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[daurousseau]

Oh please. I can easily imagine François Hollande clinching the AK47 he keeps in his closet and launching the first attack against the evil forces of capitalism. He is an ENA alumni, after all. Hasta siempre !

Parispundit, my friend. I notice that, talking of Sarkozy, you didn't criticize him the way any academic should. You didn't say he was Pétain, Hitler, Pinochet, Lucifer, Thatcher, Bush an Big Brother. I suspect that your eyes weren't full of the righteous tears that the sheer evilness of his totalitarian regime should provoke. You didn't even say that Sarkozy is propagating the flu on purpose.

If you want an academic career in France, you'll need to acquire a few local reflexes.


Dellaroux :

It's a beautiful song, indeed. Le "Temps des Cerises" isn't revolutionary in itself, but was used as a rally song by the insurgents during the "Commune" of Paris in 1871. It became the unofficial anthem of the Socialist Party. Note : the french socialists aren't really socialist. They're more liberal, in the US sense. They use this song since it's much softer than the "Internationale", which is a plainly communist and revolutionary song. Nonetheless, the socialists sometimes sing the "Internationale" as well, when they need to draw far-left votes to them.

The French love political songs. I guess it's part of our romantic nature. The lecture of Finkielkraut (see link above), if I'm not mistaken, was interrupted by kids singing "le chant des partisans," the anthem of the Resistance. To see 2009 kids, students at Sciences-po -- with cell-phones in their pockets and a Playstation linked to a HD home-movie theater in their bedroom -- sing "le chant des partisans" is of course plain ludicrous. Ha, the foolishness of youth ! Poor, poor, poor Parispundit, who has to teach them a little bit of history.

Anyway, the "most French" French song is probably "les feuilles mortes" :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWfsp8kwJto

I also love the songs written by Pierre Delanoë. "L'Eté Indien" still got it, even 30 years later :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIElXj0ZKlk

Same for "si tu n'existais pas" (and guess who's playing the trumpet ?) :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QuBwReAkXGI

And this one, well, everybody knows it by heart :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtWLLQTDXAw&feature=fvst


No one on earth knows how to write love songs like the French, and I'm freakin' proud of it !

The "most French" song  (les feuilles mortes was composed by the Hungarian-French Joseph Kosma, born in Budapest. Of course you can't get many more French than Prevert, who penned the words. I love playing this song. It was created for Prevert's and Kosma's old collaborator, Marcel Carne, for a movie intended to star Marlene Dietrich. She made the big time mistake of turning down the role and thus missed out on being identified in perpetuity with that song.

[frenchdoctor]

According to Le Parisien today, an university teacher (University Paul-Valéry, Montpellier) had to kill a student who broke into his home, threatening his family. It happened last monday.

http://www.leparisien.fr/faits-divers/l-agresseur-du-prof-de-juvignac-etait-un-etudiant-21-10-2009-683091.php

http://www.leparisien.fr/faits-divers/le-terrible-temoignage-du-prof-qui-a-tue-son-eleve-24-10-2009-685934.php

(Story here according the le Parisien, 24 october).

The teacher flunked this student last year. Monday evening, the student, wearing a hood and carrying a gun, broke into the teacher home. He beat his wife, insulted the family, including the 11 years old child, asked for money, poured gas on them and threatened to lit a fire. Somehow, the family managed to rebel, a brawl occured, and the agressor died (heart stop due to broken rib cage). The teacher was charged with homicide, but wasn't put in jail, since self-defence will be considered by justice. His 11 yo son, under psychological shock, is still at the hospital.

This student entered university with a "bac technique" (a vocational secondary ed degree that doesn't prepare students to HE -- actually no "bac" does anymore). He failed many courses during 3 years. The gendarmerie has two other pending cases with him involved : armed robbery and criminal arson.  He was already condemned, in 2005, for illegal possession of a gun. He also spent some time in a mental institution. In 2004, he already threatened to burn a classmate.

I already knew that being a criminal -- and/or being seriously unbalanced -- doesn't prevent anyone to enlist as a student at a French research university. But honestly, to that extent, I could not imagine.

Still worse, the story fueled a far-right hate campaign. Hate feeding hate... what a complete waste. I'm floored.
   

