Si Trump a lu un livre de 753 pages, je suis Margaret Thatcher. Je n'y crois pas. Juste une info, ce livre est fermement anticléricaux. Je ne sais pas si Trump croit en Dieu mais il fait tout pour les chrétiens fondamentalistes. La philosophie d'Ayan Rand ressemblerait à la partie Libertarian qui est "laissez-faire" pour toute question de société y compris le marijuana, le mariage gai, l'avortement, etc.Laure a écrit : ↑jeudi 26 mars 2020 18:55 Comme je ne connaissais pas du tout cette "source vive", j'ai consulté la notice Wikipédia qui m'apprend que ce serait le livre préféré de Donald Trump Peut-être ton premier point commun avec ce président ?
Plus sérieusement, la chose qui m'interroge, c'est comment la jeunesse américaine pouvait être amenée à lire ce genre d'ouvrage ? Dans quel cadre ? Etait-ce une demande des professeurs ?
En fait, mon seul point en commun avec Trump était / est Taiwan. Il a fait ce qui semblait une grosse boulette en félicitant la présidente de Taiwan la première fois qu'elle a gagné l'élection, la Chine n'était pas contente, ils font tout pour que l'indépendance absolu de facto de Taiwan ne soit pas reconnu des autres pays. Tsai Ying-wen (son prénom veut dire "anglais" en Chinois !) a toujours été pour affirmer ce statut. Quelques personnes ont dit que c'était pas une erreur de Trump, qu'il affirmait la vérité et qu'il leur accordait un statut qu'ils méritent, je n'y crois pas, mais plus on peut soutenir Taiwan comme un pays, mieux c'est. En peu de temps et sans sang versé, le pays est devenu complètement démocrate et libre, une phare pour la liberté de la presse en Asie et dernièrement, le seul pays en Asie qui permet le mariage gai. En fait, sur Taiwan les Démocrates et Républicains sont unanimes dans leurs soutiens et viennent de passer une loi ensemble avec aucun opposant. Taiwan figure actuellement dans les actualités, ils ont bien appris comment gérer l'épidémie après SARS, ils ont le mieux géré Covid-19 (le vice président actuel est épidémiologie) mais Taiwan est bloqué de l'OMS par la Chine depuis toujours.
J'ai lu The Fountainhead parce que ma prof de littérature (avant dernière année de lycée) a fait l'annonce d'un concours pour une bourse. Il fallait écrire une dissertation sur ce livre. Ce concours existe toujours il semble : https://aynrand.org/students/essay-contests/
Etant donné que le livre n'était pas obligatoire et assez long, peu de mes camarades de classe ont lu ce livre. Dans mon lycée à part moi, j'ai identifié seulement mon béguin.
Voilà deux extraits qui sont restés avec moi malgré tout, sur l'âme jeune et idéaliste et sur la musique.
Source : https://archive.org/stream/TheFountainh ... d_djvu.txt
Je n'ai pas traduit parce que le langage de Rand n'est pas très lourd des éléments intrinsèquement culturels.
Elle a écrit en anglais alors que sa langue maternelle était la russe.
Un extrait de l'introduction que Rand a écrit :
"It is not the works, but the belief which is here decisive and determines the order of rank-to
employ once more an old religious formula with a new and deeper meaning, -it is some
fundamental certainty which a noble soul has about itself, something which is not to be
sought, is not to be found, and perhaps, also, is not to be lost.--The noble soul has reverence
for itself.-" (Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil.)
This view of man has rarely been expressed in human history. Today, it is virtually non-
existent. Yet this is the view with which-in various degrees of longing, wistfulness, passion
and agonized confusion-the best of mankind's youth start out in life. It is not even a view, for
most of them, but a foggy, groping, undefined sense made of raw pain and incommunicable
happiness. It is a sense of enormous expectation, the sense that one's life is important, that
great achievements are within one's capacity, and that great things lie ahead.
It is not in the nature of man-nor of any living entity-to start out by giving up, by spitting in
one's own face and damning existence; that requires a process of corruption whose rapidity
differs from man to man. Some give up at the first touch of pressure; some sell out; some run
down by imperceptible degrees and lose their fire, never knowing when or how they lost it.
