A simple visit to the Harvard Natural History Museum is enough to remind us of the scale of the disaster: above the records of a very large number of animal species is inscribed “endangered”. The thing is heard and the heavy human machinery is slow to react. The younger generations inherit a world in a state of emergency. However, animals have not disappeared from the pages of our books, but how are they represented there? Five albums offer us an inspiring answer.
In the XVIIe century, Jean de La Fontaine ensured the posterity of his work by the celebrity of his fables, which featured anthropomorphic animals with moralizing aims: “I use animals to instruct men”, he said. In light of the immense influence of his work, it is tempting to ask: is the anthropomorphization of animals in literature a reflection of their enslavement in our society?
Although it is possible to observe a guardianship of animals for the benefit of the human ego in La Fontaine’s work, several fish have swam under the bridges since. For Nadine Robert, editor at Comme des Géants and Le hare de Mars, it is important to put anthropomorphic representations of animals in their context: “In fiction, sometimes there can be symbolic value. But other times, the illustrator lets his imagination run wild, and if he wants to make a talking insect on two legs: why not? We’re just creating characters. “
According to her, fiction does not command the same kind of imperative as documentaries, and anthropomorphic animal characters can help tackle delicate issues: “Representing animals creates a small distance that makes it easier to receive it. This immediately indicates that we are in the tale, and it is perhaps easier to receive. “
The album With us, Korean sisters Jin Joo and Jin Kyung, turns anthropomorphism against itself. We walk around a zoo, itself enclosed in a city, to meet animals staged in human-specific facilities – the cheetah runs on a treadmill, the skunk urinates in a toilet. In an apparent opulence, according to the standards which are ours, the animals shed days which leave nothing to guess their misfortune… Until this final scene where the book opens – literally – on a vast wild space, cruel reminder that the characters in the story were first uprooted from their natural habitat, then domesticated for the enjoyment of zoo visitors. As magnificent as it is striking, this work is a rallying cry to restore the animal sovereignty that we have suppressed.
Conditional liberty
Séraphine Menu, author of Owhere are past the birds?, sees positively the project to move away from “these anthropomorphized visions or to have this superiority over animals”. According to her, the salvation of animals – and, incidentally, ours – requires a regression of our ego: “I think we are just starting to understand that we are part of the living. That we are neither above nor outside. Of course, starting to integrate rather than seeing things from afar is essential. In a way, seeing yourself as part of a whole. “
Her approach has led her to explore the situation of birds and invites us, through stories and birdwatching knowledge, to become aware of their state: “We are talking about the diversity of species, but the reality is that ‘they are disappearing enormously and that we do not know if we will have silent springs in the future. We wanted to touch on the subject of their disappearance. Despite the pitfalls she presents, the author has been careful to instill hope, urging her young readership to be part of the solution.
Séraphine Menu proposes not “to save the world, but to repair our mistakes”, and she will certainly embrace the cause of Fourteen wolves to rewild Yellowstone. The album chronicles the project, set up in 1995, to bring wolves back to Yellowstone Park. The result of intensive hunting, they had disappeared from the park for several decades, creating a catastrophic imbalance in the ecosystem.
The story of their return, instructive and inspiring, illustrates the causal links that govern ecosystems. Here, Catherine Barr’s narration observes wildlife from a distance, letting it come to life on its own – and in Jenni Desmond’s naturalistic paintings. Their initiative is all the more brilliant as it allows us to create an imaginary into which to transpose the future, by embodying solutions within our reach.
Name the living that we live in
Mélina Schoenborn’s project, This is not a book about dinosaurs, stands out. Its theatrical and humorous staging goes beyond the documentary framework, and is amused by the way in which animals, in particular through literature, have invested our imagination: “I did not want to make a documentary in itself. I wanted to tell the story of a struggle between two species that do not have the same place in our imagination. “
Both amazed and fascinated by everything she is unable to name, she saw her interest grow, with the pandemic, for what lives around her: “It’s unsuspected, in a 15-minute walk, if I focus on everything that is alive – mineral or animal -, the inventory that I can do. »Taking the opposite view of our proverbial fascination with« extinct, gigantic, threatening or threatened animals », she became interested in squirrels:« They are there. We don’t know them. They serve to distract Europeans. And so, for all these reasons, I found that they deserved that we were interested in them. “
The multiple concerns addressed in these works find an echo in Julie Flett’s most recent album, Everyone is playing. Both rhyme and dance, this simple story expresses an optimistic benevolence in which the human being invites himself into the heart of the living, carried by a playful wonder. Heir to the Cree culture of her father, she says she is blessed to be able to share a vision in symbiosis with the living that surrounds her: “I think it’s about reconnecting and strengthening the relationships and ties that we maintain. with the land, animals and our environment in a respectful manner. “
Literature ensures that the animal species that are contemporary to us are not the dinosaurs of tomorrow. Lucid on the effects of our actions, but also turned towards a horizon where life is perpetuated, this literature proposes to linger on the living one which surrounds us, while inscribing us there, in this place which returns to us. Literature of resistance, vibrant literature, once again, it builds bridges, at a time when life seems confined to so many unattainable islands.