Les Travaux et les jours was written in 1977.

Two ancient texts are quoted as epigraphs, along with an extract from a speech by André Giraud, Minister for Industry at the time. On the one hand, an extract from Hesiod (8th century B.C.), which has given its title to Vinaver's play ("Works and Days"), and on the other hand, La Queste del Saint Graal (13th century).
Beyond the idea of time given in the title, and reinforced by the alliteration of the three words moteur / mourir / moulin (motor / to die / mill) in the first three lines, the reference to Hesiod is far from being simply anecdotal. It is a matter of justice and injustice, of the work sent to men by Zeus to punish them, at the same time as it is their only means of accomplishment. Hesiod was writing in a low period in man's history compared to the epic heights of The Iliad and The Odyssey. Parallel to Hesiod, Michel Vinaver is writing in the low period following the break-up of great capitalism.

As for the quotation taken from La Queste del Saint Graal, the accent is put on the theme of the earth that has been "gaste", that is, lain waste, barren, where nothing can grow any more. Here, it refers to a pair, the golden age and what followed the golden age. Les Travaux et les jours also includes a quest, for harmony between what could be and what is (this is probably true of all Michel Vinaver's plays). From the very first section of the play - which contains nine altogether -, in the middle of the everyday conversations of the employees of the After-Sales Service Department of the Cosson company, a fairy tale lexical field develops ("She who lives all alone and in the middle of the countryside" / "I am not a big bad wolf" / "A very old pharmacist told me").

From the outset, the author is careful to direct our reading beyond a sociological investigation or a study of manners based on the life of the Cosson coffee grinder company. " …what the theatre has always dealt with is the threat of the break-up of an order. The order of the world, man's place in this world, how to behave in it … in writing for the theatre, I have turned to the field of work as a substitute for what used to generate dramatic action up to now. "(M.V., interviewed by Jean-François Marchandise, 1997). The fields of battle have moved into business. A company is an epicentre of conflicts: between the public and the private spheres (in Les Travaux et les jours, an affective vocabulary is often given to "the Cosson firm", while Cosson procedures invade love and family relationships), between people, even within people. "Perhaps the error is to think that 'work is doing something'. No, work is being in something."

Within the Cosson company, everything turns, the grinders, the motors, the hierarchy, the love affairs. And the negative image, here, is "to be motionless in the middle of the whirling". The company is a giant body (all the parts of the human body are mentioned in the play), alive and ill. Against illness, against the expansion of the desert, love constantly reinvents its own forms. In nine sections, at the end of never-ending loops, something dawns. Les Travaux et les jours is one of the rare plays of Michel Vinaver that have a happy end.

Along with the references previously given, we must also add the presence of the American poet, T.S. Eliot, whose poem The Waste Land was translated by Michel Vinaver in his youth. In his preface to the poem's publication (in the magazine Poésie, n°31), he analyses its importance using terms which seem to relate perfectly to his own writing : "It's my house… What forms part of this "dwelling" is the primacy of rhythm which pushes towards meaning; it is the contrapuntal treatment of a multiplicity of autonomous themes; it is the pre-eminence of themes over plot elements; it is the movement given to the themes for them to clash or take each other on to the point of fusion, rather than a causal chain movement; it is the anteriority of the word, the characters being formed from the eruption of the flow of the words, it is the tentative emergence of a structure that departs from the discovery of itself rather than setting up a pre-existing framework (a subject, a situation, some characters); it is the molecular level where the join is made between the most universal and the most ordinary, between the mythical and the everyday, between the most ancient and the absolutely now - without passing through metaphor and even less allegory; it is composition by juxtaposition of fragmentary and recalcitrant elements, rather than by development; it is the practice of assemblage, collage, laceration; and it is also verbal destitution, its back turned on fine language, ornament. The reader (the audience) is invited to make his way through this material-in-progress whose loops don't close, leaving him to create for himself the connections which reach him from an undetermined multiplicity of possibilities."

This is the second play performed by the production unit of the Theatre Dijon Bourgogne (after Le Mariage, L'Affaire et la mort by Soukhovo-Kobyline created in late February, 2002).

A "sampler" based on texts by Michel Vinaver, a short form designed to be performed privately or before restricted audiences (work committees, etc), will be presented by Alain Gintzburger (actor in the production unit) during the two weeks preceding the performances of Travaux et des jours.

In parallel with play rehearsals, the video director Fabien Rigobert is currently working on the design of an independent object, based on archives on loan from a Dijon-based company that deals with the re-employment of laid-off executives. In particular, these archives contain simulations of job interviews (although the job-seekers are real) and work experience situations.

Anne, Nicole and Yvette reply, by phone or in writing, to users' complaints, Guillermo checks the machines returned to the company for repair, Jaudouard is the boss. The five of them make up the After-Sales Service Department of the Cosson company.

Cosson: a brand of coffee grinders. There are people in France and in other countries who wouldn't use any other machine than a Cosson to grind their coffee. It's more than a recognition of quality. It's an emotional tie. Loyalty. A mystique.

The same kind of link characterises the relationship between the personnel and the company. Those who work at Cosson's are caught up in a whole network of feelings that go beyond the limits of a simple work contract.

Les Travaux et les jours explores the territory of love which is built up between the company, its employees and its customers. These loves are not necessarily happy. The territory in question is covered with tensions and conflicts. To the point that it breaks up or is dissolved, at the end, under the pressure of opposing forces. Then we realise that a story has been told.

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