Trafika Europe 12 - French Bon-Bons

Anne F. Garréta

was not ghostwritten by the creatures of the Comedy. We have an abundance of young youngsters and old youngsters of both sexes, ambitious, as naïve as they are cunning, in thrall to their own little bildungsroman. Channeling (often without knowing or else knowing too well) Corteggiano, apocryphal instructions of a baroque cardinal of yore. What will then have prevented you from emulating the heroes of this society’s canonical plots? The text says splendors and miseries of courtesans, and lost illusions… It also says femme-écran… The funniest thing about it is that a lot of people around you have a clear-sighted view of the plot. If they did not outline it for you (or is it that you failed to recognize and decipher the hints they possibly dropped?), it’s clearly because they thought you were already aware of its necessity and its obviousness. Did they believe that you would naturally be inclined to pursue it, as they would have, had they been in your position, since such inclination is supposed to come naturally (thanks to a thorough inculcation in the great narrations of said society) to all ambitious subjects. These spectators probably still consider you an imbecile today, and certainly secretly despise you for having wasted the opportunity, and for having failed to jump into an affair so promising and so obvious. Had you discerned it, would you have been able to throw yourself into it? For want of cynicism, would you even have had enough

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