So near and yet so far - II

While the French may seem to have a more colourful cultural and political life, they have often paid a high price for it, says CHRISTOPHER HURST in this concluding part of his two-part essay.

THE British may sometimes have envied their nearest neighbours for the quicker tempo of their cultural and political life and the glamour of their capital city. But the price for the French has often been high.

The battle between left and right in France began in the Revolution (and even in the years leading up to it), continued in the upsets of 1848, reached its height in the Paris Commune of 1871, and erupted again violently in the Dreyfus affair. During the Third Republic (1870-1940) France was as much involved in expansion overseas as Britain, and of course this had its opponents, although the national consensus supported it. In the 1930s there was a left-wing "Popular Front" coalition, but this had its enemies among extreme right anti-republican groups, inspired by the successes of Hitler and Mussolini.

French scandals seem to be more lurid than British ones; such was the case in 1934 of the financier Stavisky who had floated bonds which were worthless, and was then found dead. Far-right groups claimed he had been murdered to prevent the revelation of crooked dealings by prominent people, and their agitation culminated in a riot outside parliament in which 15 people were killed. Two successive prime ministers were forced to resign, and stability only returned when a centre government of national unity was installed.

The right had their real chance after the French army was forced to accept an armistice with the Germans in June 1940. The country was by then thoroughly demoralised. It is said that the French fought so fiercely at Verdun to erase the disgrace of their defeat in 1870, but they, even more than the British, were unprepared for the sweeping success of the attack by Hitler's Panzer divisions. The supposedly impregnable Maginot Line of fortifications along the eastern frontier was simply by-passed. The armistice in 1918 was signed by the defeated Germans in a railway carriage in the forest of Compi`egne. The carriage had been kept as a national monument, but it was used again for the surrender in 1940, with the roles of the protagonists reversed. The French battle fleet was anchored in Oran, Algeria, and the British fleet, till then its ally, shelled and immobilised it to prevent it from being used by the Germans.

With the French army defeated, the dissolving French government turned to the "hero of Verdun", Marshal Petain, by then 84, to form a new ministry; with the armistice signed, he was given powers as head of state in the central and southern part of France which the German did not immediately occupy. Its "capital" was the spa town, Vichy - a name (with its associated adjective "Vichyite") ever since associated with craven collaboration with the Nazis. Every one of the European countries which the Nazis over-ran produced its collaborators (none more hated than Norway's Vidkun Quisling), and France, a bigger and greater country than all the others, had its share. The pre-war politician who collaborated most eagerly was a former prime minister, Pierre Laval, and he was executed in 1945 in a manner that was little less than a lynching.

Petain himself, though condemned to death and then imprisoned for life after the war, at least claimed with some credibility to be motivated by concern for his country and for his beloved French soldiers, more than a million of whom had been taken prisoner by the Germans in June 1940. He resisted Laval's policy of working actively for a German victory, and tried to pursue a neutral, delaying foreign policy, but he did none the less believe that formal collaboration was necessary as the lesser evil.

There was a 49-year-old brigadier-general, who had served under Petain in various capacities since 1913, including at the battle of Verdun, and been promoted by him personally. However, he took the opposite view from Petain's, left for London in June 1940, and broadcast to his compatriots urging them to continue the struggle. In his absence a military court in "Vichy France" condemned him to death, deprivation of rank, and confiscation of his property. This was Charles de Gaulle.

De Gaulle may represent an enigma, but he was undoubtedly one of the truly great political figures Europe has produced. His actions in 1940, which so deeply influenced subsequent French history, could in a sense have been foreseen; he had published several books on military matters, most notably one, in 1934, advocating a small professional army, mechanised and mobile, as against the theories of his time, supremely embodied in the static Maginot Line. This austere intellectual, relatively junior in rank, was unpopular with his colleagues, and when he proclaimed "Free France" he had little backing. His pride and obstinacy exasperated the more easy-going Winston Churchill who had to work with him. But as time went on his prestige and power increased, and on the liberation in 1944 he was made head of the provisional government, but he resigned in 1946 - characteristically because of irritation with the squabbling of the political parties.

