Françoise Sagan has just had her first child. It seems only yesterday that this young, talented Frenchwoman gave us her sensational Bonjour, Tristesse and, in a more minor key, Aimez-Vous Brahms. Remember how hard it was to reconcile the novels’ worldly wisdom with Miss Sagan’s extreme youth? But then, the French are a marvelous race, are they not? Who but a Frenchwoman could have known so much, so soon? Things such as .. .
A strange melancholy pervades me to which I hesitate to give the grave and beautiful name of weltschmerz. Since I am French, the idea of weltschmerz has always appealed to me, but now I shrink from its connotations of complete egoism. I have known boredom, regret and occasionally, dyspepsia; but never weltschmerz. Yet today it envelops me like a silken web, enervating and soft, and sets me apart from everybody else.
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