La Ronde

He will always remember the first breakfast he ate in Paris.

On a Saturday morning, de Ville sits gracefully across from Valentino and Conrad with a well-practiced smile on his face.

Long before he received Valentino's reply, he had prepared the topics of "chat" with these two gentlemen--those words that were so boring to him that he could fall asleep standing up and listening to them.He kept his tone at just the right level, sounding emotional without being offensive: "...the decline of structuralism is inevitable! I noticed the problem with Althusser's theory early on, he paid too much attention to abstract order , but ignore the emotional life of the workers! We have to understand the workers themselves, instead of burying our heads in our own little study..."

Nowadays, as long as there are intellectuals participating in the parade, almost no one does not oppose Althusserism, which is the safest position.The more De Ville said, the more excited he became, and he even wanted to believe this set of rhetoric.Although a few months ago he went to listen to Althusser's lectures and applauded enthusiastically from the audience.

Valentino occasionally nodded to show he was listening, but didn't respond much.De Ville did not exceed his expectations. Although the other party showed great importance to etiquette, his sense of urgency and desire to express revealed his true origin.

Half of Valentino listened to de Ville, and the other half focused on Conrad.The child was listening carefully, but perhaps there were too many unfamiliar words for him, so he yawned sleepily.De Ville paused in embarrassment, and Valentino glanced at Conrad.

Conrad hurriedly said awkwardly: "You... please continue to talk, I just slept too little yesterday and was a little sleepy. You spoke very well, although I don't understand much..."

Devillers still maintained a smile, but the anger of being ridiculed ignited in his heart.If you don't understand, you still say that he speaks well. Isn't that ironic?When he came in earlier, he noticed this worker. The white suit on the other side didn't fit well, and he didn't seem used to wearing such formal clothes.He originally wanted to arouse the workers' conversation first—according to his experience, the emotions of these working people are always the easiest to be incited, but the other party is like a piece of wood, only knowing to stare at him with puppy-like eyes...

Valentino patted Conrad's shoulder reassuringly, turned his head to look at de Ville, and interrupted his running further and further: "Maybe Althusser was wrong, but that doesn't mean he The opposite of is correct."

"Prince Valentino, what do you mean?" De Ville asked hesitantly, not sure what he meant.Those blue eyes fixed on Valentino, as if sincerely asking for advice.

"Mr. de Villey, you said that Althusser was obsessed with constructing abstract orders and ignored the workers themselves, but have you ever thought that maybe the individual experiences narrated by the workers are the product of theoretical construction?" Valentino took a sip of his wine .

De Ville did not expect to encounter such a questioning, but he still replied without changing his face: "But it is better to go from the abstract order to the physical experience than to stay in the theory..."

"No, I'm afraid you didn't understand. Focusing on workers' experience is only superficially moving toward practice, and the phenomenon that this practice focuses on may be the consequence of another theory. So the key is still to explain the theory. Moving toward practice is not necessarily progress, it may be Pure stagnation." Valentino replied politely but strangely, "Also, please don't call me prince."

Listening to the conversation between the two, Conrad couldn't help being surprised, and his sleepiness disappeared.Although he was confused by the content, he had never heard Valentino speak in such a nonchalant tone—at least not to him.

"You're right, Mr. Valentino! I didn't think of this level." De Ville responded humbly, but he didn't take the other party's statement seriously in his heart, and he was quite disapproving.

Valentino was nonchalant, and Conrad barely engaged in the conversation.Under such circumstances, De Ville did not stay long after all.He walked to the coat rack, took his coat and put it on, turned his head and saluted and said, "Goodbye, gentlemen, see you on the street. I wish you a good day."

Conrad quickly followed his example and bowed, saying goodbye to him.

After seeing off de Ville, Valentino looked at Conrad and smiled and said, "You are very suitable for wearing a white suit. Unfortunately, I didn't bring a tailor. My size is still too big for you."

Conrad was happy at first when he heard this, but soon lowered his head: "But white is too easy to get dirty... No matter what I do, I always pay attention to my clothes."

Valentino rubbed his hair and said, "I'm not used to it at first, it's fine if I wear too much. Or I'll make you two sets of dark colors, so you don't have to choose the color of your clothes."

Conrad didn't seem to hear this, thinking about his own thoughts.Valentino called him again, and he came back to his senses: "Oh, I'm sorry... I was distracted. I was just thinking about de Ville, and you, the clothes look so natural on you. Maybe this is still It has something to do with people, I don't have as much knowledge as you, and I don't understand the etiquette of high society..."

Valentino looked at him quietly, without saying a word, with no expression on his face.

Conrad didn't continue talking, and raised his hand after a few seconds, and said in surrender: "Okay, okay, I know what you want to say, people can't be restrained by objects. Put on a piece of clothing, It's because it looks good, not because it symbolizes any class...but I'm not used to it..."

Valentino wanted to continue to frighten him with a sullen face, but he couldn't help laughing after hearing this.Conrad looked at the lines of laughter in the corners of his eyes, and couldn't help leaning forward to kiss him.

