This French paper looks at the paradoxical nature of modern progress in the 19th and 20th centuries. It deals with the works of Charles Baudelaire and those of Céline, especially focusing on Voyage to the end of the night (Voyage au bout de la nuit). The paper will examine modern means of transportation and communication, and the negative and violent images associated with them. The fast modernization in the last half of the nineteenth century ends with WWI. From this point, Modernity becomes post-modernity, but the contradictory aspects of the former persist. The more we communicate, the further we are separated. Modern mobility and progress do not succeed in uniting humanity. On the contrary, they increase the distance between people. Progress becomes all the more rapid, absurd and even dangerous. Having lost control, Man is driven to his dehumanization.
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