Formes subtiles de la fuite, Virginie Savard
Triptyque, 2020
Sadness and fear create two interwoven
trajectories in Virginie Savard’s Formes
subtiles de la fuite (Subtle Forms of
Flight). These emotions dominate the book, not directly or as themes, but
as they shape the atmosphere. They are ways to relate to the past and to the
future, ways to lack adherence to the present: “My expiration date nears
softly” (“Ma date d’expiration approche doucement,” 30); “time is slow seen
from underneath” (“le temps est long vu d’en dessous,” 33).
From a precarious stance in a slippery
present, fears block off any vision of the future, materializing in
hopelessness: “All the oracles defenestrated themselves / before announcing
what’s coming” (“Tous les oracles se sont défenestrés / avant d’annoncer ce qui
vient,” 33). Sadness emerges from a haunting past, as in the children’s room
that was redecorated by the parents, leaving little material anchoring for
memories.
Fleeing from past and future, without
anywhere to land, creates a gap between an unstable interior (the body, the
apartment) and a shapeless exterior. On one side of the gap, DNA stretches like
the present into repetition and its encoded death. On the other side, baths are
taken in blankets, fireworks are confused with gunshots, and sleeping during a
fire makes vigilance toward the immediate environment meaningless.
This distance and experience of
interstices carry through concrete space. We know where we are - Hochelaga,
Montreal, the green line on the metro, the bus, an apartment. But we do not get
a strong feel for what it is to be there - the places are locations, not
subjects in themselves:
l’idée de Montréal
est plus grande the idea
of Montreal is bigger
que Montréal than
Montreal
la distance the distance
entre chez moi et
où j’habite between
my home and where I live
est plus vaste que
l’horaire des trains (49) is wider
than the trains’ schedule
Connections are then only possible within
small, confined spaces, where presence is not in question - with appliances,
which make for new images, and with one person on the bus, where the tiredness
of the cliché carries together the fatigue and the encounter that encounters
it. If in this book connections are not impossible, they are definitely prone
to vanishing quickly, as in a poem full of enjambements that begins with “my
hair clings/to the wind of the metro” (“mes cheveux s’accrochent/au vent du
métro,” 47).
This clinging to, hanging onto volatility
indicates in a few surges of violence a desire that’s greater than sadness and
fear. There’s for instance sparse use of fire throughout the book, and relying
on its symbolic meaning without expanding on it allows for direct verses that
circumvent usual images. Burning and moving on can be found within the same
image: “now I must/go on in flames and to something else” (“maintenant il
faut/passer au feu et à autre chose,” 51). And what is usually a solemn,
orderly task of destroying someone shows the disorganization that is
unavoidable in any meaningful transformation: “I light/my own pyre/in a vast
disorder” (“j’allume/mon propre bûcher/en un vaste désordre,” 82).
Transformative violence also surges in
images of riot and revolution, showing the shaping of the softness that is
displayed in the poems into a hardened weapon :
je trône dans un
fauteuil démodé I sit in
glory in an outmoded armchair
en tricotant des
briques while knitting bricks
pour la révolution
(30) for
the revolution
et je jetterai des
poèmes and I will throw poems
dans les vitrines
des boutiques (85) into
shop windows
The emotional atmosphere and the isolation
of the short verses on pages that seem too big for the poems allow for a
glimpse into the loneliness of another. Savard creates this access without
drama, without grand gestures, without unveiling herself - with modesty and
precision. It’s loneliness we see, and not her. And she is aware of the limits
of this exercise, writing with the least possible amount of significant hope to
reach and adhere to the present:
liste non
exhaustive des raisons de parler non exhaustive list of reasons to
speak
m’assurer que ma
voix existe encore make
sure my voice still exists
meubler le temps furnish time
m’assurer que
j’existe encore make sure I still exist
quelqu’un pourrait
entendre (70) someone could hear
Jérôme Melançon
writes and teaches and writes and lives in Regina, SK. He is the author of two
books of poetry, De perdre tes pas
(2011) and Quelques pas quelque part
(2016) with Éditions des Plaines, one book of philosophy, La politique dans l’adversité (Metispresses, 2018), and has a
bilingual chapbook forthcoming with above/ground press, Coup.