Then all of these vanish in the vast swamp of their elders who tell them persistently that
maturity consists of abandoning one's mind; security, of abandoning one's values; practicality,
of losing self-esteem. Yet a few hold on and move on, knowing that that fire is not to be
betrayed, learning how to give it shape, purpose and reality. But whatever their future, at the
dawn of their lives, men seek a noble vision of man's nature and of life's potential.
---
Et la partie qui m'a présenté Rachmaninoff :
He had always wanted to write music, and he could give no other identity to the thing he
sought. If you want to know what it is, he told himself, listen to the first phrases of
Tchaikovsky's First Concerto-or the last movement of Rachmaninoff's Second. Men have not
found the words for it nor the deed nor the thought, but they have found the music. Let me see
that in one single act of man on earth. Let me see it made real. Let me see the answer to the
promise of that music. Not servants nor those served; not altars and immolations; but the
final, the fulfilled, innocent of pain. Don't help me or serve me, but let me see it once, because
I need it. Don't work for my happiness, my brothers-show me yours-show me that it is
possible-show me your achievement-and the knowledge will give me courage for mine.
He saw a blue hole ahead, where the road ended on the crest of a ridge. The blue looked cool
and clean like a film of water stretched in the frame of green branches. It would be funny, he
thought, if I came to the edge and found nothing but that blue beyond; nothing but the sky
ahead, above and below. He closed his eyes and went on, suspending the possible for a
moment, granting himself a dream, a few instants of believing that he would reach the crest,
open his eyes and see the blue radiance of the sky below.
His foot touched the ground, breaking his motion; he stopped and opened his eyes. He stood
still.
In the broad valley, far below him, in the first sunlight of early morning, he saw a town. Only it
was not a town. Towns did not look like that. He had to suspend the possible for a while
longer, to seek no questions or explanations, only to look.
There were small houses on the ledges of the hill before him, flowing down to the bottom. He
knew that the ledges had not been touched, that no artifice had altered the unplanned beauty
of the graded steps. Yet some power had known how to build on these ledges in such a way
that the houses became inevitable, and one could no longer imagine the hills as beautiful
without them-as if the centuries and the series of chances that produced these ledges in the
struggle of great blind forces had waited for their final expression, had been only a road to a
goal-and the goal was these buildings, part of the hills, shaped by the hills, yet ruling them by
giving them meaning.
The houses were plain field stone-like the rocks jutting from the green hillsides-and of glass,
great sheets of glass used as if the sun were invited to complete the structures, sunlight
becoming part of the masonry. There were many houses, they were small, they were cut off
from one another, and no two of them were alike. But they were like variations of a single
theme, like a symphony played by an inexhaustible imagination, and one could still hear the
laughter of the force that had been let loose on them, as if that force had run, unrestrained,
challenging itself to be spent, but had never reached its end. Music, he thought, the promise
of the music he had invoked, the sense of it made real-there it was before his eyes-he did
not see it--he heard it in chords--he thought that there was a common language of thought,
sight and sound--was it mathematics?--the discipline of reason-music was mathematics-and
architecture was music in stone-he knew he was dizzy because this place below him could
not be real.
He saw trees, lawns, walks twisting up the hillsides, steps cut in the stone, he saw fountains,
swimming pools, tennis courts-and not a sign of life. The place was uninhabited.
It did not shock him, not as the sight of it had shocked him. In a way, it seemed proper; this
was not part of known existence. For the moment he had no desire to know what it was.
After a long time he glanced about him-and then he saw that he was not alone. Some steps
away from him a man sat on a boulder, looking down at the valley. The man seemed
absorbed in the sight and had not heard his approach. The man was tall and gaunt and had
orange hair.
He walked straight to the man, who turned his eyes to him; the eyes were gray and calm; the
boy knew suddenly that they felt the same thing, and he could speak as he would not speak to
a stranger anywhere else.
"That isn't real, is it?" the boy asked, pointing down.
"Why, yes, it is, now," the man answered.
"It’s not a movie set or a trick of some kind?"
"No. It’s a summer resort. It’s just been completed. It will be opened in a few weeks."
"Who built it?"
"I did."
"What’s your name?"
"Howard Roark."
"Thank you," said the boy. He knew that the steady eyes looking at him understood everything
these two words had to cover. Howard Roark inclined his head, in acknowledgment.
Wheeling his bicycle by his side, the boy took the narrow path down the slope of the hill to the
valley and the houses below. Roark looked after him. He had never seen that boy before and
he would never see him again. He did not know that he had given someone the courage to
face a lifetime.