English translation of the French transcript, made with AI and not yet proofread — click a paragraph to jump to it. Show the French original
There's no accounting for taste: relativism and market music 0:30 Let's go.
1:50 taste and the judgment of beauty, but I'll let Dominique clarify all that, he'll do a lot better than me — it makes ten million different views on one side at least, this kind of contradiction between a viewpoint that says colors, colors and tastes can't be argued about — you've already heard that, tastes and colors — yes, colors so-called, and yet for two thousand years it's been a paradox that people have said we don't discuss it, everyone has their own thing, and it's very fashionable, especially in a society run by capital — I'm not doing politics, I'm just saying that in a world of free enterprise, where everyone is a bit in their own bubble, individually, in that case there's no universal, nothing communicates, there's nothing common, no community, and communism even less — and all these words hang together — so why discuss things that are each person's own business? I think I'm posing the problem, I won't solve anything, you see — you still have to take responsibility for how you pose problems, you can't have it both ways: either you say it can't be discussed, it's everyone's own affair, and in that case that's that, or when you...
3:04 listen to Borodin's second quartet while someone else listens to a rock group or Inuit music, fine — or, what often happens between guys — I say guys on purpose, in quotes, a guy means, well, among themselves like that — and I like little blondes, me the tall brunettes, or the curly-haired one, whatever, everyone with their supposed taste — and then a girl walks by, no matter who, and everyone turns around, all of them, not one of them matches what each had said — there they are, me included — I think that's more the order beauty belongs to, that's the example I just gave: when it expresses itself in the form of a Mozart symphony or an electric guitar solo, I mean, it wins unanimous agreement — but you still have to be in contact with it, because when you say it's a bit each person's own business, beware of this cultural relativism that gives you an illusion: you have the freedom to like what you want, but in fact you're put in contact with nothing, so you have the illusion of having a choice when in fact you...
4:16 know nothing, you only have a choice among what you hear on television and radio, that is, always the same thing — let me remind you that for 60 years the music listened to by young people, nine tenths of young people, has been the same, and even the remaining tenth listens to music that hasn't moved in 60 years — I'm in the middle of paradoxes, forgive me, but that's measurable, because I'm saying it's not an opinion, unfortunately — it's not an opinion, you can criticize, but unfortunately we're not in the realm of opinion, we're in the realm of knowledge — that means it's music with the same meter, it doesn't move anymore, once a measure has started — take rock, take rap, take reggae, the common point is that once it's started, you're sure it will be the same measure right to the end, you're sure there won't be any surprise — and now I get to the most important thing, I'll say it all: suddenness, like in a police station, spotlights, no projection into the eyes, no flash of any kind, journalists know that, no flash — so you see, I'm given the illusion that I've chosen, oh you're being generous
5:35 we're only given this public mask, it gives us the illusion that we have a choice among different kinds of music and that I pick the one I like — that's not at all what happens with young people I talk to, who know no other music than that of the market — I said to them, do you know — what did I say — Borodin's second quartet, he says who's that, you're into classical, I say classical, meaning we're already leaving aside 12 centuries of music, hugely, wildly different from one another, you can well imagine that medieval polyphony and Beethoven's symphonies aren't quite the same thing — but let's even set all that aside, take today's music, the music being made today in the Solomon Islands, in the heart of the Pacific — do you know the polyphonies sung by the islanders of the Solomon Islands? No, of course you don't, as you understand, I love it, so I'm speaking about it, he doesn't know any of that — well then, you certainly know Clifford Brown's trumpet solos, one of the greatest trumpet players to come out of jazz, you have to admit — who's that? What do you know about music? Oh well, I know, I know, I know Michael Jackson, you know — right, you know what the market, what everyone knows, without knowing anything, and I'll prove it to you that they...
Spinoza, musical heritage, and the distinction between natural and artistic beauty 6:51 know music that doesn't move, that's fixed once you know the first measure, the rhythm won't change until the end, you agree? That's not an opinion — in rock it doesn't stop, the rhythm, once it's started, it doesn't move anymore, he says — there's excellent rock and bad rock, that's not our problem here — when you say I like this, I don't like that, you're not talking about the music in question, you're talking about yourself — Spinoza, a philosopher who's well regarded, has this idea: the idea that Peter has of Paul expresses more the state of Peter's body than the state of Paul's body — to translate that simply for you: if you listen, the idea that Peter has of Paul tells us more about Peter than about Paul, if you think about it a bit, well yes — so when someone tells me, I don't like Mozart, or, I don't like rap, well, whatever — Mozart hasn't changed a single note of his work because of that, Mozart doesn't care whether you like him or not, but it tells me about the person, poor kid, he doesn't know the times, but when they've had their inheritance stolen from them — that's what's really serious, because it's part of your heritage, all of that, by right, you...
8:01 are by right heirs to the musics of humanity, whether it's traditional Chinese music or Mozart's symphonies, you understand what I mean, you are heirs to that — and above all, this heritage, you're only given the heir to the musics broadcast on Skyrock or on France Musique — I'm doing it on purpose, taking different, even opposed, repertoires where each is in their own bubble — yes, I start there, I've taken examples more from hearing than from sight, but it comes down to the same thing — to speak of the beautiful, there's already a distinction to make between artistic beauty and natural beauty — what needs to be asked is whether beauty is natural, I'm only answering the questions I've been asked, that's what I'm here for, I can't impose the questions — but natural beauty, in principle you already know, you have the answers to the questions — it's Plato who said first, he's the first to leave us a written philosophical work, that's important because afterward many repeated what he said, he's the first — the whole tower of knowledge is remembrance, to know is to recollect, as you like, anamnesis, that means that to know is to come to...
9:14 take note that I knew the answer but had forgotten — ah yes, I had forgotten, I had forgotten that I knew — you know that artistic beauty and natural beauty are incompatible, since you know that in language natural is opposed to artificial, yes or no? You say it yourselves: there are natural flowers and there are plastic flowers, you know that — you know that we don't say plastic flowers are natural, I'm not teaching you anything, you know that, but you don't take responsibility for what you know, you look for whether there isn't such a thing as natural beauty — listen, you'd need to know: either beauty is artistic or it's natural — I just showed you: artistic, artificial, listen carefully: artistic, artificial, it's written right there, A-R-T, in both cases — it's not me saying it, it's in the words, I'm not trying to speak in the words' place, I give them back their voice — if the words don't speak, are you going to speak for them and give arbitrary definitions? No, I listen to the words, that's my job — so why does it end in a fight?
Kant: determinant judgment and reflective judgment 10:15 it's because we don't clarify all that, we come in with our opinions when we should end up agreeing — I insist on my example of the 15 guys who all turn toward the girl walking by, I say guys and girl on purpose, with great respect for men and women, that's not the point — but you see, we can show that we speak, we think we have our opinions, and in fact we don't know what we like, it's the object we love that teaches us what we love — here I'm forced to get a bit abstract, I don't want to be a demagogue, I do have to teach you some slightly complicated things too — complicated when you don't know them, it's much simpler, believe me, than fixing a sink — a philosopher isn't more complicated than a plumber, but everyone has their specialty — what I mean is, we need to make a distinction that Kant, an 18th-century philosopher who left us the first, roughly speaking, the first work that can be called an aesthetics in the modern sense of the word, a theory of the beautiful — that's the famous Critique of Judgment, a critique of the faculty of judging, Urteilskraft, as you like.
11:26 Kant, you can say Kant the French way, doesn't matter — well, Kant distinguishes determinant judgments from reflective judgments — ooh, that's quite abstract, but once we have the definitions, it's all dead simple — determinant judgment: this hammer is well made, meaning I know what it's supposed to be used for, to drive a nail into the wall where I've hung my painting, and I say it's well made when it properly fulfills the function I assign it, that is, the metal isn't propelled into the kitchen while I'm left with the wood in my hand, it doesn't crush my thumb — there, it's well made — and to know whether a thing is well or badly made, you have to remember what it's supposed to be for — that seems trivial, but if I say this stadium is well made, I might say, well, it depends, is it for football or ice hockey? You agree those aren't the same constraints, so 'well or badly made' means nothing if we don't know what it's for — now we see it, the stadium is right there, we have it before our eyes, but what it's for, that's not before our eyes, you have to ask the question, you see, the end — the end is what isn't there, it's what's over there, télos, teleology.
12:37 it's far off, télé, television, or in novels — those are things I'm reminding you of, you'll see I seem to be wandering off but I'm right in the middle of my subject, you can bring it back — in whose name, what does Kant say when he moves beyond determinant judgment — I told you that's a judgment of value, this hammer is well made because I know its function and I see that it has fulfilled it well — and then he says, reflective judgment — so what's that? It's when I feel that something is well made but I couldn't for the life of me say why — take this: I see a shirt in a shop window, and, ah, I like it, now we're in aesthetics, ah, I find it pretty, ah, it's beautiful, I like it a lot, ah, if I had the money I'd buy it — and yet, can I say what the function of what I like is? I can't say it, I just note that I like it — I can't say it serves some purpose, I can't say it's because there are rabbits on it, it's rare that I'd buy a shirt with rabbits on it, but you see, however abstract, a shirt with, I don't know, stripes or plain — he means, it's yellow.
13:48 well, the beautiful is the same, you see, it's a judgment of value, you agree — 'it's beautiful' is a judgment of value — 'this stadium is well made' is a judgment of value I can justify when I say it's made for football and that the grass is properly laid, and so on — and then there are judgments of existence: 'this stadium measures 600 meters,' that's not a judgment of value, it's measurable, everyone agrees with a tape measure, if we're precise — you see the distinction clearly between judgments of value, which presuppose a purpose being pursued, and judgments of existence: 'this water does me good because I'm thirsty' — that's what I'm saying, there's always a purpose, an end that gets forgotten, a desire — that's where I need to get to, that's where I need to get to: we find a thing beautiful when it pleases us, so when it gives us pleasure — because there are people, you know, you ask them, so what makes you find it beautiful, and well, because I like it — that's called a tautology, it means saying the same thing twice — why do you like it, because I find it pretty — well, there we go in circles a bit.
