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Maurice Genevoix (1890-1980)
For some of us, the name evokes a street, for younger people sometimes the name of a high school or college, and for others a great name in literature. This man of letters and academician is known for his novels in which he evokes nature with a certain poetry: Raboliot for example. He is also the author of novels about the First World War, in which he participated. The collection of his notebooks from his time in the trenches, entitled Those of 14 is an important testimony to the fighting and living conditions at the front.
Fishing and literature
But why talk about this author on Fishing.news? Quite simply because, according to Jean Marcel Dubos, Maurice Genevoix is a contemporary fishing author, a writer who blended fishing and literature in France. For this author: "In the West, two great writers have contributed to raising the status of fishing, Genevoix in France and Hemingway in the United States". Maurice Genevoix is undoubtedly an author who blended the lyricism of poetry with the beauty of fishing. In his opus entitled The tackle box, published in 1926, there's no such thing as fishing with lures, carbon or fluorocarbon. It's all about bamboo and silk lines. Simple things. The author describes angling on the banks of the Loire. The first four chapters are named after fish: bleak, roach, chub and pike.
In a way, this novel is the story of his youth, as well as that of his alter-ego, the young hero Bailleul. He dreams and fishes with his friend Janneret. Najard, a vagabond, accompanies them and introduces them to angling. Genevoix recounts the fishing stories of these characters with a touch of poetry. Here, it's all about the conviviality of fishing. Every sentence is chiseled, skilfully chosen to bring out all the poetry inspired by his passion for the fishing world.
First of all, the passage in which Najard talks about pike fishing in front of an astonished Bailleul: "You have to go after the pike, look for it, as I was saying: a dead fish on the hook, a gaule with porcelain rings, very wide, twenty meters of good braided silk, or thirty, or forty, and there you go, you cast. You cast near or far, wherever you think there might be "people"; you bring back your dead fish, you walk it around all over the place, tied up so that it seems to wriggle; you go after the pike, you understand? You look for it, I've got to tell you again, instead of waiting on the spot. And here comes the catch! There's no other way to catch pike..."
Further on in "En douce", the author describes chub fishing. "Then, in a gap, he would insert his fishing rod, hazard a step, then another, until he discovered before him a clearing of open water curling on a bed of pebbles. He adored these transparent flows, warm and fresh together, the color of the bottom as golden as a crust of bread, the mineral vivacity of the water. [...] The water flowed insensitively, without a ripple, without a wrinkle. But you could tell it was flowing by the fins of the little chub, by their short noses, fraternally stretched upstream [...] He (Bailleul) was in no hurry, determined to risk his luck only for a character who was worth it [...] With his lips almost closed, he translated the rhythm of his catches into restrained words, joyous onomatopoeia: "Chut!...c'est la mouche qui se pose. Wouf!... Toc!...Et hop! Next!"
When you read these passages, you can imagine yourself on the banks of the Loire with Bailleul, watching the chub. I won't say any more about this book, leaving you free to buy it, borrow it or leaf through it in your favorite library. There's just one more thing I'd like to mention, and that's the note on the first page signed by the author: To the anglers' international. This book is therefore a tribute to all anglers, whatever their origins, social class or location on the globe. Long live literature until the opening.
Bibliography of works cited:
Maurice Genevoix, Those of 14, Point Seuil, Paris, 1996 .
Maurice Genevoix, The fishing box les cahiers rouges, Grasset, Paris, 2005.
Maurice Genevoix, Raboliot le livre de poche, Paris, 1961.
Jean-Marcel Dubos, The Joy of Fishing borneman, Sangre de la terre, 2001.
