Land of Evening

Kathleen Raine wrote: 'When I first met Jean Mambrino he was an ardent young novice about to be ordained a priest of the Society of Jesus. Now in his eighties he has emerged from a tempestuous life no longer concerned with church matters into an old age full of love and wisdom. In the Jesuit house in Paris he is the literary, theatre and cinema editor of their review Etudes. The collection of poems L'Hesperie: pays du soir are poems of old age, a theme which I am myself well qualified to understand, and translating them has been a labour of love. In the year 1957 Jean published a French translation (with Marie-Beatrix Mesnet) of my poem-sequence On a Deserted Shore in Francois-Xavier Jaujard's Edition Granit. I am happy that Enitharmon Press gives me this opportunity to reciprocate."
About the Author: Jean Mambrino was born in London on 15 May 1923 to an Italian father and a French mother. He lived in London until the age of seven, and then was educated in Paris. After ten years of advanced studies devoted to philosophy and theology, he was ordained into the Society of Jesus in 1954. His regular visits to London brought him into contact with T.S. Eliot, Kathleen Raine. An article that he published in the Times Literary Supplement put him in touch with Jules Supervielle, who eventually arranged for the publication of Mambrino s first collection Le Veilleur Aveugle in 1965. At this time, Mambrino s poems were also published in the Cahier du Sud, the Nouvelle Revue Francaise and the Botteghe Oscure. His collection, Glade, translated by Jonathan Griffin and introduced by Kathleen Raine, was published by Enitharmon Press in 1986. Mambrino taught English language and literature for fifteen years before becoming the literature and theatre critic for the review Etudes in 1968. In this post, he has travelled widely across Europe, the United States, the Near East and South East Asia. Jean Mambrino has translated a number of important works of modern and contemporary English poetry, notably by Kathleen Raine and Gerard Manley Hopkins, and also edited an Anthologie de la poesie Mystique Francaise. He has written extensive critical works, such as Le Chant Profond, a collection of twenty studies of novelists and poets of the twentieth century, and Lire comme on se souvient, a volume of literary chronicles."