Obscurity

A young man returns to his native city after several years abroad and goes in search of a man he calls his master.  He had been a disciple of this brilliant philosopher until the master insisted the young man go out into the world to put his teachings into practice. While the disciple was away, the master abandoned his wife and child and moved into a squalid one room flat and cut himself off completely from his former life. The disciple finally tracks him down and spends an entire night listening to his former master’s bitter denunciation of the ideals they had shared.

Obscurity, written in 1960 at a time of poetic paralysis for Philippe Jaccottet, embodies that literary effort to harmonize the best and the worst in the form of an intense encounter between two men, once very close, who meet again after three years. The ‘worst’ is despair, falsehood, accidie, and lethargy of spirit. The ‘best’ is hope, the ability to remain open to beauty and truth in the world and not abandon faith in the essential goodness of man despite evidence to the contrary. 

Obscurity, Jaccottet’s only work of fiction, will help revive interest among his existing readers and to introduce his writing to new readers, especially those awed by his reputation as a major poet.