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Promise at Dawn by Romain Gary Fire

The writer, director and writer Roman Kacew, better known by his pseudonym of Romain Gary, was born in Vilnius (Lithuania) on 8 May 1914.

Romain Gary lives alone with his mother Owczinski Nina, an actress with her Russian Jewish and flees his country after the revolution. Never knew his father Ivan Mosjoukine, one of the most famous star of silent films.

was still a child when his mother spoke of the enemies against whom he had to fight: TATOC, "the god of stupidity, with my bottom red monkey and the head of intellectual ; Merzavka," the god of absolute certainties, a sort of Cossack standing on mountains of corpses uccisi, torturati e sottomessi in nome delle cosiddette verità religiose, politiche o morali" , e la metà del genere umano gli lecca le scarpe con commozione e infine c'è Filoche, il dio della meschinità, dei pregiudizi, del disprezzo, dell’odio che, all’ingresso del mondo abitato, grida: « Sporco americano, sporco arabo, sporco ebreo, sporco russo, sporco cinese, sporco negro» . E vi sono numerosi altri dei, ancora più misteriosi e più pericolosi, difficili da identificare…

Il cordone ombelicale con sua madre non si reciderà mai. Come avrebbe potuto essere diversamente di fronte ad una donna che tutto aveva sacrificato perchè il figlio potesse avere il meglio.

"Ormai sola da tredici anni, senza marito e senza amante, lottava in quel modo, coraggiosamente, per mettere insieme ogni mese il necessario per vivere, per pagare il burro, le scarpe, l'affitto, i vestiti, la bistecca di mezzogiorno: quella bistecca che mi metteva ogni giorno nel piatto, un po' solennemente, come segno della sua vittoria sulle avversità. Di ritorno da scuola mi sedevo a tavola davanti a quel piatto. Mia madre, in piedi, mi guardava mangiare con lo sguardo appagato delle cagne che allattano i cuccioli.

Lei non voleva assaggiarne, sostenendo che le piacevano solo le verdure e che la carne e i grassi le erano assolutamente proibiti. Un giorno, lasciata la tavola, andai in cucina a bere un bicchiere d'acqua. Mia madre era seduta su uno sgabello e teneva sulle ginocchia la padella in cui aveva cotto la mia bistecca. Raccoglieva con cura il sugo rimasto sul fondo con pezzetti di pane che mangiava poi avidamente e, nonostante la rapidità del gesto con cui nascose la padella sotto il tovagliolo, capii in un lampo tutta la verità sui veri motivi del suo regime vegetariano" .

La loro storia si svolge tra miseria e benessere prima in Polonia, poi a Nizza, dove finalmente approdano, perché la Francia per la madre rappresentava la patria della cultura, della libertà, della civilizzazione. Solo in Francia il figlio potrà become famous, an artist, a diplomat, a hero. And Gary intends to live to honor the dreams, hopes and sacrifices.

It 's a book, ironic and touching. Autobiography of the early years of the writer, in which he speaks of this extraordinary relationship with his mother for the child who dreams just a hero or at least future glory.

"We need to find a pseudonym," she said firmly. "A great French writer can not bring a Russian name. If you were a virtuoso of the violin should be very good, but for a titan of French literature is not to be ..."

And Gary will become famous as the Mom had said "... my son will Ambassador of France, Knight of the Legion of Honor ..." fight to be able to achieve success for offering it to her, in consideration for the waiver which has been forced ( ... I could not straighten the world, to win the stupidity and wickedness, to bring justice and dignity to men; but nevertheless won the table tennis tournament in Nice in 1932 ... ". He was convinced that fate had thrown " tip the scales for the balance of a life of sacrifice and dedication " , that of his mother in fact.

With continuous incitement Mom, you will never won, will fight stubbornly against destiny, even when the gloom seems to prevail. "... The hardest hours of the war have always faced the danger with the feeling of invincibility. It could not happen at all, because I was the happy end of my mother ..."

talks about his mother's book, but also of war in which Gary has seen many friends and comrades who disappear one by one municipality. In the end what remains is a melancholy existence at the end of incomplete and for the many lives that accompany it always finite even in the solitude of the beach where the ocean begins and ends with the story.

"The truth is I was defeated, but defeated and I did not learn anything. To be neither wise nor to resign. I lie in the sun on the beach in Big Sur and feel throughout the body on youth and the courage of those who come after me, and I await them with confidence, looking at the seals and whales that pass by the hundreds this season with their splashing water, and listening to the ocean: I close my eyes and smile and know that we are all there, ready to begin again. "

The book is really a hymn of love for a mother who had so much meaning in his life:
"His ingenuity and imagination, that believe that it was wonderful to see in a child lost in a specimen of a future central Poland French famous writers and a great ambassador to France, continued to vuvere inside me with all the force of good stories told well. "