J'annonçai à ma mère que j'avais décidé de partir et que je déposerais ma candidature pour enseigner à l'étranger, dans n'importe quel pays que the fléau du tourisme épargnait encore. J'avais peur de lui faire de la peine. Je pensais qu'elle aurait peut-être voulu me garder auprès d'elle. There is no tent in front of me when I dissuader.
Tu as bien raison, me dit-elle. Va-t’en. Ici, il n'y a plus rien.
Jérôme Ferrari, North Sentinel, 2024.
I told my mother I'd decided to leave and that I was going to apply for teaching positions abroad, in any country still untouched by mass tourism. I was afraid I'd hurt her feelings. I thought she might want me to stay. But she didn't even try to dissuade me.
"You're absolutely right," she said to me. "Just go away. There's nothing left here."
The Sentinelese, numbering fewer than one hundred, are the last people on Earth who have managed to maintain their isolation from modernity and its demands for interconnectedness, if necessary by force. Jérôme Ferrari's latest novel, which takes place on the island of this people, tells their story. North Sentinel Although Ferrari's film is titled (even though Ferrari blends the Corsicans with the wider world, partly through the title and the orientalist narrative framework surrounding Captain Burton), it bears the programmatic subtitle "The Story of the Native and the Traveler": In Latin and Greek, indigenous and autochthonous peoples are, in a sense, the opposite of barbarians; they are the original inhabitants of a landscape. In the context of colonialism, it refers to those who were already native to the area before the conquest by foreigners, who have a close connection to their habitat, emotionally and spiritually, and ultimately also in terms of their ethno-cultural identity.
S'oppose à nos émissaires la figure inversée des indigènes, tous regroupés derrière une même opacité exotic, mais present à la photographie selon deux modalités distinctes: d'abord en tant que curiosité pacifique qui suscite l'étonnement, l'inquiétude, le désir d'élucidation et même un genre d'estime inavouée, de projection mélancolique (le romanticisme tenace des modes de vie supposément immémoriaux, authentiques, refoulés ou inconnus de nous).
Jérôme Ferrari, À fendre le cœur le plus major, 2015.
In contrast to our emissaries, there is the reverse figure of the locals, all gathered behind a common exotic opacity, but present in the photograph in two different ways: firstly, as a peaceful curiosity that evokes astonishment, concern, a desire for clarification, and even a kind of unacknowledged appreciation, a melancholic projection (the persistent romanticism of supposedly unimaginable, authentic, repressed, or unknown ways of life).
This perspective is more explicit and central in Jérôme Ferrari's latest novel than in his previous books. "Nord Sentinelle" refers to an archipelago whose inhabitants still resist contact with other peoples: North Sentinel Island, part of the Andaman Islands in the Indian Ocean, which belong to India. They embody the other extreme of overtourism, this overwhelm of an area's capacity limits by the influx of mass tourism, as seen on Mount Everest, in Santorini, Barcelona and Mallorca, in Venice, Dubrovnik – or in Corsica, where Ferrari's novel features a new wave of tourists after the COVID-19 hiatus. Overtourism is the intensified form of mass tourism, further fueled by media reports from the hotspots, Airbnb accommodations, mobility through budget airlines, and day-trippers on cruise ships. North Sentinel It is intended to be the first part of a trilogy, with which Ferrari wants to tell the story of the encounter with the different.