15:00 let's be serious, we said we'd listen to the words carefully — it pleases me, it gives me pleasure — if it gives me pleasure, that's because it satisfies a desire, that's different, it's not the same, pleasure and desire, because if you have an unsatisfied desire, that's pain — thirst, I've lived in desert countries, thirst when there's no water, it's hard, you understand what I mean — so if we feel pleasure in having a shirt, a painting, a person we like, etc. — I'm talking about aesthetics here, not about the cause and its moral qualities because she gave you a certain kind of money, no — when we discover an aesthetic pleasure, something within us, a desire within us, is satisfied — there, if it pleases us, if it gives us pleasure, that's proof that it answers one of our desires, but which one? That's what's specific to aesthetic judgment: we don't know, we feel the pleasure first, then we have to search why — it's not like the hammer, I know beforehand what it's for, that's determinant judgment, let's drop that, it has nothing to do with art and beauty — now you understand the difference with beauty: I feel a pleasure...
16:10 and I have to search, good grief, why the fact that the shirt is like that gives me pleasure — and then you have this humiliation we feel before beauty, a happy humiliation, which is that I have to turn toward the object to get the answer — the object knows more about me than I do, can you imagine? Philosophy began with a pediment at Delphi: know thyself — and here's a bit of a humiliation, I learn that the shirt knows more about me than I do — I thought I put on shirts this way or that way, girls, curly hair, whatever, and suddenly I'm telling you none of that has anything to do with it — I'll wrap this thought up — ah well, I know it knows more about me than I do — there, there, I don't want to monopolize the floor, but I'm introducing the problem, I'm not closing it, I don't know how I'll close it, in any case I'm not closing it, but let me recap a little of what I've just said, to be clear, not to drown the fish: we're not in a world of freedom where everyone has the choice to take what they want and love what they want, that's not true, you have to be in contact with things to say afterward that you have a choice, we're in contact with almost nothing.
Summary: the standardization of aesthetic consumption and education 17:20 especially in today's world, where there's an unprecedented uniformization of aesthetic consumption — let me give an example, that's what I'm in the middle of saying, there, that's it, thanks, sound system — uniformization, and so the so-called choice, it's Ford, the car manufacturer, who said advertising makes it possible to make the customer believe they can buy a car of any color, provided it's black — he knew the world we were entering, one of those who ushered us into it, his portrait was in Hitler's office, always — I say in passing, Henry Ford, an immense admirer of Ford, Ford ended up in — that's not the subject, Ford, I don't hold it against him — there was Ford and there was Taylor, yes yes yes, that's different, Taylor, I defend him, Taylor and Ford are different — I'm talking about the sophists here: you can make the customer believe they can buy a car of any color provided it's black, liars — you're made to believe you're free while you're never more submissive; there's never been such monotonous music, and you're made to believe it's the music young people are asking for — there, I'm sticking to my train of thought.
18:30 if it were just ideas, we wouldn't be here, what I'm saying is serious — I say that because I had the good fortune, thanks to your generosity earlier, thanks to your money, to be able to be project leader of a music school in one of the poorest countries in the world, in Niger, on the edges of Mali, it's Sahara — I say it's thanks to you because it was financed by the European Union, and I say the European Union has a budget made from your taxes, from your — yes, from taxes and — from all the citizens and all the elements of the European Union, so thank you, I never earned my living so well, and I got these musics, it was good — in short, the poor kids, so, um...
19:19 and there I was able to have as students Nigeriens, Beninese, Togolese, you see, some from the same cultures, so I have some idea what I'm talking about when I talk about mixing — and I'll sum up a bit what I've just said: first, it's not true that we have a choice — to have a choice you'd need to go through education, that's a bit the subject of our talk yesterday — through an artistic education that doesn't consist in saying here's what's beautiful, here's what's ugly, that's fairly stupid, fairly dogmatic — it consists in saying, listen, now you have a choice, you can decide, right?
19:56 between Prokofiev's second quartet and the umpteenth track by some dance-boy group or whatever, you can make your choice — I guarantee you that all the young people I've been able to offer that choice to, without hesitation, jump into classical music, which after all has a prodigious diversity across the centuries in which it unfolds — it's not me who imposed it, I'll say — a rapper I know, small guy, didn't know that, I'm talking about Borodin, that's the second time I've mentioned him, who says to me, play that Borodin thing again, it's good enough to loop, that was pretty, like that — so there's that, first, and second, I made a distinction between natural beauty and artistic beauty, reminding us that artificial is opposed to natural, and that some philosophers — I'm thinking of Hegel, whom I know a bit, a bit better than others, not that the others who talk about him are lesser philosophers — Hegel said that nature is a copy of art, so it's spontaneously the opposite: it's not art that is a copy of nature.
Nature, a copy of art: a natural beauty dating from the eighteenth century 21:06 a true artist is one who produces exactly what's in front of him, like a good photographer, which means that in this art, which is of the order of copying, we could never say the earth is blue like an orange, to borrow Paul Éluard's famous line — that's not crazy, but let me give you a very simple example, since at the outset it's obvious there's artistic taste — well, this house, which is the fruit of labor, of an art, even of a craft, that also presupposes craft knowledge, not only artistic knowledge, of what such-and-such material can do, and so on — the Italian who did the upper part isn't bad, they're excellent masons, decorators — and natural beauty, well, that's a beauty in which there's no human labor at all, nothing — the beauty of, I don't know, the ice fields of Greenland, the beauty of the desert, it's magnificent, striking, or of the forest, or of the bocage, the area around Saint-Dizier, there are admirable spots — what's it called?
22:17 Eurville, it was pretty — if I were Corsican, I'm particular about lovely places, they don't do that with the Trois-Fontaines abbey — no, no, no, the banks of the Marne near Urboune, I'm serious, and I've already seen a town — there, that's such splendor — good, so we're talking about natural beauty, again, I'll give examples — the bridge at Joinville, there's nothing natural about it, it's a small work of beauty even less natural, it took work, effort, sweat, it took intelligence, that's not natural — but to come back to beauty that would be natural, the desert, Greenland, etc., note well it hasn't been that long since we've judged that beautiful, we can even date it — it dates from the end of the 18th century, you won't find any text before that which speaks of the beauties of nature — I think a century just before, I'll get to what happened at the start of life — I think a century just before, the 17th, Madame de Sévigné, she chats away in every one of her letters, chats, or rather writes very well, when she passes through the trees — because she often went to see her daughter at Grignan in the Drôme, which some of you know, it's very beautiful, Grignan — when she passes through the trees, she pulls the curtains shut in the carriage.
23:27 because trees were horror, the mountain was frightening, it was a world of dread, 'Alpine cretin' as they used to say, there were people who were stunted, poor, there were goiters — now there's mountain tourism, no matter what they say, we have the sea, the mountains, we have everything, especially the stunted ones, we have them here too, I'm talking about my own compatriots often, you know, those who say 'French people out,' nothing about 'Arabs out' — meaning only us Corsicans are beautiful, well, okay, not all Corsicans, I can say that freely here, I'm on free ground here, I've had my pastia, I've had a good cry, my girls — so anyway, it hasn't been that long since we've found the landscape beautiful — so why is that? I'll just finish this point, yes, because it's a crucial point, otherwise I'll lose the thread — what happens in the 18th century?
Revolutions, La Nouvelle Héloïse, Turner, and the African bush 24:23 the two revolutions that make the world you and I live in now: the English industrial revolution, bravo, the political revolution, and the French political revolution — that's what happens in the 18th century — it took the industrial revolution for nature to retreat, for people to start finding it pretty, once it stopped threatening, once it stopped terrifying you, there — go ahead, no, it's just in relation to what you were saying about the Alps, I was thinking of Rousseau's La Nouvelle Héloïse, it was he who made us love the Alps, is that it?
24:56 it's an illustration of what I just said, it's well known in literature that the first texts expressing the beauty of mountains are found in Rousseau's La Nouvelle Héloïse, right in the late 18th century, in a wonderful text of letters where he writes to Julie, 'I left sad and troubled by your joy,' that's a peak, it's prose poetry I recommend — but beauty of the mountains was never expressed before that text — was it the same for Turner's mists too? But of course, we're right in — most of Turner's mists, you certainly know, some of you, that painter Turner, of a stunning modernity for his time — we're at the start of the 18th century and it's even more impressionistic than Monet — so what do we see through the mist?
25:43 because there are paintings that would be almost abstract, completely abstract in the 21st-century sense, if there weren't a small figurative motif, that is, a locomotive that has just passed by, the mist — we're already in the invention of the railway, we're no longer in the 18th-century bocage of the Ancien Régime — there, you see, that's important, what I'm saying, because you get the impression that it's so beautiful, the ice — the ice — the ice fields of Greenland, I'll get there — or the beauty of the desert, it's so beautiful we think men have always found it beautiful — you'd have to explain to a Tuareg that the desert is beautiful, unless it's his little brother, the director of the travel agency in Agadez, who's going to advertise it to you, of course, because it's very good that white people love the desert, but good grief...
26:33 I spent a lot of time with Africans, I had the good fortune that reading and writing were taught to me by African schoolteachers, I owe a great cultural debt to the region — how do you say it — it was in Benin, which was called Dahomey at the time, that goes back — well, what's most terrifying for an African is to be stranded in the bush before reaching the capital, that's the most terrifying thing, the bush isn't beautiful, it's the world of spirits, of unsettling things, that's it — it's where it's regular, secure, that people can walk around without too much danger — so what happens at that time for there to suddenly be this resurgence of beauty and for people to start finding the Alps beautiful too, what's going on?
Kant and the good soul facing the Buchenwald landscape 27:23 so there's — ah, what a good question — so there's that, and I'll connect it to — you mentioned Kant and the Critique of Judgment, well Kant almost draws a link between the fact that we feel a sense of satisfaction, of pleasure, and morality — so I quote Kant, still speaking of nature: I look at the landscape, I look at the sea, etc. — 'to take an immediate interest in the beauties of nature is always a sign of a good soul' — so there's something there that's profoundly revolutionary too, that is, we...
