A collection of speeches given around the world by Michèle Petit on the importance of the arts and literature in our troubled lives.

In this collection of essays, Michèle Petit analyses the place of art and literature in the context of crises that have been multiplying in recent years (war, climate change, Covid-19, etc.).

It’s about the beauty that can transfigure the worst after wars or terrorist attacks; the transmission of culture in exile, which is the lot of so many children, women and men today; the way in which language, when it is close to the sung form, enables us to come to terms with space and with what we call nature; the dreams that literature helps us rediscover; libraries, those houses of thought where new ways of living together are invented; the discreet sharing of books during the Covid-19 pandemic…

Michèle Petit uses a variety of means to remind us that the utilitarian is never enough for us, and that we cannot be reduced to economic variables, or even to our social roles: we are also, and perhaps above all, poetic animals.