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Frédéric Hermel, a French nostalgia

2021-03-24T18:43:39.547Z


FIGAROVOX / TRIBUNE - Journalist Benjamin Sire pays tribute to his colleague Frédéric Hermel, who publishes C'est ça la France by Flammarion editions. For him, this book and its author represent this republican French soul which today has to face threats ...


Benjamin Sire is a composer and journalist.

On March 24, Flammarion publishes a strange little book entitled

C'est ça la France

, signed by the journalist and writer Frédéric Hermel, expatriate for 30 years in Spain, where he closely follows the adventures of Real Madrid, of which he delivers the column for the RMC antenna and various other media.

This work, made up of 29 chapters, is a summary of small madeleines, like so many fiery declarations of love for France.

Tables of what the author sees as inseparable particularities of our country, although some refer us more to its chtimi soul than to the whole of France, such as those dedicated to RC Lens and the beaches of the North.

Never mind, it is nevertheless a question of France here.

Are thus reviewed with poetry, style and tenderness, the symbolism of bread, pétanque, the marinière, the calendar of posts, the pastis, the initiation rite of learning a poem by Victor Hugo and a whole sum of small symbols which, sometimes clichés, but just clichés, form the great whole of French nostalgia and its possible survival.

And it is this question, this nostalgia, its capacity to resist in the face of the upheavals of the world, that this chronicle will deal with, much more than to consider itself a literary critic.

Frédéric Hermel alone is a “French passion”, from which he will not have escaped the extent to which universalism is today threatened by obscurantism.

The boeotian, so French precisely that he can not help assigning each to the only task for which he has publicly revealed himself, could wonder what fly stung Frédéric Hermel to get him to leave the football field, although the book sometimes refers to it, in order to take its pilgrim's pen in defense of our country for, as he writes in his thanks, "

that France remains France, the country of the Enlightenment and the universal rampart against obscurantism

”?

The answer is simple and you just have to follow the Twitter account of our Madrid d'Artagnan to find it without the ounce of ambiguity.

Frédéric Hermel alone is a “

French passion

”, from which he will not have escaped the extent to which universalism is threatened today by differentialisms, communitarianisms, sectarianism and certain forms of obscurantism.

Therein lies all the strength of the book, its topicality, as well as the pitfall which it can come up against, as we will see later.

Behind the popular subjective banter of the sports commentator, hides a fine culture, resolutely classic, matinee of this legitimate pride of the son of little, but not of nothing, brought up with the forceps of a school of the Republic fiercely marked by this secularism that the author, yet very religious, defends tooth and nail.

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In addition, this book is also the cry of the heart of a man whose love is marred by the delicious guilt of the voluntary exile, seeing his country of origin through the eyes of Chimene from a chosen distance.

Upon arrival, this marriage between these two contradictory feelings brings back to memory memories that are too symbolic and too pretty to constitute anything other than a nostalgia wanting to perpetuate a country which the author would dream that it would still be accessible to young people. 'today, when it is no longer.

Because which France, made up of small moments and touching and emblematic rituals, does Frédéric Hermel want to talk to us about?

That of a generation now demonetized, represented by this white man over 50 years of age incessantly subjected to criticism of being, of having been and of wanting to survive.

The one that is worth so much mockery to Jean Castex and his black and white accent that smells of the land.

The one that flourished in modernity under the leadership of Pompidou, without concern for the environment, at a time when rurality meant something other than a fantasy of urban ecology and was not ignored by power.

That of the Tour de France which earned him such a touching chapter.

This same Tour de France vilified by a greenish left that hates the people while promoting cycling.

The one which, far from an accomplished but already declining globalization, still saw itself as a beacon for other nations, when cultural standardization had not yet swept over the five continents, making everything else a mirror of here and from here one elsewhere among the others.

We can already see breaking the words of Frédéric Hermel, in addition to the infamous reference to a nationalism with racist overtones, an untimely exaltation of a France of boomers so much decried nowadays.

That of the forgotten, the invisible, who are not ashamed to be French to their fingertips, both open to the world and to other cultures, but concerned with the preservation of their own.

This France considered outdated and rancid at the time of the globalized start-up nation, each mention of which is accused of promoting the National Gathering, even though everything in it smacks of the republican left of revolutionary extraction, the black hussars of elementary school, the little people and the paid holidays of the Popular Front.

It must be said that the left is so tired of abandoning all its values ​​in favor of a multitude of identities and more or less representative minorities, and of an anti-racism which succeeds in the feat of reinventing the notion of race. and the assignment to community residence, which its most extreme opponents had only to stoop to pick up the stake of the people.

So we can already see the words of Frédéric Hermel surging in, in addition to the infamous reference to a nationalism with racist overtones, an inopportune exaltation of a France of boomers so much decried nowadays.

This France, a mixture of old regime traditions and revolutionary heritage, is nevertheless the one that we imagined to be eternal, the standard bearer of an emancipatory universalism that can reign well beyond its borders.

