Underground : L’Histoire (2001) – Jean-François Bizot
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“Some have stated in our written histories that Spartacus or Jesus may have been the first to define the Underground. Or Socrates drinking his mix of the poisonous hemlock, François Villon inaugurating the zazou spirit of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Galileo, Benvenuto Cellini, Giordano Bruno, each threatened by or ending up at the stakes for opening new horizons to an ancient world.

Closer to us is Fyodor Dostoyevsky and his Notes from the Underground. Or the green hair of Baudelaire, or the fulgurating irritations of Rimbaud, the grinding teeth of Lautréamont and the voluptuousness of Huysmans and René Crevel. We arrive at the 20th century, who has invented this term underground?. A young person challenges you: “A label? A brand, a sticker, a badge, a pin? In short, you were already wired in your time.” Youngsters always have the right to await you like a cretin with the turning, since we were all young. One answers him: to be wired, to connect, here what was and which will remain the true underground.” Are you a hipster? — paraphrased from Jean-François Bizot’s introduction to this book