[frenchdoctor]

Sorry for my bad grammar. I'm so floored that I forgot to check my post.   

[frenchdoctor]

And my translation was inaccurate. It is not "broken rib cage" but "compressed." According to the attorney (procureur) it's well possible to cause a heart stop that way, especially since the perpetrator was incoherent and demented. According to the press, legitimate self-defence is almost certain, unless some new elements appear.

Still. Someone died, whom psychiatry and/or justice should have taken care of beforehand. A family, including a child, was threatened in the most gruesome way (the perpetrator brought rope, handcuffs, gasoline... possibly with the idea to torture his victims). This teacher had to kill -- even if it's half self defense, half accident. Crazy far-right survivalists are trying to make a hero out of him. And, last but not least, the family of the perpetrator is sueing, saying that the professor imagined this as a trap to kill this student -- a theory that absolutely nothing proves so far.

And to think some people say university teacher is an easy job.



 

[dellaroux]

Oh, mon dieu....how horrible.

I'm so sorry for all involved, the child perhaps most of all, but the father, just everyone...

I've been through Montpelier. The part I saw looked calm, comfortable, safe. This is hard to imagine.

Mes condoleances a tous...

[frenchdoctor]

And I'm also upset about the crooked lawyer who is using the grief of the other family (whose demented son died in the story). From what I've heard -- le Parisien is often a good source -- he's spinning an unwinable case and probably taking them a lot of money in the process. A responsible lawyer should have said : "I'm sorry, but your son did something awfully bad. According to the investigations so far, legitimate self-defense is most probable". Instead of that, he's more or less insinuating that it is some sort of big conspiracy. I'm afraid this irresponsible dumbhead is using the sorrow of parents to make a name for himself.


 

[dellaroux]

I don't know if it's the same there but that's the job description for a defense lawyer here.

[frenchdoctor]

Actually, it's the other way around this time. It's the professor who is accused of homicide, and therefore he's the defender. The state attorney hinted that he will most probably (*) accept the legitimate self-defence plea. It's the accusation lawyer, representing the victim's family, who seems to be out of his shoes.

The defence lawyer has a splendid attitude :

http://www.youtube.com/user/Midilibrecom#p/a/1/K0XGxN26EUc

He says that it is normal to see a lawsuit follow its course, since someone died. It was important to say that in a very quiet and thoughtful way, because of the survivalist wackoes I was talking about, who are asking for the right to kill on sight. Nonetheless, he also says that the legitimate self-defence jugement is doubtless. That seems to be the general opinion of the press on this case.

We're almost forgetting the main point : an university teacher placed in a kill-or-be-killed situation because... well because of what ? I don't even know. The French academic system is such an absurd failure that nothing of it makes sense anymore.

----------------
(*) unless some "law & order" twisted scenario happens. You never now, after all.

[frenchdoctor]

I said earlier in this thread that Albert Camus was buried in the gorgeous small village of Lourmarin, in the southern hinterland. That's where he lived, too :

http://ramses.pharaons.fr/genesites/Mairie/lourmarin1/Sites/Page.php?login=lourmarin1&Page=photo_360_plan&Requete=

His good friend René Char, another small town southerner, wrote a poem entitled "l'éternité à Lourmarin". ("Avec celui que nous aimons, nous avons cessé de parler, et ce n'est pas le silence").

Well, Sarkozy, who definitely doesn't know anything about culture, now wants to tranfer the tomb of Camus to the Panthéon :

http://www.lemonde.fr/politique/article/2009/11/19/sarkozy-souhaite-faire-entrer-albert-camus-au-pantheon_1269540_823448.html

The Panthéon, ugly like sin, is the mausoleum located in the 5th arrondissement of Paris, built in the 18th century neo-classic "big cube of rocks" style. Since the Revolution, the Republic use it as an utterly pompous way to celebrate its great figures.

I'm sometimes amazed by my own coutry. I live in a country where the President can decide where individuals will be buried. A country where we think that putting great thinkers in a cold, big lump of rock stained by urban pollution is actually a way to celebrate them.

