“To observe is to read. It’s not just books that we read,” Dany Laferrière warns us. On the occasion of the publication of his most recent title, A certain art of living, The duty finds him, through the magic of videoconferencing, at his observation – or reading – post, in his Paris apartment where, perched high up, he drinks in the light that pierces the window.
He is soon expected at the Trois-Rivières Book Fair, which will welcome him as writer in residence. In the meantime, his weekly tasks at the French Academy keep him in the City of Lights where, if we are to believe everything he says, he is fasting: “The chairs are uncomfortable and the remuneration is insufficient: it’s is the aristocratic principle. But the food is excellent. So every Thursday, I eat, and the rest of the week, I don’t eat. »
On this point, it is ironic, of course, but can we always be sure? The gaze plunged deep into things, the words delving into truths, even the simplest, to discover a forgotten nugget, his imagination, like his books, takes astonishing detours which very often lead us to this smile bright, always ready to emerge. In truth, Dany Laferrière plays on all levels. How could it be otherwise, anyway, for a writer who admits “not always being the same”?
The shape in question
In A certain art of livingthe writer seeks to “know how things happened in this life where [il] didn’t stop moving. » In free verse, in what has the appearance of brief chronicles, expansive haikus or sweeping reflections, Dany Laferrière “draws a naive self-portrait”.
Unclassifiable book? Probably. Dany Laferrière, while apologizing to booksellers, prefers to navigate beyond labels: “Borges said: “To say of a book that it is a novel is the equivalent of saying that it is red. It means nothing.” A book is an object that is made to be read. So. »
While discussing, involuntary definitions nevertheless trace its contours: “Each little text is so complete, autonomous, almost, even if linked to the rest, that they are micro-narratives. I wanted to make a book that seemed thin, but was very busy. »
Reveries, wisdom and candor come together in a limpid style, but, for the writer, this light display reveals a revolutionary tension: “For me, it has to be totally classic, and revolutionary. I take an absolutely classical language. And the revolutionary idea is that the language is so classical that it is not seen. The path of words is that of the reader, we read the words without recognizing them, but in the end, they open a window onto a new landscape. »
And in fact, when these few verses which form a whole close, we remain for a moment in front of this open window, our thoughts wandering. The text, airy, seems to invite us to this floating outside the world. “We must take into account, when writing, the fact that the reader sometimes stops reading without closing the book. We must avoid speaking over our silence,” he writes.
Far from the feverish verve of some of his novels, one might believe that this decanted style would be the sum of a lifetime of writing. These brief chronicles are, however, reminiscent of Chronicle of gentle drift (VLB publisher, 1994), and moreover, the academician admits that this inspiration has always been germinating in his writing: “Of course, it is a singular form. But when I received the Medici, in Port-au-Prince, they gave me, as a gift, all of my articles published when I was in Haiti, and they were already there. I was 19-20 years old, it was average, maybe, but it was already there. »
Love in one name
This freedom, which the writer has never ceased to claim and embody, represents a playground in which to reinvent himself, an assertion as true for him as for his reader: “Feeling that there is a whole world in below these three lines. Knowing that we can completely redo the layout of this book. We could remove the chapter titles, put all these chronicles in a hat, and draw a completely different story. »
If the sequence of chronicles may seem arbitrary, a story nevertheless runs through the book: that of a man who found refuge in Borneo to cope with the departure of Hoki. “I was looking for a way to say love, and I noticed that the people who are in the reality of love are not in the speech,” he tells us, adding that the appearance of Hoki is enough to nourish powerful and universal feelings. “And this name can become pain. This name is a world. All the magical power is in the name. You just have to call it and the space is occupied immediately. »
Through this character, he admits to having wanted to “avoid questions of race, class and borders”, thus never sinking into folklore: “Hoki is not Haitian nor Japanese, she is not old nor young, it’s love. It’s Hoki. And everyone can relate to it, because there is no description. It’s a sketch. »
And why Borneo? In fact, Borneo, like Hoki, brings forth a dream, images and emotions that do not materialize concretely: “I was reading a book that I really like by Pablo Neruda, I admit that I have lived, and in which he says that it had been conceived in Borneo. I wanted to live in the sound of that name: Borneo. And then, I like to mention places that I don’t know. I live with them more easily. I invent them. I can do whatever I want with it, basically. I haven’t described Borneo, because when you know, you don’t need to describe. And precisely, I pretend to know by not describing. »
The gray light of Paris will be lost behind him, quickly swallowed up by the colors of some large formats, hung on the walls, of illustrations taken from his comic novels. At nightfall, he invites us to be wary of “the left side of the night” then, always laughing, he suggests that we consider the benefits that humans would derive from returning to a four-legged posture. More seriously, he explains to us how “emotion cancels time”, then sings the praises of culture: “The individual, even naked, even in prison, even beaten down, stands tall in his imagination. And there, he is indestructible. »
It would take a vast space like this imagined Borneo to demonstrate it or, more concretely, the density of a book like A certain art of living. In the meantime, to those who hope to reveal the Dany Laferrière mystery thanks to this “naive self-portrait”, this one reminds, indirectly, that there is no need to cheat to break the rules of the game: “No, the idea of writing under another pen name never occurred to me. Borges says that the safest labyrinth is the straight line. I finally think I hide more easily under my own name. »