LA COMMUNE STAYS ROOTED IN THE CULTURE OF MODERN FRANCE
The song "Cherrytime," which all French people know, evokes the Communards' brief hope and one of its last lines, the blood-soaked end:
But how short is the season of cherries
When people, dreaming two by two,
gather earrings...
Cherries of love with dresses
That fall under the leaves like drops of blood
But how short is the season of cherries
When dreamers gather earrings
A recent recording by Noir Désir, 2008
Communard (Jean-Baptiste Clément) wrote the melancholy song about lost love a few years before La Commune. After it he added the line about drops of blood and dedicated the song to "Louise," an ambulance driver met on the last barricade, which she refused to leave. He would always reject royalties.
The sound of that barricade's explosion carried as far as Versailles. When Communards imprisoned there heard it, they knew that La Commune was over.
-- Louise Michel
A graphic novel tells its story and was put to music:
(In 2017)
.
(In 2017)
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The Cry of the People by Jacques Tardi (Castermann, 4 vols. 2001-04), after the novel by Jean Vautrin (in French).
La Commune represents the hope of an egalitarian and just democracy and is a major landmark for the left:
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| Communist Ball, July 13, place de la Commune For that site, please read on |
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The libertarian Left chose March 18, the day the Commune broke out, to launch its presidential campaign (La France insoumise, "Unbowed France," in 2017).
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Commemorating the 150th anniversary
- On walls where La Commune was strongest, and that still lean left:
In the 20th
In the 13th
A City Hall remembrance in the 13th (at place Jeanne d'Arc, where local Communards may have fought their last battle).
- At the Sacré Coeur
My Paris Commune
An evocation of the carnage that its builders approved.
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Permanent testimonies:
- Annual commemorations since 1883, at the wall where the last combattants were shot...
The Mur des Fédérés, in the Père Lachaise cemetery
- A fresco with figures that are six feet tall near the site of the last barricade:
By QMRK, 2021 / Irina Zwerger
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