ELMORE LEONARD – TIMOTHY OLYPHANT – JUSTIFED –
2010-2014
THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON – 2010
The first season of a series
always gives the recipe and you have to taste it. If the recipe is good, you
will like the sample you taste and you will get attached, addicted or just
mesmerized and faithful. Otherwise you will have to drag your feet through all
the seasons you bought on a special deal.
The character Deputy US Marshal
Raylan Givens is the centerpiece of the series and he better be original and
true to life. The actor is essential and he is good, even good looking. He is a
cop who shoots always first but never before the other gets or tries to get his
artillery out. It always ends badly, for the other of course. This starts with Raylan
killing a Very Important Person from the drug business in Miami, Florida.
We all know V,I and P are the first three letters of VIPer and that this snake
is particularly poisonous, though less efficient than a rattlesnake. But that’s
only the starting block of the series. Raylan is railroaded back to Kentucky where he was
coming from, back to the very city where he grew up and the very city he had
thought he had left forever, and ever, till his justified killing of a drug VIP
brought him back.
Then the character and the series
is a mixture of features that make it unique. First the accent is southern and
it takes some time for those who are not used to it to either get it or go back
to it if they have had some experience in that field. The second element is
that he is a Clint Eastwood of the new age. He has a cell phone and he is clean
and he wears a two or five gallon hat as a distinctive trait. Dirty Harry was
slightly dirty at times. But as a high plains drifter he is quite trendy in
this world of the Internet of Things.
Then Raylan has a personal
dimension with a father, a stepmother though no mother, nor siblings. He has
his high school girl friend he did not marry and the woman he married and then
divorced, and her subsequent second husband. He has all his old friends with
whom he did all kinds of antics, some definitely not entirely legal. His best
friend, if he is a best, is one of the sons of the local drug king who is just
out of prison. Raylan’s father was the agent of that chap during his barred
vacation, but he did not do good. So he has problems. The high school girl
friend and paramour married one of the sons of the local drug lord. She finally
killed him in strange conditions. The drug lord wants to get rid of his other
son who was sent to prison by Raylan but managed to get out rather fast because
of various circumstances, but he comes out a Christian reborn in Jesus.
Halleluiah!
Raylan’s whole problem is that he
has to get rid of the drug circle and at the same time spare his “best” friend
turned reborn Christian. The rest is detail and funny, well written and
inventive.
This season ends up on a
cliffhanger. They are all dead except Raylan, his “best” friend whose father
was killed by the only survivor of the Miami
drug club. The “best” friend, who is called Boyd actually, goes after the
running girl and we understand Raylan goes after them. What happens next is for
next season, precisely. There is no real deep thinking or philosophy in this
series. It is more so far what I would call southern folklore and standard US Marshal
cop-lore in the boonies.
I should have spoiled nothing
because what I have said is the normal pattern that we know from the very start.
The pleasure is in the detail, the small elements, people, epiphenomena, and
that or those you will have to discover yourself in five hundred and fifty two
minutes of running time and the thirteen episodes. Good luck.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU
ELMORE LEONARD – TIMOTHY OLYPHANT – JUSTIFED –
2010-2014
THE COMPLETE SECOND SEASON – 2010
This second season does not bring
the big surprise we could have expected. The Bennett family who have been
controlling Harlan County for two or three generations, this Bennett family
being in the hands of the mother, with no father available, but with three sons
the mother uses as her direct servants and hit men, let’s say slaves in crime
because that is what it is, this family has to come to an end one day and
generally it happens with a lot of pain and suffering.
Why does it have to come to an
end?
Because the power of this family
is based on crime: illegal cultivation of marihuana at a very high level, grand
style and all, for tremendous amounts of money. Because the power of this
family is reinforced by one son who is the local sheriff and has turned the
local police force into a gang to enforce and reinforce the power of and the
decisions of the mother. Because the other two sons are plain criminals and
nothing else, killing for fun and torturing for kicks. Because some company
from outside decides that the tremendous amount of coal that is hidden in these
Kentucky mountains has to be taken out and the Bennett family is an obstacle to
this industrial venture and has to be either bought, or even bribed, or
eliminated. Since the sons are die-hard criminal minds there is no other way
but to eliminate them, and get rid of the mother.
