guillevic’s Ville. Some time ago, I came across what is, perhaps, the 
first commentary of the poem: a short review written by René Lacôte in the 
left-wing journal Les Lettres françaises.7 Lacôte notes the abundant vegetation, 
mostly a variety of trees, in Guillevic’s urban landscape. This green matter is 
evident in Guillevic and no surprise for his reader. However, I was especially 
struck by the tension Lacôte identifies between the city and the outlying open 
fields, “campagne”, and also between the city and the people “qui sentent en 
eux des dimensions qu’elle n’a pas.” This idea of an individual human presence 
as a different entity and reality, even antagonistic to the city, which denotes 
essentially a collectivity, intrigued me and brought me to read again Ville and 
even to reconsider as a whole Guillevic’s writings after 1960. If there is in Ville 
this tension or antagonisms, then Guillevic reiterates here that notion central to 
left wing ideology of collective values and interests at odds with individual 
ones. The book, then, is not simply an esthetic exercise in poetic writing or a 
necessity to free himself from an “obsession”, or a self-appropriation of the 
city by the “enfant de la côte bretonne”, as designated by Lacôte; rather, it is a 
reaffirmation of a political credo that underlies and motivates his social 
activism.  
 
  Indeed,what is remarkable in Guillevic’s writing post-1960 is the 
quasi-absence of individual human beings. If one peruses the volume Relier, 
for example, that includes texts from the late 30’s to the late 90’s, one 
encounters the familiar self-ruminating voice of the poet sometimes tender, 
sometimes humorous, sometimes ironic, sometimes angry, addressing in 
everyday language, stones and birds, flowers and trees,” brother oak tree” 
(780), musical instruments, insects and heavenly bodies etc. However, 
Guillevic’s poetic space is starkly desolate, devoid of human presence, of 
otherness or of seeking  the Other. There is, of course, the occasional reference 
Notes Guillevic Notes IX (Fall/Automne 2019)    51 
to a human figure as a type, never as an individual. In the poem L’hôpital, 8  
for example, we find reference to vague human forms such as “le voisin” and 
“l’infirmière”, and to groups such as “médecins”, “visiteurs”, and the indefinite 
“beaucoup”, their presence seen as a part of the general letargic atmosphere of 
“lenteur” which reigns in the hospital.  
 
In Ville individuals are also absent. The inhabitants are only 
represented as a collectivity, joining together in order to redress common 
injustices as in the evocation of a protest march along the avenues of Paris.  
 
Ils sont ensemble. Ensemble, ils vont, 
Savent pourquoi. C’est par exemple 
De la Bastille à la Nation. 
Milliers, longtemps. Largeur du ciel. 
 
Ils chantent, crient, se fraternisent. 
Ils ont, d’espoir ou de colère, 
A crier lourd, à dire haut. 
 
Parfois silence, 
Longue montée. 
 
Car les morts du métro Charonne 
Ne peuvent pas se délaver. 
Ont irrigué la ville 
De leur meilleur. 
 
La foule est veuve, 
La ville est respect. (Ville, 114) 
 
 
The repetition of “ensemble” puts emphasis on the collective action of the 
inhabitants, not only to redress inequities but also to bear witness to the martyrs 
of social injustices, such as the victims of the massacre  at Métro Charonne.9 
 
Notes Guillevic Notes IX (Fall/Automne 2019)    52 
One image, the city; two divergent visions. In the 1940’s, Claudel 
writes odes in praise of individual agents of social change, to builders of cities 
and nations, namely Petain and De Gaulle. In 1968, Guillevic marches together 
with other writers, students and workers to condemn inequalities, but also to 
demonstrate strength and compassion in solidarity. One, Claudel exemplifies 
civil an moral rectitude in the figure of powerful individuals;the other, 
Guillevic, advocates for social justice through collective solidarity and action. 
For one the city is essentially a moral space,erected and sustained by faith; for 
the other it is fundamentally a social structure cemented by solidarity. 
 
