In
La Steppe rouge
, his first book, Joseph Kessel meditated on a simple truth, but one that the great narrative of modernity struggles to assume: revolutionary passion disfigures man.
It nullifies the work of civilization which moderates, calms, civilizes it, in other words, to awaken the brute in it and its normally suppressed fascination with chaos.
It's the captivating scent of the powder that disturbs the senses.
In particular, he portrayed a man who could be called honest, a clear supporter of order and stability, but who, letting himself be won over by the intoxication typical of these troubled times, turns into his opposite, and then lets himself go to his destructive temptations.
Roger Caillois, for his part, in
Instincts et société
, spoke of the
"vertigo"
that can take hold of a society discovering that everything it took for granted can collapse.
For Roger Caillois, vertigo seizes a society when the associated forces reappear in the heart of the city…
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