The agents of that cleansing
mission will be the Deputy US Marshall Raylan Givens from the Givens family, a
rival family to the Bennetts, and the Crowders, another rival family to the
Bennetts. Raylan is the only one who is on the side of more or less legal
means, the use of force if it is justified. The other members of these two
families are on the side of justice for themselves, vengeance for their dead,
revenge for their businesses and lives. So they want the Bennett empire to be
split up into pieces and the viable pieces to be entrusted, or recuperated, by
them.
So the brothers have to go one
after another. One is shot dead by a girl he tried to molest and whose father
he had killed, the second ends up in prison, the third, the local sheriff, ends
up badly too and the mother has her own fate on her own hands. The chief of a
tribe, or a clan, of a gang deserves some modest reward in their ends, in this
case her end, face to face with Raylan.
The details you’ll have to get
from the 13 episodes, but we knew from the very beginning that this second
season was the end of the monstrous criminal corrupt dictatorship or a dumb
mother and her three slaves of sorts, and sons by name.
There are tricky moments to
eliminate secondary corrupt dummies, and some sensitive moments about the girl
whose father was assassinated by the Bennetts. There are also some surprising
moments concerning the two female characters, Raylan’s ex-wife who became his
new girl friend, and his high school lover of sorts who is connected to one of the
last surviving Crowders. Not to speak of Raylan’s step mother he calls his aunt.
A very strong woman but to be strong is nearly a disadvantage when confronted
to unethical criminals.
But I am sure you will enjoy the
suspense. At the end, which could have been the end of the series, Raylan has
applied for some promotion out of Kentucky
or the Marshall service, he has just learned some good news about his ex-wife
and we do not know what will happen. That’s not a cliff hanger but that will be
a new start next season.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU
ELMORE LEONARD – TIMOTHY OLYPHANT – JUSTIFED –
2010-2014
THE COMPLETE THIRD SEASON – 2011
This third season is crucial now
the main gang has lost their head, their chief. The only actors are the black
gang and Crowder’s gang that has recuperated Arlo Givens, Raylan’s father. The
new element that is going to animate the whole season is the arrival of the son
of a Detroit gangster, rejected by his own
father and who is playing the carpetbagger of the 21st century in Kentucky. That means
this season is going to be business as usual in an unusual circumstantial situation
with the invasive action of an invader from the North who does not seem to know
how things are going down South.
Locally we only have one element
that has some deeper meaning: the sheriff of the main county of the action has
to face re-election. Boyd Crowder and his gang decide to play their pack of
cards to get their own man elected. The Detroit
invader tries to pay the incumbent sheriff to keep him in office. In fact the
election is very tricky and the result is astounding. We must always consider
being a newcomer in an elective job is necessarily a handicap but American
elections are full of surprises. Remember the 2000 presidential election “won”
by decision of the Supreme Court who stopped the recounting of several millions
of votes that were not exactly correct. No allusion of course to rigged
elections of any sort that are not possible in the USA:
that’s typical of third world countries or Asia or Europe, hence of everywhere
except the USA.
The second question is the place
of a black gang among several white gangs in the South. Segregation is still
real and effective though now some members of the black gang are not that clean
or faithful as for their own gang and they may give some information to the
other side, turning a tricky situation into a very messy situation.
What’s left then if the social
and cultural issues are rather light?
Some good intentions that are
both illegal and ethical but they create more problems than the conflicts they may
solve. The objective is not to shoot all gangsters down, but to put them in
prison, at least for a while, and if they have to be shot, they must not be
shot dead. That’s the real problem for Raylan Givens, but he seems to be
becoming civilized.
The season then ends on a good
fine rich situation since most gangsters are eliminated, except one, the black
piggy bank is broken and the content is brought to light from the depth of the
stomach of this piggy bank and Raylan visits his ex-wife who is presently
pregnant with his own child to make sure she is OK at her sister’s where she
found refuge from the saucy bullet-ridden situation at “home,” if a police
corps is a home of any kind.
So we end without a cliff hanger
really but with a nearly cleaned up plate. So how are they going to renew the
situation to have new “adventures” in this southern jungle to put on the
platter of next season?
