Aurel Stoica & Marta Moldovan-Cywińska: Farewell sadness = Welcome sadness!

Aurel Stoica: “Bonjour, Tristesse !”

Marta Moldovan-Cywińska: Oh, that's the title of Françoise Sagan's famous novel, which shook France and Europe in 1954. It was included in the list of the 100 best books of the 20th century, published in Le Monde. Sagan took the title from one of the most beautiful poems by French surrealist Paul Eluard. I read it for the first time at my mother's urging. The poem began: “Au revoir, Tristesse/ Bonjour, Tristesse !”

AS: But let's get back to Sagan's story. Seventeen-year-old Cécile wants to feel free from her father's decisions and amoral behavior... and in a sense, she repeats one of his mistakes.

MMC: Liberated but entangled, the spiritual “tomboy” exudes sadness in the presence of her father, who quotes Oscar Wilde: “Sin is the only note of vivid color that remains in the modern world.” A chain reaction: quoting Wilde also generates a particular sadness.

AS: And what secret did her predecessors hide?

MMC: It was the “La garçonne” – the tomboy had another incarnation. The “Flapper,” a young woman moving to the rhythm of American jazz exported to Europe. Her increasingly shorter outfits were just an addition to her carefree manifesto of youth. The flapper and tomboy felt most at home on the beach – over time – in tunics and shorts with geometric patterns, in beach pajamas ( smile).

AS: In a turban and cape, they wanted to appear attractive and independent like the first and most famous American flapper, Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald –  F. S. Fitzgerald's wife.

MMC: The 1920 film “The Flapper” starring Olive Thomas was a picture of the struggle against the stifling conventions of the Victorian era. It was the tomboy who dominated her fashionable “sisters.” A hat without a brim, covering a shapely head. Instead of the “flowing” dress, so popular in the 1920s, a few years later a blouse with a sailor-style collar appeared in shop windows... but we were supposed to be talking about physical anthropology, not old fashion!

AS: Well, that's how digressive poems are created (smile).

MMC: And so the wall of misunderstanding around people who live in the world of imagination and popularization of science grows thicker.

AS: Don't worry! Misunderstanding strengthens the will!

MMC: Except that in a dehumanized world, misunderstanding generates somthing like “wash and go” hatred.

AS: Farewell sadness  =  Welcome sadness!

Photo : Pixabay