Even though some regarded Jean Raspail, the famed French author, as a writer focused on catastrophe, he was in essence a writer of faith.
Raspail was also not a defender of lost causes, but a herald of the unvanquished.
“In struggle there is hope,” he would often say, quoting the French philosopher Joseph de Maistre.
Freedom for Raspail was inseparable from identity, without which the notion of freedom becomes meaningless. In order to remain who you are, you have to be who you are, just like old King Robert, the father of the hero in Raspail’s novel “Sire”, who from the beginning of his life lived in exile.
A man rejected by the world, but capable of “sad humor” and able to mock himself. This was Raspail’s way to avoid despair. Sometimes he talked seriously, but not so anyone would notice in order to accentuate that he only half-believed it himself.
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