Of course, the book's short oriental prologue can be read as an ethnopluralist anti-migration narrative if one so desires, even though a political program is explicitly rejected:
No need for prophecy to know that the premier voyageur apporte toujours with lui d'innombrables calamities. Peu importe qu'il fût brute sanguinaire, an aventurier cupide, un soudard conquérant, un suppliant en larmes ou un homme comme le captain Burton, dont la soif de connaissances consumait le heart dans des proportions si monstrueuses qu'elle en devenait un vice, peu importe qu'il cherchât la guerre ou le repos, la conquête ou la rédemption : le premier qui pose le pied sur le rivage, fût-il animé des intentions les plus pacifiques et les plus louables, fût-il un saint, fût-il le sauveur du monde en personne, il faudrait le tuer, lui et tous ceux qui l'accompagnent, without distinction d'âge ou de sexe – les vieillards, les femmes, les hypothétiques enfants, toute la horde angélique des chérubins. En suivant this simple règle, l'humanité se serait évité, au prix d'un crime minuscule, une atroce et interminable litanie de massacres, d'épidémies, d'asservissements et de mutilations ainsi que quelques autres abjections mineures au rang desquelles il faut compter la chanson coloniale, les missions évangéliques et, bien évidemment, la practice intensive du tourisme. Il a pu m'arriver, je ne le never pas, de défendre, en plus d'une occasion, this interesting theory with an enthousiasme quelque peu excessif, le plus souvent au cours de repas familiaux trop arrosés ; May the view of this clair aux yeux de tous qu'elle relevait davantage de la specéculation contrefactuelle ou de l'uchronie que du program politique et qu'elle était, en dépit de sa radicalité, parfaitement fondée aussi bien du point de vue de l'histoire que de celui de la logic.
Jérôme Ferrari, North Sentinel, 2024.
One doesn't need to be a prophet to know that the first traveler always brings much misfortune. It makes no difference whether he is a bloodthirsty ruffian, a greedy adventurer, a conquering soldier, a weeping supplicant, or a man like Captain Burton, whose thirst for knowledge has so consumed his heart that it has become a vice; it makes no difference whether he seeks war or peace, conquest or salvation; it makes no difference whether he is a man like Captain Burton, whose thirst for knowledge has so immensely consumed his heart that it has become a vice; It makes no difference whether it is war or peace, conquest or salvation: the first to set foot on the shore, however peaceful and laudable his intentions, be he a saint, be he the savior of the world incarnate, he must be killed, he and all who accompany him, without distinction of age or sex—the elderly, the women, the hypothetical children, the entire angelic host of cherubim. Had humanity followed this simple rule, it would have spared itself, with one small crime, a terrible and endless litany of massacres, epidemics, enslavement, and mutilation, as well as several other minor abominations, including colonial song, evangelical missions, and, of course, rampant tourism. I do not deny that I have advocated this interesting theory on more than one occasion with somewhat exaggerated enthusiasm, mostly at overly boisterous family dinners, but it should have been clear to everyone that it is more of a counterfactual speculation or uchronia than a political program, and that despite its radical nature it is both historically and logically fully justified.
To avoid misunderstandings, political oversimplification, and ideological suspicion against the author: In Le Sermon sur la chute de Rome Ferrari designed a multicultural utopia of a tourist bar where diversity is celebrated as a conflict-free festival:
Au mois d'août, avant son départ pour l'Algérie, Aurélie vint passer une quinzaine de jours au village avec celui qui partageait encore sa vie et elle fut stupéfaite d'y trouver le jaillissement d'une vie bouillonnante et désordonnée qui déferlait sur toute chose mais Prenait manifestement sa source dans le bar de son frère. On y trouvait a clientèle hétéroclite et joyeuse, qui mêlait les habitués, des youngen gens venus des villages alentour et des tourists de toutes nationalités, incroyablement réunis dans a communion festive et alcoolisée que ne venait troubler, contre toute attente, also altercation. On aurait dit que c'était le lieu choisi par Dieu pour expérimenter le règne de l'amour sur terre et les riverains eux-mêmes, d'habitude si prompts à se plaindre des moindres nuisances, au premier rang desquelles il fallait compter la simple existence de leurs contemporains, arboraient le sourire inaltérable and beat des élus.
Jérôme Ferrari, Le Sermon sur la chute de Rome, 2012.
In August, before leaving for Algeria, Aurélie spent two weeks in the village with the man who still shared her life and was surprised to find a vibrant, chaotic life that swept over everything, but which clearly originated in her brother's bar. The clientele was a colorful and joyful mix: regulars, teenagers from the surrounding villages, and tourists of all nationalities, who coalesced into an incredibly festive and convivial community, undisturbed by any conflict, contrary to expectations. It seemed as if God had chosen this place to test the reign of love on earth, and even the locals, who are usually so quick to complain about the slightest inconvenience, including the mere existence of their fellow human beings, wore the unchanging, blissful smiles of the chosen ones.