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU
ELMORE LEONARD – TIMOTHY OLYPHANT – JUSTIFED –
2010-2014
THE COMPLETE FOURTH SEASON – 2012
This Season is tricky since so
many of the old traditional outlaws in Harlan County have already been dealt
with, I mean flipped over like flip cards and ended up right on their heads,
brains and skulls spilled over the sidewalk. We knew there was a connection
with Detroit in
the drug business or heroin distribution and that there were only two local
actors left. But Detroit
was furious because the network was being both strangled and drained. So they
had to do something about it. First to obtain the merger of the two opposed
actors and then to protect the network against Deputy US Marshall
Raylan Givens who is definitely not a gift, a present, a blessed contribution
to the wealth of business, meaning outlawed business of course.
The Detroit people tried to take over and they
sent some cleaning teams but unluckily they failed. That’s when we start
understanding the real stake and it is Drew, that dead heroin higher-up gangster
or dealer who actually faked his death in Harlan County and disappeared leaving
a body behind him and some unluckily identity that was taken care of by Arlo
Givens. The two million dollars of heroin went into the local business, made
the county rich and the very few people who knew who Drew was kept their mouths
shut and just became well-off and even rich. But Arlo Givens cheated, of course
and naturally, and he kept the bag and the Drew driver’s license ID hidden in a
wall of his house. For some absurd reason a couple of young people were sent to
recuperate the bag but it ended up in the hands of the US Marshalls.
Too bad! Arlo was supposed to have burnt it. And his cheating will not benefit
him in the ends since his end is going to be miserable and unhappy. That’s what
happens when you play poker – so to say – with bad boys.
And that’s the story of the
season.
1-
to find out who Drew is in the county, under
which identity he is hiding;
2-
to get him in the hands of justice so that he
could get a deal with the local public attorney or prosecutor in exchange of
his telling who is who in the vast US network of heroin, or at least the branch
growing out of Detroit;
3-
to save a poor young naïve but not innocent
prostitute who was the witness of some crime by one of the surviving Crowders,
and at the same time to bring her into safety in the hands of the US Marshalls
so that she could bring the last Crowders down, or at least one of them, the
others being either eliminated or under some suspended fateful ending:
4-
to protect Raylan’s ex-wife who is going to give
birth to his child, knowing that in the hands of the Detroit criminals she is a
very good hostage, hence very valuable and thus has a high level of added value;
5-
to enable the child to be born safe and secure;
6-
to get Raylan suspended for thirty days, a
suspension for sure, but a golden suspension indeed that is in fact a forced
vacation;
7-
finally to manage to get the bad guy from Detroit that menaced
Raylan’s wife killed in a way or another, though not by Raylan and not with
Raylan’s gun.
You can trust Raylan to be able
to get everything through with the most numerous surprises possible. That leads
us to an end without any real cliffhanger. A baby is going to be born during
recess. The merger will be solved among the two gangsters. The poor Boyd
Crowder will get some respite and maybe even a promotion and his future wife will
be taken in custody. The Black gang, on the other side of the racial divide,
will manage to get out sprinkle white though not clean. Drew will be in custody
and the young naïve etc. prostitute will be safe since her ex-madam is in
custody too. And Raylan is on vacation. Happy fishing and lucky idleness, Sir,
Mister Master Sir, do not forget we are in the South!
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU
ELMORE LEONARD – TIMOTHY OLYPHANT – JUSTIFED – 2010-2014
THE COMPLETE FIFTH SEASON – 2013
This fifth season is tricky since
all the local Harlan County families are dying like hell, so some props
have to be brought into the Kentucky
landscape. The first one is a whole family from Florida, the Crows, like the
birds that are both parasites and scavengers, and they take over the Crowders
with all kinds of conflicts going along with this coup d’état if not putsch.
The second one through the friends in Detroit
comes from Mexico
with heroin. And that is the heart of the season with Raylan Givens more and
more sidetracked by his chief Art to the point of this chief making a mistake
in procedure and getting severely wounded. The worst part of the situation is
that a ten year old boy is mixed up in this Crow family, and like with birds
crows do not like smaller birds like sparrows and robins. So the boy has a lot
of problems with his mother, when she is revealed to be his mother, and with
his uncles when they are revealed to be his uncles.
