INTERVIEW
"Boxes are a bit like confessionals. We hear and see a lot of extraordinary things." At night, Bartabas, founder of the Zingaro theater and the Equestrian Academy of Versailles, often goes to observe his horses. To fall asleep, the author of A horse the other (Gallimard) sometimes counts them: "it's like sheep, I've had so many ...". Guest of Frédéric Taddeï in En balade avec , Sunday on Europe 1, the rider and director, "a little insomniac", told an anecdote which says a lot, according to him, of the character of these animals.
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"His neighbor passed his own straw through the bars"
During these nocturnal visits, "you have to be quiet, you have to listen," breathes Bartabas, who claims to have already "seen the horses dreaming" - judging by their sometimes agitated sleep. One night, while engaging in this observation exercise, the rider witnesses a scene that leaves him speechless. He then found himself near two boxes, occupied by two horses. "Horses are normally on straw," he explains. But in this case, one of the animals is not: "It was a horse that devoured all its straw, so we put it on wood chips, it was forbidden to straw, litter. "
"And at night, I realized that his neighbor was passing his own straw through the bars to give him," smiles Bartabas. "It was something that marked me very much, because not only did he feel the need for glucose in the other, thanks to a communication which is beyond words, and in addition he did it at night, he had the notion of the forbidden. He did it when there was no one to watch. "
"A horse is not a pet"
For the rider, yet an expert on animals, this scene is a real surprise. "It doesn't sound like anything, but it's something that made me think about animality. To observe horses is to watch the animal humanize, but not humanize as a domestic animal, like a cat or a dog that will mimic your behavior, "he explains.
"Because a horse is not a domestic animal. It has its own life, its own rhythm and it is we who set ourselves at its own pace. When I say to see it humanize, it is to see it discovered the movement that was originally ours. That is to say the movement that allowed us to become human ", concludes the rider. "Maybe horses have a means of communication and feel things that we are no longer able to feel now."