Abstract: This study reports on the omnipresence of beasts in Connaissance de l'Est. Whether metaphorical, sculpted or real, they shed light on the organicity of cities, landscapes and writing: primitive China, as described by Claudel, reveals the lineaments of its civilisation through the prism of its relationship to animality. "Le Porc", the height of untranslatability, thus becomes, through its digging activity, a hermeneutic model for the poet who probes these geographical confines.-
