Conversations

Marguerite Andersen is a professor of French Studies at the University
of Guelph. She is the author of Courts métrages et instantanés and La
Soupe.

Herménégilde Chiasson is an Acadian visual artist, filmmaker,
playwright, and poet. Conversations, a collection of 999 poetic
aphorisms, is firmly rooted in the French tradition of moralists such as
Montaigne, La Bruyиre, and Pascal. The aphorisms, which assume the form
of statements or questions, take readers who are willing to listen to
their inner voices to a new level of consciousness. The voices the
author presents are those of intelligent, reflective human beings who
abhor the loudness, vulgarity, arrogance, and mediocrity that surround
us most of the time.

Chiasson received the Governor General’s Award for the French version
of this book. In explaining their choice, the jury cited, with great
accuracy, “sonorous rhythmic resources of a language on the verge of
ultrasound.”