H.
J.
KAPLAN
How France Mourned Mitterrand
(Excerpts from 1996 Journal)
January
9, 1996
This morning, I sat down to write a letter - and that is as far as I got.
What stopped me in my tracks was the radio I had left playing - an exe–
crable habit - in the bedroom adjoining my study. The music stopped and
there was a bulletin to the effect that Franyois Mitterrand was dead.
January 15-20, 1996
Mitterrand spent his entire life as a politician, and although he was
capable of behavior deemed scandalous or worse by his adversaries and
even at times by his own followers, he seems to have lived and died with
a clear conscience, sincerely believing that whatever served his political
fortunes must
ipso facto
redound to the higher interests of his country. And
hence of all mankind. He was President of France for fourteen years,
longer than anyone since the inception of the Fifth Republic, which he
had first denounced as a "permanent coup d'etat" and then made the
instrument of what he called his
force tranquil/e.
A virtuoso performance. It
was often said of him (first by the novelist Franyois Mauriac, I think) that
he was the hero of a novel, whereas his arch-adversary, C harles de Gaulle,
was the hero of an epic poem. A novel which he might have written, since
he fancied himself a writer and actually published a few books - political
essays, not fiction, to be sure, al though he liked to sugges t that in devoting
himself to the commonweal he was sacrificing the literary artist he might
have become.... A couple of years ago, his party was swept from office.
The country was fed up with the financial scandals he had tolerated and
even abetted, demoralized by economic and social problems and prepared
to welcome a brave new dispensation - which, unfortunately , never came.
The erstwhile Opposition, now in power, has still not managed to turn
things around; in fact, for reasons I don't propose to go into now, the sit–
uation seems to be worsening, with more recession, more unemployment,
more confusion in foreign affairs, where the French see their government
helpless in Algeria, humiliated in Bosnia and (how sharper than a serpent's
tooth!) blackguarded by
la conscience universel/e
for nuclear testing in the
Pacific.The irony is that
la conscience universe/Ie
is a French speciality, if not
