Poetry
Testament du Haut-Rhône
Not translated into English
Maurice Chappaz · 1953
Synopsis
A prose poem that follows the valley of the Upper Rhône, in the Valais: the chapels scattered through the meadows and larch woods, the lost villages, the priests, the fairies and the prophets, the animals and the people of the land. The speaker names this country as one draws up a testament, at the moment when the peace of peasant life comes to an end and a society that depended on a single book begins to come apart; his lyre, he says, was a lyre of cattle.
Context
The book crowned some ten years of poetic work and was published in Lausanne by Rencontre in 1953. Its success plunged the author into a deep crisis; in order to renew himself, he left to work as an assistant surveyor on the construction site of the Grande Dixence dam. Jean-Luc Seylaz sees in it the moment when the enchantment of the early years breaks. The text was reissued in 1966, illustrated in 2003 by Gérard de Palézieux for Fata Morgana, and translated into Italian by Dadò, in Locarno.
Who it is for
In French, a brief book of poetic prose; there is no story, but a country named and hailed, in a language close to incantation.
Prizes and reception
Prix Eugène Rambert in 1953; reissued in 2026 in a paperback volume by Gallimard, with a foreword by Philippe Jaccottet, who died in 2021.
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The pages consulted to check this page.