“People think books stay in the library at night as they go in search of sleeping readers. This is how we wake up in the morning with the taste of a story on our lips,” writes Dany Laferrière, in his fifth drawn novel, In the splendor of the night. For the occasion, he breaks into the night, its intimacy and its delights, with the sole dream of wanting to be part of it. The duty met him at his home, in a Villeray where the sun competed orange with the cones of the street.
We enter Dany Laferrière as in a book: a few characters are there, in the heart of a scene, who invite you to the step of their words and the beats of their dance. The stories float in the air and the books – the essential of what is offered to the view – are on the lookout, jostling in the libraries. Our gaze glides over the titles. It’s the food of the moment. Moreover, many of them are only passing through here, since Maggie, the writer’s wife, regularly sends a selection of works that will replenish the libraries of Haiti.
The day upside down
We barely sit down when the academician plunges into a night which, in his words, shines brighter than the day: “When I was a child in Petit-Goâve, my grandfather sometimes woke me up to contemplate a starry sky . Because the night should be a universal good. “The other side of the day brings to light many paradoxes, and he regrets that our societies do not dwell on it more. “We lost the light of the stars a long time ago. When we felt that the day had to continue and that if we didn’t have it naturally, we were going to do it artificially. It must be said, the contemporary world of big cities is thought out and designed by people who have not known the night. »
There must be an impact to these millions of people who spend nights taking pills after all
The remedy for our daytime crises may even be found in the mysteries of the night. It would be enough, he suggests, to stop turning your back on them. “A large part of the days are made up of people who have had a bad night and who have remained in bed tossing and turning. There must be an impact to those millions of people who spend nights taking pills after all. »
If the night offers its shovelful of small miracles, Dany Laferrière is however sorry that the inequalities of the day are prolonged in the darkness. “The fact that women don’t have access to the night is huge. When we consider the degree of civilization of a society, we must consider the ability of women to move freely at night. Because it’s still almost half a day to which the individual does not have access! »
Failing to get into the city, reading would already be a first way of living at night. “An insomniac is someone who does not like to read, otherwise he is a reader. But the night is another nourishment, another theatre, populated by other characters or, at least, the result of a reversal in which new protagonists frolic. And to discover it, you have to cross it: “You open the door and you go out. »
An open window
In the splendor of the night, perhaps the most accomplished of his drawn novels, gives way to writing that is still just as incisive, but more airy and open, allowing the writer-illustrator to make the complementarity of writing and drawing reign. “There is already a whole atmosphere created by the immediacy of the design. Drawing is the present indicative. It is another art of writing. The invitation is dense, suave and exhilarating, and one engages in it as in the night, without always knowing where one is going. “I will walk all night if necessary to make myself available for the unexpected,” he wrote.
A 16-year-old poet narrates stories animated by a bestiary where predators and prey compete for the headline. The poet is first of all a privileged observer: “I love the night because it hides me from others while exposing them to my owl’s eye. Other times, however, he slips right into the action: “I go back to the night. I found myself in the middle of a crowd. People brushed past me. I heard them, without seeing them, tell their day. The rustle of voices, all those sweaty bodies rubbing against my skin made me feel like I was crossing a river. »
The night is embodied as a founding space where Dany Laferrière, like his young poet, draws poetic inspiration. The writer gives pride of place to Haiti, even if a few magnificent verses testify to a painful daily life: “Cité Soleil prefers night to day. The song of the sea. The old Caribbean wind. The trade winds and sea monsters lull those who live in this district roaring with misery. »
It’s literature, but it may also be, quite simply, a dream. “My mother believes that we are all there is in the dream, so that I am the tiger, the snake, the tree, the path, the brush and even the wind. “Dreams like books escape us, but it is thanks to them that the collective imagination is built: “We recognize ourselves in the emotion sung in the books, as if it did not belong to the person who has written, but to language and tradition. That’s why I take up stories without a bad conscience and repeat them, because the world is a child to be tucked away. »
In the splendor of the night invites us to the universality of existences, to its sweet memories of Haiti and to this light which shines, whether it is a star, a lamppost or a match, even when the night is plunged into disarming darkness. “I wanted to let people know that Haiti can provoke. People, poets, who talk about Li Po, in the Port-au-Prince night, because it’s part of their memory. And I wanted to show, through my literature, that this place which seems closed, which is a poor island, marred by misery and disasters, nevertheless keeps an eye on the rest of the world. Haiti looks at the others. There is a window. That’s my work: a window. »