A special Valentine’s downer from a Frenchman
I really was in no hurry at all, no more than they were. I’d pretty well come to the point, the age, you might say, when a man knows he’s losing with every hour that passes. But he hasn’t yet built up the wisdom to pull up sharp on the road of time, and anyway, even if you did stop, you wouldn’t know what to do without the frenzy for going forward that has possesed you and won your admiration ever since you were young. Even now you’re not as pleased with your youth as you used to be, but you don’t yet dare admit in public that youth may be nothing more than a hurry to grow old.
In the whole of your absurd past you discover so much that’s absurd, so much deceit and credulity, that it might be a good idea to stop being young this minute, to wait for youth to break away from you and pass you by, to watch it going away, receding in the distance, to see all it’s vanity, run your hand through the empty space it has left behind, take a last look at it, and then start moving, make sure your youth has really gone, and then calmly, all by yourself, cross to the other side of Time to see what people and things really look like.-Celine, Journey to the End of Night
Prime example of why we can blame the influence of French lit for encouraging the youthful dramas of vanity and sweepingly romantic overgeneralization.
But how can one blame anything in the face of Death, Doc? The Reaper is all about sweeping overgeneralization. Worm food, man.
Do we have time for blame, mon deu, do we have the time…
(fore lighting fades to leave only backlit silouette. Speaker slowly kneels, one leg down and the other posting, arms curls up, knuckles pressed to forehead)