Terra Amata
J. M. G. Le Clézio
Language: English
Pages: 147
ISBN: B000IL7NOM
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
For Chancelade, the world is teeming with beauty, wonder and possibilities. From a small boy playing on the beach, through his adolescence and his first love, to the death of his father and on to the end of his own life, he relishes the most minute details of his physical surroundings - whether a grain of sand, an insect or a blade of grass - as he journeys on a sensory adventure from cradle to grave.
Filled with cosmic ruminations, lyrical description and virtuoso games of language and the imagination, Terra Amata brilliantly explores humankind's place in the universe, the relationship between us and the Earth we inhabit and, ultimately, how to live.
Le Tour du monde en quatre-vingt jours
Spot. ‘If an elephant passes a certain way but once that way becomes a road, and if his mother passes that way also, that road becomes a plain. The elephant has a head but no neck. ‘Elephant Laaye, enormous animal! Elephant La-n-dede, thy name is “Death, stand aside, I pray thee!” He who says he will slay the elephant, and the hunter who says “I shall bring down an elephant”, receive the elephant’s reply: “If thou knowest the fate of goats, leave me in peace. But if thou knowest it not, come.
White or red cloth shades were scattered about the room. And on the wall over the bed there was an imitation antique engraving of a horseman surrounded by a pack of hounds. On the table to the right of the bed was a white telephone without a dial and a pottery ashtray. On one side a cream-painted door opened into the bathroom. It was a small room lined with white tiles and contained: a bath (white); a washbasin (white); a wardrobe with a mirror (white); a towel-rail (white); towels (white); a.
Apaches, Navajos, and they still owned the land.’ ‘Yes, it must have been very interesting.’ ‘Or else I’d have liked to live 500 million years ago—you know, at the time of the brontosauruses and ceratosauruses and pterodactyls.’ ‘And mammoths.’ ‘No, I think the mammoths came later, after the mastodons. No, at the time I meant there must just have been amphibians and reptiles, and seas and lakes and swamps everywhere.’ ‘And another thing that would be fun would be to live 50 million years.
Means the human race has already reached its highest point. Henceforth it will just gradually decline. All that’s been invented will be forgotten, people won’t know how to write any more, fire and tools and language will all be forgotten. They won’t know how to walk on two legs any more, and then one fine day it will be all over.’ ‘It’s awful to think of it.’ ‘Not really. There may be other species, other forms of civilization.’ ‘It’s still awful to imagine. All that trouble for nothing.’.
That’s not all. You can speak in gestures like the Nootka Indians; with wings like bees; by whistling like porpoises; by making faces like gibbons. You can feel with your fingers like the blind, or play the organ like musicians. The world is spread out all around, perfectly comprehensible. The wind makes a noise in the trees, the clouds mass on the horizon: that means it’s going to rain. The moon is yellow with a misty halo: that means that winter’s coming. The insects grate furiously, the frogs.