You can’t know how happy it made me when Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, in his victory/defeat speech on Monday night, quoted one of Quebec’s greatest poets.
When the young leader of the PQ, who had just been elected in Camille-Laurin, said: “Tonight, we have not come back to come back. We have arrived at what is beginning”, he paraphrased a famous quote from Gaston Miron, the author of The raped man.
Phew! It felt good, right in the middle of these political speeches on Monday evening, following an election campaign where we barely talked regarding culture, to have a little beauty, a little finesse and a little poetry. .
LE VEROGATE
Why did it touch me as much as PSPP quotes Gaston Miron?
1– Because I love poetry. 2– Because I fear that Quebec will forget its greatest authors.
We ask a lot, for two weeks, the question “Who is Véro?” Because of Louis Morissette’s text in the magazine Vero in which he asked “Who is Véronique Cloutier?”
Because of Guy Nantel’s vox pop around Dawson College where English and French students didn’t recognize the host.
But also following the Graduate School of Media Art and Technology at Cégep de Jonquière made public a study of 600 students on their cultural and media consumption habits. The teachers were surprised that some of their students didn’t know Vero.
- Listen to the Nantel – Durocher meeting on the Sophie Durocher show broadcast live every day at 3 p.m. via QUB radio :
I think that instead of asking young people if they know Véro to measure their knowledge of the culture, we should ask them if they know Gaston Miron. Is the national poet completely forgotten today?
I love Véronique Cloutier, I loved her documentary Lot-Less (which had a real and resounding impact on the lives of Quebec women), she sparkles on TV and radio, but she does entertainment.
If we want to assess the knowledge or appreciation of young Quebecers for their own culture, we should perhaps ask them what they know in the cultural field.
I find it much more serious that a CEGEP student does not know Michel Tremblay or Robert Lepage, Dany Laferrière or Kim Thuy, that he has never heard of Riopelle or Marc Séguin. How many young people from the southwest pass in front of the Marie-Uguay cultural center, but know nothing of the poetess who died at the age of 26?
Every year, artists who built modern Quebec die in indifference because young people don’t know who they are. Yves Desgagnés told me recently on QUB radio that on the day of Michelle Rossignol’s death, when he was invited on TV for another subject, the show’s researcher told him not to mention the death of the actress because it was not interesting enough for the public…
- Listen to the Durocher – Dutrizac match broadcast live every day at 12:40 p.m. via QUB radio :
A RAPAILED COUNTRY
A culture is alive when it circulates.
Gaston Miron died in 1996. But he will never die as long as politicians and ordinary citizens continue to quote him, like that, in the course of a sentence, in favor of a speech.
“I am at the center of the world as it rumbles within me.”
