Measuring the world at a walking pace

Paul Morand wrote that 'outside is a more beautiful word than today' because geography makes history and footsteps invent the lives of every human being. Not even Sylvain Tesson escapes this flow of horizons, oceans and deserts: he has demonstrated this with masterpieces such as Sentieri neri or Bianco, published by Sellerio, and he also reiterates it in the form of the diary with Una leggerissima oscillazione. Diaries 2014-2017, which Piano B proposes by collating the writings published in "Le Point" (where the author keeps his monthly notebook), "Philosophie Magazine" and "Grands Reportages".

Like the ancients, Tesson also believes in 'Nulla die sine linea' and travels because 'the wayfarer is the only alternative to Musil's "man without qualities"', aware that walking is a fierce hand-to-hand combat with oneself, which tests one's inner resilience. Then comes the writing that brings order to the chaos, in the overdose of sensations, cues, encounters: 'Keeping a diary enriches existence. The daily appointment with the blank page forces one to pay more attention to the facts of the day, to listen better, to think deeper, to look more intensely'. And perhaps find peace: Sylvain Tesson on 20 August 2014 'falls on his own shadow' in Chamonix, while climbing the roof of his house. Ten metres of emptiness, 26 fractures, eight days in a pharmacological coma, a slow recovery and a journey of rebirth through France follow. He walks, he climbs mountains, he climbs the parapets of life and he writes, he observes the world from up there, with a slant that oscillates between ethics and endless dynamism. Measuring the world with one's body means having the possibility of accessing the Whole through the part and knowing that 'he who is rural eats what grows within his range; he knows nothing about Korean cinema, he doesn't give a damn about American primaries, but he understands why mushrooms grow at the foot of a certain stump. From a limited knowledge, he accesses the universal'.

Thus, Tesson's reflections on a film, on a book, on the news (from the Charlie Hebdo massacre to that of the Bataclan), on political events, become timeless lessons, journeys through the thoughts and lands of the world and the certainty that technology keeps us on a leash, tames us and, finally, hypnotises us. For this, it is best to leave our moorings. From the calanques of Marseille, Tesson descends into a sea cave with the impression of 'having emerged from a cathedral where the wedding of the sea, the sun, the cliffs and the abysses has just been celebrated'. Then, in the spring of 2014, when Ukraine is calling for the restoration of the constitution, he visits a coal mine in the Donbass where a miner questions him: "What do you know about the sun if you've never been in a mine?" and where he perceives that it is language that is homeland, even before borders. Maidan Square is in flames, the Ukrainian people in turmoil, Putin with his guns drawn: 'I don't like revolution at all. It is just an exchange of property in which everyone loses'.

Then there is France: Cassis is a cathedral of sun and stone; Normandy is a journey between butter-coloured beaches and the sea where erosion reaches the heart; on Mont Ventoux, he understands that one can only eat products from the region or from the neighbouring region; the ascent of the Barre des Ecrins, on the Oisans massif, is done in the footsteps of Edward Whymper, who first accomplished the feat, and the only difference from 1864 is that modernity has created technical clothing: "What is technical progress? It is the progress, within us, of the certainty that we fundamentally need useless things'.

You walk alone to hear the whisper of life and the flow of your own blood: no more modern journeys where you cross the world to take a picture: 'there will be no more travel stories, only postcards. Only children, old people and birds look at life with their eyes'. And Tesson, as in other parts of the book, indulges in aphorism: 'The nobility of snow: arriving silently, leaving quickly; Every day I climb the hills like a baby on its mother's breast (earth); Blood, the only truth that comes out of a man; Travelling, means distance will bring depth'.