Star philosopher Raphaël Enthoven publishes Krasnaia, animal fable about power. Hence this “bestial” interview.
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Raphael Enthoven. @ Belgaimage
Krasnaia depicts a society run by animals. In the “animals talk to us” genre, you prefer George Orwell, author of animal farmLa Fontaine or Walt Disney?
I am a child of Orwell and La Fontaine. As for Walt Disney, I’m like everyone else, I passionately watched the first cartoons. Orwell’s book (published in 1945 – Editor’s note) can be read as a funny story of animals taking over a farm or, in the second degree, as a parable about the Soviet Union.
What is the most philosophical Walt Disney cartoon?
The most thought-provoking are those who are not afraid to show disasters: the death of the mother in Bambi and the death of the father in The Lion King. In both cases, the shock of these two disappearances – whatever the age at which we look at them – is constantly conducive to reflection because, in my opinion, there is no serious reflection except that which assumes the possibility of lose loved ones. In this, Disney cartoons are important.
The pandemic is present in your story through the circulation of a virus which is transmitted by flatulence…
Yeah… It’s hard to tell you why I wrote that, but it came to me that way. It also allowed me to play with the caudal constraint, that is to say the obligation imposed on certain vixens to live with their tails down and, in the book, living with their tails down will be a measure to protect themselves from the virus.
When we read the description of your animal world, we think that you could have been a zoologist or a veterinarian…
Not at all. I’m an amateur, someone who doesn’t know much and someone who loves it passionately. I am the one who allows himself to use a lexicon that in reality he does not master at all.
What is your favorite animal in Noah’s Ark?
The man.
What is your favorite animal on earth?
The cat. I know of nothing more graceful, subtle, charming, profound, indifferent and interesting.
Could animals have invented social networks?
No. But the chirping of swallows, the inopportune meowing, the furious barking, the braying – all of this is ideal to describe the din of social networks, this false agora where people believe they are discussing while yelling at each other.
Do you eat animals?
Yes, but not all. I’m a carnivore, and I don’t feel hostile to the one I devour. On the other hand, I have an ethical relationship with the consumption of meat, I am less indifferent to the origin of the meat and the way in which it was produced.
Your previous book The time saved in which you revealed a lot of things from your family’s intimacy created a great media box. How did you come out?
The number of things in life that we tell ourselves that we could do them and that, in the end, we don’t do because we see more trouble than benefits… All these things that we renounce suppose the regret with which we is forced to live… Well, when I wrote this book, I did the opposite: I went to the end of a process, and since that day, for me, the world is new.
Krasnaya, The Observatory, 423 p.
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