The Valais poet and author Maurice Chappaz (1916–2009) looks back on his career – from his youth in Valais to his co | dG1fdEttTTdPNWZybUU
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00:00I didn't know that I would become a writer, I didn't know.
00:08I didn't think rationally that at 20 I would write.
00:12It seemed to me like a completely fanciful thing.
00:22I was a shadow because I was writing.
00:25Because I was thinking, because I was trying to write poems.
00:29I was like someone who came from a planet, Mars or Venus, I don't know which one.
00:42The part of the Valais that I liked the most was De Fichère in Lafourca.
00:49Why? Because there was all the poetry of the ancient Valais,
00:53there was still an energy.
00:56There was, let's say, the old Valais life in its pure state.
01:02It was a time when we thought that politics could achieve something very human,
01:07at the same time with progress.
01:10And not something horrible technical.
01:14The change of civilization is so terrible that there is a change of people.
01:20I traveled, staying in the Valais, further than if I had been in the United States.
01:32What time do you have? Because I don't have a number.
01:354 hours and 45 minutes.
01:374 hours and 45 minutes, no, I don't know.
01:39No, just go quietly, I'm not tired.
01:42You have gentleness at the end of your life.
01:45Nobody can prove it.
01:48Let's say there is a life after death.
01:51You can't prove it.
01:53But you can't prove that there isn't.
01:55So, in short, our life together,
01:59to a certain extent,
02:01believe or not believe,
02:04it's like you're walking towards a pass.
02:09And there is an unknown behind the pass.