Notes 
 
1 Claudel, Paul.  La Ville.  
2 Guillevic. Ville. 
3The page references are to the Pléiade edition of the Claudel’s plays, vol.1, 
1969. 
4 “mais la ville est commme un mot/ que je ne connais pas”. Relier 
(Gallimard , 2007): 501. 
5 Relier, 501,502. 
6 « Autour de Ville: poésie urbaine, poésie cosmopolite.» Guillevic: la passion du monde, sld. 
Jacques Lardoux, Angers: Presses de l'Université d'Angers, 2003., 313-321 
7 René Lacôte, “Chronique de poeesie.” Les Lettres françaises 1280  (29 
avril, 1969): 10. 
8 Relier, 417. 
9 Paris massacre (17 October 1961) during the Algerian war, ordered by 
police préfet Maurice Papon. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 


English

Claudel, Guillevic and the City

Notes Guillevic Notes X (Fall/Automne 2020)    49 
 
 
L’Homme qui se ferme: The ‘OPEN” and “CLOSED” 
Dialectic in Guillevic 
 
Sergio Villani 
 
he poem L’Homme qui se ferme first appeared in a small edition1 in 1949 
and that same year was included as the penultimate text in Gagner.2  It is 
dedicated to Jean Marcenac, poet, participant in the Resistance and intellectual 
Marxist.  L’Homme qui se ferme is very personal as it reveals, like no other 
text of this period, the poet’s mental and emotional turmoil, as well as his 
ethical and social turpitude in this post-war period and at his mid-point 
lifespan. The title of the poem is not “l’homme fermé”, shuttered, closed in, 
but “qui se ferme”, a reflexive verb in the present tense, indicating, not a static 
state, but an intermittent, progressive and willful action. The poem transcribes 
this mental and emotional churning as a character vacillation, a tendency to 
either clam-up, shut himself in from the outside world and others, or the 
opposing desire to open up, engaging in the social sphere. The self-analysis, a 
ruminating trait in Guillevic, is punctuated with philosophical and existential 
questionings, such as 
 
                               Qu’est-ce que c’est: 
                                Etre sur terre? 
or 
                               Si vraiment elle s’arrête 
                               Cette boule. 
 
as he also wonders about the reception and efficacy of his poetic voice and 
social message: 
 
                               Reste à savoir ce qu’on en fait  
                               De ce qu’il dit. 
 
T 
Notes Guillevic Notes X (Fall/Automne 2020)    50 
This dualistic, an almost schizophrenic attitude, is also reflected in the 
poet’s changing versification and artistic association with contemporary 
painters. The short, abrupt rhythms of the free verse as in the one, two, three-
line sequences in L’homme qui se ferme, give way, -- as the poet opens up and 
becomes more militant politically, -- to more lyrical flowing verse structures 
in Terre à bonheur and to rigid versification and fixed forms such as the 
sonnets of the 1950s. The poet adopts traditional forms of versification to 
accompany and support the reconstruction period of the Republic, and then 
reverts to free verse in the 1960s.   Paradoxically, at the same time as he 
expounds the virtues of the alexandrine and the sonnet, he remains partisan of 
modernistic painting and collaborates with several abstract painters, especially 
those who display socialist and communist leanings. 
This ambivalent attitude finds a graphic illustration in the cover of 
L’homme qui se ferme by the Marxist painter Edouard Pignon. 
 
 
Pignon sketches a window with two shutters ajar, uncertain as to whether 
closing or opening. Two staves with entwined serpents cross each of the 
shutters diagonally, one on the inside, the other on the outside, suggesting 
Notes Guillevic Notes X (Fall/Automne 2020)    51 
danger in either space or, perhaps, as the serpent on the rod of Asclepius, a 
healing prospect. 
Since its publication, L’homme qui se ferme has received scant critical 
attention. It is not mentioned at all by Pierre Daix and Jean Tortel.3 In fact, 
strangely, in these two commentaries, there is little reference to Gagner. Jean 
Pierrot is the first to note the importance of this poem in 1984, stating that 
Guillevic portrays  here “un autre soi-même”,  torn between his old  anguish 
and fears and the desire to free himself from these obsessions,  ”peur de 
l’espace et celle de la claustration.”4 However, In his 1991 thesis on Guillevic, 
Gavin Bowd, identifies a difference in “tone” in this series of “discontinuous 
micro-texts”, suggesting through negatives, questions, formal, and linguistic 
oppositions “an openness to an uncertain world.” 5  There is indeed formal 
discontinuity here but it figures forth  the very nature of his existential  
rumination, halting, hesitating, fearful and uncertain. And there is a unified 
image of an emotional and mental state created through the discontinuity.  As 
for the “openness”, Guillevic himself seems to consider this cloistering 
tendency as a past anxiety which he has been able to transcend. He attributes 
the “openness” which he enjoys to the relationship he has with Colomba 
Voronca, as he reveals in the dedication he writes in the copy of L’Homme qui 
se ferme he offers her:6  
Notes Guillevic Notes X (Fall/Automne 2020)    52 
 
