Anniversary
May. 10th, 2011 10:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chani30 years ago François Mitterrand became President, and with him socialism reached L'Elysée with the slogan "changer la vie". It didn't stay there a long time since the policy changed in 1983, but Mitterrand remained President for 14 years.
In the last months of his "reign" he said that he believed in "les forces de l'esprit" and that he will not leave us...and he's still haunting us nowadays (especially today, big concert on Bastille square this evening and many tv programmes), perhaps because we haven't had great political figures since him and because our current president is a poor excuse for the function.
Mitterrand was a well-read man, a writer, a machiavellian politician, a man of culture and a true republican monarch. He was often compared to Louis XI or to the Sphinx; he got a few nicknames during those 14 years, among them "Tonton" and even "God", and in death he, who loved Egypt so much and spent his last December in there, and read the Book of the Dead before he passed away, he ended looking like Ramses II.
He was already ill when he got elected in 1981 and he was supposed to die in 1983, even though the cancer he had was a big secret and nobody knew, yet he survived until January 1996. The fact he defied disease and death for so long is part of the legend and of the enigma. The fact he had an illegitimate daughter, Mazarine, his favourite child (the one who studied philosophy and became a writer!), and two families, also feeds the legend. All our kings used to have bastards after all.
It's weird to see that so many people are still enthralled by that cynical man who kept teaching lessons to those around him, was mean to them and often despised them. Most of them still admire him, whether they are left wing or right wing (but Mitterrand himself was very right-wing in his youth), whether they liked him or not. I don't know how many books have been written since he died, but there's a great many of them.
I can't say that I like him but I would lie if I'd say that I don't think he was fascinating and that he didn't leave a big hole behind him. He was a sort of novel character, so close and yet so mysterious, strong and rather merciless, so smart but often so cruel; a man who probably had more convictions than he got credit for, and whose life was filled with twists, moments of glory and courage, resilience, secrets and lies, paradoxes and shadows, a man whose last years as President were like a Passion (terminal cancer, his Vichy past coming back to bite him in the ass). Even his flaws had a certain grandeur.
François Mitterrand embodied the worst and the best of "great politics", our royalist past and the legacy of French revolution, all our contradictions.
In the last months of his "reign" he said that he believed in "les forces de l'esprit" and that he will not leave us...and he's still haunting us nowadays (especially today, big concert on Bastille square this evening and many tv programmes), perhaps because we haven't had great political figures since him and because our current president is a poor excuse for the function.
Mitterrand was a well-read man, a writer, a machiavellian politician, a man of culture and a true republican monarch. He was often compared to Louis XI or to the Sphinx; he got a few nicknames during those 14 years, among them "Tonton" and even "God", and in death he, who loved Egypt so much and spent his last December in there, and read the Book of the Dead before he passed away, he ended looking like Ramses II.
He was already ill when he got elected in 1981 and he was supposed to die in 1983, even though the cancer he had was a big secret and nobody knew, yet he survived until January 1996. The fact he defied disease and death for so long is part of the legend and of the enigma. The fact he had an illegitimate daughter, Mazarine, his favourite child (the one who studied philosophy and became a writer!), and two families, also feeds the legend. All our kings used to have bastards after all.
It's weird to see that so many people are still enthralled by that cynical man who kept teaching lessons to those around him, was mean to them and often despised them. Most of them still admire him, whether they are left wing or right wing (but Mitterrand himself was very right-wing in his youth), whether they liked him or not. I don't know how many books have been written since he died, but there's a great many of them.
I can't say that I like him but I would lie if I'd say that I don't think he was fascinating and that he didn't leave a big hole behind him. He was a sort of novel character, so close and yet so mysterious, strong and rather merciless, so smart but often so cruel; a man who probably had more convictions than he got credit for, and whose life was filled with twists, moments of glory and courage, resilience, secrets and lies, paradoxes and shadows, a man whose last years as President were like a Passion (terminal cancer, his Vichy past coming back to bite him in the ass). Even his flaws had a certain grandeur.
François Mitterrand embodied the worst and the best of "great politics", our royalist past and the legacy of French revolution, all our contradictions.