Ferrari also emphasizes his own self-critical connection to Germany regarding the background of the Heisenberg novel. The principle and the necessary research in the foreign country; he had no tourist experience of Germany, and he was generally worried about thinking Eurocentrically and possibly missing cultural differences:
This is a piece plus compliqué. D'abord, this is a vieux project, The principle. Je n'aurais jamais pensé pouvoir le faire. This is a book that can be read even if it is written. Je m'explique. En fait, j'ai été amené, à partir de 2010, à aller souvent en Allemagne grâce aux traductions de mes romans, et j'ai noué des liens là-bas. C'est un pays dans lequel je n'avais jamais mis les pieds - drink quand j'étais petit, je crois - and maintenant je dois y aller deux ou trois fois par an. You coup, avoir this experience de l'Allemagne, qui n'est pas une expérience touristique, m'a permis d'envisager l'écriture d'un roman sur un Allemand, ce que je n'aurais jamais fait avant parce que j'avais toujours peur de l'ethnocentrisme, du décalage culturel, etc. Vraiment, this is an opportunity. And my editor will help me with the research, and I will be able to confront the Heisenberg file, in the end, by choosing the genre-là, which is determined.
The possible worlds of Jérôme Ferrari: entries in the writing with Pascaline David, 2020.
It's a bit more complicated than that. First of all, it's an old project, The principleI never thought I could do it. It's a book that was only possible because I'm a writer. Let me explain. In fact, since 2010, the translations of my novels have taken me to Germany frequently, and I've made connections there. It's a country I'd never been to before—except as a child, I think—and now I have to go there two or three times a year. This experience with Germany, which isn't a tourist experience, has allowed me to write a novel about a German, something I never would have done before because I was always afraid of ethnocentrism, cultural shifts, and so on. Really, I seized an opportunity. And then my publisher helped me with the research; he put me in touch with Heisenberg's son—you know, things like that, which were crucial.
Tourism itself is subject to a cultural-historical change in holiday styles and destinations, as Ferrari traces in the transition from the purely hedonistic sun worshipper to the meaning-seeking cultural tourist:
À la fin des années 1990, après s'être exclusivement consacrés au bronzage sur les plages, ils commencèrent à penser - ou plus probablement quelqu'un pensa pour eux - qu'il serait bon de diversifier leurs activités, de se rapprocher de la nature et de s'intéresser aux cultures indigènes et ils décidèrent de partir en quête de l'authenticité que nous étions bien sûr tout disposés à leur vendre.
Jérôme Ferrari, North Sentinel, 2024.
Ils se mirent donc à arpenter en masse les chemins de randonnée, troquant avantageusement leurs coups de soleil, piqûres d'oursins et hydrocutions pour des ampoules, des morsures de punaises de lit, des entorses et des chutes mortelles au fond de ravins oubliés.
Ils exigèrent de manger local. D'écouter de la musique locale. Ils tenaient absolute à ce que leurs vacances aient du sens.
In the late 1990s, after spending all their time sunbathing on the beach, they began to think – or probably someone thought for them – that it would be good to diversify their activities, be closer to nature and take an interest in indigenous cultures, and they decided to go in search of the authenticity that we, of course, wanted to sell them.
They began to swarm the hiking trails, exchanging sunburn, sea urchin bites and water damage for blisters, bedbug bites, sprains and fatal falls into forgotten gorges.
They demanded to eat local food. To hear local music. They desperately wanted their vacation to have meaning.
