"Happy who, like Régis, had a beautiful trip."
He has passed the exams, triumphed in competitions, crossed the seas, tasted the strong alcohol of revolutions, slept in prison.
He sailed in the waters of power, advised the prince before landing on the shores of an academy, that of Goncourt, which he ended up leaving.
He is the inventor of a discipline: "mediology".
The signatory of a decisive text, in 1989 (with Alain Finkielkraut, Élisabeth de Fontenay, Catherine Kintzler and Élisabeth Badinter), on the veil worn by young high school girls from Creil.
The defender of the learning of the religious fact (
“Sacred: what legitimizes sacrifice and prohibits sacrilege”
).
The painter sorry for the Americanization of a France populated by "Gallo-Ricans".
His odyssey, unlike that of a large number of intellectuals, does not unfold between Bastille and Nation,
Le Monde
and
Radio France
, the Théâtre du Rond-Point and the Cannes Festival.
Back in Ithaca, that is to say between the Odeon and the valley of Chevreuse, he chose, in
From One Century to Another
, a work of rare truth, to take the tour of a lifetime as he toured the world (several times).
Debray, aware of his brilliance, did not want a lifetime to cavort with words.
Child of the book (
"I'm talking about a bygone time, that of the Humanities, when the figures had not yet taken power. A time which was stupidly content to draw its information from Homer, Pascal or Tintin."
), Adult under the reign of images, he saw his fall against the backdrop of algorithms and digital babble.
When others want to be or have, he wanted to do.
"It is not by the support of a text, in truth, / That one climbs the wall of reality"
, writes Victor Hugo.
Debray, aware of his brilliance, did not want a lifetime to cavort with words.
The book is sterile if it does not lead to action: Debray left, weapon in hand, then pen in hand.
He wanted to use his energy, his intelligence on the course of things.
He considers that he has failed.
The revolution?
Even among the Picaros, the future does not sing much.
Mitterrand?
He sacrificed the nation to Jean Monnet's dream.
The
mass media
?
Despite the warnings, they get the better of the men.
Intellectual life?
It has advantages, allows postures, but dissent is no longer a combat sport, it is a pleasure of the show:
"The persecutions of yesteryear are a precious business to us and we all play Labiche in the world. costume of the Cid. "
Lucid, but without false modesty.
Debray keeps the register of his commitments, of his declarations: he was not often mistaken, he still aims right by showing that progress gives birth to archaism, materialism, the cult of the goddess Gaia, but, he believes , nobody cares.
What does it matter!
His passion as an internationalist revealed to him that he was not everywhere at home, that he came from somewhere.
Debray?
A "somewhere".
His defense of the universal awakened the charms of the particular, his praise of Humanity made him meet men, his will to make History reminded him of the implacable realities of geography.
The Melanesian myth sums up these discoveries:
"men need a canoe, yes, but no canoe without a tree and no tree without roots".
Its roots are in France.
Landscapes, a story, places, myths, a language, a literature.
In his genealogy, Hugo and Stendhal, Chateaubriand and Péguy.
He met Sartre, admired Althusser, but secretly cousin with the Hussars, remembers that Léon Daudet pushed Marcel Proust for Goncourt.
He writes lively and deep, playful and melancholy, cruel and tender, funny and gloomy.
Everything that reads, writes and reflects is invited to the table of his mind.
The dreams of a lifetime have dissipated, our country has taken its "Venetian turn" (influence disappeared, prestige preserved).
There remain the lingering flavors of friendship without which there is no life of the mind: conversation, confrontation, conciliation.
A failure?
A retreat?
Rather, a civilization program when nobody talks to each other and the agora has turned into a nasty arena.
"Not at all embarrassed not to have the ideas of my friends,
writes Debray
, or the friends of my ideas."
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