Legendari de las despartidas - Legends of departure - Joan-Frederic Brun

Legendari de las despartidas - Legends of departure - Joan-Frederic Brun

Book of Occitan poems, with French and English versions.

Jean-Frédéric Brun is known for his novels and short stories (Septembrales, Lo Temps clar de las Encantadas) and for the story of his descent into hell after the horse-riding accident that almost cost him his life (Luònh). A hospital doctor in Montpellier, he is also the president of the association Amistats Max Rouquette and recently the president of the PEN Club de Langue d'oc (a section of the PEN Club International).

The poet Brun had published only one collection, Été et sécheresse, exactly 30 years ago, but he had not stopped writing. Legendary Departures brings together the most important poetic suites written since the first and only volume. Two inspirations mingle: on the one hand the same unchanged and visceral passion for the garrigue and on the other the fine love in the tradition of the Occitan lyric of the Middle Ages, with its two characters, self-fulfillment in unfulfilled love and formal rigor. The poet inscribes himself in the tradition of the trobar clus, with his taste of the obscure poem impeccably rhymed, especially with his predilection for the sonnet in decasyllabes of the Italian classical poetry. In L'éclaboussure des heures, natural and amorous inspiration are combined in the sense of nostalgia and renunciation. Beautiful minerality, Degrees of tinkling stone, Futaies sommitales are poetic meditations where the mineral dryness can represent the sentimental asceticism and which make think of the thought of Heraclitus by the brief form of the sentences.

The poet having wanted to avoid "the mortifying confrontation of Occitan and French", we propose a trilingual edition, incorporating also English to this enigmatic and fascinating Legend of Departures.

Trilingual edition (Occitan, French, English). English translation by Joan-Frederic Brun, Christophe Razaire & Louise Esher. French version by Jean-Frédéric Brun.

Jorn.

Cover: Frontispice d'un ouvrage d'astronomie du XVIe siècle.