28:06 when we contemplate something, a landscape, and we feel satisfaction, it's because that stems from natural goodness, there's an association between — well, let's see — I visited — well, I'll let you take the floor on this, but we're in the Copernican revolution, the moral revolution too — I understand, I'm giving a pre-answer precisely because you're citing a German philosopher — I visited a concentration camp, the better known one, Buchenwald, near Weimar, about 3 km away, it's the most beautiful landscape around — I mean the Weimar region, this region is called the Thuringian Forest, Thüringer Wald, it's true it's a marvel — and at the entrance to the camp, I visited it at a time when there was still a country that has since disappeared, called East Germany, the DDR, the GDR, as you like, the communized zone at the time, the Cold War, in short — and of course, since it's a camp — at Auschwitz it was mostly Jews, for Buchenwald it was mostly political prisoners, the resistance fighters, etc.
29:14 I'll explain what follows, it's very important, no? It's huge, several kilometers, and at the entrance the regime had left a sign with a quotation from Goethe, who's an element of excellence, a national figure, and the quotation didn't speak of the camp of course, which didn't exist yet, but what it said, to put it directly, was that when you see this landscape of Thuringia, and especially the Buchenwald forest — Buchenwald means beech forest, Buchen is beech in German — when you see the landscape of Buchenwald, your soul can only be filled with elevated feelings — the pinnacle of German humanism, Goethe, would himself be at the summit of barbarism — so I have a doubt about Kant's claim that a natural landscape is beautiful and therefore necessarily good — so the Nazis adored landscapes — I say that because they're trying to turn us all into a bit of ecologists, with people running around COP21, well, that's the obscenity that's been going on for weeks now.
30:27 that we're being rehashed by those who told us it was all about — your problem is debt, remember, not so long ago it was debt — ah, if you keep getting into debt, it can't go on like this — ah, I don't care, and then we'll forget that it's not right, it's Daesh, that's the problem — ah, no, it's global warming — ah, I understand the French are starting to be fed up, it's like being a total fool, you'd have to make up your minds, there's absolute urgency — well, I'm saying serious things, we think that because I admire a landscape, I'm a good man — serious things like that, you know Hitler was part of a society against animal vivisection, he was a vegetarian, did you know that or not?
31:09 did you know that or not? To know it, to say it to young people, because there are people who say, oh, he'll turn out nice later, he loves animals, yes, that's it — but the more people love animals, the more they hate men, that's something you've probably already noticed — and I'm terrified to see the number of young people, it's not their fault, when I say young, I mean very young, all the kids, the little ones, infants, as they said in antiquity, those barely at the stage of speech, that's a stage that's tiring, who watch television and develop a hatred of man while watching it — look at me, man who's ruined the landscapes, who's killed all the animals — they have a hatred of man and an adoration of nature — I don't know what these kids will become later, but it's worrying, I hope they won't be the ones running humanity, because they could also eliminate it and keep the landscapes, there are some who dream of nothing else, and yes!
32:07 whereas Rousseau, at the end of the admirable third letter to Malesherbes, when he has such a landscape before him, with an exaltation he's known to have expressed, says: 'I confess my soul could not for long leave this thus adorned earth deserted; I soon peopled it with beings after my own heart' — we reconstruct an imaginary society for ourselves, and it's true we're not going to be happy alone in a setting — 'and, driving far away prejudice, opinion, and artifice, I surrounded myself with beings worthy of inhabiting it; I formed for myself a golden age after my own fancy' — which will give rise to social contracts, there!
Reading of the prologue to Rimbaud's A Season in Hell 32:50 I've stirred up quite a lot of material, I don't want to monopolize the floor, I'm sure this makes you want to ask questions, but I had to, a bit abruptly, take the counterpoint of a brutality that isn't in the world but is in things, more real, that surrounds us and assails us and attacks us, there! And threatens us — no but that's very good, Dominique, I'd like you to talk to me about someone we both share too, Arthur Rimbaud, in the prologue to A Season in Hell — I'm going to read what Rimbaud says, all the same — once, if I remember well — no, no, I was saying — excuse me — 'once, if I remember well, my life was a feast where every heart opened, where every wine flowed — one evening I sat Beauty on my knees. — And I found her bitter. — And I cursed her.' So, that's already in the prologue, you can connect that with the 'Farewell' that closes the collection too, but it's so magnificent I'll read it to you to the end — it was written by a kid who was 18, not even 20.
34:01 'I armed myself against justice. I fled. O witches, o misery, o hatred, my treasure was entrusted to you! I managed to make all human hope vanish from my mind. Over every joy, to strangle it, I made the muffled leap of the wild beast. I called to the executioners to bite the butts of their rifles as I died. I called to plagues, to suffocate me with sand and blood. Misfortune was my god. I stretched out in the mud. I dried myself in the air of crime. And I played fine tricks on madness. And the spring brought me the frightful laugh of the idiot. Now, quite recently, finding myself on the verge of the final croak, I thought of seeking the key to the ancient feast, where I might find my appetite again. Charity is that key. — This inspiration proves that I have dreamed! You will remain a hyena, etc.'
34:51 'protests the demon who crowned me with such lovely poppies. Get to death with all your appetites, and your selfishness and all your capital sins.' I've taken too much of that, but dear Satan, I beg you, a less irritated eyeball! And, while waiting for a few small acts of cowardice yet to come, since you love in the writer the absence of descriptive or instructive faculties, I detach for you these few hideous pages from my notebook of the damned — but let me reread you the beginning: 'Once, if I remember well, my life was a feast where every heart opened, where every wine flowed. One evening I sat Beauty on my knees. And I found her bitter. And I cursed her.' Now really, we've changed eras again, between this admiration we have for beauty with Kant, with Rousseau, and here Rimbaud takes Beauty on his knees, insults her — so, well, let me give you my interpretation, then I'll let you speak.
36:01 is Rimbaud telling us that he's somewhat gone all the way round the question, that he's gone to the very edges of madness, that he's played with beauty, that he realized beauty was ultimately completely disconnected from reality, and that perhaps he had to go through that too in order to come back — and you'll probably quote it in the 'Farewell' — to be returned to the soil, to become a peasant again — so, do we need to put beauty on our knees and say what to it?
36:36 at the start I thought you were talking about a woman — at least that's how I feel about it — I'll be careful about giving further interpretations, because I'm wary of any interpretation in front of texts of such beauty already — yes but wait, I'll be precise, I'll say interpreting is always dubious, it's putting something of yourself into something you didn't make, I mean you mustn't interpret a work, you have to restore it, and not, by chance, having encountered beauty — no but I'm being precise, you mustn't interpret, that's an element of subjectivity, it's less about interpretation, it's without interpretation — what's that got to do with it?
37:17 that's different, this thing, in front of things this important, still — that means, like a beautiful Syrian, it depends on you, on her, on him, it's what? If she speaks in the air, you, him, her, there's nothing left — he speaks of beauty and then somewhere he's disappointed — no, no, but there are answers, don't worry, in the text, I don't want to speculate behind the text, between the lines, it's too serious, too grave, too good, especially to put our dirty paws on it — I mean, it could be me, huh — at the start he says that, yes beauty, there, that's what I had at the start, 'my life was a feast where every wine flowed,' that is, he was like you and me, there's a beginning where everything is beautiful, everything is nice, everything is fine, there's a golden age period, of childhood, if you like — and then, once he's put her on his knees, that is, once he's in contact with her, it stops being a spectacle, because a spectacle is something distant, there's a distance, you see what I mean — as long as beauty is aesthetic, I'll come back to that word we haven't yet mentioned but which is crucial — for us to think we're saying, ah no, judging right away, you know what it is to undergo anesthesia in surgery, that is, to cut you off from sensibility, from the senses.
Aesthetics, a world of appearance: sunset and autumn 38:28 because we mustn't forget the origin, we mustn't forget the origin, I told you earlier, you mustn't speak in their place, the words speak for themselves very well — 'aesthetic' means the world of appearances, it's not the world of the real, so all aesthetics can only disappoint, whatever it may be, I mean, because it's only a mirror — the aesthetic world is the world of what appears, not the world of what is, right? You have a superb sunset over the sea — let me come back to what's called natural beauty to explain a bit what Hegel meant when he said nature is a copy of art, right? You'd say it's liquid gold, that happens to us sometimes, doesn't it, in the evening over the sea, liquid gold, it's for a moment of happiness — try an experiment, take a glass, plunge it into the liquid gold — oh, disappointment!
39:19 look at the glass, transparent, H2O, there's sodium chloride, it's salt water, it's the sea, nothing is left of the splendor, you see? All that was just an illusion, it was only on the surface that the sea was golden like that, because of the reflection when the sun touches it, but in depth, as soon as you go one millimeter deep, none of that remains — the being of the sea is indifferent to this beauty, this beauty exists only for us who look at it from outside, like a spectacle, like an aesthete, like an appearance, don't forget that!
39:51 it's an illusion, it corresponds to nothing — wait, wait, wait, when I dream of my grandmother, is that an illusion? My poor mother is dead, I try to make her present to me even though she's absent, of course, but that doesn't mean it corresponds to nothing, it means I loved her all the same if I dream of her all the same, you see what I mean, still, it fulfills a desire, as Freud would say, quite simply, my dream — so I didn't say it corresponds to nothing, but it means that if we love this sunset over the sea, it's because it reminds us of something — you remember Plato, all knowledge is recollection — I've carried on a bit in what I was saying to Louis all the same, what does that mean, all the same?
40:28 that means that this decline, this sort of apogee, this richness that melts into itself, it reminds us of something — it reminds us of the apogee of life just before life declines, that's it, a sunset. But the equivalent in the year is autumn. What are the colours of autumn? A profusion of gold, wouldn't you agree? Gold, richness, yellow, red, purple. It's the season of fruits, it's the season of luxury. "Here come the times when, vibrating on its stem, each flower evaporates like a censer; the sounds and the scents turn in the evening air, melancholy waltz and languorous vertigo." Baudelaire — these are poets of decadence, of decline, of the sunset. A civilisation that is drowning in its own voluptuousness and handing over to another era. That's going to give us the war, the golden decadence, all of it, carnage!
