L'Arrière-pays de Yves Bonnefoy, viagem e escrita de si

This essay attempts to approach the book L’Arrière-pays by Yves Bonnefoy from two central ideas: the notion of travel and autobiographical writing. They belong to the poet’s project, according to which, since L’Improbable published in 1959, and with reference to Baudelaire, “poetry and travel are of the same substance”. Invited by Albert Skira to participate in the collection  Sentiers de la création, Yves Bonnefoy produces in  L’Arrière-pays  a long essay in which he combines art criticism, philosophical reflection and personal narrative. With narrative projects abandoned or transformed into poems, as in the case of L’Ordalie, incorporated into the book Du Mouvement et de l’immobilité de Douve (1953), Yves Bonnefoy in L’Arrière-pays establishes a first path to reconsider the association between narrative and fiction and, for that reason, is the central text of what the poet called his «conversion».