Marie Uguay et Saint-Denys Garneau, au bord du vide

• Main Author: Mylène Durand
• Format: Article
• Language: deu
• Published: Conserveries Mémorielles 2010-04-01
• Series: Conserveries Mémorielles : Revue Transdisciplinaire de Jeunes Chercheurs
• Subjects: escape; hope; imprisonment- bridge; mirror; poetry; possibilities
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/cm/453

This is a comparative analysis of the works of two Quebecois poets, Saint-Denys Garneau and Marie Uguay who have many common points.  Both express a conscience and a lucid vision of death. Their poetic works show that their lyric subjects are situated in a sort of “in-between”, an excrescence of time, a threshold they are trying to name. Is it what Marie Uguay calls “Outre-vie” or the “faction” of Saint-Denys? The subjects explore a particular space-time, a place that is reminiscent of limbo, life and death at the same time. The subjects are on the border of seemingly insuperable limits on the other side of which life seems to dwell. As prisoners of these in-between spaces, they are alone, hurt, as if on one side of a closed window, opening toward an inaccessible world. Nevertheless, they want to cross all these thresholds, physical or metaphorical, and embrace life: crossing these “ bloodshed limits” as Marie Uguay writes. Indeed, the subjects are wounded, fragmented, but against all odds, they search for a path, to go on in order to fight imprisonment, immobility. Hope comes from writing, specifically poetry that makes everything possible and draws a line and bridges; opens a pathway toward light and life.