“Miracles only exist for those who believe in them,” writes Jean-Paul Daoust in The shadow mirrors. Despite the many reasons for despair that life has provided him with in recent years, the poet persists in believing in them.
Jean-Paul Daoust, dressed with a flamboyance that would have won the admiration of Louis Being still in this world represents more than ever a sufficient opportunity to toast.
Although he spends the majority of his time in his peaceful countryside of Sainte-Mélanie, the dandy has in reality never lived anywhere other than in the land of melancholy, we understand by reading The shadow mirrorshis most recent book, probably one of his last, he warns.
“Melancholic, me? », repeats with a smile the one who assimilates this incurable inclination to his “secret life”, which the finery and laughter have never completely managed to camouflage.
In fact, it has always been hidden somewhere deep within this recognizable voice, today a little dulled by a few painful episodes of illness.
Our host gets up, goes to the kitchen, brings back the bottle of sparkling wine and a bundle of leaves. In bold, at the top of the first page, a quote from Danièle Sallenave: “Emerging from melancholy, literature is its accomplishment and completion. It is through melancholy that we enter literature. It is through literature that we escape from melancholy. »
PHOTO JOSIE DESMARAIS, THE PRESS
Jean-Paul Daoust
“For me, melancholy is positive,” explains Jean-Paul. “I often say that it is a sadness that rests. Melancholy has nothing to do with nostalgia, which is a closed, sterile feeling. But I think as we get older, we become more and more melancholy. »
The infinite possibilities of pain
Populated by the ghosts of its rich past, The shadow mirrors is a collection both perfectly in tune with the rest of his work where delicious formulas abound – no one other than Jean-Paul sings “the audacity of ruining oneself with elegance” so well – but on which the ‘shadow of death.
In these prose texts as well packed as his famous rum & coke, the poet lists his failures, his neuroses and his ecstasies, salutes the lost lovers and friends, takes stock of the little time that remains to him, even if he refuses to leave the party before writing “the ultimate verse”.
At the end of 2021, Jean-Paul Daoust almost passed, following complications caused by an operation on his left lung, where he was discovered to have cancer. Events which “brutally” forced him to look his finitude in the eyes. At 77, no glass is strong enough to obliterate his awareness that “everything can end in such an absurd way”.
“The infinite possibilities of pain. Especially those of the soul,” he writes.
Physical pain always brings a psychological aspect, you cannot separate the two. When you’re in physical pain, the world escapes you. Pain affects sensitivity, it insults intelligence. Pain is a space of infinite solitude.
Jean-Paul Daoust
Like Adam in the earthly paradise
But Jean-Paul Daoust continues to believe in miracles, if only because life has often offered him proof that despite its cruelty, it is also a celebration. For almost 39 years now, the writer has shared his daily life with Mario, apparently the nicest man in the whole world.
Other little miracles? He remembers it all: receiving a postcard from Allen Ginsberg from Venice, after having left him in New York a copy of one of his books translated into English. intone Whose heart is there after nine o’clock? with Anne Hébert and Andrée Lachapelle during a party at Anne-Marie Alonzo. Participating for eleven years in Marie-Louise Arsenault’s radio cabarets, a platform for which he is still in mourning.
PHOTO ANDRÉ TREMBLAY, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
Jean-Paul Daoust on stage in 2006
Isn’t it another magnificent miracle that, from his little poems published in the magazine of his college in Valleyfield, several founding books of Quebec queer literature emerged? A work whose bias towards a language which dazzles will have converted several neophytes to poetry.
“Dressing the words is like waltzing with the wild beasts,” writes the man who, after having recounted in The blue ashes (1990) the abuse he experienced as a child will have crossed the desert of a long depression on his knees.
“Writing takes us to places we never thought we would go, dangerous places where you are alone with your demons,” notes Jean-Paul. But writing also makes me more alive. I have the impression, when I write, that I live more, that I understand more what is happening to me. I really like the image of Adam in the earthly paradise who names things. As he names them, they become his. Writing allows me to make sense of everything that doesn’t have meaning. »
The shadow mirrors
Hashtag
96 pages