hold on

The newspaper tells me that a humanoid robot painter sold a painting at auction last Thursday for 1.2 million euros. Comment : ” This is a historic milestone in the art world. » Let me correct myself: this is a new stage, which has nothing historic, in the history of human stupidity, which already has quite a bit to its credit and which, we can easily predict , will have many more.

Chance, providence or destiny – these little mischievous divinities – make us live in an era which, in terms of stupidity, is of boundless fecundity. To list all its manifestations, it would be necessary, literally, a full time. We could spend our lives inventorying attacks on mental security.

Thank goodness we have other cats to pet. Children to love and grow in dignity. And many wonders to ponder. For ambient stupidity, the dosage of philosophical medicine is formal: no more than five minutes per day. And preferably during off-peak hours. A brilliant man told us almost two thousand years ago, that is to say yesterday: to be in the world, but above all not of the world.

What do you want ? By bathing in stupidity, like donuts in lukewarm frying, men will end up drowning for good. Perhaps this is what they are looking for in the great man who is now sick. Going further and further into ineptitude. It’s the swimming pool syndrome: we let ourselves sink, telling ourselves that at the bottom, we will find a spring or an instinct to rise again. Michel Audiard could have said it: the contemporary dares everything, that’s even how we recognize it.

We console ourselves by telling ourselves that stupidity has always been king. A despicable and exhausting queen, but a queen. Throughout the centuries, we send fraternal hellos to each other, among people of good company. This is the life of the spirit, the taste for beauty, the love of light: in every era craftsmen work, in silence, withdrawal, pain and often solitude. They ensure that man does not despair of man. They provide upper rooms, attics, hermitages, so that stupidity does not have the last word. Let sensitive hearts have refuge. Let the soul remember that it has a crying need for peaks. To catch your breath. Don’t lose hope. In The Court ManBaltasar Gracian wrote that“a life that has no rest is painful like a long road where one finds no accommodation.” Among these essential stops: books, where the mind will find its nourishment.

To locate them, La Bruyère gave us the key, in THECharacters : “When a reading elevates your spirit, and it inspires noble and courageous feelings in you, do not look for another rule to judge the work; it is good, and made by a worker’s hand. » “Worker” here designates a nobility that the humanoid robot will never attain, any more than the barkers who flounder around it.

And let us thank the workers of the spirit for all the signs they send us. Thanks to André Markowicz for translating the Latest poems et THEJews in Babylonia by Charles Reznikoff (Ed. Unes, 2024): “Day after day in the wilderness, /year after year, /until you see a bush burning. /Yes, but you have to climb a mountain/to speak with God. »

Thanks to Guillaume Dreidemie for inviting us to Palannesia (Ed. Kimé, 2024) not to despair of the eternal return of things, and to take the example of Anna de Noailles, among others, to remain ardent in the surrounding extinguisher: “This Maenad of the forests, / Full of regrets and desires, / Almost died of life, / But she would do it again! »

Thanks to Stéphane Bernard for making us intimate, against the backdrop of the French Revolution and the reinvention of the genius of Christianity, of Joseph Joubert and Pauline de Beaumont through their correspondence (Consent to being youEd. moments, 2024): “The measure of all things is (…) the immovable for the mobile, the infinite for the limited, the same for what is changing, the eternal for the transient. »

And thank you to Pauline de Préval for her splendid Dictionary of Cathedral Lovers (Plon, 2024) on the threshold of which awaits us this recommendation, written by Saint-Exupéry in fiery letters: “Whoever carries in his heart a cathedral to be built is already victorious. » This book alone is a celebration, an antidote to the doldrums. To hold on. Come in, all your friends are here! Hugo, Goudji, Rilke, Malraux, Claudel and Péguy meditating in front of Chartres: “ Two thousand years of labor have made this earth/An endless reservoir for new ages. /A thousand years of your grace have made these works/An endless rest for the lonely soul. »