The Yale Anthology of Twentieth-Century French Poetry

JULES SUPERVIELLE

Listen with abandon not just to the sound but the shadow of sound in the whorls
of the sea where all things plunge. Don’t say that one day you may hear less
discerningly!

Don’t say it. For I avow that, turned away from you, I seek somewhere beyond
you the response revealed by you. And I will go, crying out to the four spaces:

You have heard me, you have known me, I cannot live in silence. Even in the
company of this other beside me here, it’s still,

It’s only for you that I play.

—timothy billings and christopher bush

Jules Supervielle 1884–1960

montevideo, uruguay

A

poet, playwright, and novelist, Supervielle did not claim a preference

for either side in the battle between tradition and the quick-changing

invention of his time; instead he remained part of both, a human

example of l’entre-deux, or betweenness. He was born in Uruguay to French

parents, but both disappeared after the family returned to France when he was

just six months old. From an early age Supervielle used poetry to explore his

sense of emptiness and loss, though he later turned to themes of coexistence and

exchange in his poems, which are convincing and easily grasped. He counted

Rainier Maria Rilke, André Gide, Henri Michaux, and Paul Valéry among his

friends. Principal works: Brumes du passé, 1900; Comme des voiliers, 1910; Pay-

sages, 1919; Les Poèmes de l’humeur triste, 1919; Voyage en soi, 1919; Débarcadères,

1922; Gravitations, 1925; Saisir, 1929; Les Amis inconnus, 1934; La Fable du monde,

1939; Poèmes de la France malheureuse, 1941; Oublieuse mémoire, 1949; Le Corps

tragique, 1959.