Le jeune Européen

Born on the edge of Europe, the narrator drifts through the salons of Paris, the courts of Cambridge and the cafés of Vienna, chasing pleasures that range from high‑speed auto races to polo matches and exotic hunts. His mother, a shrewd bourgeoisie from Touraine, leaves him with a tangled question of identity—English, Russian, French—while he devours the works of Bergson, Gide and Nietzsche in midnight bookstores. This restless aristocrat lives as a perpetual spectator, collecting experiences like trophies, convinced that the continent itself is a grand toy.

All that changes the night his Hispano careens into a ditch in August 1914; the outbreak of war thrusts him from privileged lounges into the mud‑filled trenches of the French infantry. Amid the bitter cold of Champagne, he confronts the raw violence of battle, feeling both the pull of his cultivated ego and the stark, unforgiving reality of survival. Listeners are invited to follow his uneasy quest for meaning as the polished veneer of his youth begins to crack under the weight of blood and earth.