The French are in love with words.
Written words, spoken words, words to sing or to scream or to declaim. Their elite schools train them to believe that once they forge an elegant formula, the problem they have to confront is already half solved.
Nowhere does it show better than in politics. Take François Hollande, the Socialist challenger to Nicolas Sarkozy in the presidential election in April.
While the president has not officially declared his candidacy and is using his remaining time in office to try to convince his countrymen that he alone can protect them from the current economic crisis, Hollande has started campaigning for good.
The clear winner of the Socialist party primaries last fall, he had been criticized since for being too mellow and out of focus — “caramel fudge” or “captain of a pedal boat,” his crueler critics call him. But come the New Year, his team trumpeted, there will be action and muscle.
Accordingly, a few days ago Hollande published an “open letter to the French” in the newspaper Libération. It is two full pages long, beautifully written, an ode to the basic principles of the Republic and a description of the many evils the Sarkozy regime purportedly inflicted on the country.
All the right words are there: truth, willpower, justice, hope, the suffering of the common people; the need to contain the deficits, reduce inequalities, share wealth and regulate markets; the decisive moment for our future and that of our children. In short, a great piece of French political literature — completely abstract and theoretical from beginning to end, and almost impossible to translate into any other language.
Here’s a sample: “The French are suffering. They are suffering in their own lives ... . They are also suffering in their collective soul; they feel there is contempt for the values and the institutions of the Republic, the social contract is under attack, the influence of the country is damaged and they watch with anger France being humbled, weakened, damaged, downgraded.”»
The reaction to the publication was muted. Opponents underlined the lack of concrete proposals, pundits declared it was too early for the challenger to spell them out, some fellow Socialists questioned selecting only one newspaper. But no one questioned the exercise.
Language in France is a major issue. Politicians feel compelled to publish a book if they want to be taken seriously. Whether they actually write it is another matter — it is not considered proper to name a ghostwriter. Sarkozy has put his name to three books, Hollande to at least four.
The latter is a master at the profuse and crisp vocabulary of the well-educated senior civil servant. The former, a business lawyer, tends to take liberties with grammar — and the French do not like that. Much of the criticism of the first year of his presidency, apart from the “bling bling” style, had to do with his use of words that were not deemed fitting for his office. There was the notorious epithet barked at a demonstrator during a public event, and the colloquial declaration that “Avec Carla c’est du sérieux” (“With Carla, it’s for real”) made during the press conference announcing his relationship with Carla Bruni, now his wife.
Sarkozy believed that at the start of the 21st century, the French wanted a young, energetic, modern leader who talked like them, after 26 years under two aging presidents locked in old-time rhetoric. It turned out he was wrong. He has since assumed the sort of public restraint and presidential solemnity expected of their president by the French.
Hollande, for his part, made the mistake in a chat with journalists of referring to the president as “un sale mec” — street talk roughly translated as “a creepy guy.” Conservatives promptly fired back that it was an intolerable insult to the presidency.
The irony is that both Hollande and Sarkozy are haunted by the same political ghost, François Mitterrand. The challenger makes huge efforts to resemble the grand figure of French socialism, imitating his gestures, his oratory and even his attire, as if the miracle blend of provincial conservatism and political socialism that reigned in the 1980s could be repeated. Sarkozy, too, has long been fascinated by Mitterrand, quoting him more often than his own original mentor, Jacques Chirac.
Whatever else might be said of his career, Mitterrand was, above all, a master of words.
By Christine Ockrent, a Belgian journalist whose career has principally centered on French television.