J'ai couvert des centaines de feuilles. Sur les routes, dans les cabanes, à bord des bateaux, je griffonnais. J'ai cinquante ans aujourd'hui, la mort m'a plutôt épargné, preuve que ma méthode était la bonne.
Ces dessins ne trahissent aucun goût pour le macabre : Au contraire, les petits pendus de mes carnets me sourient et me serinent en latin (la mort parle toujours le latin) : memento mori. Souviens-toi que tu es mortel. Dans le brouhaha d'une vie en fête, dans le contentement de soi et dans le désordre de nos heures, on aurait tendance à l'oublier. C'est un tort. »
Sylvain Tesson
BASIL BUNTING, BRIGGFLATTS
This week, come rain or shine, Poem of the week celebrates a rite of spring with the vibrant opening stanzas of Basil Bunting’s epic poem Briggflatts. “An autobiography but not a record of fact,” as the poet warns, it’s a five-part work, 700 lines altogether, using a variety of formal structures and recurrent themes and symbols tightly intermeshed.
I can’t think of a better introduction to Briggflatts and its background than Don Share’s essay, here. While his invitation to plagiarise is tempting, readers will get more insight and pleasure by going direct to source, and dipping for themselves. My own comments will be far fewer than even five stanzas from this extraordinary and beautiful poem deserve.
Bunting’s grammar alone could merit a book. Virtuoso of the verb and grand-master of the preposition, he rarely wastes time on an adverb, but is more liberal with exact and sensuous adjectives. His syntax is so rigorously constructed that not a word, a breath, a letter, even, seems wasted. Speaking of letters, try and listen to one of the online recordings of Bunting himself reciting, and note how audibly he pronounces the letter R, wherever in a word it may occur. His delivery reminds us that language is built of muscle and saliva, air and bone.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2015/apr/20/poem-of-the-week-from-briggflatts-by-basil-bunting
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