I'm also floored as a small town person myself. Why do Parisians always think they can hijack the memory of great writers ? Camus wanted to live, and to die, in Lourmarin. It was his choice, that we're going to betray. Parisians should stop thinking they have the monopoly of culture. They should stop they have the right to do everything they want. They are not superior. Aesthetic matters as well. How can Parisians imagine that this : http://www.paris-walking-tours.com/images/pantheon2.jpg

is better than that :

http://www.beyond.fr/picsvill/lourmarin065.jpg 

So, René Char was wrong. Camus, this simple man who was in love with the sun and the Mediterranée, will probably not spend "l'éternité à Lourmarin".  He will spend his eternity in a freezing stone cube, in the middle of traffic jam, in a portentous mausoleum that is the exact opposite of what his books are all about : human dignity.

[dellaroux]

Quel ignorance, encore, de Sarko....

I think he is playing puppeteer here, again, he has the power, so he can do...whatever. (Villepin probably agrees at this point, I would imagine, as well!)

I go past the Pantheon whenever I visit the Bib. St. Genevieve, and it just doesn't seem sited to its place, in architecturespeak.

The tower is kinda cool, I've taught it in sequence with St. Peter's/Rome, and St. Paul's London, as treatments of large domes. But I agree, the one time I went in the building, it was dank and cold and...uuuucky.

Mes regrets...

[parispundit]

Don't worry, French doctor, this is one thing your President CAN'T do. The law requires the children's consent, and the son has just said no, on the excellent grounds that his father having refused all official honors in his life would not have wanted it.

That said, I quite like the Pantheon from the outside, although I agree the inside is unpleasant.

[alleyoxenfree]

<irony alert>
But frenchdoctor, why do you hate your country so that you want to cost it valuable tourist dollars?

Don't you understand that Sarkozy is just trying to make sure more people visit the tomb? 

Don't you understand that the future is all commerce, all the time? <irony alert off>

[frenchdoctor]

I know it's all politics. The left wanted to put Aimé Césaire there (which is as silly), now the right replies by talking about Albert Camus. The idea of a national mausoleum belongs to another century (I mean the 18th), but they don't seem to realize it.

Paris, which has been unable to father a good writer since Proust, maintains its unearned cultural reputation by parasiting the Province. I admit Paris is something necessary : it frees the countryside from 8 millions snobbish show-offs who think they are artists. It's better to have them packed in one place, so we can write and create more quietly elsewhere. Now, if SCs could acknowledge the fact that France is actually bigger than the 5th arrondissement, it would be nice too. I'm a little tired of that kind of interviews :

SC : Paris-Paris-Paris-theory-Paris-Paris-theory-theory-Paris ?
Me : indeed. Nonetheless, French culture may be richer and much more diverse than...
SC : but Paris-Paris-theory-Paris-Paris-theory-theory-Paris !
Me : Actually, in my field, poetry, many poets draw their inspiration from...
SC : Paris-Paris-Paris-theory-Paris-theory-Paris !!!!

It can be tiresome, sometimes.

I forgot to mention this song, which applies to the situation :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVGE_oZCMvc

[dellaroux]

Merci bien pour le lien...(thanks very much for the link)...I've put it on my playlist.

Maybe it's that their initials are the same--that's a kind of balance!--A.C. (is there a D.C. anywhere?)

Your take on Paris as a snob-magnet may have applications wider than the literary, although I have some friends, there, as well...and...we might want to except any forumites, yes?

J'espere que tout va bien, je dois partir pout New York ce matin (une autre centre--dit-on des intellectuels?--mais je l'aime)
(I hope all goes well; I have to leave this AM for NYC, another center of--shall I say, intellectuals?--but I like it)

Bonne journee! (Hope your day goes well)!

[parispundit]

Oh, don't worry about excepting me. In my experience the best croissants and baguettes ARE found in Paris. This truth is demonstrated every time I stay at a chambre d'hote in the provinces. If realizing this makes me a snob, so be it. True, wine from Montmartre is not worth drinking, and confit has its origins elsewhere, but bread and croissants are the fundamental building blocks of civilized life.

Also, pace the Pantheon, most of Paris is a lot prettier than most provincial cities I have visited - although I confess I have yet to set foot in Toulouse, mea culpa. But then I am an unabashed fan of Baron Haussman (one of the many reasons I like Napoleon III).

And of course, what pleasure would there be in being a Paris pundit were it not for snobbery?