Man of Joy
 |
Description
Book Introduction
"Man of Ecstasy" is an essay by Christian Bobin, a beloved French poet and essayist who listens to silence, waits for beauty with bated breath, and creates and presents a moment of everyday life with words chosen with meticulous care.
『Man of Joy』 is composed of seventeen short stories, including a preface, about miracles encountered in the small scenes of everyday life, art and artists, books and flowers, symbolic figures, fantasies, and letters to a woman one longs for, along with short handwritten paragraphs interspersed among the stories.
Within each story, deep thought and humanity are compressed into Bobin's clear and transparent writing style, which he also displayed in his previous work, "The Little Party Dress."
The poet's delicate and soft voice and his unique perspective on everyday life unite these disparate texts.
Ultimately, what Bobin wants to convey through these stories is 'something so small that it risks being damaged if spoken of', 'something that never goes against nature', and 'a purity that blooms among the impure'. In other words, it is 'a wounded life reddened by clumsiness', and Bobin says he has never seen anything as true as that.
『Man of Joy』 is composed of seventeen short stories, including a preface, about miracles encountered in the small scenes of everyday life, art and artists, books and flowers, symbolic figures, fantasies, and letters to a woman one longs for, along with short handwritten paragraphs interspersed among the stories.
Within each story, deep thought and humanity are compressed into Bobin's clear and transparent writing style, which he also displayed in his previous work, "The Little Party Dress."
The poet's delicate and soft voice and his unique perspective on everyday life unite these disparate texts.
Ultimately, what Bobin wants to convey through these stories is 'something so small that it risks being damaged if spoken of', 'something that never goes against nature', and 'a purity that blooms among the impure'. In other words, it is 'a wounded life reddened by clumsiness', and Bobin says he has never seen anything as true as that.
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Preview
index
It's Maria
Soulage
Irresistible
prince
Blue Notebook
Oleander Island
lion head
golden eyes
new life
The Hand of Life
Living Treasure
Moments of stillness
Better than an angel
small charcoal
return
keychain
Flower of Joy, Washing of Joy
(Recommendation: Poet Kim Yeon-deok)
Soulage
Irresistible
prince
Blue Notebook
Oleander Island
lion head
golden eyes
new life
The Hand of Life
Living Treasure
Moments of stillness
Better than an angel
small charcoal
return
keychain
Flower of Joy, Washing of Joy
(Recommendation: Poet Kim Yeon-deok)
Detailed image
Into the book
I only like books that have the blue of the sky permeating every page.
I'm talking about the blue that has already experienced the darkness of death.
If my sentences are smiling, it is because they came out of this darkness.
I have been living my life struggling to escape the depression that is pulling me in endlessly.
It cost me a lot to get this smile.
I am writing to return to you the blue of this sky, like a gold coin that fell from your pocket.
This majestic blue will bring tears to your eyes as it signals the end of despair.
Do you know what I mean?
--- p.18
A woman said that her child had liked Soulages' paintings since he was four years old, but she did not know why.
When he was about the same age as the child, Soulage painted all his snowy landscapes in black.
I understand the child in front of me.
Even Soulage, who was a child, understood.
But nothing can be explained.
Explanations can never make it understood.
The light of true enlightenment can only come from inspiration, an inner outpouring that no one can determine.
--- p.37
When we speak, we remain in the words, and when we are silent, we remain in the silence.
But when I play music, I clear that space and leave, and I disappear into the faint melody, free from the toil of words and silence.
Like a young man walking away without knowing where he is going, we too are walking away.
If you know your destination, you won't get far away.
Being in music is like being in love.
You have entered the fragile path of life.
We pass from point A to point B, from one light to another.
We are somewhere in between, staggering in the darkness.
Tolerate uncertainty, smile at hesitation, and, forgetting everything else, pay attention to the faint movement of life within us.
--- p.51
I want to write a book that people can read even after they lose a loved one.
--- p.77
If we have just one poem in our pocket, we can walk across death.
Reading, writing, and loving are the trinity that saves us.
--- p.79
A crystal glass shatters in the sink and blood forms on my fingers.
Drops of blood.
A red cloud hanging in the sky called skin, a poem muttered by a living being.
The beast, the cloud, and the plate know the great shock that life gives.
Their excellence, their scattering, their toothless edges prove it.
I believe in cow dung, paper books, and washing dishes by hand.
I have never seen anything so true as a life scarred and reddened by clumsiness.
--- p.120
We are just ahead of the huge black waves, from which a loud noise can be heard occasionally in the distance.
What should I do with this fleeting prospect? What could possibly be meaningful? If it weren't for something as trivial as walking down a country road, opening a book, and watching a rose bud burst into bloom.
--- p.158
I look at the blue of the sky.
