CHAPTER 1
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse . . .

Why think about Oblomov today? Because, minus Netflix and the internet, he was the hero of our lockdowns, and will perhaps also be the hero of the post-lockdown era: the man or woman in bed, during this existence in a hover to which we were constrained for two whole years, was us – was you. The pandemic was a moment of simultaneous crystallization and acceleration, one that consecrated a historical movement that long predated it: the triumph of fear and the paradoxical enjoyment of a fettered life. The pandemic made going into quarantine (whether voluntary or forced) a possibility for everyone, a refuge for fragile souls. Goncharov’s novel is perhaps less a portrait of the Russian soul, as Lenin lamented, than a premonition addressed to all of humanity – a literature not of entertainment but of warning. The great books are the ones we read and reread because they shed light on events that they seem to foreshadow, events that come about long after their publication. There are at least two traditions of Russian literature: one of resistance to oppression (Boris Pasternak, Vasily Grossman, Varlam Shalamov, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Svletana Alexievich), the other of despair and fatalism, and these traditions mirror and respond to each other. One offers unparalleled examples of courage in the face of abomination, while the other focuses on resignation in the face of destiny, or even love of servitude (Dostoyevsky’s genius was to reconcile them). In both cases, their ability to enlighten remains unrivaled.

In addition to the tedious tragedy that it represented for billions of people, the Covid emergency has led to a vigorous rekindling of the debate between caution and daring, between nomads and homebodies, between pioneers of the world outside and explorers who remain indoors. The twenty-first century, which began with the September 11, 2001 attacks, continues today with the threat of climate imbalance, the persistence of the coronavirus, and finally the war declared by Russia on Ukraine and Europe – all calamities that foster what we might call the Great Withdrawal. This accumulation of misfortunes has permanently traumatized a younger generation that was raised, in Western Europe at least, with the gentleness of peace and promises of well-being. This generation is in no way ready to face adversity. The end of the twentieth century was a period of openness, from both the standpoint of morals and that of travel. That era is over: the closing of minds and spaces is well under way. We now have space tourism for millionaires but, for most, crossing a border or even leaving one’s own home has become problematic. Covid has fallen like a providential star on a Western world that no longer believes in the future and assumes the coming decades will do no more than confirm its collapse. The virus has crowned all these anxieties with the terrible seal of possible death. Yet all it did was reveal our ways of thinking.

The two dominant ideologies in the West today – declinism on the one hand, and catastrophism on the other – have at least one thing in common: they both speak the language of survival. The things that compete for our fear today present themselves as absolute priorities, but there is also a competition between visions of the end of the world, which, rather than cancelling each other out, combine nicely: we have the choice between dying as a result of disease, extreme heat, attacks, or enemy bombs. To parody one of Churchill’s quips about the Balkans: for the last 20 years, we have been subjected to more history than we can consume. Our time is an exciting one, no doubt, but painfully so.

In this regard, how many people experienced the return to normalcy as a shock? At first, they found the prohibitions restrictive; later, they found the lifting of these prohibitions distressing. Won’t they miss the nightmarish imprisonment that they wholeheartedly cursed when it was decreed? They are like those prisoners who, once released, sigh as they reminisce about the bars of their cell – prisoners for whom freedom has the bitter taste of anxiety. They’re ready to seize upon any excuse to cloister themselves once more. Their bedroom and house are microcosms that suffice in and of themselves, so long as they are kitted out with the latest technology. Voluntary self-confinement in the face of a dangerous world – the dungeon without walls, chains, or guards that people freely choose – should be feared far more than lockdowns imposed from above. The jailer is in our own heads. This period of life in slow motion has sanctioned an impressive easing of social constraints: limited contact, restricted outings, gatherings cut short, work from home, absent bosses, life in a bathrobe or pyjamas, authorized sloppiness, splendid regression. The disruptive or tempting Other has disappeared or been kept at a distance. Some experienced this cooping-up as a form of pleasure: the curfew, the muzzle-like mask, the safety precautions, and the “two-meter society” annoyed us, but it also gave us boundaries. We went from claustrophobia, the fear of confinement, to agoraphobia, the fear of open spaces. The pandemic worried us, but it also freed us from a greater worry: the problem of freedom. It is possible that this freedom will acquire, in the years to come, the bitter taste of a memory or of a chimera.

Who could have foreseen that this experience of being behind closed doors would, by and large, be viewed charitably – almost as a long vacation – by a substantial number of those who lived through it? Many argued in favor of what one might call a sporadic lockdown or a conditional opening. Countless people in France and other European countries no longer wish to return to the office, instead dreaming of a simple life in the midst of nature, far from the noise of cities and the upheavals of History. The end of carefree living goes hand in hand with the triumph of negative passions. We now define ourselves by subtraction – we want to consume less, spend less, travel less – or by opposition, by what we are against: we’re anti-vax, anti-meat, anti-voting, anti-mask, anti-nuclear, anti-vaccine-passport, anti-car. Meanwhile, in medicine, the term “negative” – not being infected by AIDS or the coronavirus – has taken on a salutary meaning, while “positive” has become synonymous with potential suffering. Unbeknownst to us, the pre-pandemic world was already in its death throes when Covid began. It’s true that, since the lockdown ended, bars and restaurants have been taken by storm; impatient crowds are champing at the bit to live again; frenzied tourists are pouring in to experience something new, even if it means flooding train stations and airports; people are protesting in solidarity with victims of war – and this is a good sign. Life means excess and profligacy or it ceases to be life. But the pandemic gave a strategic advantage to the forces of stunting. Our future hinges on the tension between these two camps.

Our opponents – hateful slavophiles, radical Islamists, Chinese communists – denounce Western decadence, viewing it as the dominance of minorities coupled with unbridled materialism and the progress of unbelief. Many of us have long since formulated this diagnosis, but in a balanced way. Neither the recognition of the struggle of women and homosexuals, nor the weakening of blind faith, nor the guarantee of a certain level of comfort are in themselves factors of decline: on the contrary, they are marks of civilization. One can criticize the excesses of emancipation (as in the case of wokeism) without renouncing it. Who would want to live in Vladimir Putin’s Holy Russia or in an Arab or Muslim country under Sharia law – not to mention Xi Jinping’s totalitarian China? But it is true that the legitimate protection we enjoy in Western Europe, and especially in France, often degenerates into chronic dissatisfaction, a hand-out mentality that is always disappointed: whatever the State does, it is never enough, and the help it provides makes us weaker and leads us to mistake annoyances for tragedies. The proliferation of rights is accompanied by an equal decrease in duties, opening the door to endless demands. I am owed everything, without having to give anything back in return. Just look at the protests, and indeed the riots, of those who objected to the pandemic measures. In the name of freedom, they insisted on being allowed to do what they wanted when they wanted, while also demanding that public authorities look after them if problems arose. Leave me alone when everything is fine, take care of me when it’s not. The modern patient is an impatient patient who is irritated by the limits of medicine (“incurable” is the only truly obscene word in our vocabulary), but also suspects it of having ill intentions or of being backed by shady financial interests. The more the progress of science accelerates, the more exasperation grows in the face of its flaws and delays: we cure so many diseases, so why can’t we cure them all? From a simply rational standpoint, it is astonishing that so many citizens have risen up in rage against the very thing – vaccination – that was supposed to save them (or at least protect them), going so far as to assault or even threaten to kill doctors and nurses. Some people were so relentless that they continued to curse vaccines at the very moment they were dying in hospital beds because they refused the...