“I don’t believe in You / But my struggle against you / Grants you a presence greater / Than the one I wanted to destroy. “
At 85 years old, Gérard Le Gouic sees the high spheres, his feet firmly anchored on his land, to Rosporden (Finistère), in his manor house with the square tower.
With his late wife Lucie, he had fallen under the spell of a beautiful building of the XVIe. “Century, not district”, he says with a frank laugh, in the green countryside not far from Pont-Aven.
In the rooms with low ceilings, with large fireplaces and centuries-old beams, Breton and African objects live in harmony. A large empty cage is open.
It was the lair of Georges, the parrot. Today disappeared: “We have lived fifty years together”, he said in front of peanuts and sunflower seeds.
Zola and lace pancakes
In his latest work, without naming it, the poet, originally from Rédéné (Finistère), calls out to God with deference. He does not believe in Him, but sees Him and questions his non-existence.
Isolated, almost lost in the middle of the void that asks only to be filled. “I am in an island / Surrounded by what does not exist / In the island of Your solitude / In the unfulfilled arms of Your love. “
With a laughing eye, a round face, Gérard Le Gouic almost apologizes for his exercises of disbelief. However, he had already hammered it in 1957, when it was first published, in New poetry : “Yes, in me all holy belief has died out. “
The poet readily confesses and explains the genesis of his work: “One morning I found myself writing two poems in a row that looked like prayers. They had the content and the impetus, the fervor, but I ignored the recipient and the object. “
The book can be taken as an outstretched hand or a punch. Whether you are a believer or not, it’s a real slap in the face. Hyphen between poetry and philosophy, doubts and certainties. A great success for the one whose family origins are rooted in peasants and millers and who went up to the BEPC, “Without ever obtaining it from elsewhere”.
Born in Paris, “Baptized at Rédéné”, Gérard fell in literature in the capital. “I lived in rue Daguerre, in the house where Zola lived. “
Still in Paris, at Madame Le Cossec who ran the Au pays breton boutique, he buys second-hand books sold in the middle of kabigs and lace crêpes. Including Auguste Brizeux, poet of Arzano, a stone’s throw from Rédéné. The world is small. Gérard wants to find out.
After studying in a business school, he spent a few years in Africa with Lucie: Chad, Cameroon, Congo. Back in Brittany, he ran a Breton souvenir shop, from 1969 to 1999, in Quimper. A nod to Brizeux’s collection, his business is called Telen Ar Vor (The Harp d’Armor). He continues to write poetry. Is published.
« But I felt that for some I was only an earthenware merchant. “ During these thirty years, the arrows of Saint-Corentin cathedral stared at his shop. Obviously, this did not intimidate the poet.
Exercises of unbelief, Gallimard, 70 pages, 12 €.
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