Notes From Abroad
An American ex-pat senses that events in France may be headed in an uncertain and dangerous direction if emotions aren't tamped down soon.
Calla J. Corner is an American-born writer who lived on Eucalyptus Hill above Montecito for a dozen years and whose early marriage years were spent in France. She writes regularly for The Spectator and has been published in a number of periodicals, including the Montecito Journal. Calla’s British-born husband, Richard, passed away recently prompting her to sell her Moody-Sisters-style home and return to France, where she has now taken up residence.
Ms. Corner wrote the following article after the deadly stabbings in Annecy, France and before the unfortunate recent shooting death of a 17-year-old in a Paris suburb. The second of the two events has set off a chain of protests and disturbances that threaten to explode into something entirely more dangerous. She calls her piece:
"He didn't even speak Franglais"
Since moving to France this past Spring from Santa Barbara, following my husband Richard's death, I've been speaking three languages; English (of course), Swiss French; I add ten to sixty for seventy and twenty to sixty for eighty. I hate to admit it but I've become pretty fluent in Franglais, probably inevitable in a bi-cultural family with small, creative children. I have promised myself I'd learn at least one new word a day (mot du jour).
On June 8th, I heard a reporter on the French station CNEWS comment: "il n'a même pas parlé Franglais," – “He didn't even speak Franglais". The reporter was voicing the popular argument against the approxomately150,000, mostly Muslims, who asked for asylum last year, especially those who don't make an effort to speak French or integrate into the country's culture each year.
The comment was a gut reaction to another act of violence by a refugee in a country, which over the past month has seen three gendarmes killed in a head-on crash with a speeding young drunk and drugged driver as they were transporting a young girl to a hospital; a 14-year-old kill herself due to bullying; an 8-year-old with a deformed head, due to a brain tumor, be attacked by youth in a stadium because he wore the wrong club jersey; a nurse stabbed in a hospital; pharmacies attacked by drug addicts; the First Lady's nephew be attacked in the family chocolate shop; a dire prediction that the once admired public schools are in a death spiral and that the BAC, the all-important exam that one must pass to enter a university, is becoming worthless.
I had been watching channel 24 – sometimes called French FOX – for its supposed center-right views, when the news came that four children under the age of three (one in a stroller) and two elderly men had been stabbed in a park in Annecy, across the Lake of Geneva from Lausanne, where my British husband, Richard and I had met, married and raised our three children, I turned up the volume. France was in choc – slang for "shock" – not to be confused with the shortened version of "chocolate", as in pain au choc.
When the reporter said the stabber was a 31 year-old Syrian refugee, who had been living in Sweden for ten years, had married a Swedish woman, had one child with her and had not been granted citizenship, I started taking notes. I am half Swedish. My mother was Swedish and I grew up in a bi-cultural family in New England in a time when this would have never happened in any civilized society.The stabber had asked for French refugee status and had been refused three days before his horrific crime.
Decades ago, Sweden reversed its soft-on-refugees policy as it witnessed the islamisme of the country bring instability to a once praised model of Scandinavian open-mindedness. Denmark now has buildings outside Copenhagen to house refugees, having watched what had happened in Sweden and the rest of Europe when refugees don't integrate into a society. After Germany, France has the most applications for asylum. Those granted asylum are said to have hit le jackpot because of the generous benefits.
In moving to France, I had no illusions that France would be a paradise of great food, fine wines and French logic. It is the country where my very distant cousin,Thomas Jefferson, became a gourmet and introduced the casserole into French gastronomy. It's true; our third president brought mac and cheese to Americans and cassoulet to the French, following a trip to Italy and discovering the pasta machine. If you don't believe me, look at another distant cousin, Mary Randolph's, The Virginia Housewife's Cookbook.
"Casserole" became my mot du jour, as I discovered it referred to French citizens of the far left and far right who have taken to the country's city streets, banging on kitchen pots, creating a cookware cacophony, to get the French President's attention. "Macron doesn't listen to us" was the cry in reaction to Macron's promise to raise the country's retirement age from 62 to 64.