The violence in this season is
extremely serious but always the mark of some kind of paranoid or hysterical or
even psychotic derangement of the various criminals who are like a bunch of
spiders locked up in a glass pot. They are ready to eat one another if they
cannot get even with the cops and kill them before getting back to eating one
another alive if possible. They try the latter but they are so corrugated that
they cannot shoot a weapon straight.
This criminal milieu reveals that
family links, in other words blood relations, are an absolute dictatorship, a
bond that cannot be cut loose or untied, a connection that is more than a rope,
a real cable, and not made of some vegetal fiber but made with stainless steel.
Blood means slavery. And on the other side within this blood entourage the
stronger individuals consider they have all rights to do what they want and to
be followed, obeyed by all other members. It is very bad luck to be a child in
such an environment because then you are a pack mule at best and a body shield
at worst. You can imagine if being a boy is not easy in that criminal family,
what it would be to be a girl.
There is there a real lesson
about human society. The lower you go into crime and hooliganism, the more
disorganized and disjointed human relations become, in fact there is nothing
human left, just the animal instinct not to survive but to kill. These people
are not even animals who kill to feed or to defend themselves, but beasts who
kill for the pleasure of killing and who torture as long as possible before
killing to inflict pain, suffering and humiliation. Strangely enough these men
only consider a menace to their manhood as having the chance of getting some
kind of influence on their behavior, otherwise dying for them is nothing at
all, whereas losing their masculinity is unbearable. You should see them then
crawling and begging. They have no decency, no honor, no dignity.
That’s the main dimension of this
series: it does not use any subtle intrigue or plot on the criminal side. It is
only sheer force and mere violence.
On the cop side you have the
ruffians, like Raylan, who manipulates the criminals into killing one another,
maiming each other, mutilating themselves even, let’s say by accident, but
these cops are always getting what they want: the death and elimination of the
criminals if possible without going to a court of justice and saving on
judicial costs. The second type is those who try to proceed by the rules and by
the book, Miranda and all. They know X or Y is going to commit a crime but
there is no need for them to make it come faster and thus blocking them, nor to
do anything else but wait for the crime to have been committed. The last type,
generally the bosses, is so frigid in front of these criminals that they prefer
not seeing the crime that is coming rather than sending cops who might be a
little bit rough.
So we are justified in thinking
that such police forces are in fact by far ineffective, impotent in front of
real crime, and this frustration largely explains that then some may become
criminal in their turn by taking some ethnic categories of people, young, male
and colored, meaning black or very dark, as prime targets for their harassment
that can lead to some innocent casualties among these populations. That
consequence of bad police work in the USA is not really hinted at in this
series, but we know better.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU
ELMORE LEONARD – TIMOTHY
OLYPHANT – JUSTIFED – 2010- 2014
THE COMPLETE SIXTH SEASON – 2014
The
final season of a series like this one is very complicated. It has to take all,
or at least the most dangerous criminals down, in prison, in the earth or
whatever other way they can imagine. So you have to understand that there is no
spoiling in telling you that all except two end up dead or in prison, only two
actually in that last category. And two on the loose, on the run, vanished in
thin air. No spoiling in telling you Raylen Givens ends up in Miami, Florida,
as had been announced for a while. He is a good daddy to his daughter, a
visiting or visited daddy more than a real in-house one. His ex wife and mother
of his daughter is of course with a second
second-choice husband, nothing to brag about. Not handsome but probably
not crooked either, and yet the muscle man type, rough on the outline and hairy
all over, working class and physical. A real man in one word even if he won’t
win any Mister Universe competition.
The
only thing I will not tell you is about Raylan’s hat, his famous twenty-gallon
Stetson hat. Apparently he has to bury it in the last episode or so. Bury it in
some deeply spiritual way that sounded like some crucial scene in some
A-cowboy-movie like Pale Rider or some other B-cowboy-movie with John Wayne
like never mind the title they are all the same.
But it
is time to summarize this series. As I said, and they managed to keep that
steadily till the end, it was a cross between a Clint Eastwood series and a
country-rockabilly musical without singers nor dancers. The charm was in the
southern accent which was authentic for some actors and an approaching
imitation for others, but believable enough, and beyond these criminals seen as
individuals you could see crime as an organized society with its own hierarchy
within every gang and a special very confrontational hierarchy among the gangs,
knowing that the black gang is completely out though they are the last resort
gang that provides the various white gangs with technical and emergency help
when needed. They are hated but they are very good at what they are doing like
fake IDs and passports, the security blanket of a hideout or some rescue money
or even team when things are getting a little bit sour.
