Olivier Rolin, Tigre en papier, trans. William Cloonan (pp.29-30, 2007 [2002])

…, in the same way back then several years seemed a vast stretch of time, and so Gideon possessed in our eyes a formidable seniority, as if he had been anointed by History, and also by “The Theory,” as we used to say. Because he had been a favorite student of the philosopher whose name the public only learned the day he strangled his wife, but you had read his books, which seems to restore Marxism to the dignity of a science. Lives are forests filled with shadows and mysteries, Marie, you tell Thirteen’s daughter; enormous things rot, hideous, nightmarish animals caterwaul in the darkness of each life. All the while you were stupidly wandering what was keeping him from joining The Cause, this mentor who was for you the image of rigor was going nuts, imagining he was hijacking a nuclear submarine or stealing gold from the Banque de France, he was trembling on his knees at the feet of the woman he would wind up killing. On the first days when the red flags were invading Paris streets, at the beginning of that long ago month of May, he was crossing the city in an ambulance from a psychiatric clinic. He never believed that could ever happen, the avenues transformed into poppy fields. And him, haggard, fleeing. What good had been “The Theory?” You had no idea how completely men are woven from darkness, scarred by fear; literature would have taught you that, but you had rejected literature, you only believed in “life,” “life,” and “experience,” clarified by the Theory ,and by Gideon’s analyses and instructions ,which were of a terrifying simplicity. You were intransigent and frightfully ignorant – and it would have done you no good to tell you that.

Olivier Rolin, Tigre en papier, trans. William Cloonan (pp.29-30, 2007 [2002])