Henri Lefebvre: A Critical Introduction - autonomous learning

H e n r i L e F e b v r e
and perceptions, judgments and recollections gush forth in one of
modern literature’s greatest set pieces. He “kissed me under the
Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another … would
I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first put my arms around
him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all
perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I
will Yes.” 15 The Ulysses that says Yes to life is an “eternal affirmation
of the spirit of man,” a great gust of generosity that is indeed
the spirit of Lefebvre’s total man. Yet Lefebvre knew it bespoke a
more commonplace theme: everyday passion. These, both he and
Joyce knew, match the dramatic successes and failures of Greek
heroes. Life at its most mundane level is as epic and spiritual as
any official history or religion. History, as Stephen reminds his
boss Mr. Deasy, the bigoted, protofascist headmaster, is really “a
shout in the street.” Lefebvre, the Marxist everyman, would doubtless
concur: total men and women are found on a block near you.
Lefebvre’s sensitivity to everyday life also smacks as a French
thing. The daily round is deeply ingrained in French culture where
rhythms and rituals punctuate and animate places and people everywhere:
the early morning stroll to pick up the bread; 16 the first cup
of coffee; a meal at lunchtime for which everything closes down
and families still commingle; a sip of wine and a piece of cheese;
the chime of a church bell on the hour; the familiar bark of a neighborhood
dog; a Café du Commerce almost anywhere, frequented
by a loyal clientele who appear at the same hour each day—simple,
ostensibly trivial occurrences that assume epic proportions. As novelist
Pierre Mac Orlan once put it in a perceptive memoir called
Villes, and as Lefebvre equally comprehended, “It is the finest quality
of the French that they can render agreeable a block of houses, a
few farms, two or three lamplights, and a sad café where you die of
boredom playing dominoes. It isn’t so much that, on this vast earth,
the French are nicer than anybody else, but more that they know
how to bring a bit of pleasantry to their little existence.” 17