C’est pas grave[1], a short story of children’s literature, published in 2022 (first published in 2010) begins with a little rabbit who spills his bowl of milk and bursts into tears. Daddy rabbit replies with a confident smile: “It’s okay, it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter!” (C’est pas grave); he wipes up the spilt milk and fills the glass again. A series of novel incidents follow in which Little Rabbit breaks his plate, knocks over an object and declares with the same confidence: “It doesn’t matter!” in front of Daddy Rabbit, who is surprised. Until he lights a lighter, sets the burrow on fire, and then says again, “It doesn’t matter!”. That’s it! Daddy Rabbit kicks him out. Little rabbit discovers a strange burrow which is none other than the mouth of the wolf. He finds himself in the wolf’s stomach with a little frog, swallowed along with his table and a candle. The candle falls, fire breaks out in the wolf’s stomach, and he coughs up the animals. There, Little Rabbit falls, hurts himself and cries! He comes back to see his father in tears, who tells him: “It doesn’t matter!”. But this time, it’s Little Rabbit who yells back at him: “Yes, it matters!”
Who hasn’t heard a very young child take up the c’est pas grave! taken from the discourse of the family Other? This fiction is based on the zeitgeist and reveals to us, in its own way, a dimension of the contemporary malaise that runs through it. The formula c’est pas grave! which punctuates the text, testifies in the first place to the desire of the figure who supports the father, to console the crying child. However, the phrase is quickly taken up by the latter in an excess of nonsense and provocations, from the cup broken accidentally (incidemment) to the fire (incendie) that was deliberately (volontairement) set in the burrow. This fiction presents us with a father who takes care of his “famil”[2], with “exceedingly nice aspects”[3], but failing to introduce a word that names and tempers the excesses of enjoyment. His “Get out! Get out of here!” does not introduce a single limit. We are far from this “mystagogy that makes him into a tyrant”[4], such as the one found in Freudian myths. But the lack of nomination introduces another form of ferocity which, in this story, translates into Little Rabbit’s fall into the mouth of the wolf.
In subverting the c’est pas grave! which embodies the contemporary ideology of benevolent education, the new figure of the contemporary superego, this fiction reveals its mortifying other side: the “push to jouissance” that the little rabbit caught in transgressive metonymy illustrates very well.
The father who consoles, who repairs, replaces, wipes away tears, is not the father who names…
Moreover, doesn’t the fire that breaks out twice in the wolf’s den and stomach put us on the path of a “father don’t you see…?”[5] “…that it matters (c’est pas grave)”. For perhaps it must matter, at a point, so that it may not matter?
Introducing these burning questions without seriousness (gravité), but not without consequences, is the role of children’s literature, far from the tight grip of contemporary ideology on exasperated parents[6].
References from the author :
[1] Van Zeveren M., C’est pas grave, Paris, École des loisirs, 2022.
[2] Lacan J., Seminar XVII The Other side of Psychoanalysis, London, Norton, 2007, p. 100.
[3] Ibid., p. 127.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Cf. Freud S., The Interpretation of the Dreams, Standard Edition V, p. 509.
[6] Cf. Parents exaspérés – enfants terribles, title of the seventh day of the Institut de l’enfant held in Issy-les-Moulineaux on 18 March 2023.
Translation: Robyn Adler
Proofreading: Marina Caiaffa Bardi
Picture : © Valérie Locatelli
