La marche à l'amour

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"La marche à l'amour" is a poem by Gaston Miron (1928-1996), one of the most studied and celebrated in Quebec poetry. It was originally published in Le nouveau journal in 1962, in a cycle of seven poems also entitled "La marche à l'amour". A slightly revised version was published in book form in 1970 in L'homme rapaillé (the poem would again be revised in a later edition).

Contents

[edit] Background to the poem

In one interview (http://archives.radio-canada.ca/IDCC-0-72-1234-6809/arts_culture/gaston_miron/), Miron said of "La marche à l'amour" that "all his successive failures in love were projected (in this poem) written back between 1954 to 1958" ("toutes mes expériences, mes échecs successifs dans l'amour, se sont projetés dans (ce poème) qui date de 1954 à 1958).

Several themes of the poem are clearly expressed in the different interviews Miron gave about this time of his life. Part of different interviews he gave will be highlighted below, in italics, along the description of the poem.

Gaston Miron self-described his work as similar in form to the American expressionism a la Jackson Pollock. By this, he meant that his poetry is often characterized by a succession of strong --and sometimes baffling--metaphors. "La marche à l'amour" is good examplar of this style.

His style has also often been characterized as espousing an "oral style" (for example, by the jury that honored him with the prix Quebec-Paris for L'homme rapaillé), although controversies abound about the exact extent of this orality (see the book "Miron ou la marche à l'amour" for some strong opposing views). What is certain, though, is that Miron integrated in his poems, notably in "La marche à l'amour", a few expressions of a popular range that he does not hesitate to use in a different context to create an effect. This can be illustrated here by the use of "délabre" (wretched) and "au bout du rouleau" (at the end of one's tether) in the verse "Je m'en vais en délabre au bout de mon rouleau" (literally, I go in wretched (conditions) at the end of my tether).

The poem has ten individual sections, and each section may be viewed as highlighting specific themes. Below are excerpts of the poems, (in italics are English translations by D.G.Jones, from Earth and Embers of Guernica Editions) with excerpts of different interviews that refer to the period of his life described by the poem.

[edit] Description of the poem

[edit] An idealized woman and a humble man

The poem starts by describing a woman...

Tu as les yeux pairs des champs de rosée
Tu as des yeux d'aventure et d'années-lumière

...and a man who feels boorish, yet fully dedicated...

Moi, qui suis charpente et beaucoup de fardoches,
Moi, je fonce à vive allure et entêté d'avenir
La tête en bas comme un bison dans son destin


Miron said "I had several deficiences on the emotional level (...) I had a terrible complex: that I was ugly". ("J'étais assez hypothéqué sur le plan affectif (...) J'avais aussi [...] un complexe terrible, qui était celui de la laideur.")

[edit] The woman exists in the future

Miron introduces a future tense, yet, in contrast, intensifies her description by highly visual metaphors...

all sunlit with existence you will come
your mouth besieged by all the freshness of the grass
your body ripened in forgotten gardens
flowers in the incantations of your breats
you rise, you are the morning breaking in my arms

...until we meet the first non-metaphor verses of the poem, where we learn that she exists, but that he still has not met her.

I will meet you in the end, somewhere, someplace
in spite of everything that makes me absent, ache
with the meagre vision that is left me in the depths of cold
I affirm o my love that you exist
I correct our life''

[edit] Time has come to change his life

no more will we die of listlessness my love
before the endless miles in the squalls of our dreams

(...)

I will set out to find you, we will live on this earth
these straits that have reduced me to a drifting hulk
a balloon to be obscenely pricked, a clown
with starry tears and deeper wonds, are not invincible
beat up the air, beat up the fire of my desires
run me through the silken skies of your hands
headfirst, preventing my return
except I mount again becoming upright at your side
the newcomer sprung from the love of the world
constellate me in your body's milky way

"I was discovering my powerlessness towards love, because of (my) deficiences, so in order to pull through, I invented mockery" ("Je décrouvrais mon impuissance vis-à-vis l'amour, à cause de ces tares sur le plan affectif, et pour m'en sortir, j'ai inventé la dérision").

[edit] The energy of love flows through him

in the sudden showers, stars bursting from my sky
the lightning streams through my flesh
and I go on fists clenched in the wind
a thousand horsepower beating in my heart
and in my heart a candle's flame

[edit] She is the mediation between him and the universe

She is the mediation between him, the Quebec particular man (ceinture fléchée, danse carrée), and the "universal" (l'univers, l'horizon):

tu es mon amour
ma clameur mon bramement
tu es mon amour ma ceinture fléchée d'univers
ma danse carrée des quatre coins d'horizon
le rouet des écheveaux de mon espoir
tu es ma réconciliation batailleuse


"With women, I discovered the mediation (...) If I couldn't love through someone, I couldn't lead myself onto the world, onto men. I needed this concrete mediation...so love, for me, was tied to this kind of accession to men, and to the universal" ("Par la femme, j'ai découvert la médiation (...) Si je ne pouvais pas aimer à travers quelqu'un, je ne pourrais pas déboucher sur le monde et sur les hommes. Il me fallait cette médiation concrète...alors l'amour chez moi etait lié à une certaine accession aux hommes, mais aussi à l'universel.")