Then
the hierarchy is very geographical. At the top are the local family gangs and
each family fights against all the others and the originality of this series is
that a very effective though slightly Dirty Harry in style US Marshall is
brought into Kentucky to help the local US Marshalls dismantle the gang system and
bring down the die-hard last-longest gang based on the Crowder family and a
couple of allies who hate them but have to serve them. So the seasons went on
and on bringing down one gang after the other.
The
family structure of these gangs is normally centered on a man, but there was
one exception, and that really was an exception, of one gang centered on a
mother and her sons. It so happens that out of one of these gangs one son
changed routes and went up the highway instead of down the low way. He became a
US Marshall and he of course was the only one
who could be of any help since he had been educated with them all and he knew
all their little secrets and their weak points and it never was endurance. Patience
was the main asset you had to have if you wanted to bring them down, these
gangsters.
The
final hierarchy was geographical again since it was the various routes followed
by the substances they sold on the black market that had to come from outside.
So they tried, and had to try, getting in touch with people from Detroit or people from Mexico
and it turned fiery and bitter very fast because in Kentucky they hated the guts of these
outsiders and these outsiders looked down upon these red necks. This is shown
very well in the various seasons.
The
final element that is of interest is the spectacle you get of all the various
polices in a state like Kentucky: two federal agencies, FBI and US Marshalls,
state troopers and state police, and then the police of every single county
whose sheriffs are elected by the people in a brilliant atmosphere of thriving
prosperous corruption. When you know that and the fact that the police of Harlan County
cannot cross the boundary line of the county, you imagine the mess and ease
with which one criminal can cross that line. One crossing point is a bridge
with the line right in the middle which became the meeting point of all
negotiations, all exchanges, all encounters between bands, gangs and various
police teams. That means in the US police work is impossible, coordination is a
dream and when it is tempted it turns into a nightmare, and the local cops are
very simply trained to profile the appearance of a passer-by by his look, skin
color, hat, way of walking and other attitudinal and behavioral elements and
when a total stranger is profiled into one dangerous category at first sight
using a weapon becomes not an option but a reflex. And the only information
they can get is from snitches or confidential (criminal) informers.
That’s
the problem with Raylan Givens. He had the bad habit of shooting faster than
his shadow took to open one eye and he had to learn some restraint. But he
managed and strangely enough he remained fair and faithful to the woman who was
not really involved but entangled in the Crowder gang to the last moment and
even when after all that noise, but well you will have to find that out by
yourself. Somewhere deep under Raylan Givens was a sentimental baboon or maybe
puppy. That’s the main interest in the man. He was able to feel some emotions,
some passion even though he would never admit it because he is a man and in his
gang and anti-gang training sessions a real man does not feel any passion,
emotion or sentiment. The surprising element is that he survived but we knew
that from the very start. Maybe they could have tried an ending à la Prison
Break or Dexter. A little bit lackluster.
Dr
Jacques COULARDEAU
# posted by Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU @ 2:48 PM
0 comments
ELMORE
LEONARD – TIMOTHY OLYPHANT – JUSTIFED – 2010- 2014
THE COMPLETE SIXTH SEASON – 2014
The
final season of a series like this one is very complicated. It has to take all,
or at least the most dangerous criminals down, in prison, in the earth or
whatever other way they can imagine. So you have to understand that there is no
spoiling in telling you that all except two end up dead or in prison, only two
actually in that last category. And two on the loose, on the run, vanished in
thin air. No spoiling in telling you Raylen Givens ends up in Miami, Florida,
as had been announced for a while. He is a good daddy to his daughter, a
visiting or visited daddy more than a real in-house one. His ex wife and mother
of his daughter is of course with a second
second-choice husband, nothing to brag about. Not handsome but probably
not crooked either, and yet the muscle man type, rough on the outline and hairy
all over, working class and physical. A real man in one word even if he won’t
win any Mister Universe competition.