In The principle (2015) the narrator remarks in passing that the proud old fortress city has been “degraded to a seaside resort by tourism” 1The tourists become a collective, faceless mass with ridiculous features; as foils to mythic-archaic images, they wriggle in the background:
If you don't say anything about singing, you don't have the taste of the celui that comes with me and the language, with a sour beat, on the parking lot of the night in the source of the tourists, dansent et sautent en rythme en levant les bras au ciel. I spend my time in Roman times and I want to write. I consacre tout entier à l'observation puérile de ma déchéance qui, au fond, m'emplit de fierté en même temps qu'elle apaise mes velléités créatrices car j'imagine qu'elle ressemble, jusque dans son ignominie, à celles que décrivent les romans russes. Je ne vois pas le Christ en croix saigner dans la fraîcheur des églises qui ouvrent leur bouche d'ombre sur les rues écrasées de soleil. Je ne vois pas mon père et ses amis mener leur guerre invisible et dérisoire, qui n'empêche même pas les tourists de sauter en rythme sur les pistes de danse, les bras levés au ciel, bien qu'elle dure depuis mille ans, sans fin, sans raison et sans Gloire, with ses victims and ses assassins que la lassitude a rendus indiscernables, réunis dans le même oubli, les cerémonies machinales de ses deuils, et elle ne cessera jamais parce que jamais elle n'a eu ni n'aura aucune conséquence sur l'avenir du monde qui pèse sur vous de tout son poids intolérable.
Jérôme Ferrari, The principle, 2015.
But I know nothing of blood, except the taste of the blood trickling from my nostrils, which I catch with the tip of my tongue, a blissful smile playing on my lips, in the parking lot of a nightclub where tourists dance and jump rhythmically, arms raised to the sky. I think less and less about the novel I wanted to write. I devote myself entirely to the childish observation of my own decline, which, in essence, fills me with pride and simultaneously satisfies my creative urge, because I imagine it to be, in all its depravity, similar to that described in Russian novels. I don't see Christ bleeding on the cross in the cool churches that open their shadowy mouths to the sun-scoured streets. I do not see my father and his friends waging their invisible and ridiculous war, which does not even stop the tourists from rhythmically jumping across the dance floors with their arms raised to the sky, even though it has been going on for a thousand years, without end, without reason and without glory, with its victims and murderers, whom weariness has rendered indistinguishable, united in one and the same oblivion, the mechanical ceremonies of their mourning, and it will never end because it never had or will have any consequences for the future of the world, which rests upon you with its entire unbearable weight.
It is stated even more explicitly in The principle The teeming mass of immense cities made of glass, marble and steel, teeming with "tourists, businessmen and financiers, princes, slaves and prostitutes," is contrasted with a pre-modern stillness, while the descendants of the Bedouin glide casually through the desert sand behind the tinted windows of their luxury cars:
The ancient silence vibrates in the noise of the air conditioning, the daytime sun and all the world's languages. The evening, the disk of the soleil descends to the horizon of the grues and the panneaux publicitaires.
Jérôme Ferrari, The principle, 2015.
The ancient silence vibrates with the incessant hum of air conditioners, echoing day and night in every language of the world. In the evenings, the pale disc of the sun slowly descends over the horizon dotted with cranes and billboards.
If we read Jérôme Ferrari's novels with some distance from their respective plots, recurring themes emerge. For example, the setting of Corsica, even though the author was born in Paris, is a defining feature. The origins of his parents and ancestors shape the scenery of some of his texts, coupled with a decentered view of France and the European continent, which, for instance, threatens the tradition and identity of the Corsicans in the context of tourism. The principle Ferrari paints a picture of the media, which deliberately downplays the truth of the violence for the economically important tourists: "Here the newspaper never publishes a photo of the corpses, especially not during the tourist season." 2 Tourism becomes synonymous with a superficial and banal view, as in the essay co-authored with Oliver Rohe in 2015. À fendre le cœur le plus major – via a photo archive of the writer and war correspondent Gaston Chérau from the Italian-Ottoman conflict in Libya from 1911-1912 – which also evokes another guiding principle of his writing with the theme of violence:
La gêne à ajouter notre parole, fût-elle solicitée, à ces photographs témoignait surtout de notre relation d'éblouissement avec l'image terrible. Notre regard était un regard pieux, dévolu à la seule vision de l'horreur. Sanctuarisée, d'avance protégée des corruptions du discours, imposing ainsi à ses spectateurs retenue et silence, elle excluait de surcroît les other elements constitutifs de l'archive, dont l'existence même – en soi signifiante – pouvait servir de supplément, de contraste ou de counterpoint to the height of the pendaison. These photographs of rivages and d'oasis, de soldiers and de corps expéditionnaires, ces rues, these lumière, these foule and ces visages of Tripoli que nous négligions jusque-là vaient pourtant toute leur place dans le champ du visible, parmi la réserve de sens que recèle the archive. The secours de toutes ces photographs délaissées, y compris les plus touristiques d'entre elles, les plus banales et les plus innocentes, où nichent parfois les indices les plus riches, restituait en quelque sorte un peu mieux les pendus à leur condition historique, inscrivait leur épouvantable Destin pénal dans a trame narrative plus vaste, un réseau de faits et de signs intelligible. Il n'y a pas de violence qui puisse s'abstraire de la structure politique et sociale dont elle n'est qu'un des moment, à défaut d'en être toujours l'aboutissement.
