Lost Illusions

Lost Illusions is foremost a coming-of-age story following Lucien, a young poet-to-be from the French provinces. In the beginning Lucien wished to become a renowned poet and artist, and gifted with talent and exceptional youthful beauty, he captivated those around him and journeyed to Paris to make his name. In Paris, the bright morning star became entangled in the wrong crowd: one of crony journalists, corrupt schemers, and high society socialites. In the same meteoric way Lucien was drawn into the star-studded Parisian society, he was later cast out for not adhering to that society’s unspoken rules and politics; and during all the tumultuous events, he had gradually lost his moral scruples in betraying the people close to him. The story is a tragedy of realism, and to me it was a sobering reminder of what even the best of idealists could fall to moral and personal decadence if they let the world impose its will on them instead of being wary of bad influences and being cognizant where the cesspools are.

The novel describes the difficulties of young artists who come to Paris to chase their dreams only to find themselves struggling to make ends meet while dreaming of renown and riches. In the early days Lucien meets a fellow writer-artist named d’Arthez, and together the two form a camaraderie as two kindred aspirants - impoverished, but both make up for their lack of comfort in the ardor they have for their life’s art and life’s work. Yet, as the novel progresses, Lucien became drawn toward the easy world of partying, theater, and took up a pretty actress mistress while abandoning the solitary and ascetic life of a poet and became a journalist who demanded respect, wielding his pen no longer as an artist’s paintbrush, but as a fencer’s épée. The further he deviated from the artist’s path, the more his moral compass and personal dreams got lost. In the end, Lucien’s a nobody after being cast out by Paris’s brutal world - yet d’Arthez, in staying the artistic course, became a great writer of his time as the fruit of his struggles. Lucien only abandoned his original dream because he could not take the poverty and discomfort and the loneliness of becoming a great artist. I think something similar is also the case with building startups, as I’m in a particularly lonely stretch of my journey as I had read the book: creating something people want from nothing, draining my own savings in order to pour it into a risky bet, all the while paying with the best years of my life for the opportunity to achieve something great. The alternative would be to sell my soul and go work a cushy meaningless job in big tech - that would be my equivalent to Lucien becoming a journalist. If anything, the novel’s emboldened me to stay the course - because the alternative is a really ugly reality that I never want to see.