Read Online The Conspiracy by Paul Nizan - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Paul Nizan
Tags: General Fiction
Ads: Link
difficult year to get through, for young men who placed all their hopes in the aggravation of disorder, and for whom the only desirable future consisted in not having one. Already their parents, forever paved with good intentions, were reviving career plans for them about which they had long been doubtful, bearing in mind what this strange, tottering world of the twenties held in store. Laforgueâs father, who had quite some time ago consoled himself for his sonâs refusal to enter the Ecole Polytechnique, spoke to him about doing a doctoral thesis, after his agrégation :
â Who do you take me for? Philippe exclaimed.
Was it all going to start up again, then? Were they finally going to be compelled, after invoking all the shipwrecks befitting great ornamental centuries, to sail upon the level waters of bourgeois life, observing nautical regulations and all the red signals on bridges?
The prosperity of â29, those Markets that were so healthy despite their ups and downs and any check in the contango rate, appeared as oppressive to them as the celebrated failed Revolution of â19, ten years earlier, had seemed to their elders.
They had lived amid such thrilling uncertainty, since the time when, at school, their classes had been interrupted by air raids and shellbursts and every door that banged had made them think of an explosion, that it seemed impossible to them that the sad age of indolence miraculously suspended by the four years of the War could ever resume its course.
Laforgue and Rosenthal dated history from nineteen hundred and fourteen: they would have liked to be able to call â29 Year XV, numbering the dates of a new era in the same way that the Russians spoke of Year XIII of the October Revolution. Were they now going to have to remain in the continuation of the Christian era, and feel themselves bound in perpetuity to Jesus, Charlemagne, Henri IV, Louis XIV, Voltaire, Napoleon and M. Thiers? For several months they foresaw the advent of an age of regress and boredom, such as had not been seen since the Restoration or the first years of the Third Republic, when they would lament the warlike and peaceful exploits of their elders, just as the young men of eighteen hundred and twenty had lamented the Revolutionary Wars, the Italian Campaign and Napoleonâs anabases from one end of Europe to the other, or the young men of eighteen hundred and eighty had lamented the Burning of Paris and the Commune with its sixty days of great innovations. Would they then be reduced to writing poems?
They were well aware that the public authorities and their families were conspiring, as in the past, to make them relapse into brilliant futures, careers, worries about advancement, money and successful marriages. These pretensions struck them as repugnant, but they trembled to see them confirmed by the becalming of history: in their entire adolescence, there was perhaps no year more disturbing than that year of â29, when everything contributed to a non-stop purr of contentment.
Thank God, in November, the Wall Street crash was to reassure them: they welcomed it like news of a victory. Since they tended to confuse capitalism with important people, when they saw their fathersâ faces they convinced themselves that they had been quite right to stake their lives on the cards of confusion, and that they could indubitably count upon a world destined for great metamorphoses. There was no question of settling down into an order that was about to die, no question of making their beds.
â Didnât we say so! they exclaimed.
But they had had a narrow escape.
None of them was more sensitive than Rosenthal to these plunges and abrupt recoveries of potential. You must picture Bernard founding Civil War only in order to play for time, in order to occupy his mind, until he got a chance to show what he was capable of. He would gladly have been heroic: there were no opportunities.
One evening towards
â Who do you take me for? Philippe exclaimed.
Was it all going to start up again, then? Were they finally going to be compelled, after invoking all the shipwrecks befitting great ornamental centuries, to sail upon the level waters of bourgeois life, observing nautical regulations and all the red signals on bridges?
The prosperity of â29, those Markets that were so healthy despite their ups and downs and any check in the contango rate, appeared as oppressive to them as the celebrated failed Revolution of â19, ten years earlier, had seemed to their elders.
They had lived amid such thrilling uncertainty, since the time when, at school, their classes had been interrupted by air raids and shellbursts and every door that banged had made them think of an explosion, that it seemed impossible to them that the sad age of indolence miraculously suspended by the four years of the War could ever resume its course.
Laforgue and Rosenthal dated history from nineteen hundred and fourteen: they would have liked to be able to call â29 Year XV, numbering the dates of a new era in the same way that the Russians spoke of Year XIII of the October Revolution. Were they now going to have to remain in the continuation of the Christian era, and feel themselves bound in perpetuity to Jesus, Charlemagne, Henri IV, Louis XIV, Voltaire, Napoleon and M. Thiers? For several months they foresaw the advent of an age of regress and boredom, such as had not been seen since the Restoration or the first years of the Third Republic, when they would lament the warlike and peaceful exploits of their elders, just as the young men of eighteen hundred and twenty had lamented the Revolutionary Wars, the Italian Campaign and Napoleonâs anabases from one end of Europe to the other, or the young men of eighteen hundred and eighty had lamented the Burning of Paris and the Commune with its sixty days of great innovations. Would they then be reduced to writing poems?
They were well aware that the public authorities and their families were conspiring, as in the past, to make them relapse into brilliant futures, careers, worries about advancement, money and successful marriages. These pretensions struck them as repugnant, but they trembled to see them confirmed by the becalming of history: in their entire adolescence, there was perhaps no year more disturbing than that year of â29, when everything contributed to a non-stop purr of contentment.
Thank God, in November, the Wall Street crash was to reassure them: they welcomed it like news of a victory. Since they tended to confuse capitalism with important people, when they saw their fathersâ faces they convinced themselves that they had been quite right to stake their lives on the cards of confusion, and that they could indubitably count upon a world destined for great metamorphoses. There was no question of settling down into an order that was about to die, no question of making their beds.
â Didnât we say so! they exclaimed.
But they had had a narrow escape.
None of them was more sensitive than Rosenthal to these plunges and abrupt recoveries of potential. You must picture Bernard founding Civil War only in order to play for time, in order to occupy his mind, until he got a chance to show what he was capable of. He would gladly have been heroic: there were no opportunities.
One evening towards
Similar Books
