Réception fragmentaire : la poésie de Philippe Jaccottet en Slovaquie

Abstract

Philippe Jaccottet has produced an extraordinarily rich work of translations, essays, and poetry. He quickly made a name for himself in French-language literature. In Slovakia, however, only a selection, compiled by translator and poet Vlastimil Kovalčík, was published in the journal Slovenské pohľady (Slovak Views) in 2010. Nevertheless, it appears that the selection proposed by Kovalčík is problematic due to its fragmentary nature – he only works with extracts of poems from compact cycles, omitting important words. As a result, only the ‘rest’ of Jaccottet’s poetics will reach the Slovak reader through this translation. Nevertheless, Jaccottet has the potential to be accepted in the Slovak cultural space, as his poetry has great  similarities with one of the most significant lines of contemporary Slovak poetry, i.e. spiritual poetry inspired by nature.