Abstract EN:

"Openness" is a recurring motif in Philippe Jaccottet's work. At first, it is an experience, a deciding one insofar as it gives access to a fullness of life and meaning. This experience was made very early by Jaccottet and it sustained the man through his life - he had the opportunity of renewing it on several occasions- as a poet, it guided him by gradually becoming the key pursuit of his work. However, both motif and experience have a counterpart ; and the manifestations as well as the meanings of "openness" can be fully appreciated only when considering what thwarts or threatens it. Thus, Jaccottet's work displays a feeling of being shut in which affects the relationship of the person not only to space but to time too, and finally to himself. The encounter with death - physical death, spiritual death - and with the difficult struggle to accept it, looms behind this obsession. Which makes "openness" even more yearned for. Going through landscapes provided Jaccottet with this opportunity ; moreover the landscapes supplied several "models" of "openness", each landscape revealing to the poet the meaning of his quest : rather than the pursuit of a spatial infinite, that of a moderation, in short of a harmony ; likewise the sudden advent of beauty whose intensity might be the evidence of a depth, of another dimension of the world ; finally, the transformation of matter into spirituality which, like the previous models, shows the bond between the visible and the invisible worlds. Then, during this experience of "openness", the person reaches a state of such accuracy and fullness of life that it almost frees him from the fear of death or at least gives him courage and hope. Thus, "openness" has gradually asserted itself as the determining purpose of a whole work - even merely in the evocation of its lack. But being an intimate experience as well as the lie of a landscape, it also commanded the poet's work and determined his writing. The poet carefully and patiently exerted himself to self-effacement in front of the world and so made his words transparent and true to experience. He cultivated a limpid writing so as to share this experience : passing on and passing on what is the most luminous was to form the translation on the moral level of his quest of "openness". On this path, Jaccottet, though not merging into his steps, was following Rilke who had made of Openness the core of his work. So, the present essay makes room for a constant dialogue between two processes, two spiritual and poetic experiences.