Controversies and Viewpoints Page 19
Some Greek influences are to be found in the South of France: Massilia (Marseille), Nikè (Nice), Antipolis (Antibes), Monoïkos (Monaco).
During the sixth century, the Gallic language completely disappeared; but the Latin dunum and Celtic duno (meaning ‘hill’ — see also the French word ‘dune’) combine to explain the origin of Lyons (Lug-dunum: hill of the god Lug), Belgrade (Sigi-dunum: the hill of victory), Melun (Meldunum), Châteaudun, Verdun.
The Franks and the Normans
Soon enough, Europe underwent a change of religion, abandoning the old cults dedicated to Belenos (Beaune), Belisama (Belime, Bellême), Lug and even Jupiter (Fanjaux, from Fanum Jovis, ‘temple of Jupiter’) and shifting its focus towards hermitages (cellae: Seals) and ‘small monasteries’ (Moutier, Montreuil).
It was not, however, until the great upheavals brought about by the respective invasions of the Alans (Allaines), the Alemanni (Auménancourt), the Goths (Gueux) and the Marcomanni (Marmagne) between the sixth and the ninth century that French acquired its own physiognomy.
The Franks did not content themselves with giving our country its name, but also imposed their language in the north and the north-east. Their influence, which was thoroughly studied by Walther von Wartburg447 (Evolution et structure du français.448 PUF, 1935), was exerted by means of intense rural colonisation.
Toponymy certifies the existence of major domains in which the possessor’s name is connected to the common one: Gondreville is thus the ‘domain of Gondric’.
Mr Albert Dauzat reminds us that ‘during the first centuries, swamps constituted an almost impassable obstacle to colonisation. As for the great forests, they were bypassed and barely ever damaged. Neither the Gauls nor the Romans ever cleared land’.
The ones who arrived next, by contrast, proceeded to reclaim and clear land on a vast scale. Hence the names ending with the suffix -heim and -dorf on the Alsatian plain.
In the Beauce region, for instance (the ancient Belsa, derived from Belisama), Celtic toponyms are spread along the periphery, ramifying around Chartres and Orléans: this testifies to the fact that the interior had not been penetrated. It was not until the sixth century, when the entire region was fallowed, that one witnessed the emergence of names ending with ‘-ville’ and ‘-villiers’, which are characteristic of the Frankish period.
During the feudal period, the country was covered with fortified buildings: Châteauneuf, Castelnau, Neufchâteau.
In Normandy, during the tenth century, Scandinavian colonisation reached its highest density in the Pays de Caux and the Nord du Cotentin areas. Le Havre is of course reminiscent of the Germanic word for ‘harbour’ (German haven, Danish havn). Saint-Vaast-la-Hougue, which Hrolfr (known in French as Rollon) used as his general headquarters during the invasions, stems from the Norse haugr, i.e. ‘knoll’ or ‘mound’. Almost everywhere, one encounters the ancient Scandinavian words or roots holm (Saxon hoo), i.e. ‘islet’ (Quettehou, Holmet); bekkr, meaning ‘brook’, altered into -bec (Bolbec, Caudebec); thorp (German dorf), i.e. ‘a group of farms’ or ‘village’ (Le Tourps in Val-de-Saire); lundr, meaning ‘bocage’ (Les Londes); flodh, i.e. ‘tide’ or ‘flow’, which then became -fleu(r) (Barfleur, Honfleur); vik, meaning ‘cove’, changed into -vy (Foulvy, Brévy); topt, i.e. ‘foundation’ or ‘farm’, which evolved into -tot (Ectot: the ‘domain of the oak’, Quartot, Yvetot, Maltot, Le Tot); ham (Ouistreham); gate (Houlgate); etc.
In the 12th century, France’s toponymical map was set. A century later, the langue d’oïl of the northern barons triumphed once and for all over the langue d’oc used by the Cathars and the troubadours.
The history of place names reflects the history of our language and, through it, the history of all that we are:
‘These names may mirror the first impression made by our fatherland, the land that all we live in and love, on the eyes and the souls of the men who inhabited it and slumbered in it before we came’, Gaston Paris449 once said.
