In the office where I begin my third and final column devoted to libraries, my books have taken their rightful place and left the darkness of the basement. Yes, I have finally filled the shelves of my new library. It is a dream of paper, a building of words, the house of stories. What calms me the most in all this is that the echo that reigned in the room, a constant reminder of the ambient emptiness, has finally dissipated.
In my previous columns, I started to tell the story of a woman who buys herself the library of her dreams. Once the time comes to put the books back on the shelves, she freezes, avoids, runs away. She undertakes to visit other libraries, and wallows there since, like many of you, she wants to live among books, like others among birds, orchids or monkeys.
After visiting, in a state of total delight, that of the Académie française, I went a month ago, on the occasion of the presentation of the Governor General’s Literary Awards, to Library and Archives Canada (LAC) in Gatineau. It is a place where traces of Canadian history are stored, and which acts as a permanent memory of federal institutions. Beyond political allegiances, it is a place open to the public, which can be visited to see how the written memory of a country is preserved and protected, but also paintings, archives, obsolete objects, reels and others. silent witnesses of History or, I would specify, of a certain reading of History.
During the visit, the piercing and lively questions of Maya Cousineau Mollen (winner of the GG Poetry category in 2022 for Children of lichen) on the preservation of the historical heritage of First Nations peoples revealed that this legacy had not benefited from the same preservation and archiving treatment.
On site, we were able to consult the manuscripts of Réjean Ducharme, Jacques Poulin and Normand Chaurette, annotated in pen by the authors themselves. Writing as a typist must have been so exasperating sometimes. We met a restorer of old books. With astronomical attention to detail, this woman brings old, dying books back to life. In the eyes of archivists shines that little spark that vibrates in the eyes of those who know where the treasures are hidden and protect them in an almost chivalrous way.
The neighboring building is a huge white cube in which a robot archivist spends busy days. This is the Archives Preservation Center, opened in 2022 and whose architecture has not enchanted Gatineau residents, it seems. The building is energy efficient and sustainable: a book stored in 2022 would still be readable in 2522.
With its vaults where light, temperature, humidity and particles in the air are controlled, the building appears humble, modest and raw. You have to observe it more carefully to appreciate its aesthetic appearance. Its exterior walls reproduce the intraterrestrial layers of the soil on which it was erected. A bit like a drill core, geological strata appear in a mirror effect that goes from its most superficial layer digging towards the center of the Earth. I find it revealing that, renouncing the grandiloquence of marble, velvet, statues and swords of the French Academy, we have instead decided here to represent the interior of the Earth and its rocky sediments. It’s a whole different story that we tell, in layers.
After getting lost and inspired in the labyrinthine corridors of sumptuous libraries and archival centers, I was back where I started: standing in front of mine, empty, apart from the Anne Hébert section.
“Start by placing a book, just one,” suggested Charlotte, 16.
It hadn’t crossed my mind to ask him for advice on putting away my books. My daughter’s room, a sort of small museum dedicated to the cult of singer Lana Del Rey, has been in a state of post-disaster disorder for several years. Venturing there is risky since you can no longer see the floor, small objects rustle and crack under your heel, bubble wrap bursts… I estimate that 20% of the dishes in the house are there. Here too, in the layers of crystallized crusts of smoothie, hot chocolate and other rings of broccoli soup, a story is told to us.
I started by slowly slipping in a novel by Marie-Claire Blais. Then everything else happened! It was a perfect Saturday, putting together small constellations of titles, sometimes grouped in a rainbow, often by publishing house since one must experience, it seems to me, a certain aesthetic thrill when contemplating from his library. I stopped placing novels next to each other by writers who used to sleep together, but who today no longer hang out (on the shelves, secrets are hidden between the stories).
In the section where the carpenter recommended that I display something beautiful made with my hands, I placed my book Galumpf in its version prepared by master art bookbinding craftswoman Lorraine Choquet. All GG winners receive their book dressed in a magnified and magnificent dress. His neighbors are my strange books, the king’s fools, those who confuse: Lewis Carroll’s Guide for InsomniacsTHE Professor Revillod’s universal bestiary, Mudbath of Ars O’, The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter, Why look at animals, by John Berger.
Just before starting this column, I emptied my last box, the one which contained Patricia Highsmith’s thrillers. It is very symbolic, for the reader that I am, to have started with Hébert and ended with Highsmith. The most important thing is that there is space for other books, and to enjoy reading them and then putting them away. This library will be moving, living, not frozen in time or space as a tomb would be… It will be, in itself, an endless story.