THAT VERY BOOK

I did and still do have favorite objects that inspire me. But the one I always kept with me as a child was a book called Le plaisir des mots. It was a simple selection of beautiful, strange, unusual or curious words, each one with its explanation and an image, a sort of refined dictionnary, indeed it is subtitled Illustrated poetic dictionnary. I was always making lists of the words I prefered, of course the lists were constantly changing. I remember myself spending hours pronouncing them and then trying to place them wisely into my conversations. I also often included them in my poems. I have no idea where the book is now, but now that I am writing about it I really want to go back at my parents' and retrieve that feeling I had, contemplating the beauty of the language for the first time.

Le plaisir des mots, dictionnaire poétique et illustré, Georges Jean, Gallimard col. Découverte

Thanks Cerré for giving birth to the idea of this post