Daily Life in Alphabetville

To Anaïse Chavenet

I would like, here, to offer a tribute to the alphabet. I am not talking about literature, but about the simple fact of being able to express, with twenty-six luminous letters, personal feelings so complex that we do not always manage to understand them ourselves. I am still amazed, after a lifetime spent with these mysterious signs, to know almost nothing about these little princesses and duchesses (vowels and consonants) that structure our sensitivity.

Apart from their sound and their shape,