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French High Tech and the Art of Living
| Article
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18816 |
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Section : |
LIFE
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| Issue
Date : |
12 / 1991 |
2,114 Words |
| Author
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Richard Lourie
Richard Lourie is the author of Sakharov: A Biography. |
A series of fortunate circumstances allowed me to live the better part of the past year in France--and I do mean the better part. As always, France afforded me pleasure and inspiration, but this time it astonished me as well. Expecting to enjoy the beauty of the past, I found myself admiring France's skill in negotiating the future. My image of France has been stood on its head. But that turnabout only confirms my belief that not all a journey's goals are apparent at departure.
My image of France was formed over a period of nearly thirty years; I first visited Paris in October 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis. My memories of that most acute moment in the Cold War are forever associated with the white-gray streets of Paris, tall shutters, the espresso steam and Gaulois smoke of the cafes. Paris seemed suddenly fragile, vulnerable, and mortal. Nothing could be more high tech than nuclear weapons, and so in retrospect my recent discovery of France's special relationship to technology seems to have been prefigured in those overcast days.
France was never my passion; it never deeply interested me. Reading Baudelaire and Dostoevsky at the same time in college, I had no doubt as to whose words resonated more in me: Crime and Punishment defeated The Flowers of Evil.
So, I do not go to France to swoon over the elegance of the language, or to read their press closely to find out what they are thinking. I love the food, the wine, and the light on old stone. Just being there is what I like. In fact, what counts is the slow seeping in of all the beauty and catching the beat of their rhythm, which seems to be like ours, but quickly proves different. Lunch is not a sandwich on the run but the main event of the day, and banks are closed on Monday! How can a bank be closed on Monday?
France is a country of the past. But, of course, as the French are all too aware themselves, their glory, la glorie, is a fading star. France will not again be the greatest country in the world, as its arms and arts once made it.
It has seemed to me that except for a phosphorescent flash--Sartre, Camus, de Behavior--French culture may not produce much of anything more for quite some time. France's unmelodic behavior in World War II gave it a spiritual task of the sort that does not lend itself to the high registers of art. Germany, Italy, and Spain demonstrated that at least from an artistic point of view, it is better for a culture to struggle with the
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