Sylvain Tesson: “The Slavophile that I am is unhappy”

On rattle, we break, we consume, we judge, we pollute, we are jealous, forgetting a key attribute of our existence: death. Is it the forgetting of this universal end that leads man, and first of all the Westerner, to these permanent failings? Or is it the prospect of a multisecular life promised by science? Or the death of God, which obstructs the horizon? Following a fall in 2014, Sylvain Tesson almost died. Since then, he sketches life and sketches death, with a pencil that draws the dead and not the sentences of a travelogue. In a preamble to his collection of drawings at Albin Michel^*the writer reminds us of our fate: “Man believes himself to be immortal. It is its greatness, it is its weakness. Neglecting the inescapable, denying the fact that everything is played out in a reprieve…

Illustrations: Dusault for “Le Point” – Sylvain Tesson (x2)