It is said that every century brings its own “revolutions” that change the world. I don’t know if this saying is entirely true, but by reading history books, we can find political, aesthetic, and cultural revolts — though only a few combine all three.
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The first seeks the reform of institutions; another aims to reshape customs and aesthetic sensibility; but the “complete revolution” claims the whole package — art, morals, aesthetics, politics, economy, and even values. And these “revolutions,” however different or even divergent from one another, share a common home: they are born in France and spread throughout the world. France has been their “cradle” ever since the first one — July 14, 1789.
And it is always in France that all the utopians, avant-garde intellectuals and artists with their traditional entourages, all the “opponents” and all the “conspirators” find refuge or convergence.
But at the beginning of every revolution there is always aesthetics, then sexuality, and only afterward politics. What follows, inevitably, is decay and putrefaction — as already happened in 1789, when the “Great Revolution” became the Reign of Terror. The same occurred in 1948, when the passion for freedom turned into a passion for socialism and communism, bringing degeneration even into modern art: the mockery of traditional artistic forms, the repudiation of photographic realism, and the rise of self-proclaimed avant-gardes as the sole custodians of beauty in literature and the visual arts. Museums were cleared out and replaced with emptiness — with “artist’s shit” and meaningless scribbles elevated to new “religions.” Always the same pattern: exaltation first, then stagnation, and finally disaster.
It is always the eternal “Parisian revolution” that marks the birth of modern public opinion and the “free port” of all nations — as in the 19th century, when France, and Paris above all, welcomed the exiles and survivors of every European and global revolution. Most arrived in the “respectable Paris,” where heiresses were courted and amused themselves listening, talking, and drinking, frolicking around the vocabulary of “revolutions.”
Thus, right-wing intellectuals — nationalists fleeing communist countries — drifted leftward, while those on the left, escaping military dictatorships and “illiberal” regimes, embraced nationalism instead, without the slightest embarrassment. They dined on champagne at Maxim’s before railing against “the restaurant of the capitalists,” always drunk and always seated at the Bar du Ritz, speaking of “revolutionizing” the future to make it brighter.
Just like today. It is the same weary revolutionary bourgeoisie, tired of its own daily routine, that now gives us wokism, gender theory, and every other modern folly — “frolicking around words” and promoting new laws ad infinitum.
Marco Affatigato
