From Babel to Pentecost: The Poetry of Pierre Emmanuel
By Mary Anne O’Neil
I have just been into this work of Mary Anne O’Neil’s, published in 2013. It is an exhaustive examination, translation, and explication of the works of a poet well known in France during and following World War II, one who was a devout Christian and made of his labors and life an exploration of what that faith meant, to him at least. The biographical aspects of O’Neil’s presentation are especially important, in my view, because this poet wrote a considerable amount of work championing the French Resistance during the war, including an elaborate thesis on why a Christian, in particular, should do so. An unusual thing for a poet aligned with the Resistance: many such writers were atheist, Communist, or both.
O’Neil is someone a poet, any poet, can only dream of attracting. She is tireless, passionately committed to Western literature—poetry in particular—breathtakingly knowledgeable, and a translator and pedagogue who puts her gifts to what a reader most wants—clarity. She interviewed Emmanuel once when she was young: I want to think he could glimpse something of the wonder she would become for the task of representing his very French accomplishment to an English-speaking world.