 
 
 
 
This same “openness” he praises in the dedication of the copy he sends to the 
poet Charles Dobzynski who also participated in the Resistance and wrote for 
several Marxist publications:7 
 
Notes Guillevic Notes X (Fall/Automne 2020)    53 
 
 
Of course in 1950, Guillevic writes this homage in the elation of his 
forthcoming Terre à bonheur. Dejected, he will re-enter a shuttered phase in 
1956, following the occupation of Hungary by the Soviet Union. 
The Guillevic reader is familiar with the various motifs and rhetorical 
devices (negatives, questions, oppositions (ouvre/ferme, fermés/ouverts, 
remonte/descend, blancs/noir), repetitions, etc.) he exploits in this poem to 
characterize the man’s inner turmoil, his malaise in whatever location or 
circumstance. What is striking here, however, is especially the use of imagery 
to give a visual and concrete dimension to the emotional and mental state. 
Right from the opening, the image of a messy household defines the disorderly 
state of the shuttered/shuttering Man: 
 
Ce n’est pas un ménage bien tenu, 
L’homme qui se ferme. 
 
Notes Guillevic Notes X (Fall/Automne 2020)    54 
 There is possibly here an allusion to Claudel’s fifth Great ode La 
Maison fermée, where Claudel argues that one’s being, the poet’s language, 
the Church/cathedral, and the Universe must be “closed” in order to contain 
and sustain a spiritual progression. Guillevic, in contrast, will argue that a 
house, cathedral and poetry must be without walls in order to achieve 
communion and a movement towards a temporal future, “la voix du présent 
allant vers l’avenir.”8 He doesn’t negate however, his opposing tendency to 
close-up, to “dig” deep into the self in order to reach a center of light and peace. 
 
The image of the mouth also defines the shuttered/shuttering Man, a 
mouth swallowing everything outside. Strangely, this man also resides in a 
bigger mouth, so that he is also being swallowed, suggesting a materialistic 
struggle for survival. The shuttered/shuttering Man is also designated as a 
sucker, “suçoir”, a parasite plant that feeds itself on another plant. Both images 
have negative connotations and suggest a contested and transient living space. 
 
Recurring in the poem, is the use of Euclidian geometry to characterize 
the constant mental ruminations of the shuttered/shuttering Man: 
 
Il calcule. 
Il a inventé bien des façons 
De calculer. 
 
Il remonte et descend 
Le long de ses calculs. 
 
Toujours il se retrouve 
Au même endroit de la spirale. 
  
These mental acrobatics, “escalades”, lead nowhere. Other geometric terms 
(plat, rond, ligne droite, centre, cercle) complement this vocabulary to suggest 
a sterile activity. The rationality and practicality of Euclidian geometry is used 
to describe a reasoning which is irrational and even destructive. Guillevic has 
already used this imagery to reveal the absurdity of Nazi ideology and the 
horror of its concentration camps: 
 
Notes Guillevic Notes X (Fall/Automne 2020)    55 
Et ruminant toujours 
De nous ensorceler dans leurs géométries, 
 
Ou les lignes sur tous les plans 
S’en vont buter sur le plus rien,  
Ne se rencontrent qu’à la mort. 
 
Et n’évacuent qu’aux verticales 
Des crématoires.9 
 
The “camps” are also a closed and enclosing space. 
 
 
  No doubt Guillevic fought for and aspired to create an “open” social 
environment, devoid of restricting walls.  Thus Lucie Albertini-Guillevic aptly 
named Ouvrir the third posthumous Guillevic collection. Quoting  the  verse 
“Combat pour l’espace ouvert” from Paroi , she writes: “un combat mené au 
jour le jour par celui qui engage totalement sa vie pour qu’advienne l’oeuvre 
qui le tenaille sans réserve et qui n’aboutira que lorsque s’ouvriront en lui et 
l’espace du dehors et l’espace du dedans.”10 True, but one must also recognize 
that opposing tendency in him to seek and create a closed space, away from 
others, where to cultivate whoever is intimate and where, at the innermost 
abode of his being, he can experience that silence that brings peace. That desire 
to create an enclosed space of simplicity and silence evokes a kind of monastic 
vocation. Appropriately, Brother Bernard-Joseph Samain, has seen in 
Guillevic the quest for what he calls a “moine intérieur” and he has used his 
poetry to animate the spiritual retreats at his Cistercian monastery in Orval, 
Belgium.11 Du silence, published in 1994, marks the realization of this poetic 
and spiritual quest: 
 
Le silence, ma lumière, 
Est devenue joie.12 
 
Guillevic becomes again “l’homme qui se ferme” and the “architect of 
silence”: 
 
Notes Guillevic Notes X (Fall/Automne 2020)    56 
A tout ce qui m’entoure  
je donne mon silence. Et le temps  
est suspendu,13 
 
and, like Claudel, structures his own “maison fermée.” 
 
