Alain Finkielkraut talks to Claudia HunzingerAuthor of A Dog at My Table and Cedric Sapin Defour, which publishes Smell After Rain: two authors who tell us about the intense bond they shared with their dog. There is also a place for love for the person who shares your life, and these two lyrics are both magical.
“Ubac, that’s his name (finding the right name is an adventure in itself), is not the central character of this book, Cédric Sapin-Defour, his master, certainly not. don’t want to be considered a master hero is her bond. This bond, unique, evident, and to those who have explored it, surpasses so many other relationships. This volume, illegible and useless to those for whom the company of dogs evokes nothing Its smell of the rain, Cédric Sapin -Defour, (ed. Stock)
“One evening a young dog, dragging a dirty story behind him with his broken chain, appears at the door of an old couple: Sophie, a writer who loves nature and goes for walks in the woods, and her companion Grieg, who is already from the… world is, asleep reading by day and reading by night, living on literature.” A dog at my table, Claudia Hunzinger (Ed. Grasset).
“I have read with admiration Claudie Hunzinger’s book A dog at my table and Cédric Sapin-Defour’s Smell of the Rain. That’s where I actually learned that dogs, these pets, have something to teach us, and it’s useful, if not salutary, to have a fling with them.” Alain Finkielkraut
Who is the dog in “A Dog at My Table”?
“Before I get to Yes, the character of A Dog at My Table, it seems to me that I have to go back much further upstream first, to my four years, to my five years, when I was that age there a little dog. I was a little dog first before I was a little girl. And this little dog that I was was at odds with my family, he was hit, sometimes hit, he stuck his tongue out at school and he bit his little friends. I think I learned this way of leaving the group of people from a small dog that was in the family, which I don’t remember.” Claudia Hunzinger
“I remember that as a child, access to adulthood was, above all, the opportunity to choose this company” (C. Sapin-Defour)
“We could have talked about dogs, we could even have talked about the animal, and here we start this discussion by talking about Ubac, who – ever since he was dead – was a living being, very much alive, an individual who was with is equipped with a deep psyche life, an inwardness, it was the herding dog of all dogs that I was allowed to meet in my life, which had never been mine, it was always about strange dogs, the family dogs, friends, hounds. I remember as a child, for me, accessing adulthood was, above all, the opportunity to choose this company.” Cedric Sapin Defour
give a name
“Yes: that name came to mind as soon as this little dog arrived. I called her yes because she was in bad shape, ‘she asked for help, she was on her back, she had shown that she is a woman, so this yes can be understood in different ways: it is the yes of Narrator: “I answer you yes, YES, I’ll take you, yes, we will be friends.” Then it is also the female yes to life, the inaugural yes.” Claudia Hunzinger
“It’s quite dizzying to name a name. You have to have a little bit of yourself, a little bit of your expectations, a little bit of your fears, I didn’t have a spontaneous reaction, I didn’t have a yes who came to me , I have a lot searched, I crossed out a lot, I waited, it was a long journey. Cedric Sapin Defour
“I have a personal history that is very strongly connected to the mountains; to the practice of the mountains, but also to the fact of experiencing the mountains, and this sun-protected slope, which for me is called the opposite, the backside, the also called Ubac, and I found when I shared my life with Ubac that it was a name that suited it beautifully, because it’s a slope where you hide, where you watch the world without being seen, but where we do not reject the clarity of the world, they are there. Cedric Sapin Defour
“Dogs are great humanists. They could be the last humanists.” (C.Hunzinger)
“This little dog’s life has suddenly turned life upside down; she started life, she pulled out the narrator, she pulled her out, she taught her to walk again dog but it didn’t just happen there with that dog because I happen to be a writer and between the dog who is there, and the person who is there and has his job, always something in play is great humanists. They are perhaps the last humanists.” Claudia Hunzinger
“Sometimes it doesn’t take much to see the world differently. Just sitting on the ground and suddenly the earth spins differently, the beings we meet get new perspectives, even the air I’ve spent a lifetime on the ground with big hits of friction, the percussion on the ground, but if I try to define what I miss most about this joyful society today, this humanistic society, this silent society with Ubac, is getting back on my feet and back on the ground”. Cedric Sapin Defour
The entire program can be heard by clicking on the page.
Bibliographic Sources
Claudia HunzingerA dog at my table ed Grasset
Cedric Sapin DefourIts smell after the rain ed. share
Virginia Woolf,
Flush Ed. The Sound of Time
Gilbert Keith ChestertonOrthodoxy ed. Inflammation
Marlene Haushofer, The Invisible Wall ed. Southern nudes
Milan KunderaThe unbearable lightness of being ed. Gallimard