Abstract
The inferior triangle of Solomon’s seal symbolizes matter, two elements which are said to be of feminine nature, earth and water. It is to the primeval water that men attribute — at the very dawn of Greek philosophy, for instance — the faculty of giving birth to life.
Does our “profound” being exhaust itself in its dynamism? If great passions, basic emotive pulsations, the active mechanisms of understanding, the spontaneities of the imagination, the powers inspired by will, and all these virtualities’ appeals and nostalgias go on to fade, is there then anything that remains?
— Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka1
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Notes
Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka“Introduction to the Phenomenology of Life and of the Human Condition,” in Logos and Life, Book 2: The Three Movements of the Soul (Dordrecht, Boston, London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1988), p. 74. Henceforth: LL 2.
Edmond Dune has published lyrical poetry, lyrical prose, essays, plays, aphorisms, as well as translations of German and Italian works. Most of his plays have been staged in Luxembourg. One“Les Taupes,” has been produced in Paris.
The French writer Valery Larbaud, (1881–1957) to whom he dedicated the collection, had written a book entitled Enfantines.
Professor Antoine Naaman, director of Editions Naaman in Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada, published in 1973, as the first volume of his Creation series “Poèmes en prose” d’Edmond Dune, (henceforth PP) with an introduction by the French poet Joseph-Paul Schneider. All these “poèmes en prose” had been printed before in various editions: Enfantines (1938), pp. 11–20“La malle de cuir” (1946–1949), pp. 21–75“Brouillard” (1949–1951), pp. 77–113“Le sablier et la guitare” (1958–1971), pp. 115–137.
PP“Enfantine 3,” p. 15.
PP“Enfantine 1, Grenier,” p. 13.
PP“Crime passionnel,” p. 59.
PP“La mer,” pp. 66–68.
Booklet published by the “Ministère des Affaires Culturelles” in Luxembourg, in November 1987, when the first National Literary Award “Prix Batty Weber” was conferred upon Edmond Dune.
In 1989, a year after Dune’s death, Editions PHI in Echternach (Luxembourg) published Patchwork, textes en prose (henceforth Pwk.), a posthumous collection edited by Simone Baldauff-Beck and Marc Linster, with an introduction by André Simoncini. (The title had been chosen by the poet himself.) Thus, Pwk. “L’anniversaire,” pp. 17–29. The “exotic” atmosphere in Jean Rhys’ novel Wide Sargasso Sea, her description of Jamaica, of the Caribbean islands in general, her evocation of woman seem to come quite close to Dune’s “wishful thinking.” (See Wide Sargasso Sea, Penguin Twentieth Century Classics).
PP“L’enfance de l’art,” p. 82. 12 pp “Prétextes,” pp. 36–37.
Pwk.“Pégase ou la parabole du vieil étalon,” pp. 74–86.
Pwk., pp. 5–6.
PP“Combat,” pp. 107–108.
PP“La mer,” p. 66–68.
PP“La mer,” p. 68. In his novel The Piebald Dog Running along the Seashore (or The Boy and the Sea’) (Moscow: 1977), Tchinghiz Aitmatov mentions a mythical feminine figure, the “Great Fish Woman“; Dune’s passage ”. . . vers les ports bariolés qui tiennent dans leur nasse le grouillement poissonneux de filles aux reins cambrés,” while reflecting a very different cultural background, is close to this Asiatic concept in its meaning.
PP“Sommeilland,” p. 95.
PP“Sommeilland,” p. 95.
LL 2, p. 77.
Pwk.“L’anniversaire,” p. 20.
PP“Fête au château,” pp. 74–75.
pp“Fête au château,” p. 74.
PP“Combat,” pp. 107–108.
Pwk.“Lettre de M. de Voltaire,” pp. 100–108.
Pwk.“Ecrit sur une boîte de cigares,” p. 137.
Pwk.“Lettre à M. de Voltaire,” p. 108.
In the booklet published in 1987 by the Ministry of Cultural Affairs, Lucien Kayser has established a list of Dune’s contributions to the review Critique.
Pwk.“Portrait de Kant,” pp. 115–116.
René Guénon, Le règne de la quantité et les signes des temps, Gallimard, collection “Idées,” 1945.
LL 2, p. 77.
PP“Plus-Loin,” p. 96.
PP“L’orgiaque,” p. 42.
Pwk.“Matériaux bruts pour un portrait du bourgeois,” pp. 129–134.
Pwk.“Matériaux bruts. . .,” p. 132.
LL 2, p. 154.
LL 2, p. 155.
Pwk.“Ma tour d’ivoire,” p. 125.
Pwk.“Le poète clandestin,” pp. 98–99.
Pwk.“Le poète clandestin,” p. 99.
Colpach, livre d’hommage à Emile et Aline Mayrisch-de Saint-Hubert, publié en 1957 sous les auspices de la Croix-Rouge luxembourgeoise, pages 221–222, a translation into French by Aline Mayrisch-de Saint-Hubert from the German original“Une légende de Maître Eckart”: “... De tout cela je ne suis rien et suis une chose comme toute autre chose et je m’en vais par devant moi.”
PP“Le clochard,” pp. 134–135.
PP“Ode,” pp. 105–106. The English writer Edith Nesbit (1858–1924) in her children’s book The Enchanted Castle (1907) tells her readers of statues of ancient gods coming to life during a moonlit night and enjoying peace and friendship in the company of the book’s young heroes. This “pastoral beatitude” has affinities with Dune’s longings and with his condemnation of “petrification” in “Sommeilland”: “After this Hebe gathered a few silver baskets from a convenient alder, and the four picked fruit industriously. Meanwhile the elder statues were busy plucking golden goblets and jugs and dishes from the branches of ash-trees and young oaks and filling them with everything nice to eat and drink that anyone could possibly want, and these were spread on the steps. It was a celestial picnic. Then everyone sat or lay down and the feast began. And oh! the taste of the food served on those dishes, the sweet wonder of the drink that melted from those gold cups on the white lips of the company! And the fruit there is no fruit like it grown on earth, just as there is no laughter like the laughter of those lips, no songs like the songs that stirred the silence of the night of wonder.” Puffin Classics edition, p. 205.
“Almanach,” “Mes richesses,” p. 36, collection “Le verger,” Origine, revue francoitalienne de poésie animée par Franco Prete, 1969.
“Almanach,” “Pour un autre âge,” p. 110.
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Kieffer, R. (1993). Life, Reason and Culture in the Lyrical Prose of the Luxembourg Poet Edmond Dune. In: Tymieniecka, AT. (eds) Reason, Life, Culture. Analecta Husserliana, vol 39. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-1862-0_19
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