Notes 
 
1 Guillevic. L’Homme qui se ferme. Paris: Réclame 1949. Cover illustration by 
Edouard Pignon. 1075 copies printed: 1000 “sur vélin”, and 75 “sur Montval” 
containing a numbered etching, the first 15 also containing a series of refused 
engravings, perhaps by Pierre-André Benoit.  
2  Gagner. Paris: Gallimard, 1981: 161-173. 
3  Pierre Daix. Guillevic. Poètes d’aujourd’hui. Éditions Pierre Seghers, 1954. 
Jean Tortel. Guillevic. Poètes d’aujourd’hui. Éditions Pierre Seghers, 1962. 
4  Jean Pierrot. Guillevic ou la sérénité gagnée. Seyssel: Éditions du Champ 
Vallon, 1984: 107-108. 
5  Gavin Bowd. The Poetry of Guillevic. Uiversity of St Andrews, 1981. On 
line, Proquest: 88-89. 
6  Copy sold on line. 
7 Copy sold on line. 
8  Guillevic, “Art poétique” in Gagner, op.cit.: 183 
9  Guillevic. “Les camps” in Gagner, op. cit.: 73-74. 
10  Lucie Albertini-Guillevic.”Combat pour l’espace ouvert,” in Guillevic. 
Ouvrir, poèmes et proses 1929-1996. Paris: Gallimard, 2017: 15. 
11  Bernard-Joseph Samain. Le moine intérieur. Lecture du poète Guillevic. 
Orval, été 2000. 
12  Guillevic. Du silence/On Silence. Trans. Sergio Villani.  Illustrated by Mark 
Filipiuk. Woodbridge (Ontario): Les Éditions Albion Press, 1995: 68.  
Guillevic. Du silence. PAP, 1995. 
13 In a letter, 1996, to the artist Robert Clévier who illustrates his prose poem 
Dits de la jeune fille et de l’homme. On line.  
 
 
 
 


L’Homme qui se ferme: The “Open” and “Closed” Dialectic in Guillevic

Bowd, Gavin

A Brief Franco-Romanian encounter. Nina Cassian and Guillevic in translation

Fournier, Bernard

La réception de Terraqué

Prevots, Aaron

“Rond” and a Poetics of Roundness, within and beyond Sphère

“Les embruns de la mer”: Frailty and Strength in Last Poems by Guillevic and Reverdy

Lagrange, André

Brindeau, Serge

Penot-Lacassagne, Olivier

Lardoux, Jacques

Notes Guillevic Notes X (Fall/Automne 2020)    45 
 
 
 
Notes d’André Lagrange, Serge Brindeau, 
Olivier Penot-Lacassagne et Jacques Lardoux 
 
 
1. André Lagrange 
 
 
’ai surtout rencontré Guillevic à travers les séances organisées par l’Union 
des Ecrivains à Paris. Il venait régulièrement à ces rencontres. Toujours 
attentif parmi nous ; avec un physique que l’on ne peut oublier : une stature 
imposante, intraitable, semblait-il – mais il était avant tout fraternel, avec un 
jugement sûr, allant au-devant de l’adversité et des quelques orages suscités 
par nos ministres de tutelle. En fait, il parlait peu; considérant comme futile les 
maintes discussions qui envahissaient nos propos. Certaines fois, en veine de 
confidences, il racontait des souvenirs traversés par les amis de rencontre (Il 
en eut beaucoup en France comme à l’étranger). C’est alors que se déclenchait 
son rire! Souvent rocailleux, mais toujours ponctué d’humour et de confiance 
envers les autres – toujours animé du Verbe poétique, à quoi rien ne pouvait 
l’éloigner. Guillevic demeure en notre mémoire car, lui savait qu’il existe un 
partage entre tous, une réalité pour chacun.   
 
