Just a coincidence, I guess, but I'm reading a novel* where I come across this passage:
'There are no youthful illusions in such a place. You do not mistake the world's character. By the age of seven we were all as cynical as abbots.'
Together they agree that the losing of illusions is an indispensable preparation for those who hope to rise in the world. On a third bottle, they confide to each other that they are ambitions, madly ambitious and that through luck and hard work they intend to die famous men.
What kind of ambition - unless mad, in the most negative sense of the word - is it to achieve whatever and DIE? In my book, just as in The Book, to be ambitious is to achieve LIFE.
*Pure by Andrew Miller. Allegedly the winner of the 2011 Costa Novel Award, but so far (page 49) boring and disappointing. And starts with a ridiculous, unless sarcastic, quote from de Condorcet: The time will come when the sun will shine only on free men who have no master but their reason.
(Good luck!)