Jérôme Ferrari, À fendre le cœur le plus major, 2015.
The unease we felt about adding our words to these photographs, however much it was requested, testified above all to our blinded state in the face of this horrific image. Our gaze was reverential, devoted solely to the sight of the horror. The image was sacred, protected from the outset from the distortion of discourse, and compelled its viewers to restraint and silence. Moreover, it excluded other elements of the archive whose existence—significant in itself—could have served as a complement, contrast, or counterpoint to the overwhelming power of the hanging. These photographs of shores and oases, of soldiers and expeditionary forces, these streets, this light, these crowds, these faces of Tripoli, which we had neglected until then, had their place in the realm of the visible, amidst the store of meanings that the archive contains. With the help of all these neglected photographs, even the most touristy, the most banal and innocent, in which sometimes the richest clues are hidden, the hanged men were, in a sense, returned to their historical context, their terrible fate of punishment placed within a larger narrative framework, within a comprehensible network of facts and signs. There is no violence that can be abstracted from the political and social structure of which it is only a moment, if not always the result.
Tourists disrupt the meaningful framework of the images: In Ferraris To his image (2008) An unnamed tourist couple ruins a photograph by carelessly entering the frame, just before the man is attacked by Pascal, humiliated and bloodied in front of his own children. Dans le secret (2007) After receiving compliments from one of the female tourists he has sex with, José considers becoming a porn actor. And Antoine, during his fainting spell, reflects on the tourist plague that descends upon the region with the arrival of summer, polluting not only the landscape but also the local population.
Il haleta dehors sous le soleil. Il ne put s'empêcher d'aprécier encore la chaleur du soleil sur sa peau. Everything is located on the ground in the parking lot between two cars. If the doctor is still maintenant, I don't find it anywhere, pensa-t-il. Bien fait pour ma gueule, pensa-t-il. It adores the sunny days of the winter. Comment peut-il faire beau aujourd'hui ? penza-t-il. Il fait si beau. The beau temps et la mort sont deux phénomènes que ne relie aucune chaîne causale. Il ferait beau, qu'Agathe lived or qu'elle meure, le mois de Janvier finirait quand meme, et le printemps arriverait et puis l'été avec des cohortes de touristes qui envahiraient la ville et souilleraient les montagnes et la mer, et leurs propres âmes, et les nôtres aussi, The ferait une chaleur abjecte et le soleil chaufferait durement la dalle d'un caveau vide or la dalle du même caveau dans lequel Agathe deviendrait liquide et poussiéreuse, tandis que son père servirait à boire à des salauds enjoués et malfaisants, et trahirait sa peine en continuous à vivre, qu'Agathe lives or me, the continuedrait of a manner or of another à mener a longue vie de trahisons et de bassesses, pendant a certain nombre de mois de Janvier et d'étés qui finiraient par effacer jusqu'au souvenir de this journée et de toute chose.