The
only thing I will not tell you is about Raylan’s hat, his famous twenty-gallon Stetson
hat. Apparently he has to bury it in the last episode or so. Bury it in some
deeply spiritual way that sounded like some crucial scene in some A-cowboy-movie
like Pale Rider or some other B-cowboy-movie with John Wayne like never mind
the title they are all the same.
But it
is time to summarize this series. As I said, and they managed to keep that
steadily till the end, it was a cross between a Clint Eastwood series and a
country-rockabilly musical without singers nor dancers. The charm was in the
southern accent which was authentic for some actors and an approaching
imitation for others, but believable enough, and beyond these criminals seen as
individuals you could see crime as an organized society with its own hierarchy
within every gang and a special very confrontational hierarchy among the gangs,
knowing that the black gang is completely out though they are the last resort
gang that provides the various white gangs with technical and emergency help
when needed. They are hated but they are very good at what they are doing like
fake IDs and passports, the security blanket of a hideout or some rescue money
or even team when things are getting a little bit sour.
Then
the hierarchy is very geographical. At the top are the local family gangs and
each family fights against all the others and the originality of this series is
that a very effective though slightly Dirty Harry in style US Marshall is
brought into Kentucky to help the local US Marshalls dismantle the gang system and
bring down the die-hard last-longest gang based on the Crowder family and a
couple of allies who hate them but have to serve them. So the seasons went on
and on bringing down one gang after the other.
The
family structure of these gangs is normally centered on a man, but there was
one exception, and that really was an exception, of one gang centered on a
mother and her sons. It so happens that out of one of these gangs one son
changed routes and went up the highway instead of down the low way. He became a
US Marshall and he of course was the only one
who could be of any help since he had been educated with them all and he knew
all their little secrets and their weak points and it never was endurance. Patience
was the main asset you had to have if you wanted to bring them down, these
gangsters.
The
final hierarchy was geographical again since it was the various routes followed
by the substances they sold on the black market that had to come from outside.
So they tried, and had to try, getting in touch with people from Detroit or people from Mexico
and it turned fiery and bitter very fast because in Kentucky they hated the guts of these
outsiders and these outsiders looked down upon these red necks. This is shown
very well in the various seasons.
The
final element that is of interest is the spectacle you get of all the various
polices in a state like Kentucky: two federal agencies, FBI and US Marshalls,
state troopers and state police, and then the police of every single county
whose sheriffs are elected by the people in a brilliant atmosphere of thriving
prosperous corruption. When you know that and the fact that the police of Harlan County
cannot cross the boundary line of the county, you imagine the mess and ease
with which one criminal can cross that line. One crossing point is a bridge
with the line right in the middle which became the meeting point of all negotiations,
all exchanges, all encounters between bands, gangs and various police teams. That
means in the US police work is impossible, coordination is a dream and when it
is tempted it turns into a nightmare, and the local cops are very simply
trained to profile the appearance of a passer-by by his look, skin color, hat,
way of walking and other attitudinal and behavioral elements and when a total
stranger is profiled into one dangerous category at first sight using a weapon
becomes not an option but a reflex. And the only information they can get is
from snitches or confidential (criminal) informers.
That’s
the problem with Raylan Givens. He had the bad habit of shooting faster than
his shadow took to open one eye and he had to learn some restraint. But he
managed and strangely enough he remained fair and faithful to the woman who was
not really involved but entangled in the Crowder gang to the last moment and
even when after all that noise, but well you will have to find that out by
yourself. Somewhere deep under Raylan Givens was a sentimental baboon or maybe
puppy. That’s the main interest in the man. He was able to feel some emotions,
some passion even though he would never admit it because he is a man and in his
gang and anti-gang training sessions a real man does not feel any passion,
emotion or sentiment. The surprising element is that he survived but we knew
that from the very start. Maybe they could have tried an ending à la Prison
Break or Dexter. A little bit lackluster.
Dr
Jacques COULARDEAU
# posted by Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU @ 1:50 PM
0 comments
Jacques Coulardeau at Academia.edu (44)
Le comique de
Voltaire est souvent mélodramatique et larmoyant
THÉÂTRE
COMPLET DE M. DE VOLTAIRE, CONFORME À LA DERNIÈRE ÉDITION, ROME SEPTIÈME –
FACSIMILÉ PAR ULAN PRESS
Discussion
Une seule remarque
formelle : il manque quatre pages (126-127 et 134-135) et une page et
totalement illisible (350).
