Many books give the floor to animals, or giving them pride of place. Romanesque side, from Lion of Joseph Kessel has Race to wild sheep of Murakami by the way Moby Dick of Herman Melville and the famous Fables of The fountainwe have often brushed the portraits of cats, dogs, birds, and sometimes even, they were charged with narration. Comic strip, are essential Maus d’Art Spiegelman et The Rabbi chat by Joann Sfar. Gladly charged with metaphorical scope, the animal has more than one literary tour in its bag. This is evidenced by this selection often leaving him the last word.
Free animals and prisoners Colette
“I do not always have the courage, the common sense to refuse the door to those I call – bird, cat or dog – but “evening visitors”, they leave a wake here, the trace of the creatures which made with me the exchange of a power. I only have fun their presence, their departure resolves with a gradual destitution, my decision to deprive myself of the contact, the coat, the paw, the deep eye, the smile.”
She spoke of cats like few others, also sharing this passion with (among others) Jean Cocteau, but Sidonie-Gabrille Colette, before imposing her gauaille in Paris, was a daughter of the countryside who plays the beautiful role in her books from her books Claudine Self -fictional. Dialogues of animals, splendors of butterflies, prisons and paradise, the cat… The writer has always reflected with other living beings than men, from birds to butterflies. In 2020, Albin Michel published a themed and well -felt anthology, opening a front door on this section of Colette’s literature, a beautiful gateway for those who do not yet appreciate his verb. And its very verve poetry … This selective bestiary today benefits from a pocket format. We won’t be deprived of it!
Colette – Free beasts and prisoners
Croc-white de Jack London
“Being the best was soon the only goal of the Louveteau. Threatened by all sides, surrounded by enemies, deprived of any support, he could only survive that by developing the gifts he had received at birth in the extreme. He therefore became stronger than the other dogs, faster, more flexible, more slender, more enduring, more cruel, more cunning, more fierce, smarter too. He had no other choice.”
Three years later The call of the forestwhich already featured a dog, Croc-white tells of a wolf, son of a wolf and a wolf dog with amazing physical power and an ultra independent character, which has known only adversity, first of the nature of the American north, then animals surrounding it and finally that of men, who will not cease to want to use it for the most vile purposes. Until he meets Weedon-Scott, his third master who shows him respect and love. Let him give him back well. Of his writing that is both abrupt and empathetic, Jack London testifies here of a tale as a storyteller that makes Croc-white A character in its own right, beyond all the symbolism for which he is responsible … The hero of a classic of American literature who deserves to be.
Oh cow! de David Duchovny
“All animals speak to each other in a kind of bestial and universal Esperanto – growl, whistling, bark, coupine, the lion with lamb, the bird to the dog, the momentum to the cat – except that, huh, well, who would like to talk to a cat? These critters, more narcissistic, you die (…) but I digress. Typically cattle, that. Digression, digestion. That’s all. We cows, since we are sent to graze, we have a lot of time to ruminate.”
