Decadence is a long process which extends itself over multiple generations. In any case, succeeding generations don’t feel it in the same way. My generation may experience the sentiment of decadence, because the Europe of its youth was still a relatively flourishing civilization, before the Second World War. It is probable that the generation of my grandchildren will no longer experience this sentiment, as a result of not having seen the period of European power, that it will find itself in decadence, which becomes its daily horizon, in a way it will be living “with it” without posing the questions which preoccupy us. In truth, all the members of my generation do not have the perception of decadence, and they are even numerous, because the socialists give themselves the project of edifying a new society and of creating a new man.

Translated by Samuel Zeitlin