Valentino hugged him, and in this position, the two sat on the sofa, and Valentino asked in his ear: "Do you like De Ville?"

While concentrating on playing with Valentino's collar, Conrad replied absently: "Fortunately, I haven't had the opportunity to meet such a smart and humble person before. He must be an excellent college student. I have almost no knowledge of those theories." I can't understand the words."

Valentino gently grabbed Conrad's hand that was playing with his collar, and rubbed the tip of his nose with his nose: "Little bear, it's easy to pile up obscure nouns, but clear words are the most difficult thing. You want Remember, if you find someone saying something you can't understand at all, it must be someone who said something wrong."

Conrad thought of what Valentino had told him before, which was also a theory he had never been exposed to, but he could understand the general meaning.He nodded obediently, and smiled at Valentino again: "It doesn't matter how difficult others say, I have you as an interpreter, Professor Valentino."

On the other side, De Ville was walking on the road, while calculating the next thing-whether it would be cheaper to continue trying to make friends with those two people or just give up, while recalling the conversation just now with annoyance and contempt.

"Theory to practice is not necessarily progress"?These noble children are indeed naive idealists. Have they ever experienced any real suffering?Would they know the poor better than he did?

He, Deville, was born in the poorest town in France. He has never met his father since he was born, and his mother is a peasant woman who has never studied.Among the five siblings, he was the only one who was admitted to the Sorbonne University, and he was still the best among his peers after entering the law school.Because of his good looks and etiquette, many people thought that his family was superior, and he attracted the love of many girls for this reason.

Throw these nobles into his former living environment, and they will know that those self-deceiving theories are useless at all.Poverty of ideas?joke!There's only one kind of poverty in the world, and that's the kind that keeps you hungry.In the face of a genuine struggle for survival, the only thing that matters is scrambling for supplies.No poor man cares about the break between Althusser and Ranciere, they only care about whether there is enough food and water for the next meal.

He will always remember his first breakfast in Paris, a layer of richly flavored fresh baked beans on buttered white toast.He vomited it out after taking a small mouthful, and was so sick that he ate nothing for almost a day.He had only eaten beans from a can before, and he was used to the musty smell.The taste of fresh beans, to him, is like the nausea that rich people get when they eat expired beans for the first time.

De Ville never lives, he only exists.In other words, in survival, he is always preparing for his future political life.When the right-wing government was in the limelight earlier, he strongly supported the right-wing; now that the left-wing has overwhelmed the right-wing, he joined the left-this is more in line with his class. Maybe when he enters politics, his childhood stories will also be It would be a plus, he thought.He has never been troubled by the rapid change of his position. Why does a person have to have the same position today as yesterday?Is that not the tyranny of self-serving submission to opinion?

He despises idealists who defend their positions to the death, and those so-called materialists who believe in a new religion.Only religion requires man to sacrifice his body for illusory ideas.He doesn't believe in the salvation and the beyond promised by religion, he only believes in his own body and this world.

Thinking of this, he cheered up a little, and the feeling of being humiliated slightly subsided.He intended to go back at noon and bake some beans and eat them with white bread, and then think about it in the long run.He raised the corners of his lips and smiled, his blue eyes still charming.There were girls on the street secretly looking at him from the corner of their eyes, and of course, there were also girls who looked at him openly and squarely.He's turned back into that law school top student de Villey.

***

In the afternoon, Conrad was so sleepy that he decided to go to sleep for a while.He tried to pester Valentino to take a nap with him, but the latter refused because he still had something to do.

Conrad fell asleep quickly, and his shallow breathing could be heard in the quiet room.Valentino wanted to take advantage of the abundant afternoon sun to read some books and draw some posters—after all, Conrad's friend Kurt was still missing.

He originally wanted to draw another portrait of Kurt, changing the typography of the original poster.But as I drew, the people I drew didn't look like Kurt at all.The straight and clean bridge of the nose, the thin lips with fuzzy edges, and the auricular bone protruding a bit under the thin helix, clearly belonged to Conrad who was sleeping soundly.

Valentino put down his pen, walked to the window sill and looked at the scenery in the distance, but he didn't know what he was thinking.When he returned to the desk again, he erased the outline of the eyes he had drawn before, and changed them to the shape of the eyes that he had traced countless times in his heart.

I feel that marking footnotes in the text will affect the pleasure of reading, and I will not mark the ones that are not too important (or have other opinions, welcome to raise them), and I may make a general quotation after writing.Write some brief background knowledge below, don't read it:

1. Althusser mentioned in this chapter is a French philosopher of the last century, whose direction is structural Marxism.Many people think that May Storm proved that the logical context constructed by Althusser was wrong, and what people really need is deconstruction (it can also be seen as the turning point from modern to postmodern, and Althusser is on the side of modern) .Opponents include Althusser’s students—French Marxist philosophers Badiou and Ranciere. For example, Ranciere believes that Althusser ignored the emotional life of workers, and the theory he constructed was of no help to improve the status quo of workers. It's just the rape of theory on reality.

2. Valentino called Conrad "Little Bear", which is a common nickname among lovers in the German-speaking area, the original Börchen