Godmother of the 23rd edition of Printemps des poètes, the actress Marina Hands recorded, in the Cour d’honneur of the Palais des Papes, in Avignon, an extract from “Cid”, by Corneille, and a text by Bernard Noël. The opportunity to evoke his love for poetry.
You’ve been supporting the Printemps des poètes for three years. What does this fidelity to the manifestation mean?
In my own way, I campaign for poetry, a form that comes from far away and that is addressed to everyone. The relationship to poetry is permanent at all ages and at all times. Participating in Printemps is a way of resisting the times we are going through.
The theme of this edition is desire. Is it important to assert your desire?
It is above all a matter of knowing him. The period in which we are living reveals our frustrations and our shortcomings. Therefore, it brings our desires to light. They liberate themselves and manifest themselves very strongly. We want what we lack. However, I prefer to say what I want (but don’t have) in the form of poetry rather than out of demands, in violence or pain.
You record texts by Bernard Noël and the tirade by Chimène ” Go, I do not hate you “ (The Cid, Corneille) in a mythical court where you have never played. It’s a first ?
I had to give up participating in Pascal Rambert’s show Architecture, which was held there in July 2019. I had suffered a lot from this forced withdrawal. So I am very happy. It’s a reunion after the party, but a party all the same, and just for me. I will be surrounded by ghosts. The theaters are alive, they don’t need us and they will outlive us. We are only stepping inside the memories they harbor. I am going to walk quietly to this superb Cour d’honneur of the Palais des Papes, in Avignon.
What is the childhood poem that has never left you?
“Animals sick with the plague”, by Jean La Fontaine: “They weren’t all dying, but all were hit. ” I was an introverted child. The only thing I liked to do was say poems. One day we had to choose one to recite it in class; I opted for the longest because, even though I was freakishly, I could suddenly utter it for longer: “Depending on whether you are powerful or miserable, court judgments will make you white or black. “
Marina Hands records, in Avignon, an excerpt from Cid, by Corneille, and a text by Bernard Noël.
Olivier Metzger for Télérama
Poetry and theater, are they the same thing?
I see between poetry and theater an absolute, immediate link, which is the living language. In poems, the quest for beauty goes through the arrangement of words, their musicality. The theater that I love has this double force of language and purpose.
Is being an actress having a sensual relationship with words?
Completely. Beyond the themes that an author deals with, what interests me above all is the way he writes. Words are organic matter. Languages are powerful energies. The work that an author does on writing proves his vital need to speak. The care he brings to the choice of his words is urgent. This wave of words, this need to say and to be heard, whether one is called Victor Hugo, Corneille, Racine, whether one is a singer or a slammer, is extraordinary.
“Poetry is height of mind, depth, intelligence, irony, humor.”
Saying poems, is it taking care of a language which today can no longer be deployed on public stages?
Yes. The way people harangue and curse each other on social media generates a negative hubbub, which reduces the thinking of the individual. Nobody manages to be heard. I am struck by the sterility of the debates. As a child, I only had the feeling of existing when I had access to the poems. My spine was finally building. Poetry is height of mind, depth, intelligence, irony, humor. Poetry allows you to think. To write it, to read it and to say it, is to believe in a certain beauty of the human being. Poetry and theater are languages of hope. I learned to speak through the words of others. In a way, I made a hold-up on them!
“I have the impression that a thirst is growing, exclaims Marina Hands, godmother of Printemps des poètes, and that a more precious listening will emerge when it all picks up. ”
Olivier Metzger for Télérama
Are you worried about the traces that this long closure of theaters can leave?
I have the impression that a thirst is growing and that a more precious listening will emerge when everything resumes. Closure breeds frustration. But this shutdown also makes it possible to break a system that is too mechanical. We put on show after show without knowing why. This judgment is violent. But it is enlightening on the necessity which pushes us to act and to create. I think that the question of the meaning of what we do will be more prominent tomorrow.
How is your return to the Comédie-Française, which you left in 2007 to come back in 2020?
I had missed the house. I wanted to reconnect with the public institution and its values. I told myself that if my mission only revolved around my little being, then this mission bored me. Going back to French saved my life. I have a roof over my head, a family that surrounds me when I could have been, during this Covid crisis, on a raft to row alone in my corner.
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