à cause de toi
mon courage est un sapin toujours vert
et j'ai du chiendent d'achigan plein l'âme
tu es belle de tout l'avenir épargné
d'une frêle beauté soleilleuse contre l'ombre
ouvre-moi tes bras que j'entre au port
et mon corps d'amoureux viendra rouler
sur les talus du mont Royal
orignal, quand tu brames orignal

[edit] An idealized love in opposition to a disorganized world

Montréal is large like an universal untidiness
somewhere in its shadows you are sitting and your heart
your gaze lights up the sleep of doves
girl whose face is now my lamplit route

(...)

I will console you with my tears
for the days without rain or rushes green or thread to spin
for the risks of love once it's unwound
and I will light for you great lamps of tenderness
and we shall rest
in the light of the seas flowering in manna
then will I unleash
within your body all the winds of my blood
you will rejoice my girl you will rejoice
to be the woman that you are in my arms
the world in us will be transformed

[edit] The lyrical and sexual nature of the quest for love

As the quest is named...

the advance towards love now spreads to sail
with quivering stride on the waters wounded with lilies

...the poem offers its most intense lyrical section...

I love, how I love, how you advance
my ecstasy
shivering barefoot in the glittering frosts
in this season sweetly studded with snowdrops
on these shores where summer rains down
in long flakes the fiery cries of the plover
harmonica of the world as you pass and yield
your body warm as the birch bark in my paddler's arms
as we lie still, scenting the air in the burning light
as in the pitching harvest woven by the gales
I unflod in your warmth of the long cry of the cicada

...and leads to (an imagined) sexual encounter

in you I beget
the frenzies of the spawning grounds in the heart of the Ottawa
the cry of the nighthawk comes to beat in your throat
the earth, love's furniture, your flesh
erupts pell mell in fresh shoots

[edit] The quest for love reveals its true dimension

Beyond the lyrical nature of the quest lies the more profound, the existential, dimension of the quest for love. He needs love to feel home, that is, to feel inside himself. He knows that his idealized way of loving will not stand (that his garden will be "turned upside down"). Yet, as Miron writes, "I will always be--if I am alone--this man of boundary, wailing her name, frantically unhappy".

mais que tu m'aimes et si tu m'aimes
s'exhalera le froid natal de mes poumons
le sang tournera ô grand cirque
je sais que tout mon amour
sera retourné comme un jardin détruit
qu'importe je serai toujours si je suis seul
cet homme de lisière à bramer ton nom
éperdument malheureux parmi les pluies de trèfles

[edit] Doubts and hope

Despite the doubts that affect him...

puis les années m'emportent sens dessus dessous
je m'en vais en délabre au bout de mon rouleau
des voix murmurent les récits de ton domaine
à part moi je me parle
que vais-je devenir dans ma force fracassée
ma force noire du bout de mes montagnes

...he still believes in his force to convey his idealized love:

me voici de nouveau campé dans ta légende
tes grands yeux qui voient beaucoup de cortèges
tes chevaux de bois de tes rires
tes yeux de paille et d'or
seront toujours au fond de mon coeur
et ils traverseront les siècles


This theme of the poem, the persistence to look for love despite the caveats, reveals in the finale as the main theme of the poem. Miron said that "(he) never renounced to the quest (to find love). I had deep dejection, but life is so strong that it always achieves to get back on top, like a "rooted" diving refusing to be uprooted. Like I said in "La marche à l'amour", I refuse tragedy, I refuse failure, and I say we must always yield a 101th chance to love: "j'ai du chien d'achigan plein l'âme"". (Mais je n'ai jamais renoncé (à cette recherche). J'ai des accablements profonds, mais la vie est tellement forte, qu'elle reprend toujours le dessus, comme une plongée racineuse qui ne veut pas déraciner. Comme je le dis dans "La marche à l'amour", je refuse la tragédie, je refuse l'échec, et je dis qu'il faut toujours donner la 101e chance à l'amour: "j'ai du chien d'achigan plein l'âme").


[edit] Finale

But as the poet reaches the finale, he does not share anymore the naivety of the beginning. While he still believes in the necessity to walk towards love, he also realizes the futility of his actual life

je marche à toi, je titube à toi, je meurs de toi
lentement je m'affale de tout mon long dans l'âme
je marche à toi, je titube à toi, je bois
à la gourde vide du sens de la vie
à ces pas semés dans les rues sans nord ni sud
à ces taloches de vent sans queue et sans tête
je n'ai plus de visage pour l'amour
je n'ai plus de visage pour rien de rien

Four years have passed from the first moment he started this poem, with so many lost memories at the tip of his fingers. He still waits for his true love, but he gained something: in this quest, he has revealed as he is, free of his false "aureole" of his life:

parfois je m'assois par pitié de moi
j'ouvre mes bras à la croix des sommeils
mon corps est un dernier réseau de tics amoureux
avec à mes doigts les ficelles des souvenirs perdus
je n'attends pas à demain je t'attends
je n'attends pas la fin du monde je t'attends
dégagé de la fausse auréole de ma vie

[edit] External links