Notre étendue, c'est la part du monde qui est reflétée dans notre conscience, et elle est d'autant plus riche qu'il y a plus des liens, plus de relations entre nous et le monde. Chaque fois que nous faisons un progrès dans la voie de l'amour, chaque fois qu'un lien niveau se crée entre nous et un objet ou un être, notre étendue s'enrichit. Mais la connaissance est la condition de l'amour: en ce sens, la culture n'est pas autre chose qu'une intention et une méthode pour élargir notre étendue, pour créer entre nous et le monde des rapports de connaissance qui préparent des rapports d'amour; et la sagesse, sur sa cime, c'est encore une volonté et un art d'élargir et d'organiser l'étendue.

Our étendue is the part of the world that is shown to us by our consciences, and it is much greater when there are more connections, more ties between ourselves and the world. Every time that we move further down the path to love, every time a new link is created between ourselves and an object or a being, our étendue is widened. But knowledge is the condition for love: in this sense, culture is nothing else than an intention and a method for extending our étendue, to form between ourselves and the world ties of knowledge that paves the way for ties of love; and wisdom, in its tower, is again a will and an art of widening and organising the étendue

P. Simon 






* (...) a song about the magic of movement, the wonder of simply being together in dark times, living in and for the moment, "Dancing in the Dark" (...) 

Paradoxically, the Depression also left us with the most buoyant, most effervescent popular culture of the twentieth century. Screwball comedies, dance films choreographed by by Astaire or Busby Berkley, folk ballets by Aaron Copland, crackerjack performances by Cary Grant and a legion of other young stars, swing music by Duke Ellington and other maestros of vastly popular big bands, or the new, streamlined consumer products by Deco designers -
all this offered wit, energy, class style, and movement

(above all, movement)

to people whose lives were stagnant, fearful, deprived of hope, people who often took to the road but really had nowhere to go. "Just going," one of them told an interviewer who asked about his destination. As * is one of the motifs echoing through this book.



Morris Dickstein, Dancing in the Dark: a Cultural History of the Great Depression (2009)

"Jonathan's vulnerability was as apparent as an opencast mine, barely hidden by his sense of the bizarre - a quality that made him, in Helen's eyes at least, so attractive. Carlotta, in one of her more extraordinary analyses, said he was incapable of thinking, that this was a process that never took place in his handsome, Pompeian head, with its expression of gentle, ironic humour. But Helen found this statement grotesquely exaggerated. She saw a lot of thought in what he did - not cerebral thought, but feeling thought, if one can so define it, which was born not simply of a desire for success but from a poetic vision and a need to understand and comment on the world. Jonathan's thought processes came of the combustion that seized him when he suddenly saw something unusual, beyond the normally visible. Carlotta's thinking was never of this sort."

Angelica Garnett, The Unspoken Truth


 The Riders of Rohan arrive, Merry is with them



When the dark shadow at the Gate withdrew Gandalf still sat motinless.
But Pippin rose to his feet, as if a great weight had been lifted from him;
and he stood listening to the horns,
and it seemed to him that they would break his heart with joy.

And never in after years could he hear a horn blown in the distance
without tears starting in his eyes.




J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of The Rings: The Return of The King