41:24 So there, it's beautiful, a sunset over the sea, but it's beautiful as an appearance, it reminds us of something — a summit, a hero for example, it could be the tragic end of a hero, there! So it's not nature that is beautiful, it's something in man that is beautiful but that man had forgotten, and that man, you see, like earlier with the shirt I saw in the shop window, something external reminds him of his own deep truths, and to man alone — a being who is going to die and who knows he is going to die, which animals don't know, man knows he is mortal — only a being who knows he is going to die can find a twilight or an autumn beautiful. Do you understand what I mean now?
42:04 And there's a writer who put this very well, a bit less known than Rousseau, much less in fact, called Senancour, who lived just after Rousseau, one generation later — he's perhaps the one who most finely analysed what was called for over a hundred years "the malady of the century," to express modernity. He said this: "Spring is more beautiful in nature, but man has done so much that autumn is sweeter." That's beautiful as a sentence, isn't it — spring is more beautiful in nature, what could be more beautiful than a spring — but man has done so much that autumn is sweeter. So that presupposes a history for me to find autumn sweet like that, you know, it presupposes that things come back to me through unconscious memory. From what you're saying, if I understand correctly, you seem to be saying that the gaze of man, of any individual, starts to dream because he finds a sunset beautiful, a mountain, a tree, a blade of grass, a daisy — and for you that would be false because, in his imagination, if he goes a bit deeper, or if he digs into it, it's ugly. I don't agree.
43:14 I can talk about ugly, that's not the point — I don't know, that's not the point. No, you said that with the sunset, you dip your glass into the gold, the sunset disappears, it's just water, sun gas — but man's imagination, when he wants to see beautiful things, he looks at them as they pass, for me I find that marvellous, and without going into... You said it, imagination is an image, the image, the imaginary is the opposite of the real, that's exactly what I'm saying — when I go for a walk in the woods and I see a blade of grass that pleases me, I look at it with fascination, but you're quite right, and how magnificent it is, or a daisy, no matter — well I do that fifty times a year, what you're saying, at least fifty times a year, I love picking mushrooms, that's autumn indeed, and even if we don't find any the scenery is so beautiful that we're delighted, we agree the harvest is in autumn, I agree with you, we agree, but as I told you, we love an image, we love a surface, we don't concern ourselves with what's one and a half metres underground and all that, we don't care about the real, we're not going to go underneath, the reality of nature, we don't care — but in that case we have to own up to it in our discourse, we mustn't say that it's nature that is beautiful, it's our gaze, as you say, it's our imaginary.
44:27 Well then we are in perfect agreement, so I'm not saying you disagree, because we are in perfect agreement — it's inside man that we must look for beauty, it's the glass of water — when you said it's the one who looks at it, when you said you dipped the glass of water and you no longer saw that image you'd put into your head — but I'm not going to go as far as dipping the glass of water, I keep the image I saw, but you were right, because it's true that if it goes deeper, if you look at a daisy, it's magnificent, sometimes a little daisy, nothing much, if you dig, what are you going to get?
45:07 Roots, worries, of course — and so the beauty of the daisy will disappear and I'd rather stick with my first image. Ah, but I wouldn't advise it — so beauty, let's come back to the general point, beauty in the end, is it you who makes it for yourself without digging deeper? That's all I wanted to say, that's what I understood — so it is indeed in appearance, not in being. A painting has no beauty except in the eyes of the one who — we're now going to move the discussion along, so go ahead, Dominique, Hervé, we're here to question it — so Hervé, your remark?
45:41 As Goethe said, a painting has no beauty except in the eyes of the one who looks at it — that's entirely superficial and personal. To that you'd add something — that means what's beautiful for you isn't beautiful for him. I'm not sure it's beautiful — I've really seen people who don't admire a sunset over the sea, the beauty of some isn't necessarily the beauty of others. I don't know, we need to frame this as a question. I know the world we live in, the capitalist world, would give credit to this idea — let's say we're two people shut up each in our own respective subjectivities, so I owe you nothing, you owe me nothing — well I'm not sure that's the truth, at the level of method we have no common heritage — since we're in a workshop, normally a workshop is a place where you work, so let's try to work a little — if you make remarks, try to formulate a question, quite simply, formulate a question to sum up the problem you're trying to... to improve, there — so go ahead, if there are — I'll pass the word to him — little questions, little remarks, little... or if you need clarification about what Dominique said earlier while speaking, while speaking.
Lascaux, necessary superfluity, and the separation of the beautiful and the good 46:53 And speaking of the little Paris place, you were saying that it might have been the encounter — you both talked about it — the encounter between the owner of the place and our Italian friend that had perhaps triggered — I don't know, but if we go back very, very far, what could have triggered in man this urge to draw in caves?
47:25 Well, very good question, that really triggered something — now I'm glad for this kind of question, because there are those who want to explain everything through nature — that's the cognitive sciences, you've heard of that, it's very topical, to explain love, sexuality, they talk about pheromones, I'm just throwing that out, some analogies — but no, there are those who explain everything like that, and vice versa. So, to answer his question: cave paintings obviously don't correspond to anything biologically, they're not at all indispensable for survival — you agree, to survive you need to hunt, eat reindeer, etc.
48:07 But not to make a painting — that's almost a waste of time even in terms of survival, yes or no, it's a luxury, it's superfluous, the cognitive sciences would say, from a biological point of view. Well, that superfluous thing was necessary for the sacred, it's admirable, that's man — man isn't some brute. I love the badger, it's cute, we very rarely see them because they're nocturnal, they're feisty, watch out, don't get too close, don't put your finger in that mouth, it bites hard — but it's pretty, it's beautiful, you're valuing it a bit, I maintain its appearance, it's a beautiful animal — there's a bit of racism in our preferences, and yes, I've often thought, you see, you see children say oh how cute the teddy bear is, how pretty the teddy bear, a little bear, a little bear, a monitor lizard, a lizard, not pretty — well ah, and racism starts just like that, because objectively a teddy bear could be more dangerous than a lizard, you see, for me that's reality — now, I'm listening to the name of aesthetics, that's beauty, appearance — there, I'll note in passing that it's not because we have knowledge of the beautiful that we have knowledge of the good — is that what you wanted with Anne earlier?
49:18 Yes, yes, yes, I can go deeper with you — but yes, well there, no, but I'm saying there are those who think it, because they're great artists, they're in the world of the good, whereas the rest of us are idiots — watch out! There are great Nazi artists, believe me, there have been! I say this because people make out that fascism is some lout with a thick neck — the thick-necked one, the brute — no, no, no, no, no — great Nazi artists, believe me! Lots of people love Carmina Burana — are you talking about that work, Carl Orff?
49:48 There, yes, even those who never listen to classical music know Carmina Burana — it was a commission of the Hitler regime, you should know that! He was the official musician of the Reich, Carl Orff — I've got nothing against that, that doesn't mean the music is ugly, it appeals to me too, but good grief, I keep it as appearance, me! I don't say, hey, the guy who did that, he's a good guy! I don't cross that threshold, you see? I don't confuse the beautiful and the good! But then, Dominique, can we confuse the beautiful and the true, on the other hand?
"Saluting beauty": losing in order to find again, Pascal and Nietzsche 50:19 I'm thinking especially of poetry, and perhaps of the beauty of Rimbaud's language, or others — but we also sense there's something true, though we can't quite say what! And we're overwhelmed by the appearance, the beauty, but we sense there's something true! And often someone might say it's beautiful, and another might say no, it's true! As if we're linked by related mysteries! So what distinctions can you make for us, can you clarify a bit the relationship that the beautiful and the true might have?
50:52 First I'll do justice to Rimbaud now, since you quoted him — it's not him who brought it in, you quoted the passage, I'm going back — right, because we shouldn't bore our audience who's trying to follow, and rightly so! He was at the point where Rimbaud, sitting, had it on his knees, and what happens to him, why does he suddenly find it bitter? Well, we saw that it's because appearance, when you put it on your knees, when you see it up close, so when you make the experience of the glass of water, he's quite right to say so — greeted, a word, I see! There, there, right! I insulted it, I fled — but, you quoted the beginning, I'll quote the end of A Season in Hell, he was reading that admirable text, it's a few pages actually, nothing at all!
51:28 It's one of the most beautiful texts ever written, and it's tiny! And he thought it would never be published, he burned it, he burned it, he burned it — luckily his friends kept the manuscript, they preserved it! At the end, I quote very briefly, in the conclusion: "That has passed. I know today how to greet beauty." No, because we mustn't make Rimbaud someone revolted against beauty, against the fault, no, that's true! At the beginning he rejects it! That's what makes us understand — at the beginning he rejects it, he found it bitter, he insults it, he did everything, he bites the stock of rifles, the good of beauty!
52:04 What I'm saying is profound — we all have to go through that experience! We have to have denied something, have pushed it away from us, in order to truly appreciate it! There's a very beautiful line — I'll turn to religion, to Christianity, I'm not a believer, but I admire it! It's a miracle in Pascal, one of the greatest Christian philosophers — he's both a thinker and a Christian, but he remains a philosopher! And Pascal wrote an admirable text called The Mystery of Jesus, where there's a dialogue between the soul and Christ, and the soul despairs of reaching salvation, of the good, because of the sin within it, and Christ answers — listen carefully to this phrase that expresses what we call a mystery — "Console yourself, you would not..." "You would not seek me if you had not found me!"
52:50 If you seek me, that means it's already done, you're a Christian, you've found me! What isn't good is not seeking, being content with what one is! That's what makes Nietzsche say, "It is not your sin that scandalises heaven, it's your satisfaction!" Moreover, in the Gospel you find the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector — it's the Pharisee who enters the church, who prays ostentatiously to show he's one of the good people, who believe in God, who knows the commandments, who says his prayers — and then there's the tax collector who stays at the entrance, who doesn't dare go in because of his sins.
53:22 Jesus says, "That one is the true one." The one who is ashamed of his own domain! It's magnificent! "You would not seek me if you had not found me!" "If you are in anguish, in doubt, in the search, that means you have found me!" It's magnificent! So don't be in a hurry to reach the end of the search! So Rimbaud flees beauty, doesn't he? He seeks to recover that Eden, that sort of golden age he had at the beginning, and at the end, we must believe he found something, since he says, "That has passed, I know today how to greet beauty!"
