AT THE PARKING LOT — THAT IS, AT THE RAMPART —
WALK DOWN TO THE DOME
(VIA RUE MAZARINE)
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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 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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As 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.
-- Le Génie de la langue française by Mark Fumaroli,
"Lieux de mémoire," III, 3, dir. Pierra Nora, 1997
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Louis XIV octroie [grants] la Croix de Saint Louis en 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 d'histoire, a royalist television series
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 after 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
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| Pamela Spurdon |
The male, elderly, conservative and white majority
is unlikely to recognize the contribution
of slammers who trade rap verses in the street
as nobles traded poems in salons...
Barbès festival, Le mot qui claque [The word that slaps], 16 ans de slam," 2024
...or of Africans who make French
the world's fifth most widely-spoken language.
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Rap in Abidjan / zoom -- Elian Peltier for The New York Times, December 2023 |
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