In Hugo Latulippe’s documentary I lift myself up (in room), on youth and poetry, Catherine Dorion is first followed by the camera as an activist artist, then as a Member of Parliament for Québec solidaire in the National Assembly. In front of the film, I felt perplexed, disturbed by these political inserts which alternated with the poetic ardor celebrated in the film. As if art and politics did not have the same function and did not require the same faculties in those who come into contact with them. This is true and false, of course. And it all depends on the temperament of the artist in the big gap between the two worlds. But it was nice to see on screen Catherine Dorion reciting a poem to the Assembly, shaking the plum tree.
During her mandate, which will not continue beyond the next election as she announced this week, we could find her irritating, refreshing, subscribed to show politics. His unconventionalism seemed at least to prove that the enclosure of power can shelter all temperaments. From there to put them at ease…
Catherine Dorion now considers the institution outdated, a real stifle of dissenting voices. Question of perspective. She was too rebellious for the function and bumped her wings against the bars of the chic Blue Salon which did not put aside its protocol. The lady lives on another planet than that of the elected representatives in the chamber. Art is less formatted, crazier, freer than partisan contests. We have seen her suffer, provoke, shock, seek her place.
And when the MP for Taschereau claims to be bored of writing books, you have to believe her. She will always be a QS activist, but she will keep spaces for creation, an essential forum for her development. Of which act!
Is poetry insoluble in political life? Not necessarily. It takes a candidate capable of triple back flips, to play with conventions to free themselves from them. The function may seem tedious to the pasionarias who rush into the stretchers brandishing the sword of idealism. Catherine Dorion sent all that flying and often, her iconoclastic side made us smile. One thing is certain, an impetuous poet benefits from being a member of the ruling party to feel capable of making things happen.
In the Parti Québécois, Gérald Godin held several seats from 1976 to 1994, deputy and minister in various portfolios. The companion of Pauline Julien, the poet imprisoned during the events of October, the scholar, the lover of the French language was also the one who will have attempted the most ardent rapprochements with the allophones of Quebec, as the ethnic confinement revolted this fervent independentist.
And in addition to his work and his burning correspondence with Pauline Julien, brought to the stage in The vixen and the unkempt, we remember him as a man exploding on all fronts, open, warm, lit, thirsty for freedom and flexible enough to jump from one role to another. He had already moved from poetry to journalism, with detours through teaching and publishing, before entering politics, which helped him to grip his society.
Gérald Godin sat at a less deleterious time than ours. Sovereignty seemed an ideal within sight. Faith in the cause could be accompanied by artistic lyricism. During her career as an MP, Catherine Dorion will have rather experienced the ravages of the pandemic, environmental issues packed at the top by the management of current affairs, an ambient gloom. Another time… But beyond the eras, the statures and the different political legacies (thin for Dorion), we feel in these two committed poets an identical aspiration to surpass and a sadness in the face of the failures of the collective heart which prevent it from beating. stronger.
Gérald Godin’s poem Montreal Tangoreproduced on a wall facing the Maison de la culture Mont-Royal, a tribute to immigrants, did he not see beating “this old worn-out heart of the city / With its spasms / Its embolisms / Its murmurs in the heart / And all its faults / And all the reasons in the world that he would have / To stop / To give up”?
through the verses of Desire, Catherine Dorion lamented the same ambivalences: “And the heart remains there, thirsty, virgin, efficient, like new, magnificent. Barricaded in us, useless / And if we live / crushed in the Great Darkness / take two take twenty-eight thousand immemorial take / I imagine that’s normal”. Before declaring further to hope “that the dawn will come soon”.
“Real life is elsewhere”, they say. But the politics is here. Going from one circle to another is like somersault. Sometimes some get hurt there and leave the arena. Like in the circus too.