{"id":606,"date":"2026-06-10T05:12:44","date_gmt":"2026-06-10T09:12:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/linitiative.ca\/english\/le-chat-du-jardinier-de-thomas-shlesser-la-poesie-remede-qui-soigne-les-blessures\/"},"modified":"2026-06-10T05:12:44","modified_gmt":"2026-06-10T09:12:44","slug":"le-chat-du-jardinier-de-thomas-shlesser-la-poesie-remede-qui-soigne-les-blessures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/linitiative.ca\/english\/le-chat-du-jardinier-de-thomas-shlesser-la-poesie-remede-qui-soigne-les-blessures\/","title":{"rendered":"The Gardener&rsquo;s Cat by Thomas Schlesser. Poetry, a remedy that heals wounds"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-89072 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/linitiative.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Le-chat-du-jardinier-Thomas-Shlesser.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"328\" srcset=\"https:\/\/linitiative.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Le-chat-du-jardinier-Thomas-Shlesser.jpg 800w, https:\/\/linitiative.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Le-chat-du-jardinier-Thomas-Shlesser-768x315.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\"\/><\/p>\n<p>After the worldwide success of Mona&rsquo;s Eyes, which sold more than a million copies, Thomas Shlesser invites the reader to explore the world of poets in The Gardener&rsquo;s Cat<a href=\"#_ftn1\" name=\"_ftnref1\" id=\"_ftnref1\">[1]<\/a>. Director of the Hartung-Bergman Foundation and professor of art history at the \u00c9cole Polytechnique, he won the \u201cAuthor of the Year\u201d prize and was elected \u201cBook of the year\u201d in the United States by Barnes &#038; Noble in 2025.<\/p>\n<p>Words to the rescue of evils<\/p>\n<p>Louis, who turns out to be an extremely sensitive gardener, is unable to bounce back from the storm which has just ravaged the Proven\u00e7al hinterland: \u201cThe whole countryside prayed in secret for an end to this senseless frenzy of the air and the rain which, under the influence of the gusts, fell obliquely. And it was neither the spears of the mistral nor the familiar rages of storms or lightning, so frequent on the Mediterranean coasts, which that evening made the shutters slam and the children jump, but a tumult of unknown, almost supernatural violence.\u00a0\u00bb (P. 12)<\/p><div id=\"linit-3936464427\" class=\"linit-dans-le-contenu linit-entity-placement\"><script async src=\"\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js?client=ca-pub-8992136571741975\" crossorigin=\"anonymous\"><\/script><ins class=\"adsbygoogle\" style=\"display:inline-block;width:728px;height:90px;\" \ndata-ad-client=\"ca-pub-8992136571741975\" \ndata-ad-slot=\"6185130430\"><\/ins> \n<script> \n(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); \n<\/script>\n<\/div>\n<p>What makes the gardener special is his cat. He is with him all the time. Unnamed, this pet represents everything a human being needs: affection, attention and even care when illness reveals itself. In this close bond between the gardener and the cat appears Thalie, a recently retired French teacher. The exchange between them takes place straight away. On the one hand, he takes care of his domain and on the other hand she tickles his sensibilities through poetry. This world of words where details count is crossed by poets who have left their mark on History. Indeed, Louise Ackermann, Guillaume Apollinaire Louis Aragon, Antonin Artaud, Th\u00e9r\u00e8se d&rsquo;Avila, Brbara, Charles Baudelaire, William Blake, Alexandre Blok, Nicolas Boileau, Jorge Luis Borges, Georges Brassens, Jacques Brel, Emily Bront\u00ea, Michel-Ange Buonarroti, Aim\u00e9 C\u00e9saire, R\u00e9n\u00e9 Char, Dant\u00e9, Marceline Desbordes-Valmore, Robert Denos, Emily Dickinson, Birago Diop, T.S Eliot, Paul Eluard, L\u00e9o Ferr\u00e9, Serge Gainsbourg, Federico Garcia Lorca, Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe, William Ernest Henley, Jos\u00e9 Maria de Heredia, Friedrich Holderlin, Homer, Victor Hugo, Rudyard Kipling, Ivan Andreevitch Krylov, Louise Lab\u00e9, Jean de la Fontaine, Alphonse de Lamartine, Nicolaus Lenau, Giacomo Leopardi, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Fran\u00e7ois de Malherbe, St\u00e9phane Mqllqrm\u00e9, Ossip Mandelstam, Marie