The Situationists

Photographs: Henri Cartier-Bresson, Jean Bourgeois, Bruno Barbey

And yet, how rare were the references to the great names of ideology – Marx, Lenin, Mao, even Che Guevara – on the walls of Paris.  They would later appear on badges and T-shirts, as icons symbolizing the overthrow of systems.  The student rebels reminded theorists of a long-forgotten Bakuninist anarchism, but if anything they were closest to the ‘situationists’, who had anticipated a ‘revolution of everyday life’ through the transformation of personal relations.  That (and their Gallic brilliance at devising memorable slogans) is why they became the mouthpiece of an otherwise inchoate movement, although it is almost certain that hardly anyone until then had heard of them, outside a small circle of left-wing painters.  (I certainly had not.)

Hobsbawm, Eric.  (2002).  Interesting Times, A Twentieth Century Life.  London.  Penguin Press.  P.248.

James Salter

The room had become confining for him, a regular closet.  He stood up.  He felt like a man who puts weight on a bad leg for the first time.  Suddenly he was conscious of his position, uncomfortably.  He was the leader.  There seemed to be something artificial and repugnant about that, as if he were wearing a bright shirt with the word printed on it. Everything had been so effortless until now.  Unexpectedly, the simplicity of things was gone.  It had been a bad day.

When the ships returned from a mission, everybody watched for them.  Usually, they came lining back to the field in flights of four, flying tight show formation with the black smoke fading in parallel streams behind as they turned in toward the runway and landing pattern. They seemed to be most indestructible then.  They were of frozen silver.  Nothing could possibly dim that grace.  No enemy could deny them. Departures were stirring: but, every return, even the most uneventful, was somehow transcendent and a call to the heart to rise in joy.  Out of the north they had come again, brief strokes of splendor.



Extracts from:  Salter, James. (2007) The Hunters.  London.  Penguin.  First published 1956.

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