Pierre Morency sees the great human caravan pass by

If there are “rare people and widespread people”, as he writes in In both featherless feet, Pierre Morency certainly belongs to the first group.

Dominic Tardif
Press

“You must have met some as a journalist,” says the poet with a mischievous smile, about those people who do not conceive of any shyness in talking extensively about themselves and flaunting their little person – common people . Our interlocutor, who can be reached virtually in a bright room in his house on the Île d’Orléans, is rather one of those rare people who provide their knowledge with generosity, but who always express themselves with the humility of the eternal pupil. Generosity: at the end of our interview, Pierre Morency leaves, in his immense library, in search of his dictionary of first names, in order to read to the author of these lines the entry corresponding to that of his daughter.

A major figure in Quebec literature, Pierre Morency is also a discreet figure, who has patiently built a work on the fringes of fashions for more than 50 years, with an almost pious attention to movements from outside – birds have been his main subject – as well as for the movements of his interior life. “In the 1960s, as I saw that a lot of poets were busy describing our national reality, I said to myself: ‘Hey, I’m going to do something else'”, says the 79-year-old writer, obviously still very form. “I said to myself: ‘Here, I’m going to try to make the revolution in me, to explore my domain.’ ”

It is to the exploration of this rich field that the writer continues to devote himself in In both featherless feet, a unique little book taking the form of a fascinated list of all the types of people who have crossed his path.

Somewhere between poetry, aphorism, jokes and Sunday sociology, Pierre Morency identifies, one fragment at a time, “people who feel rich because of what they have given”, “people who, at the turn of age, began to experience this distress in front of the door which is about to close “,” the people who, very early on, undertook the formidable work of seeing clearly “or” the people giving the impression that ‘they are still probing the value of their family jewels… ”

Although he is sometimes distressed by the difficulty that some of his fellows experience in extracting themselves from their navel, Pierre Morency here essentially engages in an exercise of admiration, drawn up from a lifetime of insightful observation of a not always admirable race: the human race.

“In the convergence of our memory are all the human beings that we have met, that we have heard about, that we have imagined, that we have seen badly, but that we have tried to guess to be. It is one of the most magical realities of our existence to explore this convergence that is within us. In the convergence of my memory, I see the great human caravan pass by. ”

A special kind of light

Pierre Morency is this man capable of quoting great writers without ever appearing to be wearing a hat, but rather as if he were sharing sentences entrusted to him by friends. “In any work of art chaos must sparkle through the veil of order,” wrote Novalis, a phrase he made his own in order to describe the balance he hoped to achieve between spots of sun and this background. shadow over which unfortunately unfolds In both featherless feet, because this shadow background is that of our time.

“However, I try not to feel any anger or bitterness towards our world”, says the one who uses in his book the pretty neologism “to defuse oneself”. “But I feel some pain when I see people knocking themselves out so loudly. I painfully feel the ordinary din. The ordinary din? That of overconsumption, of the speed punctuating all our actions, of the devastation inflicted on the environment.

Lucid, Pierre Morency nevertheless remains one of those who have chosen the light, a word he does not disdain to utter. “And suddenly I think of those people who can immediately see the hot dot of the i in the exact center of the word light,” he writes. Is he one of those people?

“You know very well that I don’t have that gift,” he replies once again with the humility of a monk. It is a more or less poetic image that I use to try to say that the lights that one can find in life are rarely great extraordinary lights. It may just be the sound of the wind in a tree or a point in a word that fascinates us. The little light that must be brought into oneself, it perhaps begins with this point on the i. ”

“And then I like the word light,” he continues. I think he is handsome and that he speaks well. Unfortunately, it is overused, worn out. It is for this reason that we have to look for the small dot on the i, to try to find something meaningful in this word again. ”

Pierre Morency was once one of those “people who beat up in droves because they never thought of turning on the light”. This was before he undertook this vast work of “disentangling his inner universe”. After “a somewhat difficult childhood”, the man comes into contact with the poetry of Lamartine, Musset, Baudelaire.

“I saw a kind of new light thanks to my discovery of poetry. I glimpsed through these readings the possibility of feeling in me a kind of lighting. It is this special language that allowed me to change this great inner disorder, which gave me sparks, which gave me shocks. His first book, published in 1967, was entitled Poems of the cold wonder of living. And the wonder has never ceased since.

In both featherless feet

Pierre Morency

Boreal

104 pages