Philippe Jaccottet

Q: When did Philippe Jaccottet die?

Philippe Jaccottet died on February 24, 2021.

Q: How old was Philippe Jaccottet when they died?

Philippe Jaccottet was 95 years old at the time of death.

Philippe Jaccottet (French: [filip ʒakotɛ]; 30 June 1925 – 24 February 2021) was a Swiss-born Francophone poet and translator.

Life and work

After completing his studies in Lausanne, he lived for several years in Paris. In 1953, he moved to the town of Grignan in Provence. He translated numerous authors and poets into French, including Goethe, Hölderlin, Mann, Mandelstam, Góngora, Leopardi, Musil, Rilke, Homer and Ungaretti. He was awarded the German international Petrarca-Preis in 1988 for his poetry. In addition to poetry and the novel L'Obscurité (Gallimard, 1961), he is known for his prose writings on music and art, and the notebooks that he published regularly beginning in 1963 under the title La Semaison (seedtime, referring to the seasonal dispersion of seeds).

In 2014, Philippe Jaccottet became the fifteenth living author to be published in the prestigious Bibliothèque de la Pléiade. After Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Blaise Cendrars and Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz, he was the fourth Swiss author to be published in the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade.

He was married in 1953 to the Franco-Swiss painter and illustrator Anne-Marie Jaccottet (b. 26 July 1931, née Haesler). Reproductions of her watercolors and sketches appeared in the volume of his poetry translated into English by Cid Corman in Breathings (Mushinsha Imprint for Grossman Publishers, 1974).

Jaccottet worked with other artists to create limited edition volumes of his work, including Pierre Tal-Cot in À travers un verger (Montpellier: Fata Morgana, 1975) and Zao Wou-Ki in Beauregard (Paris: Maeght, 1981).

His poetry has been characterized as one of "nuance and attenuation" and as moving between "a feeling for the leverage of precise limits and at the same time a yearning, nostalgia, for the illimitably open." The Irish poet Derek Mahon, who translated a selected edition of Jaccottet's poetry from 1953 to 1983, described in his introduction the "intensely visual" quality of the work, and compared it to that of writers as diverse as John Keats, Rilke, Paul Éluard, Samuel Beckett, and W. S. Merwin (who also translated Jaccottet). Translators and critics also note its resemblance to the work of Francis Ponge and its phenomenological discipline.

Jaccottet died in Grignan, France, in February 2021 at the age of 95.

Honours

1958 Prix des écrivains vaudois
1966 Johann-Heinrich-Voß-Preis für Übersetzung
1981 Prix Gottfried Keller
1985 Grand Prix de Poésie de la Ville de Paris
1988 Petrarca-Preis
1995 Grand Prix national de Poésie
2003 Prix Goncourt de la poésie
2018 Prix mondial Cino Del Duca

Publications

L'Effraie, 1953
L'Entretien des muses, 1968
Paysages avec figures absentes, 1970
Chant d'En-bas, 1974
Rilke par lui-même, 1971
À la lumière d'hiver, 1974
Des Histoires de passage, 1983
Pensées sous les nuages, 1983
La Semaison, Carnets 1954–1967, 1984
Une Transaction secrète, 1987
Cahier de verdure, 1990 (poem Cherry Tree, Eng. trans. Mark Treharne)
Requiem, 1991
Libretto, La Dogana, 1990
Poésie, 1946–1967, Poésie/Gallimard, Paris, (1971) 1990
Requiem (1946); suivi de, Remarques (1990), Fata Morgana, 1991
Cristal et fumée, Fata Morgana, 1993
A la lumière d'hiver; précédé de, Leçons; et de, Chants d'en bas; et suivi de, Pensées sous les nuages, Gallimard, 1994 (poem Learning, trans. Mark Treharne, Delos Press, 2001)
Après beaucoup d'années, Gallimard, 1994
Autriche, Éditions L'Age d'homme, 1994
Eaux prodigues, Nasser Assar, lithographies, La Sétérée, J. Clerc, 1994
Ecrits pour papier journal : chroniques 1951–1970, texts gathered and présented by Jean Pierre Vidal, Gallimard, 1994
Tout n'est pas dit : billets pour la Béroche : 1956–1964, Le Temps qu'il fait, 1994
La seconde semaison : carnets 1980-1994, Gallimard, 1996
Beauregard, postf. d'Adrien Pasquali, Éditions Zoé, 1997
Paysages avec figures absentes, Gallimard, Paris, (1976) 1997, "coll. poésie/gallimard".
Observations et autres notes anciennes : 1947–1962, Gallimard, 1998
A travers un verger; suivi de, Les cormorans; et de, Beauregard, Gallimard, 2000
Carnets 1995–1998 : la semaison III, Gallimard, 2001
Notes du ravin, Fata Morgana, 2001
Et, néanmoins : proses et poésies, Gallimard, 2001
Le bol du pèlerin (Morandi), La Dogana, 2001.
Une Constellation, tout près, La Dogana, 2002.
A partir du mot Russie, Fata Morgana, 2002
Gustave Roud, présentation et choix de textes par Philippe Jaccottet, Seghers, 2002
Correspondance, 1942–1976 / Philippe Jaccottet, Gustave Roud; éd. établie, annotée et présentée par José-Flore Tappy, Gallimard, 2002
Nuages, Philippe Jaccottet, Alexandre Hollan, Fata Morgana, 2002
Cahier de verdure; suivi de, Après beaucoup d'années, Gallimard, "coll. poésie/gallimard", 2003
Truinas, le 21 avril 2001, Genève, La Dogana, 2004
De la poésie, entretien avec Reynald André Chalard, Arléa, 2005