Gabrielle Bernard

Gabrielle Bernard , born and died in Moustier-on-Sambre (1893-1963) is a Belgian poetess of Walloon language

It lost its been engaged during the Great War and “its loneliness the screen of an interior life made whose richness was expressed in several collections of French poems” (in particular “While waiting for the caravel” 1936). Influenced by F-Jose Maugis who “made him like the semi-rural world semi-industrialist where she lived”, she composed four collections (in Walloon language) “four frescos” (M.Piron) “which form like a powerful synthesis of the mining country of the Sambre: the decoration, beings, their destiny, their descent. One did not expect such “a wild complaint” exit of this voice of shade, which was actually “a voice of fire” (J.Guillaume). Jean Louvet, writer Walloon of French language also born with Moustier-on-Sambre is a large admiror of this auteure.

The art of this poetess - accessible to all the French-speaking people - known as at the same time the language whom it uses and rural/industrial contrast Walloon country, by putting in parallel a mining catastrophe and the peace of the fields as in the èboul' mint . In this poem, seeing a badly stayed gallery, the deputy (minor chief) gives alarm, but too late:

Li curve churé known the moncia which comèle
tote Li winne if rècrase and stofe the ûrlemints
france.

the vault tore on the stone heap which écroule
all the vein is crushed and choked the howls.

On the surface, at the same moment, the world remains indifferent, the carter orders from his horse, of the children thread daisies,

and large the solia of julèt' fêt meûri frumints…

: “and the large sun of July makes mature wheat”.

Another duality, the choice of French and/or the Walloon to be expressed is also characteristic of many Walloon authors (of French language or Walloon) who count like Géo Libbrecht, Jean-Pierre Verheggen, Guy Denis, or this large person in charge of the French culture in Wallonia and with Brussels which was Marcel Hicter…

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