Le book by Gérard Macé, Talking silhouetteopens with a paradox, since the author begins by announcing that he no longer writes. “I no longer write,” he wrote. I don’t write anymore, but…, he immediately corrects. It is therefore a question of trying to understand how this book was written despite everything.
Two parts arrange Talking silhouette. The first, brief, is a sort of introductory statement which questions the fact of stop writing by metaphorizing a certain idea of “poetry”. The second, which bears the title of the book, is the very heart of the work, based on a simple principle: on one side a poem, on the other its gloss. But already we are hesitating. We do not know whether the poem glosses the gloss and whether the gloss is not the poem, a prose poem, or a Borgesian retelling of the poem. Thus, very quickly, other questions cover that of writing, the verse-prose relationship (in poetry Gérard Macé went from prose to verse), the function of the “speaking silhouette”, a silhouette which is also floatingbetween dream or half sleep, the formula which belongs to the cinema vocabulary designating these extras which we see discreetly in the background of a scene.
Gérard Macé published a book at the beginning of 2024 which includes the main interviews he has given over the past twenty years (Revolving bookcaseeditions Le temps que il fait, 2024). One of the very last interviews (“A poetic use of knowledge”), unpublished, dating from 2022, is almost contemporary with the composition of Talking silhouette and addresses the mechanisms at the origin of the creation of the work or (to quote Francis Ponge) the “factory of the meadow”. “I like what nourishes me, what floats,” he replies, “what meets echoes, is transformed. I like to live with what I have in my head…” He adds that he has practically no drafts, that he messy not and, a little provocatively, that he does not like to work, before explaining what his method consists of: “So I work a lot mentally, which gives, I believe, a particular rhythm to the sentence. There is something interior, there is a music to the sentence […]. It is an inner word that becomes writing. » The assertion « I don’t write anymore » would be understood in this sense: I only write what I recite to myself, by heart ; I then just copy it onto the page. A method which applies especially to the poem when the prose, by dint of being mentally chewed, becomes verse.
The position or posture is that of the daydreamer. Gérard Macé works while sleeping, while lying down, and repeats to himself what crosses his mind. “The tiger no longer prowls around our houses / it’s the polar bear that comes to rummage in our trash cans. » We recognize affinities that range from Nerval, Proust to Michaux via the surrealists. The poems are very rarely titled (only three, among the first: “Théâtre de verdure”, “Forest and pharmacy” and “Advice to musicians”). Sometimes the italicized incipit plays this role: nature in man ; the ocean is a terrible speaker ; a gnawed stitch took away the whole work ; half-naked women of the world ; faith, this indestructible sole ;the singer is late…Those who are familiar with Gérard Macé’s books will find the themes of an unclassifiable work which navigates between genres, eras, worlds.
Something also returns: childhood, the story of family origins which finds in the fable, the tale or the myth a way of telling itself… The mysteries of the circus… The powers of sleep or memory… The call of the open sea , the invitation to travel, Ariel and Prospero, Baudelaire, Conrad, Moby Dick, It’s on the ships…the Orient, The Thousand and One Nights… Minerva’s bird, an “owl” in one of the poems, more Hegelian than Nietzschean, which for us takes flight at dusk… One of the themes, which ultimately seems to impose itself more, would revolve around death , our death or that of others, like a “ghost that accompanies the deceased”. The reference is undoubtedly not the right one, but there always comes a moment when we begin to meditate on our own old age, to write our Of old age. And Gérard Macé does it in his own way, very subtly handling irony or humor, by summoning friendly figures, Charlot, Fellini’s clowns, a dialogue by Leopardi between Fashion and Death, Jean Starobinski’s acrobats …
When the body is no longer the one
an acrobat or a cyclist,
he still dreams of exploits.
The clean and jerk is my favorite figure,
which I borrow from weightlifters.
Once a day I throw over my shoulder
the bulky bag of the past
so that he offers me a future,
towards which I advance while counting my steps.
But winter must be harsh
for those who have no memories.
Gérard Macé, Talking silhouetteGallimard, January 2025, 100 p., €15
