How would you define the intention of your latest book soberly titled “Ile d’Ouessant-2024- Getting to the island of Ouessant”?
André Le Saout, author from Brest: “I want to show an island in what it is and not in what we want it to be. Ouessant is a mythical, fantasized, even embellished place. We go there because we want it to be beautiful! My intention, in this work, is to go beyond this visual which monopolizes the rest. To summon the other senses, touch, smell, taste, hearing to understand everything that makes up the “island”, its geography, its human community, its fauna, its flora…”.
“Yes, because, for me, the island can only be understood, felt, from the continent, once back in my neighborhood, in my community, in my apartment. There, and only there, can I write about Ouessant.”
You devote a fairly long passage to the personalities who came to Ouessant, starting with Vauban in 1685.
“Indeed, the island has always attracted elites, intellectuals and artists despite the hazardous crossings of recent centuries. The list is long of the great painters, great writers who frequented it.”
Few beaches, omnipresent winds, hazardous weather (…): so many advantages, in the medium term, to preserve the island from overtourism
To conclude, what do you predict for Ouessant in view of the overtourism plaguing the Breton islands?
“Few beaches, omnipresent winds, hazardous weather, high cost of crossing and accommodation, weakness of purely tourist infrastructures are, in my eyes, all assets, in the medium term, for the preservation of its environment and its community, and barriers to overtourism.”
Practical
The third of the Books (after those published in 2022 and 2023) by André Le Saout dedicated to Ouessant and entitled “The need of the island”, is on sale for €12 at Dialogues in Brest and at Ouessant Presse on the island.
France
Books
