romantics, idiots and bourgeois

следващите няколко откъса ми напомнят за определени социо-културни 
ситуации и просто в годината 1789 трябва да бъде сменено едно цифра.
the following short exceprts remind me of certain socio-cultural situations 
you only have to replace certain cyphers and expressions in order to achieve 
l'actualité parfaite

"the french bourgeois - the revolutionaries of 1789
the conquerors of europe under napoleon
became rich, smug, tenacious, and fearful of change;
and their children and grandchildren, the young men of flaubert's generation
were raised in an atmosphere of careful, commercial materialism,
of complete lack  of interest in literature and the arts
and of complete distrust of impulse and imagination.

unable, therefore, to express the society in which it found itself
because that society was antipathetic to literature
the very contrary of anything imaginative
literature became the denunciation of it.
young writers gave vent to their discontent either by revelling in past and more
glorious times, the middle ages and antiquity, or by seeking escape in distant
scenes, the orient, america and italy, or by expressing melancholy wilder
and more desperate than hamlet's over the atmosphere of the age.
young poets, young dramatists, and young novelists formulated the feelings
of their generation, and to the consternation of their elders the young public
began to act like the characters in the plays, peoms, and novels which it read.

----

in 1835 vigny's tragedy chatterton, the final scene of which showsthe suicide
of the young english poet, brought on a wave of suicides throughtout the country;
one young man killed himself in the theatre where the play was being given,
dying happily with chatterton; another ended his life before an open window
at sunset, his hand resting on a copy of the play open on the last fatal page.

---

it was in the midst of this turmoil that flaubert was sent to school
in the french way he was entered as a boarding pupil in the local rouen college
which prepared for the university. almost all of his classmates were passionate
romantics. [...] even the heights of romantic despair were occasionally achieved
 by the collegians: at least two of flaubert's schoolfellows committed suicide,
one blowing out his brains with a stolen pistol and the otjer hanging himself
with his necktie.

taken from "flaubert and madame bovary" 
by francis steegmuller, new york review books