53:58 "Might it not be a certain nostalgia? It's often what we've lost that we miss!" Yes, for that, you have to lose it! You have to have already possessed it, and then lost it! But yes, absolutely! Because what one has had just like that, because it was given to you, like an inheritance and so on, it stays abstract! Of course! One has to have lost it from one's own heart! Many children have the same political ideas as their parents, and then suddenly take the complete opposite stance! They're right, in a way, they need to form their own opinion, the children!
54:31 They're right! And perhaps they'll come back to the same opinion, which will be their own, which will be theirs, for reasons that are their own, and not for their parents' reasons! Otherwise, parents would just be cloning, and we'd all be like frozen Adams, unmoving since forever! There would be no history! We mustn't reproduce identically in our children what we ourselves were! Whereas good parents, you'll agree, are those who think their children should manage to do even better than them! There, a difference! So there, I'm answering your question indirectly, but you see the connection with the question that was asked!
The beautiful and the true: reading a text seven times before reflecting on it 55:34 The houses are a bit austere, a bit Maghrebi. In Italy, they've really put flowers, I tell myself, it's not the season. I'll note in passing that there is indeed this advantage with Italians, the art of decoration and of masonry at the same time — that's not entirely a coincidence in my opinion. I don't know, I don't know that Italian's story, maybe he was a coffee-machine salesman, I know nothing. But there, I'll offer the hypothesis that he was someone who must have had taste, per le belle cose. For beautiful things. So yes, the relationship between the beautiful and the true.
56:07 So I remember an anecdote with... Yes, that was a preamble, to get to your question about beauty and truth, but go ahead. I don't know if you know Bertrand Vergely, a philosopher who taught in Saint-Dizier, etc. And he's come back to Saint-Dizier a few times. And I'd gone to see him there, and I'll finish, at the Abbey of Trois-Fontaines, we were talking like that, and he often went to the Abbey of Trois-Fontaines, so the place I was getting at... What a marvel! There.
56:37 And I said to him, like that, the Abbey of Trois-Fontaines is really a place conducive to reflection, isn't it. He looks at me like that, and he goes... No. He says to me, first, beauty. Yes, what are you going to reflect on? What are you going to reflect on? He's quite right. What the hell are you doing reflecting? Reflection is tiring, beauty is restful. Beauty first. I was looking for truth, he's going to tell me something true, he does tell me something true when he says that, by the way. But he, so, insists first by telling me... We set aside the logos, we set all that aside...
57:09 You're asking me a question I've already answered. But you weren't listening. No, no, I'm joking. No, but afterwards, I want to get to this idea that when you read a text, Rimbaud or someone else, you can... And Rousseau, for example, says... Read me twice. Read me once for the style. Read me for the style. At least twice, I say... At least twice, at least twice. But watch out, behind it there's still the logos, there's still something. So what relationship will that establish, precisely, appearance, with the part that's perhaps a bit more hidden beneath the appearance?
57:45 The beautiful and the true. For those who still have the baccalaureate to sit, for example, or those who are responsible for children who have the bac to take, a piece of advice to pass on: it's when you have a text commentary to write, that's what I was getting at — read me several times. When you have a text commentary, an essay, a dissertation, etc., the first thing to do is to read it seven times. I'll stop at an arbitrary staggering number, but in any case more than twice, you see. Seven times, the text, with no reflection at all. Without your ideas, without anything, what's it saying to you?
58:17 Without anything, nothing but photographing it with your ears, if you will. Seven times. And when you've started your commentary afterward, you'll be ten times better armed. There. I'm starting there, first, as a prelude. Because we can say there are philosophers like Rousseau who are beautiful to read, and then there are others who are a bit harder going, sometimes... But they've got substance, it's not beauty, it's truth. No, exactly. Precisely. So, beauty, truth. There. Beauty, beauty, beauty. We're looking at the relationship. But I already solved the problem earlier, you just didn't hear me. So I repeat. And you make me repeat, like Rousseau said, read me twice.
58:47 So, that's very good. Because it was abstract, when I said it earlier. Now we're going to get concrete. When I said earlier, it's a bit humbling, the fact that when I find an object beautiful, pretty, whatever, that pleases me, it's the same thing at once. If I find it pretty, it's because it pleases me. That's obvious. It's because it gives me a pleasure, an aesthetic pleasure, an almost culinary pleasure, if you will, well, a... pleasure. Well, it pleases me somewhere, it comes to fulfil a desire. I don't know exactly which one, but what's certain is that it pleases me.
The beautiful object expresses the truth of desire: Wilde, Freud, Rilke 59:17 There can be no pleasure if there hasn't been a prior desire. How could there be pleasure in drinking if there hadn't been thirst? Otherwise you get "drinks without thirst," as Captain Haddock says when he wants to insult idiots. Well, so this is serious. The object reveals me, so it tells me a truth about myself. I'm starting to answer your question. I'd already answered a bit. The beautiful object expresses a truth, and not just any truth — the truth of my desire, good grief. So I don't separate beauty and truth, for now. But there, it's a truth I don't know.
59:48 And maybe because I don't want to know it, in the end. Because we don't want to know all our desires. It's all very well to say, know thyself. It's all very well to say, I'm going to go see a philosopher to know myself. Good grief, wait, there may be all sorts of things about myself I don't want to know. That I'm not at all the ideal guy I think I am, a generous, kind fellow, but that I'm perhaps a scoundrel, to know it. Selfish, vain, peremptory, guys who never let women speak but speak in their place. But sometimes, guys, well, I didn't know.
1:00:20 There's a purpose in saying that. So let me finish, because we're going to ask a question. Because otherwise it confuses me. Yes. What a beautiful voice. And since there's a musical side to it, I listen when you speak. It distracts me. And yes, and it's the same, there's a shop that plays music, supposedly so I'll consume, I can't. Anyway. I'm serious, I'm listening. So, quite seriously, the beautiful object expresses a truth.
1:00:52 If he finds it beautiful, if it pleases me, and insofar as it pleases me, it makes me discover a truth. Which one? That's where the search must begin. So it will be an incitement. And there, we're no longer in the beautiful, no longer in art, no longer in aesthetics, we're in philosophy. There comes a moment when it's the true that's being sought, this time. At your own risk and peril. There's a very beautiful preface to a novel that some of you have surely read, a very well-known one, called The Picture of Dorian Gray. It's one of the most famous novels in the history of the novel, by Oscar Wilde.
1:01:23 Say it, because it's an extraordinary film script. The film came too. Yes, there. The guy who's so handsome, who doesn't want to age. But that's fine, because a painter who's in love — a gay painter — makes his portrait. Because the English, end of the century, that's the decadent period, it's not pejorative in the art world. He makes his portrait in such a faithful way that the portrait captures his personality. And it's the portrait that stays beautiful. It stays beautiful for years and years. It stays young, sorry, you see. It doesn't decay. It's the portrait that... So he hides it well, so no one sees it, because the portrait...
1:01:55 It's a record of all his sins, of all these abuses, of disgust. It's magnificent as a scenario. Yeah, you could make fantastic films, even a thriller with that. I won't tell you the rest, etc. But there's an admirable preface by Oscar Wilde. He says, all art is at once surface and symbol. Danger to those who dive beneath the surface. Danger to those who read the symbol. Whoever dives beneath the surface does so at their own risk and peril.
1:02:26 There, there's my take on the relationship between beauty and truth. The beautiful expresses a truth that is not in its place and that needs to be put back in its place. That's exactly what Freud calls, in the dream, displacement. Every dream expresses a truth about myself, but a truth that is not in its place. I'll give you an example I gave yesterday. I'm getting lazy, I'm coming back to it. There's reason to be lazy, first because I'm Corsican, I can say that here. And that's not true. So God buried his Corsican in the Oscar. There's no back and forth here.
1:02:56 It's since tourism became... via Scotland's sky. It's since you can rent your packaging to a German and can wear it. Well, let's move on. So, because I'm getting lazy and tired from the Corsican sun, I remember an example of displacement in dreams, what that means. It's very technical and precise. Let's say I'm English-speaking and I have a little sister named Daisy. Daisy, wait. Who's that, is it Donald who came? Yes. Ah, she's fluent in French too. That is to say, daisy also, you know. The flowers that last only a day.
1:03:27 Beautiful things last only a morning — a second euro, that's a daisy. Let's not get lost. Suppose I dream that I'm treading on a field of daisies. A meadow, sorry, full of daisies, in bloom. I walk in it with delight. What does that mean? I am treading, trampling my little sister. It happens that during the day I told her that, that little brat, with her tantrums, her whims, I'd trample her. But that's what I do in the dream. I do it, but metaphorically, thankfully.
1:03:57 You see? The dream expresses a displaced truth. I displaced my little sister onto a flower that bears her name. That's quite fitting for the dream, as a mechanism. And insofar as I'm not guilty — I'm not guilty, because it's monstrous, that idea of trampling one's little sister. So what do we do? We only make progress with civilisation. I trample flowers that bear her name, and I trample her. And that gives me pleasure. A small example of what displacement is. But the relationship between beauty and truth, that's what it is.
1:04:29 There may be formidable realities behind what beauty is going to do. Do you remember that film, Death in Venice? Perhaps some of you. The film... Visconti. It's Thomas Mann. Thank you. Yes, it's not by Visconti — the red marquis. Yes, Visconti, bravo. Yes, bravo. It's based on a novella by Thomas Mann. You found two reasons. Based on a text by the German Thomas Mann, directed by the Italian filmmaker Visconti. That is, one of the greatest families of Italy, ultra-Communist. There are princes like that, red princes. Visconti.
1:04:59 The same one who made The Damned. Well, there's an epigraph, just during the opening credits, before the film begins, a quote from the great German poet Rilke: "Beauty is nothing but the first degree of the terrible." You see, that's the gold we were just talking about. There. I thought you'd have brought us to Plato, but you took us elsewhere, into the depths. I have a question. So, wait, Joseph, you said you did. No, but, we have time.
1:05:29 Yes, there, Hervé spoke, you spoke, I was speaking, I was speaking. Because he's asking a good question, Joseph. And if no one speaks, you'll... So, we're going to give the floor first to those who haven't spoken yet. Go ahead, even if you feel awkward, even if you don't know, we know that we don't know. If you feel awkward, that means you're doing well. So no worries, this is a people's university. Can we say the same thing about the ugly? In what sense?
