« Nous n’avons pas besoin de parler français, nous avons besoin du français pour parler » (André Belleau).
(Accouplements : une rubrique où l’Oreille tendue s’amuse à mettre en vis-à-vis deux œuvres, ou plus, d’horizons éloignés.)
Où construire ?
Kerangal, Mailys de, Naissance d’un pont, Paris, Gallimard, coll. «Folio», 5339, 2020, 336 p. Édition numérique. Édition originale : 2010.
«À Dubaï donc, le ciel est solide, massif : de la terre à bâtir.»
Whitehead, Colson, Crook Manifesto. A Novel, New York, Doubleday, 2023, 319 p.
«You can run out of land but not sky» (p. 33).
«l’orage ne perturba guère
les travaux ni le feu sacré de l’étudiant
sinon nous n’aurions pas été là
à l’écouter encore»
François Hébert, Si affinités. Poèmes, Montréal, L’Hexagone, 2023, 104 p., p. 40. Postface de Nathalie Watteyne.
(Une définition du zeugme ? Par là.)
«elle a l’air triste d’une monitrice
de colonie de vacances de Ville-Émard
par un jour de pluie à la télé communautaire»
François Hébert, Si affinités. Poèmes, Montréal, L’Hexagone, 2023, 104 p., p. 27. Postface de Nathalie Watteyne.
«A few stagnant years went by, during which he made halfhearted attempts at starting different collections (coins, china, friends), dabbled in hypochondria, tried to develop an enthusiasm for horses, and failed to become a dandy.»
Hernan Diaz, Trust, New York, Riverhead Books, 2023, 402 p., p. 12. Édition originale : 2022.
P.-S.—En effet : «pièces, porcelaine, amis», ça sonne un peu comme un zeugme.
(Accouplements : une rubrique où l’Oreille tendue s’amuse à mettre en vis-à-vis deux œuvres, ou plus, d’horizons éloignés.)
Richard Wagamese, Indian Horse. A Novel, Madeira Park, Douglas & McIntyre, 2013, 220 p. Édition originale : 2012.
«Keewatin. That’s the name of the north wind. The Old Ones gave it a name because they believed it was alive, a being like all things. Keewatin rises out over the edge of the barren lands and grips the world in fierce fingers born in the frigid womb of the northern pole. The world slows its rhythm gradually, so that the bears and the other hibernating creatures notice time’s relentless prowl forward. But the cold that year came fast. It descended on us like a slap of a hand : sudden and vindictive» (p. 36).
Ed McBain, Pusher. An 87th Precinct Mystery, New York, Signet, 1973, 153 p. Édition originale : 1956.
«Winter came in like an anarchist with a bomb.
Wild-eyed, shrieking, puffing hard, it caught the city in cold, froze the marrow and froze the heart.
The wind roared under eaves and tore around corners, lifting hats and lifting skirts, caressing warm thighs with icy-cold fingers. The citizens blew on thir hands and lifted their coat collars and tightened their mufflers. They had been enmeshed in the slow-dying lethargy of autumn, and now winter was upon them, rapping their teeth with knuckles of ice. The citizens grinned into the wind, but the wind was not in a smiling mood. The wind roared and bellowed, and snow pilled from the skies, covered the city with white and then, muddied and dirtied, yielded to the wind and the cold and turned to teacherous ice.
The citizens deserted the streets. They sought pot-bellied stoves and hissing radiators. The drank cheap rye or expensive Scotch. They crawled under the covers alone, or they found the warmth of another body in the primitive ritual of love while the wind howled outside.
Winter was going to be a bitch this year» (p. 1, incipit).