The Written Life: Literature and Friendship

Michaël Trahan writes: “A book is a promise. It starts with an idea, a desire, and we end up with words on a page or a screen. Sometimes they are shared—offered, even. This offering of words, of an idea that is also a promise, is what we call literature.

“I would like to approach literature’s relationship with desire. The underlying question is that of writing’s ties to fidelity—to one’s self, to an ideal, to those who accompany us, hear us, listen to us. This question is also that of friendship.

“What is a literary friendship? What does it offer and imply for those who are entering written life? What impact does this have on how they live with literature? What are its effects on the surprising life of forms and books? I do not know, but I do understand that friendship is one of the things that keep me reading, writing and editing literary texts.

“A book is a pledge, a commitment. We swear allegiance to a desire until we become strangers—not to what it has led us to, but to what we have built, that is, written, by working towards it. In the end, books come and go, but in the best of all worlds, friendships remain.”

Michaël Trahan is a writer. He published La raison des fleurs (winner of the 2018 Prix du Gouverneur-Général for poetry) and Nœud coulant (winner in 2013 of the Prix Émile-Nelligan, the Prix Alain-Grandbois from the Académie des lettres du Québec and the Prix du Festival de la poésie de Montréal). He is the literary director of the poetry magazine Estuaire. twitter.com/mtrahan telegrammes.net