de France, Filippo Tommasso Marinetti, John Milton, Pablo Neruda, G\u00e9rard de Nerval, Anna de Noailles, Ovide, Cesare Pavese, Fernando Pessoa, Edgard Allan Poe, Alexandre Pushkine, Jacques Pr\u00e9vert, Marcel Proust Raymond Queneau, Rainer Maria Rilke, Arthur Rimbaud, Maurice Rollinat, Pierre de Ronsard, Jacques Roubaud, Claude Roy, Sappho, L\u00e9opold S\u00e9dar Senghor, Gaspara Stampa, Anna Sylvestre, Torquato Tasso, Georg Trakl, Marina Tsveta\u00eeeva, Jacint Verdaguer, Paul Verlaine, Fran\u00e7ois Villon, Virgil, Roger Waters, Phillis Wheatley, Walt Whitman, Mary Wroth, are cited to explain to the gardener that if the human being does not take no time to become aware of what surrounds him he cannot in any way give meaning to his life. It is thanks to poetry that everyday life is not a simple repetition of gestures but a cadence, a movement which seeks a symphony to ensure rhythm.<\/p>\n<p>The Gardener&rsquo;s Cat, a novel formulated in the image of a course given to students, recalls all those who have left their mark on History. By taking Thalie and Louis as the main characters, Thomas Shlesser succeeds in healing the wounds of a reader likely to be in a state of suffering. The cat, an animal that cannot pronounce words, is taken into a state where it is monitored by a veterinarian. The serious illness is confirmed and Louis finds himself distraught. The author, through his skill, manages to make feelings waltz, often in continual change.<\/p>\n<p>Thomas Shlesser does not just narrate but arouses the curiosity of the reader to explore what is hidden behind all the poems that were written in the past.<\/p>\n<p>Lamia Bereksi Meddahi<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref1\" name=\"_ftn1\" id=\"_ftn1\">[1]<\/a> Thomas Shlesser. The gardener&rsquo;s cat. Ed\/Albin Michel. 2026. 381 pages<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-89075 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/linitiative.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Le-chat-du-jardinier-Thomas-Shlesser-Albin-Michel.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"545\" height=\"800\"\/><\/p>\n<h2 class=\"screen-reader-text\">Article navigation<\/h2>\n<div id=\"linit-2945351564\" class=\"linit-apres-contenu linit-entity-placement\"><script async src=\"\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js?client=ca-pub-8992136571741975\" crossorigin=\"anonymous\"><\/script><ins class=\"adsbygoogle\" style=\"display:inline-block;width:728px;height:90px;\" \ndata-ad-client=\"ca-pub-8992136571741975\" \ndata-ad-slot=\"6185130430\"><\/ins> \n<script> \n(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); \n<\/script>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After the worldwide success of Mona&rsquo;s Eyes, which sold more than a million copies, Thomas Shlesser invites the reader to explore the world of poets in The Gardener&rsquo;s Cat[1]. Director of the Hartung-Bergman Foundation and professor of art history at the \u00c9cole Polytechnique, he won the \u201cAuthor of the Year\u201d prize and was elected \u201cBook [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":607,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/linitiative.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Le-chat-du-jardinier-Thomas-Shlesser.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"Le chat du jardinier de Thomas Shlesser. La po\u00e9sie, rem\u00e8de qui soigne les blessures","footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-livres-et-romans"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/linitiative.ca\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/linitiative.ca\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/linitiative.ca\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/linitiative.ca\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/linitiative.ca\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=606"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/linitiative.ca\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/linitiative.ca\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/linitiative.ca\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/linitiative.ca\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/linitiative.ca\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}