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La toponymie française, an essay by Albert Dauzat. Payot, 335 pages.
Histoire et guide de la France secrete,450 an essay by J.P. Clébert and A. Michel. Planète, 461 pages.
*
French Individualism
All peoples have the qualities of their own flaws. Mr de Lévis-Mirepoix451 writes:
If our public misfortunes are, more often than not, the result of our divisions and our excessive individual affirmations, our great successes are mostly due to individual affirmations directed towards the magnificence of our national destiny.
Published in 1957 and then reedited in 1973, the work which the duke of Lévis-Mirepoix dedicated to French individualism emphasises a constant facet of our national character.
In his essay on European Peoples (La Baconnière, Neuchâtel, 1946), Nicolas Lahovary remarked that ‘France is the only one among the great European nations to include numerous representatives of Europe’s three main races: the Mediterranean race, the Alpine race and the Celto-Germanic race’. Formed through successive enlargements of the royal ‘private reserve’, the French Hexagon comes across as a geographical and human crossroads. A Celtic language is spoken in it (Breton), as are two Germanic languages (Flemish and the Alsatian dialect) and five Romance languages (French, Occitan, Catalan, Italo-Corsican, and Franco-Provençal); not to mention Basque.
French people have different heritages, languages, histories and cultures and have difficulty perceiving what they could ever have in common; they are individualists.
It is this French heterogeneity that accounts for the fact that our national unity did not result from a slow ripening of popular consciousness but from a central authority that endowed it with an artificial and rigid framework. Just like in Spain or England, the state has preceded and created the nation in France, instead of only embodying its result, as is the case in Germany or Italy.
There is a French or Spanish nation and a civilisation. There is, likewise, a German or Italian culture and a people. And these terms correspond to one another as much as they are in contrast with each other: people and nation, culture and civilisation.
French individualism dates back to the Celtic era. It was a Gallic people, the Eduans, who called for the Romans to intervene in the hope of removing the Germanic threat. It was a naïve scheme on their part: having vanquished the Teutons, the legions undertook to conquer their ‘allies’.
Civil War or National Sport?
The above-mentioned conquest was accomplished using modest forces, as Caesar did not, in total, command more than 50,000 men; he did, however, take advantage of the Gallic divisions and disagreements.
‘The Celts were mediocre citizens, and this represented one of the very principles of their weakness’, observed Mr Henri Hubert (Les Celtes).
‘What they lacked was political cohesion’, specified Gonzague de Reynold452 in Le monde barbare vol. 1.453
According to Fustel de Coulanges,454 ‘there is no doubt at all that the Gauls were indeed very profoundly attached to both their fatherland and their independence, yet this attachment was, for a period of six years, weaker than their dissensions’ (Institutions politiques, vol. 1455 ).
When Vercingetorix undertook to unite those who resisted the Romans, he came up against both indifference and a diversity of passions.
Caesar’s soldiers had little difficulty in seizing Avaricum (Bourges). At Dijon, the Gallic army suffered the consequences of its cavalry’s lack of discipline, and the call of Alesia remained unheeded.
In a country where everyone criticises everyone else, civil war would become a national sport.
During the 18th century, it was Colbert,456 who, in one of his memoirs, deplored the fact that ‘the French, the world’s most polite people, find it so unbearable to suffer each other’s presence; that ‘their union is so difficult to achieve and their societies so inconstant’; and that ‘the best affairs perish in their hands through some unfathomably unfortunate fate’.
In the aft
ermath of World War I (1914–18), an inquiry spanning across approximately sixty volumes and conducted by the National Association of Economic Expansion attributed the bad state of the French industry at the start of the century not to technological or financial causes but, instead, to psychological reasons.
