There is a nostalgia for a lost paradise. We all feel it, more or less; it connects us to original sin and to the fall. This disease torments pure souls. She heels and waves. Illness of youth if ever there was one, romantic madness, this nostalgia is at the heart of Sébastien de Courtois' novel, L'ami des beaux jours .

Frédéric and Sébastien, the two protagonists of the beautiful novel by Sébastien de Courtois are inhabited by this nostalgia. It is difficult to say if they caused it. They found each other without looking for each other. Elective affinities are part of the same hallucination that animates haughty youth, giving it that extra aristocratic veneer and conquering character. Nothing seems impossible to him. The two friends reciprocally divine their attraction to this nostalgia, a sort of exuberant and sensational vertigo. Thus, the two friends devastate everything in the pink city, and the Cathar land rewards them well, instilling in them in return the spirit of revolt of those who believe themselves oppressed, of those who decide to be oppressed to better reveal their invigorating nature. Like any friendship where every second is shared, they will read the same books, talk about the same fights, burn for the same causes, all more orthodox and primordial than the previous one... Frédéric and Sébastien become inseparable. Beautiful souls agree in friendship like a master piano. The two friends' quest for the absolute continues to swell, but they only see its radiance. You can only truly fall in love with your image. They agree so the words turn out to be useless. Action becomes the only outlet. Because in words, in jousting, oratorical or physical, there is always something missing. Since there is nothing real outside of passion taken to its extreme. Since the path is not enough, only the apotheosis can transcend this so rare moment, which is already fading, which disappears as we speak of it: youth, and the spirit that inhabits it. A time of incandescence, a moment when the intensity goes beyond understanding, when life discovers its entrails and encourages us to do the same to pay it the only tribute that suits it. Plato prophesied this world, our world, a world of copies, suffocating, incapable of no longer recognizing an original. Frédéric and Sébastien recognized each other in an instant and bonded with the same aggressiveness, but reigning over the cafes, reigning over the spirits, reigning even over the beautiful, seasoned and talented Sophie, could not be enough. Jules and Jim smelled of remugles. The 60s were so lacking in tragedy. Frolic for frolic, laugh for laugh, stroll for stroll, a false world announcing the boboitude, hated by the two friends. Make no mistake about it, L'ami des beaux jours is a modern tragedy, a drama therefore, because Sophocles has put away his tools which no one can seize anymore without wondering about their usefulness. The 90s where Sébastien de Courtois' novel takes place, indicate our current world, where all tragic feelings have been eradicated. An empty shell. The two friends must agree. Neither literature, nor love, nor friendship, nor alcohol are enough for them. Besides, nothing is enough. Sébastien, a bourgeois lost in this life in fusion, having found the role of his life there, finishes putting away his things to resume a more peaceful life, having understood for a long time the distance he should take with passion and its ornaments. Frédéric, he cannot bring himself to do it, because he created his world, he made it, if his castle of sand melts like snow in the sun in front of the waves, he must be one with his winner and s sink into the sea. Frédéric can never retreat. Not out of pride, just because he doesn't know how to do that. He only knows how to move forward. If he stops, he falls. A retreat would be certain death… A cause presented itself to him as if by magic: the war in Yugoslavia. Frederick marries her. He says to Sebastian: “Don't look for me! But, there is nothing more to look for. If, one last thing, to accomplish the revolution, look for a trace among the stars...

A few decades later, Sébastien leaves to investigate and discover the truth of Frédéric and his warlike and poetic destiny. He will find the trace of his forever sleeping friend in a valley near Osijek in Croatia. One of the many unknown soldiers in modern warfare. Sébastien, with nostalgia and modesty, remembers having known him well, in the lost paradise of his youth.

The friend of sunny days , by Sébastien de Courtois. Stock editions. 20 €