Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Floating Notion - Floating Nation

As Quoted from Notes from Exile (p.187-188):

"The word poreux in French means full of holes. I think "porous" is the same thing in English. I wanted to make a pun, a kind of play on words. Starting with the idea l'Acadie is full of holes, we have to decide whether l'Acadie is going to be l'Acadie diasporique, with all the constructive part of it - or are we going to be l'Acadie diasporeuse, with all the negative part of it, all the disillusions, and maybe disappearance at the end.
It's very mixed up. Some people say "L'Acadie is the Acadian peninsula in the north" and they mean it! They say l'Acadie is nothing more than a small corner of northeastern New Brunswick. I've heard people from Caraquet say, "L'Acadie, you know, Calixte, is Caraquet"; and some people say l'Acadie is New Brunswick; and some people say l'Acadie is les provinces maritimes; and people from Louisiana, when they come here and they hear that, well: "Listen, we have l'Acadie down here too." It's not clear what Acadie is; it's a floating notion..."

Calixte Duguay, Poet, Musician, Composer

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