Pas que la fam - Ives Roqueta

Pas que la fam - La faim, seule : 50 ans de poësia occitana - Ives Roqueta
(Not that the fam - Hunger, alone: ​​50 years of poësia occitana).

« Pas que la fam » (« La faim, seule ») is a choice of poems made by the author through his 50 years of Occitan poetry. The author of " La messe pour les cochons" gives it to be read in Occitan and in translations made by himself, or sometimes by his wife Marie Rouanet, or else by F-J. Temple, a wide range of his poetry, since his first collection, "L'escrivèire public" ("The Public Writer") appeared in 1958.

We follow the path of a poet who is never afraid to relate, to deliver chronicles, facts that may pass for crumbs of humanity, unworthy of poetic creation. As if only the praises of heroes or gods mattered!
In his texts, the language does not remain dried up, reduced to scattered nouns, castrated by its verbal force, for want of narrative or forgetting syntax.
There are things, things that seem the simplest, a table, a knife or a hoe. Words thus become plots of existence, gazes turned towards ordinary lives, without any miserabilism, however.
Essential trifles in which the poet dares to speak of the poor people, without shame, as he sees them. Texts that touch the human, the full of existence. With a language that is not poor, but mastered, without pathos, with words that seem to follow a natural course. Like the blacksmith who shoots the thread of the scythe. For, as Rouquette says elsewhere, "words let themselves be carried to the slaughterhouse."
Its language is constructed as a mirror of the landscape, forged by the work of men, it clashes with the past and returns, obstinate, towards the men and women of every day.
With a voice of voice that pays attention to the idiotic girl as to the hateful notary, to the one who kills the pig as to the saint. A poet who knows how to say, as little know how to do, the poverty of the idiot and its beauty. The man, with the help of God, is here to stay.

A writing that also proclaims the beauty of language and addresses God, not the all-powerful, but the lover. While the writer who wants to go to the people and who despairs not to welcome him in his home is thus a prophet without a procession.
From the first published texts, from The Evil of the Earth or the Public Writer, to the Ordinary of the World and Limousin's Blues, we always feel the same attachment to the poetic workshop, without any truce.
In an obstinate quest for words, without being sure of finding them always. But, as Rouquette says, hunger alone is food. This is the work of the poet, day after day.
Write only, to live. In the Occitan language, to save her, and to save herself.

Jean Eygun


Editions Letras d'òc.

Preface by Jean Eygun:

« Comment parler de la poésie d'Yves Rouquette, après bien d'autres ? Comme d'une faim de mots jamais rassasiée qui se ressent immédiatement, dès la première lecture. Enracinée cependant dans l'histoire de la littérature occitane, liée à ses prédécesseurs comme aux contemporains.
Et les vers, peu à peu, vont nous dire l'amour de la vie et nous découvrir les sentiers de la mort. »

Extract: L'ostal

L'ostal es freg coma las sèrps
la paur s'es arrapada al lièch
ren a pas pus lo mème gost.

Los nivols se rabalan sens nom
s'estripan a totes los fraisses
sens saber qu'existis una mar
plan pus bas ont s'anaràn perdre
amb aquela set que los cura.

Los jorns passan sens se semblar.
Ièr cresiam d'aver ganhat
e uòi gausam pas pus
parlar de ren.

Aquò's que, saique, fasèm pas
que començar d'aver talent
de çò just coma los mainatges
pressats de se wire de muscles
e que manjan sens dire ren
un pan qu'a pas ni gost ni gosta
puèi que la nuòch cridan de paur
sens que cap de mòble craïne.