Culturethèque
La Flame de la Manche
The English say: ‘you wear your heart on your sleeve.’
The French say: you raise your sleeve to protest.”
They collect their placards, and yell, "prenez vos désirs pour des réalités!”
Among both the British and the French, we see this passion burning…quite literally, in many cases.
Matchstick no. 1: Jeanne d’Arc (ca. 1412-1431)
Now we all make mistakes, but this one is something else. A woman who led the French to several victories in the Hundred Years war (1337-1435), capturing fortress after fortress and recovering La Patrie from the English, was squashed out by French contemporaries. Why so? Being a woman, a Roman Catholic and a brunette didn’t help. But what we have here is the oil which started the idea. Some would take this ironically; even Voltaire’s La Pucelle d’Orléans (1899) was burned!
Matchstick no. 2: Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder plot (1605)
One, two, skip a few years and we have our fellow gentleman Guy Fawkes (1570-1606) starkly crouching over Jacobean gunpowder: guilty until proved innocent. The plan of mastermind Robert Catesby (I know, “Robert Catesby night” doesn’t have the same ring, it sounds more like a chat show) was to blow up the first call to parliament in James I’s reign, the plan failed. Miserably. Even the subsequent Renaissance gossip turned the daring English rebels into nothing more than excited firework-watchers.
Matchstick no. 3: Les Soixante-Huitards (May 1968)
The ashes of d’Arc still smoldering in the hands of the trendy students of ’68. Now these guys know their revolutionary stuff building their barracades in the same streets of 1848 and 1871 (Wikipedia it if you’re lost). This time we are fighting for the right to…talk! Yes I know, not so heroic but “la prise de parole” was on the lips of every long-haired, flared-jean student and under the cobblestones of Paris. In their masses and lining the streets of Paris, we all have to thank them for the best homework excuse: Il est interdit d’interdire.
Here is a little something to get you front row seats at the Café de Flore.
Thank you readers and that’s all for now folks, here’s a tribute to all you resisters out there.
Tune in your headphones for next week: Gainsbourg vs. Bowie (and a vignette of the classical music bits before).
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