Les éditions La LOUTRE et la LUNE are delighted to present their very first publication, a graphic novel entitled:
sILEnce is a space-time, an imagined place from which everything emerges and to which everything returns, endlessly… on an ocean-page, a sand-page, a sky-page… without limits… without beginning, without end… without reason… unless perhaps there is?
sILEnce is at once profoundly true and profoundly false
Everything exists there—and nothing exists at the same time. Man appears, disappears, always in between, like day and night that are one yet remain impossible to name together.
Man transcends the island’s boundaries through his dreams. But perhaps the island itself is only a dream? And has he ever really left it? He steps out of a page only to return within it. One stroke of an eraser, and it’s gone.
Did he ever truly exist? Do we truly exist? And above all, does it matter more than silence?
Note: The illustrations in this work were created entirely without the use of artificial intelligence.
As this book contains no words, it is presented in the three languages that have quietly nourished it, each in its own way.
By the author
Fabrice BRIVOT
The story of sILEnce emerged quietly, left on the shores of my inner world by waves that receded gently, probably after a storm—I can’t quite remember.
I had noted it down and silently thanked it, as one should.
And then it stayed there, for a long time, until I discovered Giulia Ravarotto’s drawings, shared the story with her, and she immediately agreed to bring it to life with her illustrations.
A few paths later, once I held Giulia’s magnificent drawings in my hands, sILEnce paradoxically struck me silent: a second, unexpected phase of creation opened before my eyes, hands, and imagination—a period of work that was challenging, solitary, long, yet thrilling.
I had to try to give rhythm to this unmeasured time, to breathe life into an invisible, fragile hourglass so that each moment could flow at its proper pace; to set the silence to music so you could at least hear the wind on this island… To shape, arrange, doubt, recreate, erase, seize accidents, preserve them, mold the existing—all guided by Giulia’s lines, without ever betraying their subtlety or delicacy. Above all, to protect that delicacy…
And then, one day, it is done. The clamor disappears, and the book is there, beneath it all. It had always been there. And it waits, calm and serene. It knows it will travel elsewhere, drifting gently into other hands. Yours. It is not afraid; it knows why it exists.
May it…
By the illustrator
Giulia RAVAROTTO
sILEnce was for me an immersion in a familiar space, at once wonderful and frightening.
A space in which to breathe and celebrate the details, which one after the other by their mere presence were carriers of a story; deep and ancient, as tender as our hearts.
I was accompanied by the question : what is it like to draw silent images, that ask nothing?
What is it like to simply stand beside you reading?
And I let the answer come without looking.
