Literature Review

Tesson the inimitable

4 reading minutes

written by Jonas Follonier · December 10, 2019 · 0 comment

The great traveller and writer Sylvain Tesson is back in bookshops with The snow leopard. A polished work through and through, profound from beginning to end, that you won't close until it's finished. Tesson, who recounts his quest for the snow leopard in Tibet with photographer Munier, is a classic, and that's a certainty, simply because he's inimitable.

Sylvain Tesson fascinates. Because he's a man of long journeys and long stories. Because he's one of France's finest writers. Because he's a voice that's increasingly reactive to the environment, and a voice that counts. Because he's free. The general public is familiar with his half-frozen face, the result of a drunken night during which the writer indulged in one of his mad passions, that of climbing rooftops. The episode took place in Chamonix. By the purest of coincidences, I found myself at the scene of this terrible incident on the very day I'm writing this column. As fate would have it.

Understanding that we don't understand

At the end of the year, this extraordinary character publishes a new story, The snow leopard, published by Editions Gallimard. On Monday November 4, it was awarded the Prix Renaudot. This book, dedicated to the mother of a lion cub, is the story of joy. Or even, dare we say it, of the joy. The joy of grasping the elusive: «Munier and I understood that we didn't understand,» writes the author at the end of the book. And for good reason: the animal, as described by Tesson throughout this splendid literary journey and as apprehended by his photographer friend, is by definition a mystery. The mystery of animal life itself, beyond all morality. A mystery that Aristotle, under whose authority Tesson places his sentences, understood well, of course:

«Aristotle confined animal destiny to vital functions and formal perfection, excluding all moral considerations. The philosopher's intuition was perfect, superbly weighed, nobly formulated, totally effective - Greek, that is!»

This philosophical reflection runs through this text, which the editors of our magazine warmly recommend. Firstly, because it is expressed in sublime language, in which every word and every expression could not be better chosen. Secondly, because the admiration for animals that transpires in this text is not a praise of cute little kittens. It's a wonder at the wildest, most amoral and most visceral aspects of living beings. And the new Tesson is a must-read, as it introduces us to a very special animal: the snow leopard, with all its distinctive characteristics.

«She was there and the world cancelled itself out. She embodied Physis Greek, natura in Latin, of which Heidegger gave this religious definition: “that which arises from itself and appears as such».»

When the writer-adventurer lurks in a cave with his acolytes - the photographer Munier, his friend Marie and the metaphysician Léo-Pol Jacquot - to give himself the chance to see the animal appear, we are treated to a little moral guide. A repertoire of virtues so foreign to our way of life, influenced by an urbanized society detached from the beauty of the world: prudence and hope are the two most present in the novel. With these two totems of true ecology, i.e. anthropological ecology, Tesson invites us to wait. Waiting for a «face-to-face encounter between our admiration and [the panther's] indifference’, or waiting for anything else. And this expectation itself is beautiful. Whether or not the awaited - and therefore loved - object appears.