Gustave le Bon457 once bitterly remarked that ‘in the German industry, banks, factories, and exports are interconnected so as to achieve a common goal. There is no fear of risks, since this interconnection allows for the division of burdens. All individual initiatives are encouraged because the local authorities set to exploit them are perfectly aware of their value’. He also denounced ‘the lack of solidarity rendering us unable to undertake coordinated and disciplined collective efforts; the routine that prevents us from changing anything once the methods have been established; and the fear of risk-taking, timidity and lack of initiative which lead us to dread major undertakings’ (Psychologie des temps nouveaux.458 Flammarion, 1920).
The current situation surrounding French industry and agriculture, which is partly due to excessive fragmentation and the absence of collective equipment, proves that little has changed in our country over the course of half a century.
As far as military action is concerned, Mr Alexandre Sanguinetti459 remarks:
The moment the nation’s or army’s discipline becomes lax, it is the Gallic that resurfaces from under the French.
He goes on to add:
Although we are an ancient warrior people, we are not a military one. We have retained our Gallo-Roman origins, but especially the former of the two, i.e. our taste for band turmoil; indeed, we prefer bands to the firmness of legions. This explains the great “thrashings” we suffered during the feudal age. On the eve of our greatest disasters, there is nothing we love as much as assembling irregular soldier units with prestigious names. It is in such troops that we feel most at ease. Our misfortune, however, dictates that these units of ours regularly encounter the 24th Bavarian, which, despite not having such an ostentatious name, remains far more solid and reduces them to a pile of rubble — for there are no miracles in war. (Une nouvelle résistance.460 Plon, 1976)
As explained by the Duke of Lévis-Mirepoix, French individualism, which was controlled by the state under the Old Regime, prospered in the party system (i.e. the twenty-five governments of the Fourth Republic) and was simultaneously tempered by sudden and brief explosions of socialist anarchy (The Revolution of 1789, the Commune of Paris, May 1968) and a plebiscitary reflex that decorated militaries such as Bonaparte, Déroulède, La Rocque, Pétain, and de Gaulle took advantage of.
The Ambiguity of Our National Heritage
The continuity of our policies and institutions has, of course, suffered because of this.
Any English diplomat that succeeds another will behave exactly as his predecessor did. With us Latin nations, it is the very contrary that applies. Our colonies had as many political systems as they had governors, and we all know how often the latter changed. A French diplomat practices politics yet is incapable of embracing one policy. (Gustave Le Bon, Psychologie du socialisme.461 Félix Alcan, 1902)
Georges Pompidou462 writes:
Periodically, the wealthy uptown part of Paris grows fond of a certain man before turning away from him on an equally regular basis. General de Gaulle experienced this: idolised by Paris in 1947, he ended up being almost hated by the Parisians in 1953. Having reclaimed his idol status in 1958, he saw Paris — the same bourgeois Paris that I referred to earlier — gradually detach itself from him in a process that began in 1965 and culminated in the spring of 1968, which undoubtedly marked an extreme point in this evolution. (Le nœud gordien.463 Plon, 1974)
Too often, nationalism in France has deviated towards xenophobia. It is more of a plain and simple rejection of difference than a favoured conception of man’s relation to the universe.
Solidarity and sociability do not intersect. The English, who are highly solidary, are rather unsociable indeed. The French, who, by contrast, are very sociable, only become solidary in times of war and danger. In times of peace, it is the ‘each man for himself’ principle that prevails. Every social or professional category makes demands that suit its own interests, while in the Parliament, ‘the parties that find themselves in a minority never refuse to ally themselves against the one who has triumphed’, remarks Gustave Le Bon once again, before adding:
There is a large number of revolutionary socialists who have only been elected to the current Chamber thanks to the assistance provided by the monarchists, who remain as lacking in terms of intelligence as they were at the time of the Revolution. (La Révolution française et la psychologie des revolutions.464 Flammarion, 1913)
Irony, panache, politeness, witty remarks, elegance, eloquence, and a taste for style: these are all typically French traits. ‘The French mistake words for facts’, Moltke used to say.
