À la claire Fontaine : un poète gaélique au Maghreb

Abstract

This article introduces the work of the multilingual Scottish poet George Campbell Hay (1915–1984) to a Francophone readership. After providing the necessary biographical and cultural background and outlining the main characteristics of Hay’s published work, the article focuses on Hay’s reading of French Resistance literary journals during his period of wartime service in North Africa, in particular Fontaine (founded 1939, Algiers), and identifies traces of their influence on Hay’s poetic discourse of heroic duty and his poetry of war, including his most celebrated poem ‘Bisearta’. It is suggested that the intellectual vigour of this Resistance writing played a significant part in the maturing of Hay’s philosophical thought and poetic discourse, and the development of his transcultural/translinguistic literary experiments. The article offers polished translations into French of two of Hay’s major Gaelic poems (‘Atman’ and ‘Bisearta’) as well as of shorter quotes from a variety of other poems.