The French are obsessed with America, because it succeeded where they were doomed to fail, that is to say, in creating a new tradition. The past creeps in, always eating upon the present. The French have to be obsessed with was is new, because they are old and getting older.
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The incessant chatter of the French is one more symptom of their fear of the past; silence would return them unto themselves, and make them witness their becoming-past; the search for more novelty and their continual talking is a way to reify their present, before it escapes.
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This seems right, but are their not many French who admire the ancien regime as well?
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Yes, but it's the admission of a failure to integrate in today's world. The battle over the pre-1789 heritage of France was fought and won by the Romantics during the Bourbon Restoration and then later commented on by reactionary authors like Balzac, Stendhal & Flaubert.
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So the fight over the interpretation of the Ancien Régime & its art was already felt as lost by the 1830s, you can clearly feel it in Balzac and Stendhal when they describe the slow passing of impoverished provincial aristocrats who were stripped of their rights & lands.
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