We could characterise individualism in this manner in all domains. In war — the bravery of the partisan rather than the composure of a front-line soldier; in sports — the spirit of initiative rather than team spirit; in music — individual singing rather than choral singing; in matters of intelligence — a taste for analysis rather than a sense of synthesis; in the educational field — knowledge rather than discipline. And then there is this destructive form of mental activity embodied by hypercritical irony, this manner of being ‘the one who is not to be duped’, of not respecting anything and scoffing at everything and everyone (beginning with oneself): what it reveals is an extremely profound division affecting the personality (the one who shows respect is the one who believes, because he is of a single moulding, finding in his own ideal the pure image of what he longs to be).
To the Celts, the state was evil incarnate. The Celtic empire perished due to a lack of authority. For the Latins, the state is everything. It was thus Machiavelli465 who stated: ‘I love the state more than my own soul’. In the eyes of Germanic nations, the state expresses and shapes the aspirations of the people.
As for Georges Pompidou, he also wrote the following:
It is enough for one to observe the manner in which the French live to gain an awareness of their profound natural inaptitude to accept someone governing them. The natural reaction of the French towards both the state and its representatives is one of mistrust, a hostility paired with a sort of inferiority complex. To the Frenchman, the state comes across as an implacable and absurd machine that is foreign to him and of which no good could ever be expected to come out … so much so that political crises almost inevitably turn into government crises; because, at the end of the day, it is the very foundation of the state’s authority that finds itself constantly questioned. (Op. cit.)
Willingly statists when it comes to collective interests, the French remain fiercely individualistic as far as their personal interests are concerned. Ever favourable to nationalisations, the communist electorate still prefers the ownership of individual houses and shuns public transit.
The same ambiguity applies to the notion of ‘liberty’. Mr Lévis-Mirepoix explains that when speaking of individual reality, ‘the Latins conceive of it in the strict sense, as the primacy of the person over society, whereas the Anglo-Saxons perceive it very differently, namely as the defence of private life and natural rights and without any encroachment on what is the state’s own due’. This is why England, which has undergone two revolutions and led a king to his death, has never rejected its past experiences and knowledge.
It was in the 19th century that the individual-versus-state antinomy arose in its sharpest form. One thus proceeded to oppose, without any nuances, a ‘liberalism’ bordering on anarchy and a ‘statism’ verging on dictatorship.
This is because for any state that finds itself compelled to compensate for individual lacks, the temptation to infringe on individual prerogatives is great. Rudolf Stadelmann466 once wrote:
There is, on the one hand, a frivolous sort of individualism that barely cond
escends to receive support from the state and, on the other, a cynical perception of power which lowers the individual to playing the role of an instrument, to his use as cannon fodder.
He does add, however, that ‘wherever balance is preserved, history will always be inclined to uphold a fertile equilibrium between statal necessity and the individual’s right to freedom’.
The Values of Peoples and Masses
The ailments of statism are well-known. The state’s inferiority in economic matters is as patently obvious as its superiority in political issues.
Gustave Le Bon explains:
This inferiority relates to a very simple mental law, one that has been experimentally verified a thousand times over, according to which any man whose efforts serve a general sort of interest is far less valuable than the one who endeavours to act in his own personal interest. (Psychologie des temps nouveaux, op. cit.)
In 1861, Heinrich von Treitschke467 celebrated productive liberty in the following manner:
Blessed is any governmental action that gives rise to, encourages and purifies the citizen’s initiative. All else is harmful.
In the preface of his book, the duke of Lévis-Mirepoix draws yet another distinction between ‘doctrinal’ and ‘temperamental’ individualism; he does not, however, give a clear definition of either. Furthermore, he covers the question of their origins rather hastily, a question that is, literally speaking, the ‘primordial’ one (and one is thus surprised, at times, when coming across evaluations or anecdotes whose connection to the subject matter is quite thin indeed).
What is highly evident, by contrast, is the persistence of a national temperament which, having attained stability, has succeeded in maintaining its presence across all eras and under all regimes.
Such permanency illustrates the difference between peoples and masses: within the former, the collective spirit retains a fixity that is unknown to the crowd’s essentially transitory mindset. Only when it has lost its own consciousness and soul does a people become a ‘mass’, which the leaders and the media can manipulate and shape as they please.