de la révolution

Do you remember when we did the French Revolution? That great landmark, that great watershed of history. How I explained to you the implications of that word 'revolution'? A turning round, a completing of a cycle. How I told you that though the popular notion of revolution is that of categorical change, transformation -- a leap into the future -- yet almost every revolution contains within it an opposite if less obvious tendency: the idea of a return. A redemption; a restoration. A reaffirmation of what is pure and fundamental against what is decadent and false. A return to a new beginning . . .

- Graham Swift, Waterland (137)