Jacques Yonnet Quotes & Sayings

No one will ever know what manifold difficulties I've had to overcome in order to bring to a conclusion this first part of my chronicle. In certain dreams you feel leaden, numb, paralyzed, incapable of moving even though frightful and ferocious enemies are closing in on you. A constraint, curb, impediment of this order were a constant obstacle to the, oh, so very long and arduous composition of this work. And yet with every one of these stories the fact of having committed it to writing relieved me of a genuine millstone. My only regret is not to have completely unburdened myself. I'm still sadly short of reaching that target. — Jacques Yonnet

Every day the words that Keep-on-Dancin' and the Gypsy imparted to me - theories, observations, advice and warnings - are substantiated and acquire deeper meaning.

'It's not for nothing there are so many bistrots in Paris,' Keep-on-Dancin' asserted. 'The reason so many people are always crowded into them isn't so much they go there to drink but to meet up, congregate, come together, comfort each other. Yes, comfort each other: people are bored the whole time, and they're scared, scared of loneliness and boredom. And they all carry around in their heart of hearts their own pet little arch-fear: fear of death, no matter how devil-may-care they might appear to be. They'd do anything to avoid thinking about it. Don't forget, it's with that fear all temples and churches were built. So in cities like this, where forty different races mingle together, everyone can always find something to say to each other. — Jacques Yonnet

The events I've chosen to record are only the most spectacular manifestations of forces that - out of fear, ignorance, everyday stupidity - are deemed 'obscure'. But it's now an indisputable fact that the most innocent words, the most harmless gestures in certain places and at certain times acquire an unwonted importance and weight, and have repercussions that far exceed what was intended. — Jacques Yonnet

The rest of the gang aren't worth mentioning. But every one of them's got a story.

I catch myself writing 'not worth mentioning'. According to what criteria? No reason whatever to feel superior. — Jacques Yonnet

It's a dreadful assertion to make that once the war is over, the lesson learned, the conclusion drawn lies anywhere but in the verdict 'slaughter'. The dead are very quickly forgotten. But it's extraordinary - and a good thing too - how we're bested by them in this respect. — Jacques Yonnet

An historian is a kind detective in search of the fact - remote or otherwise - that brings to a set of events apparently unconnected with each other, the link that unites them, their justification, their logic.

You cannot imagine what great delights this profession affords. It's as if, in every incunablum, consumed by worms and steeped in boredom, in every inarticulate scrawl, in every collection of forgotten chronicles, there presides a mischievous sprite, winking at you, who at the appropriate time confers on you your reward in the form of renewed wonder. — Jacques Yonnet

Fortunately the City is vigilant. It too has its secret weapons. Since the summer it has released safety valves that form part of a wonderful mechanism, known only to itself. For the past three months we've noticed the most heartening appearance all over the place of eccentrics, more or less raving lunatics, cranks, and reinvigorating crackpots. — Jacques Yonnet

1944 - Exploring London in wartime, a city with stiff upper lip, gritted teeth, clenched fists, makes you realize that Paris is a bit of whore.

Every day and every night for weeks now, London has been bleeding and hiding its wounds with impressive dignity. A 'don't show off' attitude prevails. From time to time a sputtering doodle-bug (a VI) shatters the torpor of the overcast sky. One second, sometimes two ... at most three ... of silence. Visualizing that fat cigar with shark fins as it stops dead, sways, idiotically tips over, then goes into a vertical dive. And explodes. Usually it's an entire building that's destroyed.

Apparently the Civil Defense rescue teams observe a very strict rule of discretion and restraint. You never see any panic. In this impassive city detachment is the expression of panic. — Jacques Yonnet

Imagine the literary buff, steeped in his beloved classics, rejoicing in a memory that sings, prepared to dispense kilowatts of goodwill, who fetches up at the Odeon on an off day. There are days like that, when everything rings hollow, and even the hollowness is unconvincing. There's nothing to be done about it: the inspiration's not there. He's left with a terrible sense of disappointment, resentment, against whom he doesn't exactly know: the playwright or the actors? All he can do is curl up in bed, alone, all alone, and console himself with suitably wrought alexandrines. — Jacques Yonnet

Time works for those who place themselves beyond time. — Jacques Yonnet

An event is never just what it is in itself and nothing more. It's what goes on around it, at the same time, that makes it - potentially - a tragic situation.

You have to have been exposed to this, at least once, to understand it. — Jacques Yonnet

In other words, you're justifying the Hundred Years' War.'

'More or less. For it enabled our two peoples to become deeply interdependent, allowing the most fruitful of intellectual exchanges.'