There is no door.
Or maybe the door had been open a long time ago.
Sometimes, in this greenness, I hear laughter like the laughter of flowers.
A sound that cannot be heard unless it is shared directly.
I put that greenness here in this book for you.
I'm talking about the blue that has already experienced the darkness of death.
If my sentences are smiling, it is because they came out of this darkness.
I have been living my life struggling to escape the depression that is pulling me in endlessly.
It cost me a lot to get this smile.
I am writing to return to you the blue of this sky, like a gold coin that fell from your pocket.
This majestic blue will bring tears to your eyes as it signals the end of despair.
Do you know what I mean?
--- p.18
A woman said that her child had liked Soulages' paintings since he was four years old, but she did not know why.
When he was about the same age as the child, Soulage painted all his snowy landscapes in black.
I understand the child in front of me.
Even Soulage, who was a child, understood.
But nothing can be explained.
Explanations can never make it understood.
The light of true enlightenment can only come from inspiration, an inner outpouring that no one can determine.
--- p.37
When we speak, we remain in the words, and when we are silent, we remain in the silence.
But when I play music, I clear that space and leave, and I disappear into the faint melody, free from the toil of words and silence.
Like a young man walking away without knowing where he is going, we too are walking away.
If you know your destination, you won't get far away.
Being in music is like being in love.
You have entered the fragile path of life.
We pass from point A to point B, from one light to another.
We are somewhere in between, staggering in the darkness.
Tolerate uncertainty, smile at hesitation, and, forgetting everything else, pay attention to the faint movement of life within us.
--- p.51
I want to write a book that people can read even after they lose a loved one.
--- p.77
If we have just one poem in our pocket, we can walk across death.
Reading, writing, and loving are the trinity that saves us.
--- p.79
A crystal glass shatters in the sink and blood forms on my fingers.
Drops of blood.
A red cloud hanging in the sky called skin, a poem muttered by a living being.
The beast, the cloud, and the plate know the great shock that life gives.
Their excellence, their scattering, their toothless edges prove it.
I believe in cow dung, paper books, and washing dishes by hand.
I have never seen anything so true as a life scarred and reddened by clumsiness.
--- p.120
We are just ahead of the huge black waves, from which a loud noise can be heard occasionally in the distance.
What should I do with this fleeting prospect? What could possibly be meaningful? If it weren't for something as trivial as walking down a country road, opening a book, and watching a rose bud burst into bloom.
--- p.158
I look at the blue of the sky.
There is no door.
Or maybe the door had been open a long time ago.
Sometimes, in this greenness, I hear laughter like the laughter of flowers.
A sound that cannot be heard unless it is shared directly.
I put that greenness here in this book for you.
--- p.
175
175
Publisher's Review
"Writing is like drawing a door in an impassable wall and then opening it." How should we evaluate a book by someone who begins with such a sentence? - French journal L'Express
An essay by Christian Bobin, a beloved French poet and essayist who listens to silence, waits for beauty, and carefully selects words to create and present a moment of everyday life, "The Man of Ecstasy."
『Man of Joy』 is composed of seventeen short stories, including a preface, about miracles encountered in the small scenes of everyday life, art and artists, books and flowers, symbolic figures, fantasies, and letters to a woman one longs for, along with short handwritten paragraphs interspersed among the stories.
Within each story, deep thought and humanity are compressed into Bobin's clear and transparent writing style, which he also displayed in his previous work, "The Little Party Dress."
The poet's delicate and soft voice and his unique perspective on everyday life unite these disparate texts.
'Bobang has its own style.
'It is about approaching literature with the joy that words give and the light they convey,' said Guy Goffette, Belgian poet and editor of Gallimard.
『The Man of Joy』 goes straight into the essence through the simplest path leading to the soul.
- French journal Le Monde
As the book progresses, Bobin introduces us to a series of people who "bear uncertainty, smile at hesitation, and, forgetting everything else, pay attention to the faint movement of life within us."
Soulages, who painted all the snowy landscapes black when he was a child; Gould, who left for Canada to leave behind only music; Pascal, who ran with the sparks of fire with a rustling eternity in the inside pocket of his jacket; Menuhin and Oistrakh, who played like a conversation while facing each other so that their sacred lives would not harden coldly; Bach, the madman who kept 'the eternity' at the head of his bed because his anxiety was so great.
The face of these people, who more vividly than anyone else demonstrate that anxiety and calm, silence and life, love and pain are one body, also overlaps with the face of 'Gislen', the woman Bobin loved.
(Recommendation)
Looking at them, what Bobain ultimately wants to convey is 'something so small that it risks being damaged if spoken of', 'something that never goes against nature', and 'purity that blooms among the impure'.