        * 
 
        2. Serge Brindeau 
 
uillevic, depuis son adolescence en Alsace, a retenu l’impression de 
quelque chose qui se situe au-delà de ce qu’on pourrait photographier ou  
peindre à la manière d’un peintre naïvement figuratif. Il avait eu alors le 
sentiment d’un « tremblement », la « sensation intellectuelle et physique de 
l’éternité ». Ce sentiment, cette sensation étaient ressenties comme un 
 J 
G 
Notes Guillevic Notes X (Fall/Automne 2020)    46 
prolongement concret du paysage. Le jeune Guillevic éprouvait la réalité d’un 
espace immense et d’un temps infini. 
Le poète, présent à soi et aux choses dans le quotidien de l’existence, tiendra à 
tracer aussi exactement que possible les coordonnées d’une aventure humaine 
dont il sait que nous ne détenons pas la clé. De la science, si importante dans 
le domaine de la connaissance possible, il reconnaîtra, partageant en cela la 
pensée des philosophes les plus exigeants, qu’elle « ne nous apprend pas de 
quoi elle parle » ni « où se situe ce dont elle par 
Les prolongements auxquels donne accès la poésie permettent de dégager le 
sens profond de notre vie. La poésie pour Guillevic c’est bien cela: l’éternité 
vécue comme un instant permanent... Guillevic ne peut oublier que dès 
l’enfance il se vivait comme éternel. 
 
          *  
  
 
   3. Olivier Penot-Lacassagne 
 
ragment après fragment, Guillevic essaie d’articuler ce qui, au-delà de tous 
les noms, résiste et se dérobe, limite de la langue, transparence ou béance 
. Une telle parole ne répète pas les mots reçus. Elle abolit l’horizon de cette 
expérience « questionnante », se prononce au-delà de nos dires, de nos savoirs, 
de nos prédictions. La disparition qu’elle apporte annule les repères et disperse 
les limites. 
L’errance de Guillevic défait croyances, significations et vérités. Son 
expérience poétique y trouve sa tenue. Mais cette errance est toujours menacée 
par la demande de sens muette ou pressante, quand bien même cette demande 
somme l’abandon de sens et le met en lambeaux. Car rarement l’homme 
voyage sans bagages, rarement il marche sans destination. La peur de 
l’indéfini, l’inquiétude des passages sans lendemain nourrissent le plus souvent 
sa parole et son chant. 
Ne plus écrire avec les débris et les reliques de l’Autre. Rien de plus, rien de 
moins que ce pas impossible à franchir. 
           
 
        * 
F 
Notes Guillevic Notes X (Fall/Automne 2020)    47 
 
 
       
 
4. Jacques Lardoux 
 
l est des proximités entre les artistes (poètes, musiciens, peintres). Par 
exemple entre Baudelaire, Wagner et Delacroix. Entre Verlaine, Debussy 
et Monet. Entre Guillevic, Bach et Cézanne... 
 
   - Gabriela Mistral avait formé son pseudonyme d’écrivaine à 
partir du prénom de D’Annunzio et du nom de l’auteur de Mireille, Frédéric 
Mistral. Notre camarade Eugène Michel a fait à peu près la même chose en 
empruntant le prénom de Guillevic et le nom du romancier Michel Tournier. 
 
 Ce poète de gauche répétait à qui voulait l’entendre qu’il avait peu lu Marx 
mais qu’il avait lu Villon, d’Aubigné, Hugo, Rimbaud, Guillevic… 
 
 Guillevic avait-il failli en laissant de côté à partir des années soixante la 
dimension sociale de son inspiration poétique? 
 
- Dès avant 1983 (entre 1977 et 1982), l’auteur de Requis, avait écrit: « Il reste 
à inventer/ Le tombeau qui convient / A ceux qui le refusent ». 
 
-  Eluard, Aragon, Neruda, Guillevic se réclamèrent en leur temps de 
« l’exemple de Staline ». Guillevic, quant à lui, regretta sincèrement de s’être 
laissé trompé. 
 
- A mon goût, s’il fallait retenir que quatre poèmes du premier Guillevic, ce 
serait peut-être « L’armoire » (Terraqué), « La vie augmente » (Gagner), 
« L’école publique » (Trente et un sonnets) et « Morbihan » (Sphère). 
 
- Mortefontaine pour Nerval, Ermenonville pour Rousseau, le moulin de 
Villeneuve pour Aragon et Elsa Triolet, Carnac pour Guillevic furent quelques-
unes de nos promenades poétiques favorites à la belle saison. 
 