The ugly, the flaw, and La Bruyère's point of perfection 1:05:59 That's an interesting question. Let me take up what you just said, but to express a truth that's not in its place, is it the flaw, is it the cultural marker? Exactly. And what's the relation? Is it... Are we just... At a certain point in the question... I'm very glad about the question. Whether it's the flaw or the beautiful, ultimately, we don't care. So, to be part of the beautiful, we showed it could be terrible, to give an example, quite... It's the little Paris [dance hall]. I've heard people say, it's ugly, we should get rid of that. Right? Quite. But I think in the sense of the question, it was in relation to what I wanted to say, that the beautiful, the first degree of the terrible, that we start with a teddy bear, it's cute.
1:06:35 A teddy bear, it might tear your face off with one swipe of its claw. Actually, when I leave the domain of art, and I'd given, as a counter-example, the gecko, you remember? The lizard, it's not beautiful, a reptile... Well, you see, what I find ugly, maybe if I looked closely, I'd be struck by the fact that I have bad feelings. That teaches me something too, bravo! Because the ugly and the beautiful, it's the same thing, they're symmetrical to one another. There you go. Quite right, thank you for the question. When I know why I find something beautiful, I also know why I find something ugly.
1:07:05 There you go. Quite right. Very good question. In short, I should be wary of keeping a bear and realizing the poor thing. So, maybe on this business of the flaw, it really starts from the defect. Is it that ultimately, to bring out the beauty of something, and maybe in the little Paris, that's what we find, we shouldn't focus on the defect, we shouldn't focus on... Isn't it the defect which, at a given moment, the defect, the error?
1:07:36 And maybe the flaw, moreover. The little flaw, of difference, there's going to be a kind of symmetry, of general balance which, frankly, is going to bring us something more substantial and fill us with emotion. And here I simply have a sentence from Marcus Aurelius, the philosopher emperor, there aren't many... to hear, no, the Stoics, there's the philosopher slave, that's Epictetus, and the emperor, philosopher. So he says this, it's about bread. Thus, objects acquire I don't know what grace and charm through the very accidents that befall them.
1:08:10 For example, bread, when it bakes, cracks open at certain points. And it turns out however that the cracks that form, and which are truly flaws in the art and design of baking, present a certain fittingness and stimulate in us the animal appetite. Great. Ah well, there we are at the heart of the problem I often discuss with our dear Miss Flavor. Ah, excuse me, damn it, she has a friend who's a flavor consultant and who put on her business card 'flavor explorer,' so we nicknamed her Miss Flavor.
1:08:40 She has a bit of a macho side, that's not good. So, with Miss Flavor, we talk about it a lot because she's preparing a thesis called 'In Praise of the Rotten.' It gets right into it, into defects. The holes like in Roquefort and the greenish streaks of mold, but that's what gives it flavor for me. No, but we're posing the problem in our time here. In our time, in our time. There is something rotten in the state of Denmark, it's not the worst thing, the rotten.
1:09:10 Isn't it so, if the wine weren't fermented, if the grape didn't ferment, it wouldn't give wine. Fermented, that's rotten, there. There's a threshold and somewhere between the bad rotten, the spoiled, which is abominable, and — that's too late — and when it's too early, which is still too green, not quite ripe, not yet arrived, what La Bruyère calls in an admirable text this point of perfection. There is, in art as in nature, a point of goodness or maturity.
1:09:40 There is in art a point of perfection, as of goodness or maturity in nature, which one senses by perfect taste, which falls short of or beyond it by defective taste. There is therefore a good and a bad taste, and one disputes tastes with foundation. La Bruyère, 17th century, what does that mean? The fig, we have this admirable fruit, right, that is to say? The fig, there's a point there, it's not sweet enough yet, you mustn't pick it yet, you see, it could still be better, you see what I mean?
1:10:16 It could be for a plum, it could also be for a cherry, it could be for damsons — there, there hasn't been enough sun yet, the synthesis of glucose hasn't gone on long enough, there isn't enough sugar yet. But if I wait too long too, it risks getting rotten, either eaten by birds and then spoiled, you see, there's a point of perfection, before which it's too early, after which it's too late, there's a relation to time, so a matter of the defect, that's it, in a way, what's admirable in the defect is that it comes precisely to bring something raw, jarring, to the sad symmetry, to perfection in the sense of the finished, terminated, which surprises nothing, in short, in which there's no disturbance — after all, that's an element of seduction between beings, disturbance, and how could you be disturbed if there's no flaw, if I'm not caught out, isn't that so?
Hippolytus caught out in Racine's Phèdre 1:11:08 That's what Hippolytus says, you know Hippolytus in Racine's Phèdre, a kind of little fool who's excessively, who is in refusal of women, of love — that's his father who was a womanizer, but not him, he has a moral bearing, what I like is hunting without eating, far from women, far from the court, but then he recounts less glorious deeds, he speaks to the one who raised him and who was Theseus's confidant: 'But when you recounted his less glorious deeds, his faithlessness, his faith everywhere offered and received in a hundred places, Helen stolen from her parents at Sparta, Salamis witness to Periboea's tears, and so many others whose names have even escaped him — a womanizer — too credulous a spirit that his ardor deceived; happy had I been able to erase from memory an unworthy half of so fine a story.'
1:11:58 I was going to say, little brat, excuse me, I'm quoting French from memory. What was I going to say? I decide for my father what is good, what is not good, I keep the monsters suppressed, the brigands punished, the hero, the Superman guy, what's it called, Freddy V, no, not Freddy, that's the wrong one, anyway, I know the sign of Samuel, and I see the series, a vigilante, but I remove all the stories of love and women, what is that? He castrates his father, we mustn't reverse things either — 'happy had I been able to erase from memory an unworthy half of so fine a story' — I cut my father in two, I'm not the one inventing it, I'm not interpreting, I told you we should always give the word back to the word, great texts are precise.
1:12:41 Well, when finally he falls in love, when he's caught out, he who distrusts women, love, sensitivity, everything that's a bit soft, when he comes to confess his love acquired for the one girl his father condemned to approach no man, for political reasons — she's the sole survivor of a family that fought him — she has nothing to do with love, he forbade Aricia from having contact with men. And as soon as the rumor runs that Theseus is dead, because it seems he's frequenting the kingdom of the dead, anyway, we believe him dead, it's a ruse, because he'll reappear before the end, and after the catharsis, the catastrophe, of course, the first woman Hippolytus was to have is the one forbidden by his father — he who is the prince, throughout all Athens really, could have any girl he wanted, he's handsome, he's the king's son, he has everything going for him — and he goes to find Aricia, isn't that so, and when he tells her, 'My bow, my javelin, my arrows, all bother me, I no longer remember Neptune's lessons,' but this groaning, so to speak, 'my forests,' perhaps the account of so wild a love, hearing it, makes you blush at your own handiwork,
1:13:52 it's like the narcissists, he admires himself, of nothing — 'what a strange captive for so fine a bond, could I resist the deceiving charm' — while I wasn't arriving, you're disappointing me about myself, you're catching me out, I'm really answering your question strictly, and that's when he's in love, it's when he's no longer the proud one, the haughty one at the time, if you know your Latin, but when he's caught out, being himself too, like you and me, someone who desires, therefore someone lacking something, therefore to whom something or someone is missing — that's what it means to lack, no?
1:14:29 It's having a defect of, because it also means lacking, the defect — you agree? The flaw, there you go, no, I've drifted a bit off, so there is indeed a link between the defect... okay, two seconds, of course, try to form a question, it's not a question, it's — because it was about the fig, yes, so the fig, that's a plus, no, I like that, I'm of Italian origin, so I know fig trees, I know the fig — the fig, when it's on the tree, when it's beautiful, it's not edible, you have to wait for it to become, for its skin to crack, then it's going to be a delight, when it's full of defects, there you go, yes, that's true, that's what I meant to say, that is to say beauty, on one hand, is beautiful to look at, but as soon as it starts to look flawed, that's maybe when it's at its best — great, I'll keep that one, I'll keep it as an example, that'll be a change from my usual examples, good for celebrations. And then, one last thing, and then I'll drop it — we have two beautiful departments, the Haute-Marne and the Meuse, and it's true they're beautiful, there are forests, there are villages, I have close ties to it, it's a fine part of my country,
1:15:40 whether it's the Meuse, or the Haute-Marne, that I can't understand, and this — the whole of France, all the departments fought so as not to have this nuclear dump, and we let it happen, to destroy this land a bit, I'm sorry to talk about this, Bertrand, but it had to... No, he asked a question, he didn't mean to ask a question, he wanted to throw a stone into the pond, into the pond of Lake Der — no, we still have to talk about this magnificent department, whether it's the Meuse or the Haute-Marne, and future generations won't see it the same way anymore, because there will be this nuclear thing that's going to...
The romantic garden, the right angle, and Greek measure at Sounion 1:16:18 That's all I mean. We're not going to open the debate on nuclear power. Meanwhile, I've never advertised the idea that only the defect is interesting, we mustn't hide it either, which I haven't said, but I only have the right — there is a point of perfection where the defect comes to add to perfection what it was missing, in order to be delightful. Isn't that this business of the defect that we wanted to restore, for example, with English gardens, the Ermenonville park, as opposed to French gardens — straight, rectilinear, where we tell ourselves that, well, the straight line is beautiful, the triangle is beautiful.
1:16:48 By the way, your question is interesting, because the first occurrences of the word 'romantic' as an epithet, in terms of occurrence, in the texts of the period, it's a technical term at first, and not at all a literary or aesthetic term. It refers to English gardens, the 'romantic' mode of gardens, as opposed to the classical mode, the French-style garden. Originally, that's it. When Rousseau, who's one of the very first to use it, doesn't at all mean what it will come to mean afterward, says, speaking of Lake Biel, where he lived the best moments of his life, on Saint Peter's Island, in the middle of Lake Biel, when he says the shores of Lake Biel are wilder and more romantic than those of Lake Geneva, because there one sees fewer vineyards and cultivated fields, one sees more forests and thickets.
