A coffee with Jonathan Livernois | Identity anxiety… and its antidote

What we journalists don’t explain often enough is how difficult it is sometimes to put into order the words collected during an interview.

An example ? I recently spent two hours with Jonathan Livernois, author of a biography^⁠1 on the politician Gérald Godin, who was described as a deputy-poet.

We talked about this book, but also about a bunch of relevant topics he’s explored over the last decade.

So what do I start with to tell you all this?

I opt for… the great cat massacre.

This is what allowed me to understand what fuels the intellectual engine of Jonathan Livernois – this guy who looks more like a hipster from Mile End than the idea we have of a specialist academic links between literature and politics.

This requires some explanation, I realize that.

Here they are.

Jonathan Livernois really likes the American historian Robert Darnton. He particularly appreciates the original way used by this academic to examine attitudes and beliefs in France in the 18th century.^e century.

“Darnton said to himself: what must I do to understand such a civilization? », told me the man who has taught at Laval University since 2013.

His solution?

He studied “the most fucked up affair there is, namely what he found in the memoirs of a printer who said: when I was young, we massacred lots of cats and it was really funny”. Which is, in our time, difficult to imagine.

In short, to enlighten us on French society at the time, the American historian “takes the most surprising element”, explains Jonathan Livernois.

Committed intellectual

Like Robert Darnton, Jonathan Livernois told me that the starting point of his previous essay, Between two firesis something that “really surprised” him.

It is a book that focuses on the links between politics and literature in Quebec over the past centuries. By addressing this subject, the author learned that Honoré Mercier, Prime Minister of Quebec from 1887 to 1891, had already been questioned by the leader of the opposition who criticized him for… the list of books purchased by his government!

“At the time, there were no subsidies, so the government bought books, to distribute them to MPs, ministries, etc. “, he explains.

“What amazed me was to see Honoré Mercier stand up in the House and defend each title on the list. And to see him call himself a writer, even though he wasn’t a writer. […] It really fascinated me. I said to myself: how is it that there is such a proximity between politics and literature in the 19th century?^e century ? »

And he made a book out of it.

The publication of Gérald Godin’s biography follows a fairly similar logic. It is astonishment that, fundamentally, guided Jonathan Livernois.

Elected to the National Assembly in 1976, Gérald Godin was the “first truly important literary person” to be there since Félix-Gabriel Marchand. He was Prime Minister of Quebec and died in office in… 1900.

“That intrigued me,” says the author.

I don’t use the verb “throw” by chance. Jonathan Livernois is an affable guy, who speaks with passion and chatter about the subjects he studies.

The history of ideas in Quebec, which is what interests him above all, is a rather specialized subject.

But everything he says, he does with such enthusiasm and such a talent for popularization that anyone who listens to him is inevitably captivated.

Perhaps because he retains this capacity to marvel and be astonished by everything he observes.

Perhaps also because this professor born in Saint-Constant (he now lives in an ancestral home in Deschambault, in the Quebec region) does not come from a university background and says he has “a knee-jerk reaction” to regard to snobbery.

Perhaps, finally, because the person who arranges to meet me in a café in Little Italy counts among his heroes the late sociologist Fernand Dumont (along with René Lévesque and Jean Jaurès).

He is inspired by it and wishes to be, like him, a “committed intellectual”.

He considers himself “extremely lucky” to work as a university professor. And it shows.

He is also, in my opinion, one of the young Quebec intellectuals – he is 41 years old – whose works published over the last decade have been the most stimulating.

Godin and… Catherine Dorion

But let’s come back to Gérald Godin.

“Was he really a poet lost in politics? That’s also why I was interested in the character. » It was a combination, again, astonishing to say the least.

I knew the answer to this question. Gérald Godin was anything but lost. The academic explains this in his biography.

Jonathan Livernois then addresses the subject of solidarity MP Catherine Dorion, who has said all the bad things she thinks about her stay in politics.

“In his recent book, The hotheads, she opposes the two. Systematically. As if she couldn’t find her place,” he points out.

He recognizes that the climate in parliament is “perhaps not the same as in the 1970s”, but emphasizes that Godin understood the importance of “procedures” in Quebec.

“He managed to put his very humanist vision into predetermined, predefined forms, whereas Catherine Dorion was not able to do that. »

He adds that with Godin, “politics fueled poetry and poetry fueled politics.”

There are, however, other reasons why the Laval University professor became interested in Gérald Godin to the point of devoting three years of his life to it “almost full time”.

It was also, he told me, that the deputy-poet was the source of one of his “first nationalist feelings”. It happened when he saw the documentary Quebec… a little… a lot… passionately…about Gérald Godin and his partner, the singer Pauline Julien.

“We follow their trajectory and there is also the history of Quebec in there. It’s not subtle, but it’s interesting, and I remember being struck by this couple. I must have been 8 or 9 years old. »

Identity nationalism

It is also clear that the vision of nationalism espoused by Gérald Godin resonates with Jonathan Livernois.

He was the “champion of diversity within the government of René Lévesque”, recalls the author from the first pages of the biography. We have also immortalized on a wall, very close to the Mont-Royal metro station, one of his poems where he speaks of immigrants who make “the old heart” of Montreal beat.

I assumed that the choice of the solidarity MP Ruba Ghazal to sign the preface of her book was not insignificant.

He confirms it.

He himself contacted the member for Mercier (the same constituency as Gérald Godin at the time).

“A Palestinian born in Lebanon, child of Law 101, who arrived here at 12 and who learned French. […] I told him: for me, it’s clear, you perfectly represent the spirit of Godin. »

In the same vein, I discuss with Jonathan Livernois what he wrote in his essay The Pays-Brûlé road, in 2016. The fact that he felt “a little less sovereignist these days”. This was the case, three years after the Charter of Values ​​of the Parti Québécois, due to the “worrying withdrawal” of the sovereignists.

I ask him what he thinks of journalist Francine Pelletier’s observation. In a recent essay (In Quebec, that’s how we live, published by Lux), she speaks of a “long shift” which led Quebec “from the progressive nationalism of René Lévesque” to the identity-based nationalism in vogue today.

“It’s a vision that I share,” Jonathan Livernois told me. Maybe sometimes it’s a bit square, but overall, I pretty much agree with her. »

I point out to him that the identity anxiety that characterizes our time – to which Gérald Godin was once an antidote – has contributed to the election of Donald Trump and several other politicians in recent years.

And that remains a recipe for success in politics today.

” Yes. Absolutely, he admits. But do we want successful politicians like that? Do we wish this on each other? The recipe is there and I understand it works, but my god it’s depressing. »

1. Godinby Jonathan Livernois, Lux publisher, 544 pages