Reading in 3 voices (1 writer + 2 actors)

Wed 24 June at 8pm / Duration: 45 min / Free of charge

Is it possible to hear the world too much? Belinda Cannone invites us, through her dainty novel/fable, to get to grips with today’s deafening noise.

Jeanne has such keen hearing that she hears everything: the screeching of a mouse’s claws in the house next door; the yelping of a vixen deep in the forest; the splash of rain on the leaves of a distant tree. All those things are more worrying than awe-inspiring to her. Jeanne is eleven years old. She would like to know what is happening to her. A man, Jodel, has the same gift – talent? disadvantage? – as Jeanne. When they meet, he decides to teach her how to control the strange skill they have in common. A wonderful friendship develops, studious and full of joy. But soon, things get complicated: a musician in love, a seedy newspaper article, Security Forces, and an unrepentant war criminal burst on the scene one after the other in this perfectly logic yet unbelievable story.

Background

Belinda Cannone is a novelist. She has had several novels published, such as Lent delta (Verticales 1998), Dernières promenades à Petropolis (Le Seuil 1990), L’homme qui jeûne and Entre les bruits (Éditions de l’Olivier 2006 & 2009). She has also written essays: some on the relationship between literature and music, but also some well-known books such as L’Écriture du désir (Calmann-Lévy 2000, which was awarded the prize for Best Essay by the Académie Française), Le Sentiment d’imposture (Calmann-Lévy 2005, "Folio" Gallimard 2009, Best Essay award from the Société des Gens de Lettres) and La bêtise s’améliore (Stock 2007). She has just published the novel Entre les bruits (L’Olivier 2009).

Extract

“We will go back to the clearing and sit on our listening devices, like regal forest creatures. You will no doubt be impatient as always, asking immediately what stars may sound like. We’ll see – we’ll hear, corrects Jeanne - but I can already tell you that once again, you shouldn’t remain stuck between your two ears. Soon, you’ll see, you will feel like the sounds come from you, from deep within you, like they are yours. But if you listen carefully, you will realise they are not peculiar, but that they go through you like they do others, but only you can hear them, and after a while, you will be able to recognise and order them. The sound of the stars may resonate in the hook of your ears, but you must know that it has been travelling through the universe since the dawn of time and that it belongs to everybody. The dawn of time? I hear you ask. Yes, I can hear you already. This means a long time, a real long time, not like your long time, that of mountains and oceans, no: it means almost, listen carefully, almost since the origin of times."