“I told you so,” I warned you at the beginning of another post by our friend Christian: his case was worsening, I said. But now that case seems irretrievably, definitively lost. We know that many believe that a foreign officer is someone who, upon receiving his epaulettes, brings his experience with the troops, his know-how. Fewer are those who consider that he can bring intellectual know-how, a certain culture, academic knowledge.

That's how it is. The matter is settled. At the dawn of the twilight of his life, as he severs the ties that bind him to his last professional activity, Christian reveals himself a little more each day to those who know him little or not at all. Here he is, taking flight again, offering another facet of his rich personality. Literature… The written word has always fascinated him. He loves books, writing, and calligraphy… his only exception to the latter: he's taken up e-readers… alas, nobody's perfect.

He intends to introduce us to the authors he admires through brief forays into their works and their creators. These are good times to look forward to. A kind of digest that, I hope, he won't limit to French literature, but will broaden to include great international authors like Pessoa, Garcia Marquez, and Amado… a vast undertaking that our friend is tackling for our greatest pleasure.
Antoine Marquet.

By Christian Morisot
It is said that the books and authors we read reveal a little about our personality and give an idea of ​​who we are, our way of thinking, and much more… In its day, the magazine “Képi Blanc” asked a handful of volunteer writers to review the books received by the editor-in-chief. I particularly enjoyed this exercise and writing this kind of article. It forced me to read, even books I hadn't chosen based on their titles, as I usually do.

Today, I'm embarking on a review of the writers who have marked my life as an avid reader, those whose works have forged a real connection with my own imagination.
There was a time when I dreamed of a library composed solely of works by French writers. Why this bookish chauvinism? Simply because it's impossible for me to read them all, so if I also have to read books by foreign authors… However, I quickly understood that a library must be open to the world and not closed in on it.
The imaginary library is this "mental space" where books call to us, betray us, seize us, release us, disturb us, overwhelm us, or disconcert us. It's a shifting and expanding constellation.

André Malraux knew how to shuffle the cards of a game that evoked an imaginary museum of literature. Jean d’Ormesson did too.

I begin with Alain, the philosopher with the plow, the one who fascinated me with his pacifism and who, when the First World War broke out, without renouncing his ideals, although ineligible for military service, enlisted to fulfill his “duty as a citizen”; times have certainly changed since then… His experience in the Great War resulted in a pamphlet: “Mars, or War Judged.”

I read Alain out of obligation. After the assigned reading, the teacher ordered us to write an essay on the book. It wasn’t always easy, but, curiously, I always liked this method, which forced me to read and reflect on the work and its author.

Born in Normandy, Alain never crossed a sea or an ocean in his life; He was content to remain a peasant of thought; for him, the title of philosopher was complemented by great common sense and a great deal of optimism. This is both irritating and endearing, since common sense doesn't lead far, but on the other hand, it bestows incredible endurance.

The philosopher works his field every day, saying in this regard that "ideas laden with substance are born from the soil," and again: "words are the soil of the living." Man is recognized by the daily struggle; it is his true measure, not a distraction.

The goal of Alain's philosophy is to learn to reflect and think rationally while avoiding prejudice. This awakener of minds, passionate about freedom, railed against "the contempt of officers for enlisted men, when they speak to men as one speaks to animals." He cannot bear “the idea of ​​this organized slaughter, this treatment that man inflicts on man.”

He revolts when he witnesses the development of an enormous machine designed to keep man obedient. Alain establishes a principle of discipline that consists of erasing daydreams. He predicts, with certainty: “Those who work with their hands are victorious from moment to moment; they never cease "To conquer death…" This intellectual leader trusted only in craftsmanship and devoted himself body and soul to a perpetual "lesson in life."

Throughout his life, faced with the provocations and "seductions" of death, he stubbornly refused to say no. It is not easy. It is easy to punish with violence, he said, but the mind wages a very different war.
There, then, is a brief sketch of one of the authors who filled my winter days and… many other seasons.