Free When I Was Old by Georges Simenon

as well as that of the crowd which follows or attacks them.
    If all of them are irresponsible? If …
    That’s enough for today. I’ve mixed everything up. As I do when I’m falling asleep. Just as last night when I was trying to sleep and all this – and many other things which I have fortunately forgotten – passed through my head.
    Then I took an Imménoctal.
Monday, 1 August
    I would be curious to leaf through an anthology (which may exist, for someone must have thought of it before me): a collection of all the national songs of the world, present and, preferably, past.
    The comparison between them would be revealing, it seems to me.
    First, the changes in the course of time, which would give an indication, or rather illuminate the evolution of the sentiments of human groups.
    Villages, then provinces, then nations. Each village is
persuaded that it is more intelligent and above all stronger than its neighbour.
    I believe that one would find almost the same thing in the national songs, the same words, the same phrases: we’re the strongest, the bravest. We are calm, peaceful, but our arms are ready, prepared to defend our rights, our liberties …
    At the discovery of America, it was found that each Indian tribe had its motto. The same for each black tribe in Africa. No doubt in Asia too.
    Peaceful and strong. Fearless. No one is afraid.
    Approximately the same attitude is found in children.
    Check also how many times the word ‘God’ recurs. Each tribe, each nation, is protected by its god, who is often, and increasingly so, the same as its neighbours’.
    I would like to compare all these songs, sentence by sentence, word by word.
    Huge scholarly volumes are written on the style of this or that writer, on his use of adverbs or commas, etc.
    Wouldn’t it be at least as interesting, if not more so … But, once more, no doubt it’s been done, just as the little ideas, the embryo ideas that I put in these notebooks must have been expressed many times more fully and knowledgeably. That’s why I only touch on them, out of a sort of modesty, sure I’m repeating myself, and continually tempted to put a final period to these notes which would make a laughing stock of me if they ever saw the light.
    What I just said about national songs is connected with what I was writing yesterday. The need of peoples
to believe in something, in themselves. The need to create heroes for themselves. They believe that they decide and that they are free. But they are slaves.
    Who really decides for the masses? One often speaks of financiers, of great private interest groups, in copper, in oil, etc.
    And if they themselves are only pawns?
    Who decides? No one, I think. The cohesion of History is not apparent because it is visible (?) only after the fact.
    So there would not be any great men among those who seem to rule the people, and the others, scholars, artists, really capture only a moment in the evolution of the world, explain only the small truth of an instant. Rather, they are mediums, what were once called prophets. One out of a hundred thousand or out of a million sees aright, expresses a truth that is found to coincide with the truth of their period or of the next.
    They are all only human beings. And no one yet has given a definition of the human being.
    Isn’t it remarkable that we continue to seek one?
    Along the way, we find everything, gunpowder, the compass, the infinitely small, and the laws that rule the infinitely large, atomic and electronic energy.
    We do the best we can.
Wednesday, 3 August
    This question of sincerity or of insincerity is only, after all, the question of good and evil. (I wrote
only
as if that
simplified the problem.) But I’ve ceased to believe in evil. Only in illness. And that’s questionable, too.
    On the subject of the ‘menders of destinies’ whom I believe I’ve already mentioned, a detail comes back to me which I’d forgotten. When very young, I used to dream of being one, or, on the