The stabbing of the small children calmed the symphony of sarcasm for 24 hours and then la guerre des mots (war of words) began again – this time among les têtes parlantes (talking heads). Did the stabber commit an act of terrorism or a political assassination? It matters in the French justice system which is still based on the Napoleonic Code. French politics has invaded all aspects of French life, as it has in most European cultures. Wokeism is considered to be a fait accompli by many.The French haven't yet found a word to replace "woke". Nor have they found a French word for the Black Blocs (young anarchists, often of privilege, who are anti-everything, dress in black, wear black masks and move from city to city, guided by social media to cause havoc). The Dublin Accord, that allows for all EU members to cross borders willy-nilly is now at the top of the to-think-about list in Brussels. Supporters of Frexit have been loud and clear above the clanking of casseroles.
L'Académie Française, the august institution made up of 40 Immortels, that Cardinal Richelieu founded in 1635 to regulate and keep the French language pure, has had its collective knickers in a twist over the vulgarism of the French language since World War 11. The French d'un certain age (oldies) still blame American GI's for, not only romancing French ladies with silk stockings, perfume and cigarettes but also le vulgarism of their beautiful language and banalité of French life. What the French President calls "décivilisation" – no translation needed for the three French words. Instead of blaming Americans for the sorry state of a once universally admired culture, there is a new bouc émisaire (scape goat): Macron.
The youngest Head of State since Napoleon, who is seen by many to be as arrogant as the Emperor and too elitist by those who can't understand that their county is broke from years of social spending, has made the valid case for upping the age of retirement. Macron's popularity is in the low 40's, although he has gotten a slight boost from attending a ceremony for the dead gendarmes, where he gave a moving eulogy, going to the stabbed infants’ bedsides with the First Lady and downing a bottle of beer with factory workers.. A day doesn't go by, however, that the articulate French President doesn't bang on about décivilisation without providing a plan to save French culture, except to spend billions on reviving French industries.
In October 2011, L'Académie launched an interactive feature called Dire, Ne pas dire (To say, not to say) on their website in the hopes of bringing purity to the cyber masses. Immortel No. 31, the Franco-British writer and poet Michael Edwards, explained in a podcast for Spotlight in 2019, what's been behind the Academy's raison d'être and strategy in the battle of words.
"At the time (of Richelieu) the basic reason was that many French intellectuals thought that French could replace Latin as the intellectual universal language. It obviously didn’t happen but that was what Richelieu hoped for. And for French to be able to replace Latin, it had to be perfected. The Academy thought the thing to do with French was actually to purify it, to remove all words which were not part of what we would now call intellectuals’ vocabulary. This was absolutely right for the time.
“It then became problematic. François Fenelon [theologian, poet and writer], a member of the Académie française, wrote a letter in 1714 in which he says: ‘For 100 years we’ve been purifying the French language and the result is we’ve impoverished it. Our job now is to enrich it.’
“And curiously, considering English is now seen as the adversary of French, he says: ‘I am told that the English use all the words that are useful and take them where they can find them. And there’s no reason why the French shouldn’t do what the English do every day’."
Meanwhile, as those of us living legally in France, who have come to escape wokeism, who worry about the world we're leaving our descendants, hope that we won't witness an été turbulent.
The weekend following the Annecy stabbing, I found a grain of hope in Henri, the clean-cut, 24 year-old boy scout, who happened to be in the park as the stabber was on his rampage. Henri, a devout catholic, who is spending the summer visiting France's cathedrals to draw attention to their plight, chased the stabber and hurled his backpack at him, stopping more carnage. He was hailed as le backpacker hero. The modest, young man, who didn't want any publicity (hence no last name) will be awarded the Legion d'Honneur, France's highest decoration, for his bravery. I'm hoping, along with others of my generation, that there are more Henri's and fewer casseroles in France as Bastille Day(July 14) approaches. A grandmère's wishful thinking? This past week, thousands of eco-activists, led by Swedish Saint Greta, called for nationwide soulèvements (uprisings).
At least I have a new mot du jour.