Jérôme Ferrari, Dans le secret (2007)
He was panting outside in the sun. He couldn't help but enjoy the warmth of the sun on his skin. He sat down on the ground at the far end of the parking lot, between two cars. If the doctor comes now, he won't find me, he thought. Serves me right, he thought. He loved sunny winter days. How can the weather be so beautiful today, he thought. It's such beautiful weather. Beautiful weather and death are two phenomena that are not connected by any causal chain. It would be fine, whether Agathe lived or died, January would still end, and spring would come, and then summer, with cohorts of tourists descending on the city and defiling the mountains and the sea and their own souls and ours too, and it would be bitterly hot, and the sun would beat down hard on the slab of an empty grave, or the slab of the same grave in which Agathe would turn liquid and dusty, while her father, mother, and children remained in the city. Whether Agathe lived or died, he would either way lead a long life of betrayal and wickedness, for a number of January and summer months, which would eventually fade to the memory of that day and everything else.
In conversation with Pascaline David about his own writing, Ferrari contrasts two states of Corsica in a similar way to the states in the desert state: an anti-modern, archaic one and a mass-tourism one.
Marco et moi, on était très sensitives – d'autant qu'on la vivait douloureusement – à this espèce de schizophrénie saisonnière qui nous faisait passer d'une forme de désert glacé à deux ou three mois de frénésie complète où il était plus question de boîte de nuit, de tourisme de masse, de drogue and de fornication que de vendetta and de bandits d'honneur.
The possible worlds of Jérôme Ferrari: entries in the writing with Pascaline David, 2020.
Marco and I were very susceptible to this kind of seasonal schizophrenia – especially since we experienced it as painful – which took us from a kind of icy desert to two or three months of complete intoxication, where nightclubs, mass tourism, drugs and debauchery were more about nightclubs, mass tourism, drugs and debauchery than blood feuds and honor killings.
Seasonal schizophrenia also prevails in Ferrari's latest novel. The actual story of this latest novel, which nevertheless blends different time periods, can be summarized quickly: The young Alexandre Romani stabs the 23-year-old medical student Alban Genevey to death over a bottle of wine that the latter had illegally smuggled into his restaurant.
Mais Alexandre, lui, avait cessé de dormir et ne s'était pas senti fatigué en arpentant sans relâche les ruelles de la haute ville à la poursuite de celui qu'il ne laisserait pas s'échapper, il s'était faufilé entre les groupes de touristes plus ou moins éméchés en this heure tardive, dont la plupart avaient enlevé leurs surgical masks or les avaient abaissés sur le menton, laissant apparatus laissant apparaître la chair humide de leurs lèvres roses et, me dirait-il encore pendant ma visite à la maison d'arrêt, sa Volonté était à ce point farouche and inébranlable, and si pure sa rage, que s'il n'avait pas fine par trouver Alban Genevey, il aurait frappé au hasard en choisissant n'importe lequel de ces salauds.
Jérôme Ferrari, North Sentinel, 2024.
But Alexander had not slept, he had not been tired, as he had tirelessly run through the alleys of the upper town, searching for the one he would not let escape, as he had wound his way through the groups of tourists who, at that late hour, were more or less drunk and most of whom had removed their surgical masks or pulled them down below their chins. And, as he told me during my visit to the prison, his will was so wild and unwavering and his rage so pure that, if he had not finally found Alban Genevey, he would have struck indiscriminately and picked one of those bastards.
The Corsican Romani family is the murderer of the story; even in the tourism aspect of the family epic, decline and melancholy are inscribed here between past elegance and the tastelessness of the present in a souvenir shop:
Finally, I don't think I'm sorry about the mask and I regret it. Trente années ont passé. Aujourd'hui, in the store of souvenirs jadis tenu par la vieille Eugénie Romani, dont les os noircissent depuis bien longtemps dans l'humidité du caveau familial, les artefacts offered à la convoitise perverse des tourists ne se contentent plus d'être laids et de mauvaise quality: ils dépassent tout ce l'on peut imaginer en terms d'infamie graveleuse si bien que, comparé aux t-shirts floqués d'ânes entourés de pin-up en ecstasy sirotant un cocktail sur la plage, ou aux slips black arborant en grandes capitales blanches des inscriptions vantant le volume de leur content (que Philippe vend without the pretext, for spécieux, qu'il se contente de profiter, tout en la réprouvant vigoureusement à titre personnel, d'une débilité générale dont on ne saurait le tenir pour responsable), le masque mortuaire encore posé sur mon bureau semble l'élégant vestige d'une époque de splendours révolues.
