by CATHERINE DESPONT

Ile d yeu is an island defined by light. The motto is: Au large, la lumier et le refuge. When this was written the hazy light obscured the continent. The wind and sun, caught in the poplar trees and on the waves, flickered silver and grey, like echoes of each other. The island is in the Vendee region in France, about an hour from Nantes and an hour from the coast by ferry. It is small in relation to most places, but the landscape is alternately ominous and sublime. On the Atlantic side of the island—La Côte Sauvage—the grass is low and wiry, the trees slant in the direction of the wind, and the ruins of an 11th century castle is the sight that pirates once used to shipwreck boats by lighting the rocks to look like a harbor. By edict all the buildings are…