A BASTION OF THE OLD REGIME

AT THE PARKING LOT — THAT IS, AT THE RAMPART —

WALK DOWN TO THE DOME

(VIA RUE MAZARINE)

View from the Louvre

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The bridge highlights the "School of Four Nations,"* where young nobles from recently-conquered territories learned to administer them under royal control.

*Artois, Alsace, Pignerol and Roussillon

  The School of  Four Nations by Israël Sylvestre, toward 1670 / zoom

The majesty of the site and its location facing the Louvre palace suggest a grander objective: to emphasize France's continental hegemony after defeating its hereditary enemy, Spain (victory 1659, edifice 1661).

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Becoming the "Institut de France" at the Revolution, the site harbors five learned academies. Most prominent is the "Académie française," which decides on correct use of the French language and what words belong in the dictionary. 

Reasons for French insistence on its language:

• In the exceptionally large and populated kingdom with several languages and innumerable dialects, the royal tongue encouraged unity.

• Like so much else it harks back to the monarchy. As the language of the court, explicitly oral when few outside the clergy were literate, it was sociable and refined. 

-- The Genius of the French Language by Mark Fumaroli,  

"Sites of  Memory," III, 3, dir. Pierra Nora, 1997 (in French)

Louis XIV Grants the Cross of Saint Louis in 1693 (detail) by François Marot, 1709, zoom 

• It is still the language of prestige: American television anchors say frisson, tranche, pour encourager les autres, vis-à-vis, coup de grâce, avant la lettre, à propos, etc., and a specialist of infectious diseases (Anthony Fauci) called virus mutation a "spécialité de la maison."

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The Académie française, vestige of the Old Regime

•  The ritual of admission recalls the royal court and members, modestly called "The Immortals," wear embroidered uniforms and carry a sword.

 

               Video from Secrets of History, a royalist series (in French) 

Jean Cocteau in a photo steps from the Institut

• The Académie has skipped writers who do not fit its assumptions: Victor Hugo was barely invited, and Voltaire, Balzac, Dumas, Zola, Flaubert (...) not at all. 

But Maxime du Camp was admitted for publishing a ferocious account of La Commune, Les Convulsions de Paris (in 1879).

• Its 40 members, writers who are co-opted for life, choose replacements when openings arise: Mentalities stay the same and change is almost impossible. 

-- Persistance of the Corporative Spirit in "Parisians of the 17th century"

by Orest Ranum, French ed. 1973 

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Today only five members are women, one is Black 

and there are no North Africans or Asians

Pamela Spurdon

The vast male, elderly, conservative and white majority

is unlikely to recognize the contribution 

of slammers who trade rap verses in the street

as nobles once traded poems in salons...

Barbès festival, The Word that Slaps, 16 years of slam ("Le mot qui claque, 16 ans de slam"), 2024

...or of Africans make French

 the world's fifth most widely-spoken language.

          Rap in Abidjan by Elian Peltier "The New York Times," December 12, 20  / zoom

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Next,
Eternal France: river banks and booksellers