1:17:28 That means wilder, quite simply, and nature, Lake Biel. Exactly. Where human effort is caught out. A defect of rationalization of the setting, of course. So, maybe, I've got a moment here that... Also, an architect once told me — I think it's coming back to me all of a sudden — an architect who told me things that meant a lot to me when I was a teenager, because I've admired it more than anything since. And in Paris, there may well be some here too, but in Paris there are many, as in very old towns that weren't bombed, weren't destroyed, very old medieval houses.
1:18:00 And you know the wall that's a bit bulging. There's the wall that bows out to the point where sometimes you have to put wooden props so it doesn't collapse. But he said... That's tragic. He said, because as an architect, my dream is to achieve this perfection. When it's bulging, you can't deliberately build a house that looks like that. Right. I can't build brand new a house that's aged. Right. It's a bit the same thing. He said, it's a marvel. He said, it's a kind of thing that comes to disturb the right angle and the — with a curvature. A little tropism, a curve, so we could call it curved.
1:18:33 To illustrate your point. That makes me think of the Parthenon. Exactly. The Luc talked a lot about that. Exactly. But that's because it's when we find that beautiful when we're almost too overwhelmed by rationality. By the right angle, if I might put it that way, to take the metaphor. But the opposite. I'd like us to talk about ourselves. So beauty, I'd like us to talk about the Greeks actually. Yes. I was going to take you to Sounion. I was going to take you there. Especially if you mention Sounion. Because I went to Greece late in life, for a reason.
1:19:03 I won't go on about my life but I went a bit later than I should have. And for once, I wasn't the one guiding, by the way. And we arrived at Cape Sounion. Some of you may know it a little, it's about fifty kilometers from Athens. It's a place where suddenly you see, a bit like in Brittany, very unlike the rest of Greece, infinity. I mean that in Greece, it's very rare to see the infinite. It's a bit like the Mediterranean, like Corsica. The landscape is enclosed. There's a peninsula, an inlet, a bay, a roadstead, an islet. You see, the landscape, the view, doesn't go on to infinity.
1:19:33 It's not the ocean, it's the Mediterranean. And there, for once, you have the three infinities: the light, the wind, the sea, all the way to the end. That's where the Greeks built the temple of Poseidon, the Greek name for Neptune. That's to say, that's where they made the right angle. They dared to do that. They turned their back on the splendor of nature. They made the world of man. They said, that's for the gods. It's not for us.
1:20:03 They made this world that belongs to man. They arranged the world in which we live. That's what I wanted to point out anyway. We must also speak well of the right angle and of perfection. As opposed to the cow. It's an element of effort. Always renewed. It's not perfection acquired and inherited. But is it that among the Greeks, then, beauty is the sense of measure? Yes, absolutely. There you go. To set a measure, measure is the opposite of the undetermined. The infinite. Your example is very good because in all Greek temples, you see, you have the Parthenon in mind, you have the pediment which comes to limit the verticality, the upward thrust of the columns.
1:20:42 You have the pediment which comes to impose a measure. 'Don't go too high, my friend, don't be like Icarus.' It's perilous to go too high. That's the Greeks. Whereas the religions of transcendence — Christianity, the bell tower, the cathedral, Islam, the minaret — it's a challenge. It goes toward the infinite. That's a religion of transcendence. That's us, that's the moderns, that's not antiquity. There you go. It must be pointed out. You have the choices. So, let's take a few more remarks. Go ahead.
Popular art, myth, and the pop music that kills popular musics 1:21:13 Go ahead, sir. Aren't you the one who mentioned this masterpiece of popular art? Yes, so, the question about Lascaux pleased me a lot. Because it brings us back to popular art. Because you started by saying that the guy who did that, he didn't learn in a conservatory, he didn't learn at an art school. You agree? Absolutely. That's exactly it. The guys at Lascaux, they didn't have access to an art school, or to paints. We're in agreement.
1:21:43 You did very well to ask the question. Yes, so popular art, it's the here and now. Everything begins with popular art, that's what I mean. There's poetry. I think of the griots, the African griots — I keep saying — the bard, the aoidos, oral poetry. It began like that, with our grandmothers and great-aunts. Some of you remember them, who had versified, rhymed sayings, you know, proverbs, maxims that are rhythmic like poems. Well yes, that's how art began.
1:22:14 So we must give back to the people what belongs to the people. It has a name, the poem of the people, the poem that no individual author can sign. That's modern, like an artist, like an individual, that's already a progress of modernity. No. But which is so collective that it gets lost in the mists of time. It has a name, this poem, it's the myth, the mythos, the myth. All the Greek children, to tell of Achilles' exploits, they were like that, they knew it by heart, even though they had the right to discover it for the first time when it was told for the eighth time with variations.
1:22:46 Because it plunges into anonymity. And that's the top, ahead of the author. I want to pay tribute here to the very first of artists, who is after all the demos. I remembered popular culture, popular music, popular dances, and what you told us about how a certain style of music that you can hear in Saint-Dizier as in Berlin, in New York as in Tokyo, came along and swept it all away a bit. There's no more popular dance, no more music. I felt I was being a bit harsh on the young rockers earlier, but well, you're bringing me back to that.
1:23:18 But indeed... the little Paris, that's popular art, isn't it. Yes, but it's not the same thing. Because precisely, because you can't find it anywhere else, the little Paris. I've never seen a tea dance anywhere else. Whereas all rock has the same meter, four beats, and they have the same timbres, the amplified string, whether it's guitar or bass guitar — for 60 years young people have known only one timbre. Those who listen to classical music know the oboe, the flute, the horn, their ear is enriched by tons of timbres. Those others, they're condemned to a single timbre for 60 years. I'm being harsh, there. It's an astounding monotony for a music that claims to be transgressive, maybe not at all.
1:23:49 An effect of repetition, and reputed — I know you don't agree. It's rock. No, I don't agree. I'm attacking you right in the middle. Yes, that's not the war being waged. Jazz, rock. It's not that I'm attacking the fact that we're deprived of making comparisons with other music. But wait, let me finish. Just let me finish, it's not to talk about rock, quite the opposite. It's to say that there exists in our era a musical phenomenon, I remind you, unprecedented in human musical history. It's that popular musics, in their diversity, their rich diversity, were very different in voice from one region to another.
1:24:24 There was rather the tango in the southwest. There was rather the java or the mazurka in Alsace or in the northeastern regions with the accordion. It varied from one region to another because popular music, I tell you, at that time, the music that expresses the soul of that particular people, like a flower that can only grow on that particular soil, in that particular climate, in that particular era, here and now. Whereas, for the first time in human musical history, I remind you, for almost a generation now, you hear the same music between 10pm and 2am in Tokyo, in Beijing, you hear Michael Jackson for example.
1:25:01 I mean, I don't mean this poor kid who dances very well. In my opinion, what we see is much better than what we hear, which is monotonous. Anyway, in Paris, in Stockholm, you hear the same costumes, the same hits. Everywhere it's the same, of course. And so that means this pop music has come to kill popular musics. I'm doing it on purpose, playing on the words. Because we cut them off, I'm sorry. That's fine, that's fine. But can we speak of popular art? Yes, but rock is not popular art. Or else, there are two popular arts, I'll let you choose, because I don't know how to settle the way people talk about it.
1:25:34 Is the little Paris popular art? I mean, or popular music? I mean, music listened to by a great number of people. And in that case, rock is popular. No problem. I stand by what I say. Or else popular means what expresses — in the opposite sense, coming from below — a specific people, the Corsican people, or the people of Saint-Dizier [bragard]. Well yes! I don't know, on that point I wanted to intervene, it's because you said that in classical music, many instruments came into play. The timbre, yes. The timbre. Whereas there are rock groups that pick up on classical a bit, right now there are a number of, instruments of music, but that, we don't know these musicians.
1:26:13 I know, I've taught those bands. I know, I know. But that's not what's played in most clubs tonight. Yes, but yes, but wait, I'm trying — not to deal with you, but with... This is going to be tough with José. No, no, no. But with millions of young people locked up in sonic ghettos, which isn't the same thing. Of course, if they can free themselves from it, that's all I'm saying. I'm sorry. I have nothing against rock itself. No, but if without meaning to, young people don't listen to what they should listen to — me, I'm eclectic.
1:26:44 That is to say I listen to everything from classical to pop. But you're saved, that's all I'm saying. So I'm not against you. I think we're being... So, Aude, yes? We're being extremely pessimistic about the behavior and the future of young people. And I think they're much more... much smarter than... I agree with Célmo. Célmo. Having taught for a long time, I quite agree with you. Because every time we expose them to several kinds of music, they make their own choice, believe me. And that can... They're not as stupid as what they show us.
1:27:15 They're very well brought up. When they have the choice. I've never seen them go wrong when they have the choice, the young people. You're absolutely right. Yes. I remember my little Malian, Nigerien students, tears in their eyes, telling me, sir, don't you have other Chopin waltzes, other scores? Can you play them. That's really... It has a strange effect. If there's ever an occasion, you go looking for investment, sculpture men, you'll... But yes, but I'm not doing well. You'll have a great time. I listen because I know. I'm privileged like you. I don't think it's for me. No, but the young — there's nothing against the young. No, but the young people, at the same time, they don't watch TV, the young people.
1:27:45 No. They appear on TV. But young people, as soon as something's a hit in the street, boom, they listen and that's it. It doesn't go any further. Are there other remarks about beauty, education? Can it be learned or not? Is it a thing? Already, the beauty of music, that can be learned. Is it, in your view, something one has within and can express? Everyone is artistic. Rock musicians coming to ask a jazz musician how do you make those chords. There you go. Yes. Maybe it would also be necessary to highlight the difference between the innate and the acquired.
1:28:19 Ah, that's close to your heart. Yes. Yesterday, actually, that was it. Let's start over from zero. It's nature and culture. The innate is what's born — that means natural. It comes from birth. That's what's innate. But natural is the cave. I think I showed that it doesn't come from the innate. It's art. It's acquired. When John Lennon says, power to the people, he's not saying just anything. He's trying to give a message to young people. Quite. We won't get into classical because John Lennon wasn't really classical.
