The idiot, the animal and the poet. From the silence of beasts to the silences of fools in «Silence» by Didier Comès
Abstract
At the boundary of animals and men, this article examines the particular case of the idiot. He has been often depicted by psychiatrics but also literature as an human animal. Therefore, he questions the separation that Descartes instituted between nature and humanity. With Silence, the village idiot Didier Comès’s comic book, it seems possible to bring them back together. His double deficiency ‒ he is stupid but also dumb ‒ reveals the humanity of the beasts on the one hand and the bestiality of the human beings and the other hand. Beyond that, Comès seems to invite us to gaze at the world like a poet. For this, he chooses pictures rather than words, using an aesthetic that can be described as pantheistic.
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