(Meta)physics of (im)mobility. The border of reality formation in Yves Bonnefoy’s Du mouvement et de l’immobilité de Douve

Abstract

The interpenetration of the material world with intangible sensory impressions forms the foundation of the poetic connection between image and word, which holds a special place in Yves Bonnefoy’s work. The boundary between interpreting experiences and their condensation in text carries a certain responsibility, as the author argues (Bonnefoy 1990). The inability to transpose sensory impressions onto paper may lead to misunderstandings and distortions of meaning. The search for human presence, expressed through the establishment of poetic reality within a given space, along with connections to the sensory world—discovering texture, matter, and the viscosity of substances—allows for a nuanced portrayal of experiences. These are directly correlated with the immaterial realm, creating in Bonnefoy’s poetry a unique suspension between the physical world and metaphysics. Du mouvement et de l’immobilité de Douve represents a kind of progression, leading us from the darkness of death to light. The reader evolves alongside the text. Direct experience corresponds with an awareness of surrounding space, which embodies the eidos of material existence. Bonnefoy’s emphasis on the pursuit of truth, or reaching the essence of things, is directly linked to the assumptions of Husserlian phenomenology, which must constitute the foundation of the poetic image analysis here undertaken. This article seeks to offer a fresh reflection on the poetics of presence and suspension between the physical and the transcendental, between movement and stillness, expressed through the figure of Douve and her multidimensional nature—human, animal, and mineral. Following Bonnefoy’s surrealist techniques, we seemingly depart from reality, yet move closer to nature in all its forms, ultimately reaching the Vrai Lieu that concludes the collection. This is where the corporeal being remembers its finitude, and where the physical and spiritual meet at the boundary.