I live most of the year in Folkestone, Kent and as I stroll
down The Leas, the grassy promenade of this historic town, I can gaze over the
narrow English Channel to the coastal settlements and fields of France some 25
miles away. I find this glimpse tantalising, so near and yet…; I know France
and England to be quite different societies, fashioned by their unique
histories and imbued with wholly dissimilar views on many key issues. Both have
huge merits and contribute enormously to global felicity but their proximity
can mislead if the observer assumes nearness in space equates to nearness in
fundamental attitudes.
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| National Heroine of France - Joan of Arc |
The French are idealistic yet passionate, making a heroine
of brave, driven, perhaps unhinged Joan of Arc, betrayed by her own countrymen
and doomed to a martyr’s death. The English have no such recognised hero but a representative
figure might be Oliver Cromwell, pragmatic, decisive and single-minded, who
flattened his enemies and died in his bed - a striking contrast.
For many centuries France possessed the richest culture in
Europe. In poetry from the early 12th century epic The Song of Roland, through to the three
17th century dramatic giants Corneille, Racine (yawn, yawn) and Molière,
with a later great flowering with Hugo, Lamartine, Baudelaire, Verlaine,
Rimbaud and Apollinaire. Unmatched prose has flowed from Gallic pens too, the
musings of Montaigne and Pascal, the seminal novels of Stendhal, Flaubert and
Balzac, crusading Zola, arrestingly decadent Huysmans, the endless descriptive mastery
of Proust with his Madeleines and Vinteuil’s Sonata. How much there is to
admire in the powerful Voyage au bout de
la Nuit by maverick Céline, in the exquisite sensitivity of Gide, the sardonic
conservatism of Montherlant and the coolly radical Albert Camus!
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| Victor Hugo |
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| Marcel Proust |
While England slept, France produced the baroque music of
Lully, Rameau and Charpentier giving way to romantic Schumann, Gounod and
Berlioz to be followed by the later Debussy, Ravel and Fauré. Her
philosophers were highly influential throughout Europe from Descartes onwards,
including Voltaire, Rousseau, Comte and Bergson and the modern figures of
Barthes, Lévi-Strauss
and Foucault. Painters like Poussin, rococo Fragonard and Boucher, Ingres,
David, Courbet, Monet, Degas, Manet, Cézanne and Gauguin delighted the entire
world. I can only name the great, so
dense is the achievement in so many fields. I omit vast tracts of distinction
too in the sciences, in medicine and in industrial pioneering.
To English eyes, what is missing is consistent political
stability with elites hanging on too long and triggering violent reaction. To
some of us, the French commitment to liberal democratic values is only
skin-deep. France did not reject Absolutism until 1789, and it did not need
Lady Bracknell to advise us that it was too late to avoid the horrific excesses
of the French revolution.
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| Charlotte Corday gives Marat his due |
Characters like Danton, Marat and Robespierre, though
eagerly romanticised, were a nightmare and there was much relief at the
emergence of Napoleon. His triumphs threatened all Europe while France still
indulges in Emperor-worship of their law-giving saviour. The restored Bourbons
and the Orleans dynasty failed to pacify the fissiparous natives although there
was some stability with the Second Empire of Napoleon III allowing the growing
prosperity of the bourgeoisie. Another convulsion, with defeat by Prussia and
the blood-letting of the Paris Commune, ushered in the Third Republic with
tumultuous politics but also the cultural glories of Belle Epoche
Paris.
WWI brought searing misery to France, though almost for the first time Britain
and France were allies. After the hectic and fruitful inter-war years,
demoralised France fell to Nazi Germany in 1940, polarising opinion between
traditional nationalists who mainly gravitated towards Papa Pétain
(but not so de Gaulle) and the Left. With Liberation, delivered by the British
and Americans, France soon recovered but was hampered by divisive colonial wars
in Indo-China and Algeria requiring in effect a Gaullist coup to revive the
government via the Fifth Republic.
France has since been well governed, notably by competent
administrators from les grandes écoles. This elite organised French
economic progress in the early Gaullist period but despite its efforts Germany
forged ahead and French parity with Germany is a polite fiction. French
diplomatic expertise is acknowledged by the senior partner in the alliance, but
the EU diktats emanate from Berlin
rather than Paris and are funnelled out via supine Brussels.
The political culture of the EU, protectionist, dirigiste, integrationist, and mainly Catholic
well suits most of the nations in the Union, though there are plenty of noisy critics
and dissenters. Only the UK has decided the direction of travel is not
acceptable to her and is negotiating a hopefully friendly divorce. The UK has
made the right historic decision as her political culture has quite the
opposite aspirations.
I very much hope relations between France and the UK can
find a renewed level of mutual respect and esteem. French lucidity,
intellectual reach and French defence capabilities are admirable and in even
lesser matters French food is delicious and their grandes horizontales are tasty beyond measure. Britain and France
are entwined in a misty incomprehension, but each rather likes her antagonist.
Long may the amicable rivalry between the Frogs and Les Rosbifs flourish!
SMD
5.07.17
Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2017
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