A fixed idea by Paul Valéry

A beach on the shores of the Mediterranean crushed by the sun under an implacable blue sky isolated on a rock like Sisyphus rolling away his bitterness a man is on the verge of suicide While ruminating on his fixed idea he is disturbed by an intruder a doctor on vacation like him The man with a fixed idea Pierre Arditi declares I felt in a state of inhumanity the doctor Bernard Murat decked out in all the holidaymakers accessories a landing net an easel and a colored box comes to invade the morbid loneliness The importunate debonair begins a conversation that will turn into a philosophical joust where we approach science Einstein politics and the verb THE MATERIALIST AND THE PHILOSOPHER scrap at speckled foils with the sharpest and most divinely French spirit Conversation is a balm an intellectual bandage The good doctor is a good practitioner and a brave man