It is, so to speak, 'a life scarred by clumsiness,' and Bobin says he has never seen anything as true as that.
Bobin's poetic sentences are always accompanied by adjectives such as 'delicate', 'soft', and 'clear and transparent'.
But Bobin confesses that all of this writing comes from deep darkness.
He also said, 'When talking about death, you should speak in a soft voice as if you were talking about love' (In the Garden of Longing, 1984 Books).
The green that breaks through the darkness of death.
Even amidst the world's widespread pain and suffering, the departure and absence of loved ones, and the darkness and death, Bobin's sentences bring smiles and laughter, giving us back the "blueness of the sky, like a gold coin dropped from a pocket" that we once lost.
“I only like books that have the blue of the sky permeating every page.
I'm talking about the blue that has already experienced the darkness of death.
If my sentences are smiling, it is because they came out of this darkness.
I have been living my life struggling to escape the depression that is pulling me in endlessly.
It cost me a lot to get this smile.
I am writing to return to you the blue of this sky, like a gold coin that fell from your pocket.
This majestic blue will bring tears to your eyes as it signals the end of despair.
You know what I mean, right?” - From the “Preface”
This book 'can never be understood through explanation'.
In his words, 'the light of true enlightenment can only come from inspiration, an inner outpouring that no one can determine.'
So, I ask you to read it and encounter the inspiration that dwells within you.
An essay by Christian Bobin, a beloved French poet and essayist who listens to silence, waits for beauty, and carefully selects words to create and present a moment of everyday life, "The Man of Ecstasy."
『Man of Joy』 is composed of seventeen short stories, including a preface, about miracles encountered in the small scenes of everyday life, art and artists, books and flowers, symbolic figures, fantasies, and letters to a woman one longs for, along with short handwritten paragraphs interspersed among the stories.
Within each story, deep thought and humanity are compressed into Bobin's clear and transparent writing style, which he also displayed in his previous work, "The Little Party Dress."
The poet's delicate and soft voice and his unique perspective on everyday life unite these disparate texts.
'Bobang has its own style.
'It is about approaching literature with the joy that words give and the light they convey,' said Guy Goffette, Belgian poet and editor of Gallimard.
『The Man of Joy』 goes straight into the essence through the simplest path leading to the soul.
- French journal Le Monde
As the book progresses, Bobin introduces us to a series of people who "bear uncertainty, smile at hesitation, and, forgetting everything else, pay attention to the faint movement of life within us."
Soulages, who painted all the snowy landscapes black when he was a child; Gould, who left for Canada to leave behind only music; Pascal, who ran with the sparks of fire with a rustling eternity in the inside pocket of his jacket; Menuhin and Oistrakh, who played like a conversation while facing each other so that their sacred lives would not harden coldly; Bach, the madman who kept 'the eternity' at the head of his bed because his anxiety was so great.
The face of these people, who more vividly than anyone else demonstrate that anxiety and calm, silence and life, love and pain are one body, also overlaps with the face of 'Gislen', the woman Bobin loved.
(Recommendation)
Looking at them, what Bobain ultimately wants to convey is 'something so small that it risks being damaged if spoken of', 'something that never goes against nature', and 'purity that blooms among the impure'.
It is, so to speak, 'a life scarred by clumsiness,' and Bobin says he has never seen anything as true as that.
Bobin's poetic sentences are always accompanied by adjectives such as 'delicate', 'soft', and 'clear and transparent'.
But Bobin confesses that all of this writing comes from deep darkness.
He also said, 'When talking about death, you should speak in a soft voice as if you were talking about love' (In the Garden of Longing, 1984 Books).
The green that breaks through the darkness of death.
Even amidst the world's widespread pain and suffering, the departure and absence of loved ones, and the darkness and death, Bobin's sentences bring smiles and laughter, giving us back the "blueness of the sky, like a gold coin dropped from a pocket" that we once lost.
“I only like books that have the blue of the sky permeating every page.
I'm talking about the blue that has already experienced the darkness of death.
If my sentences are smiling, it is because they came out of this darkness.
I have been living my life struggling to escape the depression that is pulling me in endlessly.
It cost me a lot to get this smile.
I am writing to return to you the blue of this sky, like a gold coin that fell from your pocket.
This majestic blue will bring tears to your eyes as it signals the end of despair.
You know what I mean, right?” - From the “Preface”
This book 'can never be understood through explanation'.
In his words, 'the light of true enlightenment can only come from inspiration, an inner outpouring that no one can determine.'
So, I ask you to read it and encounter the inspiration that dwells within you.
GOODS SPECIFICS
- Date of issue: January 15, 2025
- Page count, weight, size: 188 pages | 125*205*20mm
- ISBN13: 9791190533515
- ISBN10: 1190533510
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