The Yale Anthology of Twentieth-Century French Poetry

CLAIRE LEJEUNE

already they are saying something else or have fallen silent.
I pass, I am amazed, I can say nothing more about it.
—mark treharne and david constantine

Claire Lejeune 1926–

havré, belgium

A

poet and essayist, Lejeune experienced early in her career a mystical

revelation in which the idea of an ‘‘I’’ writing itself presented itself to

her. She founded two journals in Geneva: Les Cahiers internationaux

de symbolisme (1962) and Réseaux (1965). The latter is an interdisciplinary review

dealing with moral and political philosophy, which Lejeune continues to edit.

She also established an interdisciplinary center for philosophical studies, the

Centre interdisciplinaire d’études philosophiques de l’Université de Mons-

Hainaut. In 1984 she received the Prix Canada—Communauté française de Bel-

gique de littérature for her body of work. Principal works: La Gange et le feu,

1963; Le Pourpre, 1966; La Geste, 1966; Le Dernier Testament, 1969; ELLE, 1969

(revised, 1994).

Illiterate

Illiterate. I could never read except between the lines. Anywhere else there never
was anything. Except the bones, the cage. When I’d devoured the entrails and
drunk the blood, I had to attack the carcass... And there it was, in the secret
vertebral school that I learned everything, the existence of nothingness. I found
myself all alone on the great way. Unarmed.

Being you I shall be cured from this original agony that your very existence
secretes in me. To be ravished: there’s no other remedy for the fatality of our fault.
—mary ann caws