VOLTAIRE –
L’INDISCRET – 1725 […]
VOLTAIRE – L’ENFANT
PRODIGUE – 1736 […]
VOLTAIRE – LA PRUDE
- 1747 […]
VOLTAIRE – LA FEMME
QUI A RAISON – 1949 […]
VOLTAIRE – NANINE – 1749 […]
ISAAC NEWTON AND JUDAISM […]
Voltaire (1694-1778) me trotte, avec ou sans béquilles, dans la tête depuis
très longtemps, depuis qu’en quatrième ou troisième nous nous passions dans le
lycée municipal de Bordeaux, dit Collège Moderne, les passages expurgés de
Candide fait prisonnier par des pirates qui fouillent de fond en comble le
bateau et ses passagers et passagères. C’était peu de temps avant que l’on
interdise « La Religieuse » (1966-67) de Jacques Calmette, ce film
adapté de Denis Diderot.
Mais une citation de ce Voltaire grand amateur de citations s’impose
aujourd’hui comme une vérité éternelle et pourtant tellement mise en doute.
« La philosophie, la seule
philosophie, cette sœur de la religion, a désarmé des mains que la superstition
avait si longtemps ensanglantées; et l’esprit humain, au réveil de son ivresse,
s’est étonné des excès où l’avait emporté le fanatisme. » (Voltaire, Traité
sur la tolérance, 1763, chapitre IV, «Si la tolérance est dangereuse, et chez
quels peuples elle est permise»)
C’est en notre période cruelle beaucoup plus qu’une simple citation. Et
c’est pour moi maintenant devenu un pèlerinage. Depuis plus de dix ans je
remonte dans un sens et dans l’autre le Boulevard Voltaire de Paris de la Place
de la Nation à la Place de la République de mon hôtel au Syndicat National des
Auteurs et des Compositeurs, bien plus loi il est vrai, rue Taitbout que
j’atteins tout le temps en passant devant la Synagogue de la rue de la
Victoire, ses grilles municipales au garde-à-vous et son CRS dans sa guérite
vitrée de garde 24 heures sur 24 et 7 jours sur 7. J’ai parcouru ainsi ce
boulevard plusieurs centaines de fois et j’ai chaque fois regardé le Bataclan
au point de ne même plus le voir.
Mais l’actualité m’a tout à coup rappelé à la réalité et m’a ré-ouvert les
yeux de la mémoire et j’ai revu ce bâtiment que je ne remarquais plus depuis
longtemps. Et ce Boulevard Voltaire m’est alors apparu comme l’axe suivi le
soir du 13 Novembre 2015 par des commandos en formation de combat armé de
bombes et de religion. Et je suis passé devant le Bataclan et traversé la Place
de la République bien des fois depuis particulièrement dans les mois qui ont
suivi quand de véritables parterres de cierges, bougies, fleurs, messages
chantaient la tolérance et mon projet de traiter du théâtre de Voltaire et de
la philosophie dans ce théâtre se trouva un peu cerné et recentré sur une pièce
devenue au cours des siècles plutôt confidentielle, même si le metteur en scène
et auteur José Valverde la connaît, car il faut bien le dire le théâtre de
Voltaire était un théâtre d’agitprop philosophique en son temps, et parfois
même un peu sentimentalement mélodramatique à la Greuze. Jean Jacques Rousseau
n’était pas beaucoup mieux. On est chez ces auteurs bien loin de Pierre de
Marivaux (1688-1763) ou de Pierre de Beaumarchais (1732-1799). Denis Diderot
(1713-1784) est presque un prodige dans cet ensemble philosophique plus que
dramaturgique.
Mais voilà ici le premier travail sur un certain nombre de comédies qui ne
sont pas parmi l smeilleures pièces de
Voltaire et qui ne laisseront pas beaucoup de gens rêver car ces comédies sont
larmoyantes et pathétiques pour ne pas dire mélodramatiques. Je réserve Mahomet
et Les Guèbres pour Avignon.
# posted by Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU @ 2:05 PM
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