'You mean, the French are "anglicized" without knowing it.'

'And the English have assimilated their Continental experience from that time much more than you think. But this is what I was leading up to: the Englishman is essentially a mystical being. And, because he's scrupulous, he's apprehensive. And therefore susceptible to everything that might be interpreted as a superhuman manifestation, whether it be a legend of esoteric significance - as in this case - or an event of peculiar resonance. Don't forget, all the official bodies in Paris - parliament, clergy, and especially the university - were in favour of the English at the period I'm talking about.'

'Of course! — Jacques Yonnet

I should like one day, as some anonymous pedestrian revisiting the scenes of these memories, to follow on the heels of an attentive reader - here are some - and to relish his delight when, with this book in his pocket, he finds himself in the presence of one of the characters described, mentioned or referred to earlier on, who do exist, large as life, and wittingly or not perpetuate their legend. I'd like people to investigate, to verify. You need to be an extremely well-informed reader to identify all the 'keys' scattered throughout these pages. Many readers may find among them the key to their own front door.

In any case, what you need to know is this: in certain areas of Paris, the supernatural is part of everyday life. Local people accept this and have some involvement with it. — Jacques Yonnet

Men are so isolated, prisoners of their own wretched selves, that they can be unbelievably sociable. — Jacques Yonnet

The minutes seeped away like wine from a barrel. — Jacques Yonnet

I'd very much like to 'conclude' something from this experiment. Or that it should raise a question in my mind, and a commitment to get to the bottom of the matter, to investigate, to come up with an outline of the beginning of an answer, however ill-defined or trite it might be . . . But no. I'm here to see, hear, observe - to experience. Let others explain. — Jacques Yonnet

Silence, like madness, is only comparative. — Jacques Yonnet

In response to a tactless question he once said to me, 'What do you expect? This lousy neighbourhood gave me the come-on. I couldn't resist. — Jacques Yonnet

Here, in a few words, you've said all you need to say. People stand by each other, but they don't talk. It's remarkable. I've investigated the extraordinary history of these walls. I think I'm the only person who knows that it's the stones, the stones alone that set the tone here. — Jacques Yonnet

No one will shake my conviction that those leaders of men, who are in the nature of carbuncles, of semi-conscious abscesses, who draw feverish crowds to them like noxious humours, have an innate knowledge of arrested time. They play with those vacant moments as though at a game of chequers. A fraction of suspended, frozen time, of inert time, jammed like a wedge into the most wonderfully oiled cogs of the most lucid of minds: and the whole mechanism is brought crashing to the ground, prepared to accept any authority, to endorse the most monstrous aberrations, especially collective ones. — Jacques Yonnet

At the Saleve, the stove is drawing badly. This and the stale tobacco, rough wine and a perpetual acrid pungency (disinfectant or vomit, or both) are almost intolerable. But there's that tingling you've only got to register once: within two seconds it gets you at the back of your throat, and then immediately diffuses like a drop of oil. A sudden and surprising sweetness. Breathe in through your mouth, out through your nose. That's it. You're hooked.

Someone here is smoking hashish. — Jacques Yonnet

Sunset's the best time to take a stroll down Mouffetard, the ancient Via Mons Cetardus. The buildings along it are only two or three stories high. Many are crowned with conical dovecotes. Nowhere in Paris is the connection, the obscure kinship, between houses very close to each other more perceptible to the pedestrian than in this street.

Close in age, not location. If one of them should show signs of decrepitude, if its face should sag, or it should lose a tooth, as it were, a bit of cornicing, within hours its sibling a hundred metres away, but designed according to the same plans and built by the same men, will also feel it's on its last legs.

The houses vibrate in sympathy like the chords of a viola d'amore. Like cheddite charges giving each other the signal to explode simultaneously. — Jacques Yonnet

Better beware of the newly dead

Of the white-handed ghost

And the brightness of these lamps . . .

wrote Luc Berimont in 1940, in Reign of Darkness.

I've always felt the greatest reluctance to go anywhere near, to touch, a fresh corpse. For me, it's an unseemly thing. Useless. Hostile. Cunning. Dangerous. The 'presence' is much stronger, more perceptible one hour after death than one hour before. By my observation, this was not the case with Heisserer.

He was entirely absent from his head, his hands,his quivering body. He was gone instantly, unburdened of his absurd life, released. — Jacques Yonnet

You know, a carving, especially if it's polychrome, is not meant to move. These faces, these half-bodies, when you animate them, they're more live than the living. They can be dangerous for those who don't really understand them. With contained energy, no one can predict what will happen when it's released. — Jacques Yonnet