A project of preservation

摘要

When Victor Hugo was put forward as a candidate for the Académie Frangaise in 1841, not even he was spared the ritual round of visits that had to be paid to members of that prestigious institution. Among those whose support he had to request was the philosopher Pierre-Paul Royer-Collard. Sitting before the old man, Hugo began to list and comment on his own works. The aged philosopher, however, did not give the slightest hint of recognition upon hearing mention of The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (1831) or Ruy Blas (1838), already famous novels at the time. After a number of fruitless attempts to hit on something the old man might have heard of, Hugo exclaimed: "But Monsieur, surely you read, do you not?" To which Royer-Collard seraphically replied: "My dear boy, at my age one does not read, one rereads." At times it seems we live in an era of Royer-Collards. The euphoric celebration of novelty that emerged in the 1950s and reached its zenith in the 1960s has passed us by. The illusory hopes that revolutionary ideologies would change the world have gone up in smoke. In their wake, we find ourselves, for want of a future to anticipate with optimism, re-reading the past. Everything we can say has already been said; everything we can do has already been done. It only remains to retrieve, preserve, maintain and restore the past.