Loitering
She is Pascale Toussaint. We know her for novels, A sister, Audrey H. or poetry, Storm lilacs. And now she is publishing an anthology of fifty-two Belgian authors, living or dead, chosen according to affinities and a taste for shared pleasure: Let’s laugh, it’s rainingt. A first anthology, more rigorous and schematic, had already appeared under his signature in 2015 with It’s so beautiful! too much !. Pascale Toussaint has a sense of titles that challenge. This time, she invites us to wander around through texts and pointed or sometimes amused comments which lightly outline the profiles of elected officials. Among these and in disorder, Hugo Claus, Ariane Lefort – who wrote the preface to the book – Charles De Coster, Jacques De Decker, Jacqueline Harpman, Tom Lannoy, Jacques Brel, Véronique Bergen, Arno…. Subjective, the choice is obviously biased and everyone will find gaps that correspond to them. But the book has the merit of being and of instilling a shower of enthusiasm and kindness in a field which too often lacks it.
When the pleasures of reading combine with the joys of unusual meals
He is Jacques Richard with Written underwatera more intimate book, also more indefinite, between story and poetry. A “I” “which is not only I” talk to a “Tu” “who is not just you“but the beloved woman, or another imprecise person, or perhaps himself. In search of a balance that appeals to love, nature, dreams.”You want to be from here and there all together”, he cries out about his loneliness in feeling uncertain between his desires and reality. In the secret of himself, he stumbles upon the lucid observation of being “small and alone, little king, how small we are and each one is all alone”. If Jacques Richard’s words sometimes seem strange and must be understood in the second degree, his very musical writing – he is a musician – is the captivating thread which connects the texts to each other.
⇒ Let’s laugh, it’s raining | Anthology Let’s read Belgian | Pascale Toussaint | Samsa, 206 pp., €24
⇒ Written underwater| Poetic stories | Jacques Richard | The Grass that Trembles, 102 pp., €16
