![\"p7260486\"](\"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/04\/p7260486-300x225.jpg\" "\\"p7260486\\"")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Henri Meschonnic wanted \u201cto translate not what words say, but what they do.\u201d At times wonderfully, at times unbearably irascible, but always\u00a0controversial\u00a0and \u201cincontournable\u201d (unavoidable), Meschonnic \u00a0\u2014 poet, linguist, translator and theoretician \u2014 passed away a week ago at the age of 77. His output was immense<\/a> \u2014 close to sixty books \u2014 though what he will be remembered for best are most likely his translations from the Old Testament published in\u00a0Les Cinq Rouleaux, Le Chant des chants, Ruth, Comme ou les Lamentations, Paroles du sage, Esther<\/em> and what is probably his most famous theoretical book, the 710-page Critique du rhythme<\/em> (recently reissued in paperback by Verdier). His poetry I find of much less interest (example: \u201cI advance with \/ the silence of the trees \/ I walk with \/ the circle of the sky \/ I do not speak \/ my words \/ I walk them \/ and I walk my silence \/ it does not begin \/ and it does not end\u201d) and I positively detest that range of his essayistic work in which he\u00a0viciously\u00a0denies any merit to the work of poets such as\u00a0Yves Bonnefoy, Michel Deguy, Jacques Roubaud and Christian Prigent whom he all condemns as impostors and ignoramuses without in the least\u00a0addressing\u00a0their work as such. He is little known in the Anglo world and nearly none of the work is available in translation. A few years back the English poet & editor Piers Hugill started an\u00a0ambitious\u00a0blog<\/a> that was to bring Meschonnic\u2019s work to the attention of English-speakers, but it seems to have petered out rather rapidly. Still, that white-maned whirlwind of a man, who\u2019d pop up (un)expectedly anywhere where talk of poetry & translation was on the air, will remain a core figure of the French literary scene of the last half-century. I\u2019ll reread a chapter or two of his Critique of Rhythm in memoriam<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Henri Meschonnic wanted \u201cto translate not what words say, but what they do.\u201d At times wonderfully, at times unbearably irascible, but always\u00a0controversial\u00a0and \u201cincontournable\u201d (unavoidable), Meschonnic \u00a0\u2014 poet, linguist, translator and theoretician \u2014 passed away...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[91,103],"tags":[387],"class_list":["post-1115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry","category-translation","tag-henri-meschonnic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1115\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}