WORLD WORLDWIDE FRANCE News Journal Update - (en) France, UCL AL #341 - Culture, Read Élisée Reclus, "Story of a mountain, story of a stream" (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 What can be said that hasn't already been written about this

unclassifiable classic? The subject is strange, confusing: Writing the
biography of a stream, what could be more surprising. ---- Élisée Reclus
crosses perspectives, human, geographical, historical and religious
approaches. Water is the history of humanity and he intends to make us
aware of it. Geographer and historian, he offers us a journey,
complementary between these two disciplines, a walk along the water,
beginning with the origin, with this stream of origins, this original
water which flows from the glaciers and escapes groundwater.
The geographer invites the geologist and the hydrologist to follow,
observe, admire the course of this stream, in the rocks, in the
plains... towards the ocean. Let's not try to locate this stream, there
is nothing to locate it. It is its very essence that interests the
author, who describes it brilliantly in a three hundred page writing
where poetry and prose mingle to evoke these lights of water droplets,
these mysteries which surround the life of water nourishing from the
underground caves, to the fountains.

In turn, narrator, observer of this stream of his childhood, explorer
and adventurer, Reclus does not forget that the dreamlike side of the
stream of his dreams grows to become a river then a river. History of
this nourishing water whose ecological news reminds us of its richness
and fragility.

A premonitory writing of our outrageous urbanization, global warming,
the advance of deserts, multiple pollutions, the melting of glaciers...
Let us not read this work by Reclus with a nostalgic look at denatured
nature without any other hope than the distressing observations. Let us
be poetically carried along by this water, rich in lessons.

Dominique Sureau (UCL Angers)

Élisée Reclus, Story of a mountain, story of a stream, Libertalia, 2023,
432 pages, 8.80 euros.
Élisée Reclus, History of a stream, The feeling of nature in modern
societies, Le Pommier, 2023, 359 pages, 15 euros.

https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Lire-Elisee-Reclus-Histoire-d-une-montagne-histoire-d-un-ruisseau
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