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Born in Switzerland and a longtime resident of France, Philippe Jaccottet is a celebrated poet. In 2014, his collected writings were published in Gallimard's prestigious Pléiade series. John Taylor has translated many French and Francophone poets, including, for Seagull Books, Catherine Colomb, Pierre Chappuis, and Georges Perros.
"Patches of Sunlight, Or of Shadow is the fourth volume culled
from Jaccottet’s many private notebooks, translated from French by
John Taylor. In short and fragmentary paragraphs of quotation,
reflection, and description, it covers in one leap the years —
1952-2005 — successively covered by the last three such volumes. It
has a self-consciously valedictory tenor, and it is full of
bracketed editorial comments by Jaccottet, inserted in 2008 when he
made the selection, which often explain that this or that passage
should be viewed as a supplement to excerpts published in a
previous volume. This book is more personally revealing than the
previous ones, and sometimes it is more openly critical of the
poet’s contemporaries, lending the whole production an air of the
declassified document available to the public now that the mission
that occasioned its secrecy has been completed. But there are no
big revelations here, only a confirmation of what attentive readers
of Jaccottet have known for a long time: that his work is rooted in
a deep and sustained reflection on the existential reality of
death, and the countervailing abundance of life, and a reading of
nature and culture through that lens."
*On the Seawall*
"With Patches of Sunlight, or of Shadow, John Taylor has
given us another reminder of the beauty of Philippe Jaccottet’s own
work, which is never less than an incitement to inhabit the earth a
bit more fully."
*Reading in Translation*
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