Guernica Editions

Philippe Haeck and Antonio D'Alfonso (Translator)

Haeck's intensity is such that he needs to use the fragment to complete an on-going project of finding his way to luminosity. Behind a deliberate modesty, the output is voluminous. Never boastful, Haeck introduces his prose as notes, poem-essay, poem, life-poem, life-novel, as if what he wrote did not merit adjectives such ‘completed' or ‘final'. He has invented a genre that was missing in Canada. The verse has prolonged itself into a regular paragraph. Fiction reads like a telecast, and reality made to look like conscientious invention. The writer is not an outsider; he is one of the many who just happens to jot down notes to try to come up with some sort of understanding. He is writing, and the reader looks at the writer writing. This participatory element in this literary project is translucent and incandescent.

Thanks to writing, your life has become a cluster of bridges. Your books help you build bridges. Your sentences are like steel beams -- linked together in such a manner that a song can be heard when you walk on them. If no song is heard, you must tear done and toss everything aside. To what shorelines does this bridging lead: you have no idea. You scarcely know from which shore you have left. Might as well admit it right off, so it is said, done, no wasting time, death stands waiting on the bridge. You can pretend you are not scared of death: you know you are born one day, die the next. Death is first and foremost your own death. Yours, then the world's.