“Our very life is a journey. This quote from Matsuo Bashō, Japanese monk-poet and great master of haiku, is featured in Dany Laferrière’s most recent graphic novel, On the road with Bashō. The famous writer invites us on a journey, certainly around the world, but also in the flesh of our history, on the major notes of great works and in the shade of the persistent rays of the sun, a glass of hand.
The relationship with the famous haikist is not surprising: Dany Laferrière, after all, has already confessed to us to be a Japanese writer. However, Bashō is also a master of the travelogue – it has moreover been translated by Nicolas Bouvier, famous for his travelogues – and it is on this poetic road, populated by the unspoken, where the eternal rubs the ephemeral, that the academician walked by his side.
In the wake of its Quebec publication, Laferrière stopped in a Montreal ready to hatch, where The duty the encounter. He must after all return to one of his adopted cities, because, he writes, “the traveler returns one day or another, otherwise he is not a traveler. “Laferrière therefore travels, but for him, it is not always the case to take the plane: “We have the possibility of moving a lot more than we think. Aragon had this sentence where he said that “Life is changing coffees. “There are small movements that are possible. »
In the novel, it is the Camera that captures the slightest movement. Movement of leaves, bodies, stars and thought. In the guise of an endearing lemur, the narrator of this contemplative tale opens his wide eyes to the world: “It was the idea of looking without judgement. The people, the landscapes as they are, without cynicism. »
The true traveler does not know where he is going
For the occasion, Laferrière has taken up the pen and his pots of color, inviting us into the iridescent dance of his drawings and the brilliant mesh of his words. These sometimes take the form of aphorism, others claim impressionist poetry, homage, a great laugh sheltered from cynicism or, more simply, a dreamy thought: “As a teenager, it happened to me, while kissing a girl, to see time go by so quickly that I found myself with a woman, then an old woman, and the next minute, a skeleton. – Am I the only one to have such an intimate relationship with time? »
At the dawn of the trip, this remark is made by a Seoul butler: “My intention was never to understand the world, nor to change it. Just to live there. There is, the writer believes, in this seemingly modest posture, a magnificent commitment: “Simply living in the world requires much more than wanting to change it. Simply living there requires doing one’s part, at the top of one’s form, of one’s attentions and sensibilities, by inserting oneself into the great movement. It’s grand, actually. It is the human adventure. »
Always generous in unfolding the world map of his inspirations, the writer invites us once again to the words of others. This time, he is particularly talkative about the legacy of Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, Simone de Beauvoir and Anaïs Nin: “There are a lot of female diarists in this book. I wanted to make a small altar, so to speak, to present them quite simply, without judgment, because sometimes I like to present good people, without further explanation. »
To an invitation to clarify a passage from the novel – “I will tell you another time why I find the theater rather suspect. –, the man, in verve, gets carried away. Around, some glances cling. It may be because we recognize the academician, but it may also be because his words invite us into the communion of laughter: “Yes, I find that there is something quite suspect in the theatre. There is something in this distance, in this complicity with an audience that we pretend not to see, which seems suspicious to me. “To bathe in his novel or to float in his stories, we laugh a lot, with the great gentleman.
Safe from war, a wisdom
This colorful story spans the world and does not ignore current events. A few fighter planes and tanks tear the page, like an ugly prophecy or the cruel reminder that war is not a new story: “When we see war, we are touched in our being, in our flesh, in our blood, and after a while, we want it to stop. Not because we don’t want people to die, but because it’s starting to bother us in our comfort zone. That is to say, we think, and we even believe, spontaneously, that if we want the war to end, we just have to turn off the TV. It’s because we’re exhausted watching people die. »
Faced with this terrible observation, Laferrière calls on an old friend as reinforcements: “Borges, one of my favorite writers, advocates courtesy. Even the one that consists in providing arguments to our adversary so that he crushes us. And you have to go with this courtesy, hoping that the opponent will do the same for you. That’s the big discussion, it’s becoming the other while the other becomes you. »
Against the violence that shakes the foundations of our world, he cites as a model those flowers which, in the ravages of the earthquake in Haiti, did not bend. Their secret? Dance: “It was Nietzsche who said that there is no God except dancing. We don’t fall when we dance. We are body. It is a cosmic movement. When we dance, we are in all forms, we multiply. Rather, it is the resistance that causes the fall. »
In the absence of knowing – or being able – to dance, Laferrière offers us immortality. From the one that keeps alive the works and the thought of our ancestors, but also the metaphorical one that allows us, every day, to renew our anchoring in the world, our aspirations and our empathy: “To be immortal, we must not not stop dying. That’s being immortal, it’s someone who doesn’t stop dying. What doesn’t die is a robot, it’s an object. And each time we die, we are reborn differently. This is what makes the journey precious: this ability to die and be reborn, each time changing in sensitivity and focal point. »
Is the author of Petit-Goâve a phoenix, eternally reborn from its ashes, or a cat, sailing from one life to another? Just recovered from his journey On the road with Bashō, he seems ready to get back into shape again, using his freedom to watch for the next astonishment: “If I knew myself well, I wouldn’t have written so many books. There are other worlds that will emerge from me, and I await them. They constantly come out and surprise me. And with him, free but bewitched, we are on the lookout.