Jérôme Ferrari, North Sentinel, 2024.
Ultimately, I couldn't bring myself to get rid of the mask, and I don't regret it. Thirty years have passed. Today, in the souvenir shop once run by old Eugénie Romani, whose bones have long since turned black in the dampness of the family crypt, the artifacts offered to the perverse lust of tourists are no longer content with being merely ugly and of poor quality: they surpass everything imaginable in terms of shameless infamy, so much so that, compared to T-shirts with donkeys surrounded by ecstatic pin-ups sipping cocktails on the beach, or black briefs emblazoned with inscriptions in large white capital letters extolling the size of their contents (which Philipp shamelessly sells under the very transparent pretext that he is merely profiting from a general imbecility for which he cannot be held responsible, while from a personal point of view he vehemently disapproves), the death mask still lying on my desk seems like the elegant relic of an era of long-gone splendor.
But if we read more closely, the genealogy of the Corsican clan is also disavowed as a historically ignorant fake; the Romani (the Romans par excellence, so to speak) are ridiculously megalomaniacal; the pleasurable grotesqueness in the encounter with the extinct hero François Romani can also be interpreted as a satire on the bombastic identity stagings and historical politics of the present:
Les Romani traversaient tous l'existence avec la douce certitude d'appartenir, depuis des temps immémoriaux, à une race élue de seigneurs – Philippe Croyait ainsi avec la plus désarmante bonne foi que les quelques mégalithes grossiers constituant le misérable patrimoine archéologique de la The area is also available, when the door is sculpted on the sculpted doors of the Palais de Mycènes, along with other lointains, it also provides certainty for surgery in all the glories of the land in the surrounding area, comme This is the commun des mortels, de descendre plus modestement, couverts de loques et de poux, d'un rafiot ligure or baléare échoué sur une plage. Le fait désolant queurs premiers-nés mâles reçoivent systématiquement des prénoms de rois, d'empereurs ou de héros antiques est sans doute un symptôme particulièrement transparent de leur mégalomanie comme de leur absence totale de sens du ridicule: les Romani portant haut, et qui plus est fièrement, l'étendard de l'inculture, ils ignoraient évidemment tout de l'origine exacte des personnages, historiques ou légendaires, qui rendirent ces noms illustres et il ne leur parut jamais étrange, comme l'atteste leur grotesque généalogie, qu'un Hector pût engdrer un Achille, or Hamilcar for the grand-père of Scipion - that I am permet d'affirmer, without the crainte of a denial, that the heureuse sequence Philippe-Alexandre ne peut être que le fruit du hasard ou le résultat d'une intervention de Catalina. Rien ne put jamais ébranler la haute opinion qu'ils se faisaient d'eux-mêmes ; If you compare what it is, it is not what it is. Quelles que fussent leurs turpitudes, la supériorité de leur essence inaltérable les préservait du remords ou du déshonneur. On raconte ainsi qu'un grand-oncle de Philippe, François Romani - don't let yourself go, when you're a child, you don't feel like you have a morbid fascination, immobile in a haute armchair de velours pourpre au milieu de l'immense salon de la maison de famille, les doigts crispés sur les accoudoirs élimés, la faïence de ses yeux de poupée ouverts sur le vide effroyable et la bave coulant de sa bouche édentée sur la mâchoire pendante qu'une main ridée de vieille femme essuyait machinalement à intervalles réguliers à l'aide d'un Mouchoir de dentelles tout raidi de crasse tandis que Philippe et moi intentions d'attendrir les gâteaux rassis de notre goûter les laissant tremper dans nos bols de café au lait – on raconte donc que François, avant qu'une rupture d'anévrisme le cloue pour toujours à son armchair, avait pu mener une fière existence d'ivrogne professionnel without que quiconque dans sa famille s'en offusquât ; il avait ainsi passé l'essentiel de son temps à se saouler dans les les bars et cabarets de la ville, titubant d'un établissement à l'autre depuis la citadelle jusqu'au port, pissant à plein jet against the wall of the église en hurlant des insanités et finissant immanquablement par s'endormir à même le pavé, vautré dans ses propres vomissures, jusqu'à ce qu'une patronne de bordel compatissante ou a quelconque Samaritain le hisse tant bien que mal sur sa mule, penché sur l'encolure ou allongé en travers de l'échine comme un sac de farine, afin que la brave bête le ramène cuver chez lui jusqu'au lendemain soir. If you can find a redire in the composition of François or you will learn the notions of décence or dignité, the content of Hausser's characters will also be mentioned in the same way: on what it is.