He returned to power in 1958 amid the ruins of the chronically unstable postwar Fourth Republic, which had already been forced out of Indo-China by insurgents led by Ho Chi Minh, and was then embroiled in the Algerian war. With extraordinary vision and courage, despite a French right-wing military rebellion against him and attempts on his life, de Gaulle disengaged France from Algeria - the only man who could have done so. He followed this by granting independence to the French colonies in Africa, very much on French terms, and with continuing economic and cultural links far greater than were ever contemplated by the British with their colonies.

Contemptuous of party politicians and supremely confident of his own judgment, he none the less set great store by that most democratic of institutions, the referendum, threatening to resign if the vote went against him. On losing such a vote in 1969 on a relatively minor issue, now forgotten, he resigned, aged nearly 80, and died soon after. Although it was as a political strategist and visionary that he gained and held on to power, some of his later actions seemed more wilful than statesmanlike - never more so than when, on a visit to French-speaking Quebec in 1967, he ended a speech to the crowd from the balcony of the city hall with the words "Vive le Quebec!" This was fair enough, but when the cheers had died down he added "Vive le Quebec libre!" This naked appeal to Quebec separatism, the plague of united Canada, caused outrage in the country and he suffered the indignity of being ordered to leave Canada by the Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau before he could be received in the capital, Ottawa. It was clear that de Gaulle's exalted vision was losing contact with reality.

But, as I said at the start of the previous article, you do not need to be long in central Paris to know that the heroic past lives on, an inspiration to the present. Everywhere around are living relics of the monarchical past (the President's ceremonial escort of Republican Guards is one such), but symbols of the republic and of the Revolution are everywhere too, of which none is more potent than La Marseillaise, the most thrilling of all national anthems.

With the end of the de Gaulle era, France settled down to a more mundane existence. Today its presidents and prime ministers are managers and technocrats, and the French urge to be top dog in the European Union is unlikely to lead to more than diplomatic battles. For more than 30 years there has been none of the drama that punctuated the previous 200 years. Only France's political scandals retain some of the old flavour - such as the accusation of illegal arms dealing against Jean-Christophe Mitterrand, son of the late President Fran~cois Mitterrand, and the trial of a former foreign minister, Roland Dumas, for using his influence to get a lucrative but largely fictitious job in the state-owned Elf oil company for his mistress, and then benefitting from the huge payments she received. Now the sitting President, Jacques Chirac, is being accused of using political funds to go on expensive family holidays.

Only a Philistine could fail to include in a catalogue of the dramatic events in France's more recent past the movement in painting which culminated with the Impressionists. It began with early and mid-19th Century figures such as Delacroix, Corot and Courbet; climaxed in a transcendent blaze with Cezanne, Renoir, Manet, Gauguin, Monet, Degas, Pissarro, Sisley and Seurat; and continued in the 20th Century with Bonnard, Vuillard, Matisse and others. Van Gogh was Dutch and Picasso Spanish, but France was such a magnet that it drew them in, along with a host of lesser talents. This creative high-point surely bears comparison with Renaissance Italy and the 17th Century Netherlands. Impressionism was revolutionary; an art of liberation, of rebellion against the constricting classicism that dominated the academics.

The battles it provoked can be said to have replicated, at times, in equally venomous form, those between left and right in the political spectrum. (Courbet supported the Paris Commune and was subsequently forced into exile.) But above all Impressionism was great art, and in its achievement and legacy more "classical" than the work of the classically-inspired academic artists who once attacked it so savagely, and which has vanished like the dinosaurs. Could any other country - Britain, Germany, Spain, you name it - have produced this unique flowering at that particular time? The answer is obviously No.

Concluded

The first part of this article appeared in the Literary Review, August 5, 2001.

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Section  : Features
Previous : Reshaping the future of vision
Next     : Cultural collisions