Claude was eminently skilled in conversation. Because he listened. He listened attentively and intently. He measured the words he heard and thought long before risking an answer. So long, in fact, that in the beginning it confused the narrator. This man was clearly not one of those people who, in the words of La Bruyère, “speak one moment before they think.”
And so here we have a paradox: a book of conversations with someone who hardly spoke! Yet, despite everything, bonds have been forged: encounters between people who, at least initially, posed a dilemma for one another—a nearly illiterate but wise man on the one hand, and an academic, a literary man to boot, made verbose through professional deformation on the other…
As a genre, the dialogue has a long and venerable history in literature. It was especially popular in the 17th and 18th centuries, but the history of this literary form can be traced back to the Platonic dialogues with Socrates and various other interlocutors.
To be sure, this small book makes no claim to join in the august ranks of the dialogues of Plato, Seneca, Diderot, Fontenelle, David Hume, Marguerite de Navarre, or even Voltaire and his satirical approach.
It simply tells of an encounter.
Published in French.
