enragés
“And there were two nights left, two nights in two lives, in the days of the enragés. Those two nights were one, sleeping and waking, and the dawn coming always. There had been more than one woman’s smile in his life, more than one man’s body on hers, and there had never been this feeling that it would all go on, no matter what, that no matter what happened they would still be together, would still go on somewhere.”
“Rebellion cannot exist without a strange form of love.”
“You have been the last dream of my soul.”
words i · at the core of this compendium is lawrence ferlinghetti’s lesser lauded novella love in the days of rage. love unfolds against the backdrop of the paris student revolt of may 1968 between an idealistic american artist and a calculated anarchist banker. the dichotomy between love and rage between this unlikely middle-aged couple ends with a bang—and the unknown.
prints · posters from the may 1968 student protests. collected and owned by école des beaux-arts.
film · a sausage factory on strike, the struggle of success, longing in times of unrest, and rules and reason to combat rage. jean luc godard’s first post-68 film tout va bien made with collaborator jean-pierre gorin is a constructed tale of him and her.
words ii · ferlinghetti and his characters are highly influenced by albert camus. they embody and employ these sentiments from this anarchist work the rebel.
music · leó ferre was a famous french folk artist during the ‘68protests. this song avec le temps muses over how love changes with time and memories are warped by context.
paintings · this arrangement of henri rousseau paintings are described by ferlinghetti as adorning the walls of annie’s studio. the sleeping gypsy, the hungry lion throws itself on the antelope, and war, encapsulate the theme of rage and revolt of the oppressed.
words iii · charles dickens is certainly a source of inspiration for ferlinghetti who, in a way, retells his famous saga of love, revolution, and sacrifice—a tale of two cities.