1:28:51 But he's trying to express a message by saying that power belongs to the people because the people are beautiful to look at. That's what he was saying through his thing. But I laugh at John Lennon because I used to listen too much when I was young. Me, I have nothing to lose. We're talking about beauty. I have nothing to lose. And John Lennon said that the people were beautiful. Beautiful people. No, it's power to the... people. Me, I'm terrible. It's beautiful. Yes. I know it by heart. Everyone is beautiful.
1:29:21 Everyone says the nice ones. Make love not war. That's fine, that's my generation. I know. That's what I meant to say. The flowered shirts, etc. All of it ends in barbarity. That's what I'm saying. It ends in war. It ends in a National Front at 60%. And me, they tell me, it's not my fault. I have a philosopher friend who wrote 'Under the paving stones, Le Pen.' And why classical, whereas Hitler used to listen — I don't remember which piece... Strauss waltzes, that's what he preferred. You want to know. That is to say what's most popular in southern Germany and Austria. Strauss waltzes, which my grandmother adored. My grandmother wasn't a Nazi, poor thing.
1:29:51 There we go, but Hitler, that's what he preferred. But what did Hitler do? Good. So, if there are no other remarks, we'll wrap up. So, thank you, Dominique. Still, thank you, Hitler. Thank you. I also want to thank the museum directorate and the museums of Saint-Dizier. Yes, we were authorized to reconstruct this place, because it's still quite something. Virginie is going to give us a little presentation, perhaps, on the Petit Paris. The Petit Paris? Yes, I'll just say a word of conclusion.
1:30:25 So, our next meeting will be on January 23rd with someone you know very well, Jean Salem. Is that so? Yes, Jean Salem, Jean-Stéphane, who will be Guérien. Oh really, that worries me, I wasn't aware that he had surgery on his brain, something like that. Ah, I see, I had no information, so this is tentative, but normally he'll be with us, an immense philosopher, the son of Henri Alleg, you know him. He's someone who's a leading specialist in philosophy, wrote a thesis on the Commune, who was himself tortured during the Algerian War, and Alleg was a member of the Communist Party at the time, by the way.
1:30:58 And likewise, on my end. She wrote the thesis. It's his son, Jean Salem, who wrote the thesis. And who is indeed a great specialist in ancient atomism, in Epicurus, in Democritus. And he'll come and tell us whether there is a right to happiness. There you go. Right, happiness, that seems fairly agonistic, paradoxical, we'll see about that with him. So that's January 23rd at the MJC. Our next meeting, we hope Dominique will be with us. You mean he'll be alive. Well no, you have to do it.
1:31:28 I've arranged things. Since my heart attack, I've arranged it so I don't make it through the winter. I called on death. It's arranged. So that will normally be at the Larcelet bookshop. It will be around the 20th, well, late February. So the day before, actually, we'll present this film with Dominique at the Bettancourt media library, the island of the people. And so it will be on education and knowledge. And then, in April, we'll do it at the Vallée de la Marne workshops, the reintegration workshop, they make wooden pallets, education and language.
1:32:03 These are also people who have difficulties. There are a lot of female voters, but anyway, we'll do that with them. And the last one, in June, will normally be education and youth in the MJC's allotment gardens, like we did last year. So, if you're interested, you can always join the Popular University. The little forms are here. The DVD, well, there isn't one right now, but you can always order it here. So, Virginie, if you could now tell us a bit about the decoration of the Petit Paris.
Marcel Dhièvre's Petit Paris 1:32:37 The Petit Paris. So, I read—I don't know where it is—and Dominique said there's a love story, so Marcel Dhièvre's wife, there's a love nest, is that right? Did I understand correctly? I don't know if it's that precise, I can come back to it. Yes, yes, but there's a nest. Let's go back a bit to his story. Marcel Dhièvre was married twice. The first time, he settled in Heurville, we were talking about Heurville earlier. Ah, there's something there. And he started out there, I believe, with a first shop, or in any case his house in Heurville, with his first wife, that's where he started tinkering a bit.
1:33:08 He hadn't yet met the power of art. Then, for reasons I don't know, he got divorced, and remarried a woman who adored him. And he adored her too. Who adored him, or whom he adored? Both. I'm not sure which we said. He adored her and admired her. She admired him enormously and he, for her, well, he cherished her. And so it's for her that he also bought this shop here, which was both a lingerie shop, so we're in the 1950s, and a clothing shop for men, let's say, more broadly.
1:33:46 And so, textiles, in a sense. Textiles, exactly. It was a hosiery shop. And it's beautiful too. So it was his own interest, but it was also for her that he began decorating the interior so she could be in a beautiful environment. And, well, I don't have the timeline of his work, but he worked on this house for more than 20 years, little by little, outside, inside, and we're really looking at a work, that's what I meant by 'living work' too, because it's a piece that built up, accumulated bit by bit.
1:34:18 He received a lot of objects from people in the neighborhood. He got his supplies mainly in crockery, since you can see outside, there are pieces of earthenware. Actually, you don't see broken plate shards like that anymore. And so he really practiced an art of salvage. It's an art of recovery. And so, once again, I don't have the details of his journey, his path, step by step, how he decorated things.
1:34:48 What's interesting, then, to get a bit into Marcel Dhièvre's imagination, is all the themes, all the—yes—all the themes he develops. We see there's a whole universe, there's nature. We were talking about that earlier. Oh, on that note, excuse me, I'll interrupt you just a second. You were talking about Sumo earlier, but tell me what he did. If you look at the facade of the Petit Paris, it's decorated. There's the Greek temple, there. No, that's not it. So you have Paris, you have the Arc de Triomphe, you have the monuments depicted. You have the world of men there. And there, what do you have?
1:35:18 Greek animals. You have the car, there. You have the animals, you have the fables, there's the fox. He put it in the courtyard. Exactly, exactly. He put it in the courtyard. No, but that's what it gives. That's very well observed. That's exactly it. It's really nature and culture. On one side, he was fascinated by Paris because he got his supplies in Paris. So, the Petit Paris, of course. And the Petit Paris. And so he was able to go there several times and was fascinated by that city. So on one side we have the Madeleine, the Madeleine church. Ah, that's it, the temple, I see.
1:35:48 It's the Madeleine. There you go, the Arc de Triomphe. We can look, I think there's a tourist at the Tuileries. So we have this reference to the... To the heart of the capital. ...urban side. And on the other side, we have this whole plant environment that... That... Very good. ...spreads everywhere on the walls. We have the fable of the crow... Quite fitting, there. Right on point. He was masterful. He also brought things into relief, in the end. Things didn't stay flat. It's raised, yes.
1:36:18 And so, what's interesting is that everything is at once within the frame and outside the frame. That is to say, we can clearly see that he respects—well, that's the relationship, obviously. He respects the surfaces. We have flat areas. There, everything is well framed. And at the same time, we feel that he... spills over. That's great. It's fitting to say that the plant elements spread because we get the impression of being overrun as if by a jungle or vines. That's exactly it. And I think that's also what happened in his work as an artist. Little by little, he himself let himself be overrun and overran the space.
1:36:51 He did well. And... And upstairs, is it the same? Upstairs, inside. And the upper floor, did he decorate it? There, that wasn't... There, it's white. He stopped there. There used to be something else there before. Ah, I see. I'll just make a small remark about the title 'Petit Paris.' It tells me, in a way, that it's not quite Paris. And I learn that he was a small shopkeeper to begin with. Now, I remember very well. Those close to my age know this too. When I was a kid, there were a lot of shops in the provinces, novelty shops, haberdasheries, called 'Au Petit Paris.'
1:37:25 Oh yes, well, so there was... That designated almost—I won't say a profession, but a guild of modest small shopkeepers who had little novelties you could find in the provinces, things that were reminiscent of elsewhere. I would have said 'Paris fantasy.' On a remark from a filthy Marxist, you're in a neighborhood called La Noue, which was both a wine-growers' district, called the high paths, that's 'les voies hautes,' there you go. And there was a bargemen's district, and there was trade, so all the iron was hauled all the way to Paris.
1:38:02 There's the waterway to Paris, which means Parisian influence was also real there, which nourished this neighborhood. It brought material life to this neighborhood, which was really... So, what you don't know is that in Joinville, there's also a Petit Paris, a shop that exists, called Au Petit Paris, it's written on it.
1:38:36 what's also remarkable is how attached the population is to this. It's something—there won't be a single tag on it, there won't be anything like that, you know. It's a case of preservation by example. There you go, people are very attached to this thing. My son calls it the gingerbread house, and me, passing by, I... there's a kind of tart-house feel to it. Yes, it's... Because, when I was online, I searched for the Petit Paris, but I specified Saint-Dizier.
1:39:07 And then, they turned up about twenty Petit Paris shops all across France. That's crazy. There's something, maybe, your son's gingerbread idea, one might almost say nougat. Yes, there's a big cake feel. Thank you very much for these details, Virginie. Thank you very much, Virginie, for these details. It's a bit invented. It's extremely... and that phrase of Marcel Dhièvre's, who said the idea was there, it gave him no rest. He had to brighten up his days with his work.
1:39:39 No, I'm not an artist, I'm just adding a bit of color to the greyness of his days. To brighten up—did you see that self-effacement, that humility, not false modesty, but 'I'm not an artist.' The first mediocre hack nowadays thinks he's the greatest thing since sliced bread. I'm just trying to brighten up the greyness. And this was in the last years of... And Madame recalled that Marcel Dhièvre had paralysis in his right hand. Yes. So there you go, he'd moved to the worse. Yes, especially since in the last years of his life, he was relatively well known, he had arrived, and he was starting to have...
1:40:13 A certain renown. Yes, he was starting to be a bit... It's a shame, what I wasn't able to get the documents for, because it would have been interesting to see him speak to... Well, it was Jacques Martin who was touring France looking for original things, and he saw this guy who painted every day in front of his door, sitting there, and he made a documentary about him that you weren't able to get... From the INA. Yes, I have the exact reference, from the INA. But what he says is interesting all the same. There you go, so I'll also point out that Dominique wrote a book on Hegel, and here he talks a lot about...
1:40:48 Women. And... Femininity, community. Hegel, and aesthetics. Which he has.
