Camins de Paratge - Allegoria de nautas tèrras - Marcèla Geny

Camins de Paratge - Allegoria de nautas tèrras - Marcèla Geny

Chemins de Paratge: allégorie des Hautes Terres d'Oc.

Ways of sharing: allegory of the Highlands of Oc.

This book offers paths of adventure, paths of freedom, paths of memory going back to the time of the troubadours, when happiness seemed to be within reach while a humanist philosophy was rising, carrying art, tolerance and equality.

Such was the spirit of the paratge whose echo still resounds today in the heart of the women and men of the Haut-Languedoc.

"I drove in silence, for many kilometers, waiting for a word indicating the direction to follow. It was 11 o'clock in the morning, this May 15, the thermometer indicated 35°.

That's how I met Ròsa-Maria.

Marcèla Geny was selected to publish her poetry in one of the volumes of the Contemporary Feminine Anthology of Occitan Poetry by Paulina Kamakine. From their poetic encounter was born an unprecedented literary friendship. From one thing to another, from epistolary exchanges to readings, the two poetesses have woven this book, a collection of Marcèla's works, writings of great value for the Occitan language. Along the way, Marcèla's prose and poetry meet and intersect to tell you the story of her country.

Marcèla Geny was born in 1942 in Castelnau de Brassac, a village now called Fontrieu, a land of fountains and streams in the Hautes Terres d'Oc. Secret landscapes of wooded hills and pastures, dotted here and there with the gold of a wheat field, distant horizons of the Black Mountain and the Eastern Pyrenees, this is how she found her country, when she came back from Haute-Savoie to live in her father's house after her career as a teacher, on the day she retired.

Each stone, each tree, each deserted path revealed to her a memory of this recent past where life exploded here in hard work, but also in laughter and songs in the rich and beautiful Occitan language, the one she spoke during her entire childhood. Language of poetry and peace, language of the troubadours.

Everything seemed to have fallen silent in this ancient language, but the silence of the woods was conducive to each word coming to life again to give this allegory where tales and stories are mixed in the unalterable beauty of the landscapes and the Occitan language.

Collection Votz de Trobar n°49.

Editions Tròba Vox.

The author:

Marcèla Geny was born in Castelnau-de-Brassac - a commune now called Fontrieu, in the Occitanie region. At retirement age, after a career as a teacher in Haute-Savoie and after returning from her many travels, she returned to live in the country of her origins. And it is there, in the Hautes Terres d'Oc, in the heart of landscapes of secret beauty, that she draws inspiration to write an ode to the magnificence of the surrounding nature in which the Occitan soul is inscribed, from generation to generation.
Several of her poems have been selected to be published in one of the volumes of the contemporary anthology Paroles de Femmes by Paulina Kamakine.