"On the night of December 26, 2018, Robert Lalonde's house burned down completely. This house, which he had built with his partner and maintained with ardor for more than thirty years, is nothing more than a smoking pile of ashes. in the middle of the devastated garden. The firefighters tried to pull out the four thousand books in the burning house in single file. In vain, or almost. The masters of the house, after looking for a door in the stifling black boucane, found themselves, in the dead of winter, both naked as on day 1. For a whole year, they coasted from one chalet to another while waiting for a new home to welcome them. From this episode, Robert Lalonde draws one of his most luminous texts. The books, as soon as they go up in smoke, of course only ask to be reborn, and one fine morning, in one of these makeshift chalets, an idea comes to mind. 'author: translate Walt Whitman, all Leaves of Grass, to occupy. These notebooks, punctuated passages taken from the masterpiece of the great American poet, tell how the writer, driven from one paradise to see another being built before his eyes, ardently regains a taste for life - a whole new life. "-