David Brunat: "Alain Rey or the verb made man"

A former student of the École normale supérieure and Sciences Po Paris, David Brunat was a member of several ministerial cabinets.

Associate consultant at LPM Communications, he is also a writer.

Author of ten books, he has notably published “Pamphlettres” (Plon, 2015), “Giovanni Falcone: Un seigneur de Sicile” (Les Belles Lettres, 2017) and “ENA Circus” (Éditions du Cerf, 2018) .

The coronavirus crisis, which never ceases to test us, reminds us brutally of our mortal condition - even if our pride suffers without respite.

No more transhumanist whims and prophecies on the “death of death” today so pitifully foiled by reality!

The health crisis bluntly sends us back to our condition of vulnerable, ephemeral creatures, promised like all living beings to wither and to annihilation.

Resounding repeatedly in the heart of our technologically sophisticated world, the recall is harsh.

Men are mortal, as are their cultures, their works, their beliefs, in short: their civilizations.

And their words.

Precious in proportion to their fragility.

And therefore infinitely worthy to be protected, preserved and saved.

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Because languages ​​are also disappearing, they are doomed to disappear or dissolve into other idioms in the longer or shorter term.

And not only those that we are accustomed to qualifying as “dead” - Latin or Greek in particular - and which nevertheless are perpetuated in other forms, in particular etymological, and continue from the bottom of the ages to make their voices heard.

Words are born, grow, mature and change, not without having sometimes given life to other words, other groups of words.

They swarm, members of a large semantic family in permanent recomposition at the service of the immense community of men, all of us, therefore, beings of speech that we are, about whom the philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty said magnificently:

(in his book

).

A sentence that Alain Rey would certainly not have denied.

And that he embodied in a magnificent and admirably lively, modern, jubilant and sometimes even funny way.

His polytechnician father dreamed for him, it is said, of the destiny of an ambassador.

He became so in his own way.

With the formidable epic of

and the

, with more than 40,000 entries, this hussar of words with the colorful shirts and mustaches of a Gallic chief - he had moreover been born near Gergovie - has writes some of the most beautiful pages in the history of our language.

His polytechnician father dreamed for him, it is said, of the destiny of an ambassador.

He became so in his own way, drawing his credentials from the inexhaustible treasury of the language of Molière and thus representing his country with great dignity.

However, the latter has just lost one of his most endearing sons.

This great lover of words, dictionaries and the most living language there is, the opener of linguistic doors, the archaeologist of all philological knowledge and also the captivating radio chronicler, bowed out on the very day when the President of the Republic announced a reconfinement - not very appetizing word describing a phenomenon which is certainly not more it.

A coincidence of death calendars or a facetious scheme of fate?

This grand master of the art of lexicographical falconry has quietly left the world scene while the latter is currently shaken, encumbered, suffocated by an intellectual and media pathology which is called logomachy, or the disease of verbal jousting. and other cacophonous and catatonic disputes which bring together on the issue of Covid-19 the Faculty's experts and observers of all stripes who, each pretending to have the final word of the affair, are spreading and multiplying on the television sets by having vowed to worship the gods Babil, Baratin, Bla-Bla and other idols swollen with words which give full license to their followers to chatter endlessly.

Enter here, Alain Rey, with your luminous procession of words.

Alain Rey, a man of his word, was not made of this verbose and slobbery wood.

He knew too well the value and meaning of words.

Let us give thanks to this affable and passionate ruler for the little written and spoken signs which, used wisely, make life more beautiful, greater, richer and certainly worthy to be lived and transmitted - even if death, alas, ends. always by having the last word and establishing an indescribable silence ...

Enter here, Alain Rey, with your luminous procession of words, antonyms, hyperhonyms, phrases and other morphemes.

And long live the French language, so happily celebrated by your expert and exciting care.

Long live our language so alive, so innovative and forever fascinating!