What We Still Held: A Dialogue Before the Fall

Spring 1914. The old continent stands poised at the edge of ruin, though few yet dare to see it. In Trieste - that luminous Adriatic port where Italian, German, Slovene, and Jewish lives have long interwoven - four companions gather under fading café awnings. They drink dark coffee, speak in many tongues, and try, each in their fragile way, to hold back the gathering dark.

Prof. Logos, a philosopher haunted by the knowledge that rigorous thought can strip life of its last illusions. Psyche, a clinical psychologist who listens tenderly to wounds words can scarcely hold.
Dr. iur. Etouhnav, a jurist of formidable intellect, desperately hoping law might still shield humanity from its oldest hungers.

Hendrik, a Dutch friend, whose quiet rustic wisdom offers a gentler refuge when all abstractions fail.
Together they set out from Trieste into the high passes of the southern Tyrol, traveling by carriage and on foot, debating God, history, love, and the terrifying freedom of human choice. Each conversation leads them deeper - into old griefs, private reckonings, and the stark realization that their world stands one shudder away from collapse.

As they descend to the tranquil shores of Riva del Garda, the first tremors of war already ripple across Europe. Soon, borders will be redrawn with bayonets. Empires will vanish. And the fragile fellowship they forged on mountain roads will become a memory carried through far darker years.

Profound, lyrical, and unflinchingly honest, What We Still Held is both a philosophical novel and an intensely human testament. It asks what dignity remains when the scaffolding of civilization shakes - and whether love, conscience, and simple human mercy might yet outlast the storms that men so readily unleash.