Jérôme Ferrari, North Sentinel, 2024.
The Romani all lived with the sweet certainty that they had belonged to a chosen ruling dynasty since time immemorial – so Philip believed with disarming credulity that the few crude megaliths that make up the meager archaeological heritage of the region had been erected by his distant ancestors when gold already glittered on the carved doors of the palaces of Mycenae, which in all their splendor must have sprung from the womb of Mother Earth, instead of being washed ashore ragged and lice-ridden like ordinary mortals from a Ligurian or Balearic ship. The sad fact that their male firstborns were systematically named after kings, emperors, or ancient heroes is perhaps a particularly transparent symptom of their megalomania and their complete lack of a sense of the ridiculous: since the Romani held high the banner of barbarity and were even proud of it, they naturally knew nothing about the precise origins of the historical or legendary figures who made these names famous, and it never struck them as odd, as their grotesque genealogy demonstrates, that a Hector could father an Achilles, or that Hamilcar was the grandfather of Scipio—which allows me to assert, without fear of contradiction, that the fortunate order of Philip-Alexander can only be the result of chance or the result of Catalina's intervention. Nothing could ever shake their high opinion of themselves; all that mattered was who they were, not what they did. Whatever atrocities they committed, the superiority of their unchanging nature protected them from regret or disgrace. The story goes that one of Philippe's great-uncles, François Romani—whom I was so afraid of as a child that I couldn't help but watch him with morbid fascination, sitting motionless in his tall, crimson velvet armchair in the middle of the family home's vast living room, his fingers clutching the worn armrests, the faience of his doll-like eyes fixed on a terrible emptiness, and the drool dripping from his toothless mouth onto his drooping jaw, which a wrinkled old woman's hand mechanically wiped at regular intervals with a dirty lace handkerchief, while Philippe and I tried to soften the stale cakes of our snack by dipping them in our bowls of milky coffee—so the story goes that François, before a ruptured aneurysm chained him to the chair forever, had led a proud life as a professional drunkard, without anyone in his family objecting. had nothing to object to; he had spent most of his time getting drunk in all the bars and pubs in town, staggering from one establishment to the next from the citadel to the harbor, urinating against the church wall, shouting obscenities, and inevitably falling asleep on the pavement until a sympathetic brothel owner or a Samaritan hoisted him onto their mule as best they could, either on its neck or across its back like a sack of flour, so that the brave animal could take him home until the next evening to sleep off his drunkenness. If anyone had anything to criticize about François' behavior or sheepishly mentioned terms like decency or dignity, his mother would simply shrug her shoulders contemptuously and say: We know who he is.
This article is written in German and can be found at https://rentree.de. Automatic translations into English and French are available. English, French.
Notes- “Afin que je lui apporte mon aide dans la gestion de son restaurant, ouvert sur les remparts surplombant le port d'une vieille ville fortifiée, que la lèpre du tourisme a dégradée en station balnéaire.” Jerome Ferrari, The principle, 2015.>>>
- “Ici, le journal ne publie jamais la photo des cadavres, surtout pas pendant la saison touristique.” Jerome Ferrari, The principle, 2015.>>>
