Abstract: In Arrière-Pays (1972), Yves Bonnefoy evokes a real “quest”. Like the Holy Grail of the Breton cycle, the object of his search is evasive and multiform in nature: a place, a landscape or language, or, rather, a painting, an absolute Œuvre. It’s the hidden Centre emerging in its local incarnations, and especially, in the region of central Italy. As René Guénon writes, the supreme centre allows for a multiplicity of secondary centres, which are its material refraction.
