Title: Ancient Days - Michel Winock - book
Summary :
"As we advance in our obscure journey," as Lamartine's verse says, time transforms our familiar landscapes, so much so that in the long run we end up wondering what remains of our former days. The wind of the years whistles over our lives. Everything changes, everything is metamorphosed, and our shattered memories become the traces of another world. It is this gap between today and the world of yesterday that I wanted to bridge. This book opens with an almost forgotten era, like a village submerged by the construction of a dam. I do not recount my early years in the illusion of a lost paradise. I do not want to give here either to admire a past that is no more or to condemn its flaws. I simply invite you to discover a past that has disappeared but that still speaks to us. The time of my childhood and my adolescence is that of the post-war period and the Fourth Republic, the years just preceding the "Thirty Glorious Years." From the threads that run through this story, we could retain the academic meritocracy and the influence of the republican heritage, outdated morals, the continued prevalence of religion, the optimism and energy of a generation emerging from the Second World War and, for me, a precocious political passion. Without wanting to demonstrate anything, I scraped my violin on my sepia photos. Michel Winock
