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POETRY

French poet Yves Bonnefoy dies aged 93

Yves Bonnefoy, France's most famous contemporary poet and celebrated translator of Shakespeare whose poems were translated into 30 languages, has died at the age of 93, officials confirmed Saturday.

French poet Yves Bonnefoy dies aged 93
Bonnefoy in 2001. Photo: AFP

The prolific writer, essayist and poet, who composed more than 100 books over his long career, was often tipped as favourite to win the Nobel prize for literature.

Famous in Italy, Germany and Switzerland but also throughout the English-speaking world, Bonnefoy also produced translations of the works of Yeats, Petrarch and his friend George Seferis, a celebrated Greek poet.

He died on Friday, according to the College de France research and education institute where he was an honorary professor.

Admirers from around the world took to Twitter to mourn Bonnefoy, known for his piercing gaze and mop of white hair, many of them quoting lines from his most famous works.

President Francois Hollande paid tribute to “one of the greatest poets of the 20th century” and a “total artist, curious about the world and all its arts, generous with his time and his talent.”

Bonnefoy was born in 1923 in Tours, in central France, to a railway-worker father and a schoolteacher mother.

In his early career, his work tended towards the surreal but he quickly turned away from this movement and his first classic — the 1953 “Du mouvement et de l'immobilite de Douve” (“On the motion and immobility of Douve”) — went against the prevailing contemporary literary trends.

His writing career extended well into his 80s and he picked up several literary awards along the way, including the 1987 Goncourt prize for poetry.

He acquired legions of fans who admired his lack of attachment to a “concept.”

“What saddens me is to see that our education system does not give poetry the place it deserves,” he told French radio in a recent interview.

“Everything around us can serve as an inspiration for poetry,” he said, which he saw as “a way of discovering the fundamental meaning of life.”

BOOKS

95-year-old poet wins top Spanish literary award

Uruguayan poet Ida Vitale, 95, on Thursday won the Cervantes Prize, the most prestigious literary award in the Spanish-speaking world, Spain's Culture Minister Jose Guirao announced.

95-year-old poet wins top Spanish literary award
Photo: AFP

Born in 1923, Vitale is the last surviving member of a Uruguayan art movement known as the “Generation of 45” and currently lives in the United States. 

Spain established the Miguel de Cervantes Prize, named after the famous author of 'Don Quixote', in 1975. It is considered to be “the most prestigious and remunerative award given for Spanish-language literature” by the Encyclopedia Britannica.

The jury said Vitale was awarded the prize for her poetry, literary criticisms and translations, adding that her language was “one of the most remarkable and well-known in Spanish poetry, at the same time intellectual and accessible, universal and personal, transparent and profound.”

She is the fifth woman to win the prize.   

“I never expected to win the prize, it's absolutely bewildering,” she told AFP. “It's a surprise… an excess of generosity from Spain.

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