The idea that is risked. Yves Bonnefoy, Plato’s critic

Abstract

Yves Bonnefoy’s poetry unfolds itself not against philosophy, but against the eidetic framework set up by Plato. Bonnefoy avoids Platonic ideas no matter how effective they could be and tears himself apart from transcendence. The key point here is the material evidence, the real object, the description of the fragmented and, hence, essential world. Thus, against the existence of a metaphysical reality, Bonnefoy is committed to negative knowledge as the means to achieve truth through word and,at some point, freedom. It is in the realm of the sensible that, according to Bonnefoy, one touches the deep unity of everything. And it is precisely in this unity that Bonnefoy, following Plotinus and moving away from Plato’s path, thinks that freedom can be found.