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This France is not its picturesque villages, this Paris, the image of Épinal and the fantasy of tourism that is praised around the world, this diversity of reliefs and climates which make it a condensed planet, these 5 maritime facades which embrace in a quasi-coastal continuum the Mediterranean, the Atlantic Ocean, the Iroise Sea, the English Channel and the North Sea, these baroque traditions which astonish even our closest neighbors ...

No, this France is above all an idea.

The one who over the decades has seen lovers of all nationalities, from all continents, join and marry her, integrate into it and advance it, crossbreed it while perpetuating it.

An idea yes, entirely included in these three words often cited, rarely explained: the French genius.

Against this idea which carries with it the past centuries, their errors as their greatness, the offensive comes from everywhere.

But what remains of this?

What remains of the idea, the last major manifestation of which was undoubtedly the speech of Dominique de Villepin, on February 14, 2003, before the United Nations Security Council in New York, to refuse the entry of France? in the Iraqi conflict promoted by the Americans.

By what magic could a thousand-year-old idea die in a few decades?

What remains of the Gaullian panache when several Presidents of the Republic, Nicolas Sarkozy and Emmanuel Macron in the lead, have continued to devalue a country and its last three founding myths which are the revolution of 1789, the Clémenceau laws and the CNR program?

In reality almost everything, despite adversity;

because an idea never dies as long as one accepts to understand it without locking it in the poverty of a communication in 280 signs.

And yet, against this idea which carries with it past centuries, their errors as well as their greatness, the offensive is coming from everywhere.

From the decolonial and indigenist movement which would like that, generation after generation, each one pays its share to reimburse the facts prescribed by History and progress.

A movement which itself cries out in pain in the face of abuse it has not known and that it blames those who did not commit them.

Of the cancel culture of American origin, which would like any historical event, any artist buried for a long time or barely green, to be judged by the yardstick of the principles it emits today as being those of any eternity .

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Of the Islamist entryism which, paradoxically, is engulfed in the liberal wave to dispense its commandments of another time when the woman, inevitably impure if she is not concealed from head to toe, would be the ignoble temptress of the poor male choupidou, priapic without the knowledge of his own free will.

From the wave of identity which overthrows the common and universalism on the altar of the tiniest particularisms and produces this "

offended generation

", just described by Caroline Fourest, which distributes good points and anathemas according to sensitive itching, which is not that the mark of a bourgeois boredom so well described by the American historian Mark Lilla.

And this generation is unique in that, unlike its predecessors, it is not satisfied with rejecting en bloc the society founded by its parents, but all those which have succeeded one another since the first steps of civilization.

His victimhood tendency, his rejection of the common, his lack of culture carried like a medal and his affirmation of an egotistical right to difference extended to infinity, reveal a desire to wipe out everything without proposing in return any collective project, while Frédéric Hermel would like to transmit to it, to preserve, as he says it many times in his chapter devoted to the great breweries, writing: the great brewery “

perpetuates.

It does not create concepts, it remains.

She doesn't attack, she resists.

It does not innovate, it conserves.

[…] The large brewery is the guardian of this illusion of permanence.

"

And yet the offensive is coming from everywhere, so ...

This idea can all be summed up in front of a baker's stove, in the kitchen of one of our restaurants so badly damaged by the Covid pandemic.

But, once again, of this France described by the so universalist and tolerant Frédéric Hermel, the one who with one hand defends Karim Benzema with all his patriotic fiber, and with the other sings Victor Hugo, so as to constitute an ecumenism infinitely human and secular, there are still many and many more reasons for hope than the prevailing gloom would lead us to believe.

Because the France of Fred, the one where we marvel at our first vote by universal suffrage bringing into the world of the grown-ups, the one where we bicker around a jack, the one where we prefer the couscous with veal blanquette, is that of all possible as long as we accept the idea, as long as we understand that it has no color or origin since it is a idea.

And this idea can be summed up in front of a baker's stove, in the kitchen of one of our restaurants so badly damaged by the Covid pandemic.

Because it is this idea that has led to Sami Bouattour, Mahmoud M'seddi and Taieb Sahal, children of immigrants as much as Sami Bouattour, Mahmoud M'seddi and Taieb Sahal, three times in the last five years, the prize for the best baguette in Paris. children of a France whose idea they had accepted.

Because it is this idea that has regularly made Omar Sy and Yannick Noah the favorite personalities of the French alongside Jean-Jacques Goldman.

Because it is this idea that has just awarded Mory Sacko a star in the Michelin guide.

To Mory Sacko, this child raised at the crossroads of Malian and French cultures who revisits yassa chicken through Japan to make it the most French of mixtures.

Because that is the France of Frédéric Hermel, like that of your servant.

A country that unites everyone around an idea.

A country that embraces the entire earth on the basis of a few universal principles.

An idea that has all the future ahead to reconcile in its incessant renewal.

Source: lefigaro

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