 I 
Notes Guillevic Notes X (Fall/Automne 2020)    48 
Notes 
 
 1 André Lagrange (1928-2012), auteur de nombreux recueils de poèmes. 
 
2 Serge Brindeau (1925-1997), professeur de philosophie, conférencier, 
écrivain, animateur de clubs de poésie. 
 
3 Olivier Penot-Lacassagne, maître de conférences à la Sorbonne Nouvelle, 
Paris 3. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 


Notes

Le fonds Voronca

Notes Guillevic Notes X (Fall/Automne 2020)    105 
Auteurs 
 
 
Gavin Bowd is Reader in French at the University of St Andrews, Scotland. 
His publications include: Guillevic, sauvage de la modernité (1992) 
, L'Interminable enterrement. Le communisme et les intellectuels français 
depuis 1956 (1999), Paul Morand et la Roumanie (2003) and The Last 
Communard. Adrien Lejeune, the Unexpected Life of a Revolutionary (2016). 
 
Bertrand Degott, professeur (C.R.I.T., Université de Franche-Comté), et 
poète, s’intéresse surtout à des questions de génétique et de métrique. 
L’essentiel de son investigation touche à la poésie, autant l’écriture poétique 
au théâtre ou dans le récit (autobiographique ou non), que les différents 
sousgenres du poème. Ma préférence pour la poésie moderne et contemporaine 
n’exclut pas des incursions auprès des poètes du XVe (Villon) et du XVIe 
(Chassignet) siècles.  Poésie: Éboulements et taillis, Paris, Gallimard, 1996; Le 
Vent dans la brèche, ibid., 1998; Battant, Paris, La Table ronde, 2006; À 
chaque pas, Jegun, L’Arrière-Pays, 2008; More à Venise, suivi de Petit 
testament, La Table ronde, 2013; Plus que les ronces, L’Arrière-Pays, 2013. 
 
Bernard Fournier, professeur, poète, membre de l’Académie Mallarmé, 
récentes: Métamorphoses d'Audiberti - une biographie 1899-1965. Editions 
du Petit Pavé, 2020.Hémon suivi d’Antigone, Silences, et Loin la langue (La 
feuille de thé, 2019); Histoire de l’Académie Mallarmé 1913-1993, Éditions 
du Petit Pavé, 2016. Pour ses études sur Guillevic, voir la Bibliographie de 
NGN. 
Monique W. Labidoire, poète, née à Paris pendant la seconde guerre 
mondiale. ses parents, des émigrés hongrois ont fui le fascisme de leur pays en 
1925 pour retrouver, hélas, l’occupation nazie en France de 1939 à 1945. Ces 
évènements ont marqué l’enfant, puis le poète. Etudes secondaires au lycée 
Edgar Quinet. Sa rencontre avec Guillevic en 1962 sera déterminante pour son 
devenir de poète. Elle n’a cessé d’animer des ateliers de poésie dans divers 
lieux tout en menant une vie professionnelle dans un cabinet d’études. Depuis 
quelques années elle anime, à Paris, le "Mercredi du Poète" où sont reçus les 
poètes contemporains dans toute leur diversité. Elle collabore à de nombreuses 
Notes Guillevic Notes X (Fall/Automne 2020)    106 
revues et participe à des colloques tant en France qu’à l’étranger. Dernières 
publications: Voyelles bleues, consonnes noires, Éditions Alcyone, 
2019.Gardiens de lumière, Éditions Alcyone, mars 2017 
Aaron Prevots est professeur associé à l’Université Southwestern. Ses 
recherches portent sur la poésie française moderne et contemporaine. Il est 
l’auteur d’articles sur Rimbaud, Jouve, Guillevic, Bonnefoy, Jaccottet, Réda, 
Stétié, Vargaftig, Tellermann, et Jean-Paul Michel, et des monographies 
Bernard Vargaftig: Gestures toward the Sacred (Peter Lang, 2019) et Jacques 
Réda: Being There, Almost (Brill Rodopi, 2016). Il a également collaboré à 
l’étude parue aux Éditions VVV Yves Bonnefoy’s La Grande Ourse: Two 
Essays (2016). Il a publié plusieurs traductions: Silences (VVV, 2019) et As 
Breathing (VVV, 2010), de Vargaftig; At the Water’s Edge (VVV, 2017), 
recueil de poèmes choisis de Jean-Claude Pinson; et, de Réda, Europes (Host, 
2009), Thirteen Songs of Dark Love (VVV, 2008), et Return to Calm (Host, 
2007).  
Sergio Villani, rédacteur de NGN. 


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