Good news from France. Interior minister Brice Hortefeux confirms that the number of torched cars has ‘stabilised’ at about 4 a day, over 1,000 a year. In the riots of a couple of years ago it reached that number in a week.
In the meantime the French are tucking into the intriguing dilemmas surrounding the body of Albert Camus. The Nobel Prize winning author of La Peste, l’Etranger and La Chute debated the philosophy of the Absurd for much of his early life and would have been intrigued by the goings on.
Camus died in a car crash in 1960 and is buried in the Vaucluse region of southern France.
Nicolas Sarkozy has ordered that his body should be transferred to the Panthéon to rest alongside other literary greats such as Voltaire, Victor Hugo and Emil Zola, 50 years after his death. The outrage has been widespread. Reading from left to right, the left describe Camus as one of their very own, and declare the centre right Sarko is stealing their man. Amongst these is one of Camus’ children, who would have the right to prevent his disinterment. Centrist opponents of Sarkozy point out that M. le Président is famously unlettered (it is important in French politics to look cultured, but in one interview Sarko seemed not to know who Mme de La Fayette was, and dozens of people mailed him copies of her novel La Princesse de Clèves) and that the diminutive leader is just trying to get some good publicity out of this.
Jean Marie le Pen, founder of the hard right Front National, declared that Sarkozy was just trying to take away his supporters: Camus was a Pied Noir (Frenchman born in Algeria) and they vote for Jean-Marie. Finally another group have declared that Camus, born to a French father and a Spanish mother in what is not now part of France, was not French. This has caused a parliamentary debate on national identity.
Splendid stuff. In fact Camus was definitely French: his father died fighting for France and he himself was a part of the Resistance, editing their magazine Combat. Camus was not really of the left, as Sartre was, and warned against the totalitarianism which was the inevitable result of Sartre’s Marxism. He was one of the first to criticise the gulags, and spoke against the repression in Hungary in 1956. At the same time Camus was in no way of the right, and far from the traditional model of the Pied Noir. His philosophy, in modern terms, would be described as libertarian. His writing was of a quality to justify a position in the Pantheon (better than Zola), but he so despised government that I don’t think he would have received the honour from them.
One of the problems Camus debated was whether life had any meaning, given that we are going to die anyway. He will be looking down, a sadder but wiser man.
In the meantime the French are tucking into the intriguing dilemmas surrounding the body of Albert Camus. The Nobel Prize winning author of La Peste, l’Etranger and La Chute debated the philosophy of the Absurd for much of his early life and would have been intrigued by the goings on.
Camus died in a car crash in 1960 and is buried in the Vaucluse region of southern France.
Nicolas Sarkozy has ordered that his body should be transferred to the Panthéon to rest alongside other literary greats such as Voltaire, Victor Hugo and Emil Zola, 50 years after his death. The outrage has been widespread. Reading from left to right, the left describe Camus as one of their very own, and declare the centre right Sarko is stealing their man. Amongst these is one of Camus’ children, who would have the right to prevent his disinterment. Centrist opponents of Sarkozy point out that M. le Président is famously unlettered (it is important in French politics to look cultured, but in one interview Sarko seemed not to know who Mme de La Fayette was, and dozens of people mailed him copies of her novel La Princesse de Clèves) and that the diminutive leader is just trying to get some good publicity out of this.
Jean Marie le Pen, founder of the hard right Front National, declared that Sarkozy was just trying to take away his supporters: Camus was a Pied Noir (Frenchman born in Algeria) and they vote for Jean-Marie. Finally another group have declared that Camus, born to a French father and a Spanish mother in what is not now part of France, was not French. This has caused a parliamentary debate on national identity.
Splendid stuff. In fact Camus was definitely French: his father died fighting for France and he himself was a part of the Resistance, editing their magazine Combat. Camus was not really of the left, as Sartre was, and warned against the totalitarianism which was the inevitable result of Sartre’s Marxism. He was one of the first to criticise the gulags, and spoke against the repression in Hungary in 1956. At the same time Camus was in no way of the right, and far from the traditional model of the Pied Noir. His philosophy, in modern terms, would be described as libertarian. His writing was of a quality to justify a position in the Pantheon (better than Zola), but he so despised government that I don’t think he would have received the honour from them.
One of the problems Camus debated was whether life had any meaning, given that we are going to die anyway. He will be looking down, a sadder but wiser man.
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