Twenty-five years ago, on December 14, 1996, Gaston Miron left us. What remains of Gaston Miron’s work today? What remains of this powerful desire to name our collective misfortune, to put into words the social nature of our disease in order to transmit to the people of Quebec the impetus to offer themselves a “committed future, a clear future”.
The work of the poet: the desire for a new order
To recall the importance of the poet in our societies, here is an extract from an article by Pierre Maheu published in the review Bias in 1968 asking Gaston Miron to publish his poems.
” […] literature is not only expressiveness, it is also an act, its action is one of unveiling alienation and its overcoming; it too, by creating its own conditions, can create the conditions for its historicity. Publishing therefore becomes an act as convincing as political action. “
For Pierre Maheu, Miron’s work must be published because it has imposed itself by its quality and that “at a time when ideologies and propaganda clash here, anything that can give weight to liberating theses and decolonizing matters ”. According to Maheu, we are “at the time of getting rid of our evil, of taking possession of our being and of the world”.
The raped man: the unveiling of alienation and its overcoming
The call for collective mobilization launched by Pierre Maheu in Bias ofshout Miron so that he publishes his poems was heard. Miron goes, not without effort, to correct his suffering verses, rape his poems and prose texts to offer us the most poignant and widely read collection of poetry in Quebec literary history. A real catalyst for the hope of a people who want to invent a country – a soul – for themselves, Miron offered us a consciousness and the conditions for its historicity.
What are our instruments of liberation today?
Twenty-five years after Miron’s death, it is clear that Pierre Maheu’s appeal has not borne all the hoped-for fruit. While we were, according to Maheu, “on the verge of shedding our evil, of taking possession of our being and of the world”, here we are, two referendums for independence later, facing new challenges on the level. ideologies and propaganda. As to colonized people mobilizing to invent a country, here he is faced with a mise en abyme where the colonized gradually found themselves in the posture of the colonizer with, as a backdrop, the imperative of a necessary global solidarity to save humanity in the face of the climate crisis and disappearance of biodiversity.
Who are our Gaston Miron in 2021?
Co-founder of Éditions de l’Hexagone in 1970, Gaston Miron, in addition to his work as a poet and intellectual, wanted to give a voice to local poets. Contribute to the building of Quebec literature. Since then, ironically, Éditions de l’Hexagone has been swallowed up by Quebecor Media. And who, at Quebecor Media, underlined the poet’s death on December 14, 2021?
Even if Gaston Miron’s liberating words are still ringing, Quebec still needs strong voices and poets capable of emerging from their individual condition, from their personal misfortune, to express through poetry the social nature of our evil. And above all to carry the cry of a “committed future, a clear future”.
Today, our Gastons Miron are women, Aboriginals, members of racialized communities, environmentalists, mothers at the front, etc. Their voices are nonetheless essential. Because to invent a country – a soul -, it takes all these people!