‘Personne’ in French means the person, the self. It also means nobody, as in ‘y a personne’, meaning ‘nobody’s there’. The Latin writers invented the etymology ‘per sonare’ (to sound through), the word persona meaning mask: theatre mask, tragic mask, ritual mask or mask of the ancestors. As if in this word’“personne’ all the layers of the identity could pile up, from the idea of good looking; as in ‘bien de sa personne’; to the very self, meaning also a social role or personality, a character on stage, or an empty space, void of all human traces.
Working together is much nicer when you’re not working on the same thing.
Laurent Goldring
