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"Éloigné momentanément du théâtre des affaires et ne pouvant même me livrer à aucune étude suivie, à cause de l'état précaire de ma santé, je suis réduit, au milieu de ma solitude, à me considérer un instant moi-même, ou plutôt à envisager autour de moi les événements contemporains dans lesquels j'ai été acteur ou dont j'ai été témoin. Le meilleur emploi que je puisse faire de mes loisirs me paraît être de retracer ces événements, de peindre les hommes qui y ont pris part sous mes yeux, et de saisir et graver ainsi, si je puis, dans ma mémoire, les traits confus qui forment la physionomie indécise de mon temps."
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"Momentarily removed from the theater of activities and incapable even of taking up any sort of prolonged study due to the precarious state of my health, I am reduced, in the midst of my solitude, to consider myself for a moment, or rather to envision around me the current events in which I have played a part or to which I was witness. It seems to me that the best use I can make of my time is to retrace these events, to depict the men who took part in them beneath my gaze, and to lay hold of and thus engrave in my memory, if I can, the confused features that make up the physiognomy of my era." Such were the terms chosen by Tocqueville, at the start of his work, to describe the specific undertaking that the writing of his Souvenirs represented. It is very different from his other works, in both form and content. Its author chose to portray the events of 1848 and of the Second Republic as he had experienced them, and to give his impressions in the form of a lively narrative, intercut with moments of analysis, which allowed him to put himself in the picture while at the same time giving his own interpretations of what happened. His narrative stance in this text does not eclipse Tocqueville's qualities as a political thinker and sociologist, as shown by the firmness of his analyses. Taking advantage of another aspect of his talent, Tocqueville does not hesitate to interrupt his narrative to sketch portraits of the leading figures of the day, with a critical and ironic pen that is sometimes cruel. Louis-Philippe, Napoléon III, Lamartine, Blanqui and his own political allies successively bear the brunt of his accurate outline, sharp gaze, and superb ability to seize upon and reveal in a few lines "the secret motives" that determined their actions. Tocqueville himself did not entirely escape the ironic atmosphere that pervades Souvenirs, as he shares with the reader his clumsiness as an orator, his mistrust with respect to himself, and the errors in judgment that he committed while he was plunged in the midst of the action. He keeps the promise of sincerity that he makes at the beginning of the text, declaring that he has written it for himself; he continually refused to allow it to be published in his lifetime. Nevertheless, he devotes a full paragraph in his will to the future that he imagined for his Souvenirs, whose ultimate publication he did not entirely exclude.
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