Essays and Notes

When towards the end of his life Pierre Reverdy (1889–1960) looked back and took stock of his poetry, he wrote: ‘I think I’m not a poet or a writer or an artist; but a man who never found any other way to stay in touch with life, to keep my head above water. I wrote in the way that we catch hold of a safety belt.’ There are two qualities to Reverdy’s essays and notes on art: the opinion of a highly educated intellectual and the sensitivity of a poet. In the 1920s Reverdy underwent a personal crisis; he burnt his manuscripts and left Paris. He opted for a life of solitude in Solesmes close to the abbey that is home to the famous Gregorian choir. There for the rest of his life he recorded his observations and thoughts, which were eventually collected into three books: La peau de l’homme (1926), Le livre de mon bord (1948), En vrac (1956). A selection of his notes was published in Czech in an anthology by Jiří Pelán titled Palubník deník or Le livre de mon bord (1989). The authors took this into consideration in this book and focused mainly on untranslated work, especially those writings devoted to art and the principle of creativity, and on some essays previously published in periodicals.