ABSTRACT
Frédéric Hoffèt tirade against Paris divers from its many predecessors by reason of its prosaic and humorless presumption. The collective Parisian with whom Hoffet is concerned is admittedly not representative of the millions of inhabitants of Paris and her environs, but only of the few hundred personalities who belong to the "inner circle" of le tout Paris. Hoffet knows that the majority of Parisians are just as solid, sober, and provincial as any group in the French provinces. Today, it is Paris that feels herself provincial if she fails to seize and advertise new thoughts and tendencies immediately. His treatment of the problem is not a loving one and, what is more serious, not a particularly intelligent one. But the Parisian is too close to his city to see her as a problem, and for this reason his unanimous and violent rejection of Hoffet's curious "psychoanalysis" leaves behind in its turn a sense of ambiguity.
