I know why the gargoyle cries
How out of touch could you be? You could be so out of touch that you think the citizens of your continent would adopt a constitution they couldn’t possibly understand - like the EU commissioners. Or you could be so out of touch that following your voters’ rejection of your beloved constitution, mostly due to their “profound mistrust of [...] their political representatives”, that you go and appoint a man as prime minister who has never had to face the scrutiny of said electorate - as Jacques Chirac has done. Or you could be so out of touch that following said constitutional rejection, and then the said appointment, you are actually that never-elected prime minister and you have written a book with so much imagery and metaphor that people might wonder if there is any actual substance to your beliefs - just as Dominique de Villepin has done.
The following, then, is a condensed extract from Dominique de Villepin’s “The Cry of the Gargoyle” - an ostentatious title for an ostentatious text. Yet it is not a novel, it is a non-fiction work on the subject of France - perhaps even a vision. These words are truly poetic, but also the polar opposite of anything that indicates how that vision might be translated into tangible results:
France is a large old oak tree, full of an everlasting sap. It is a tree that has thrived and spread for thousands of years in a unique soil [...] Power, the state and authority form the main forest, from which an expansive foliage has developed. But tree surgeons have sprung up at the foot of the tree and are working away at the trunk, while mistletoe proliferates and risks strangling the tree that feeds it. [...] [Let] us stop drinking from the enchanted waters of Lethe, which strike with amnesia those who want to quench their thirst [...] Let us dare to draw on the still vivid source of the French spirit [...] [The French language is] alive in the Caribbean in memories of galleons and plantations, coloured with the spices and flavours of the Orient, shrunken by the sun and the dryness of Africa where, in the vast expanses, the man free of baggage walks along the horizon, eating the dust and the sky, forever watching out with his black eyes for the call of the god within himself.
Will Mr Villepin be the last straw for the French people? Or will he be allowed to continue the line of politicians which has failed to address, say, the 20-year persistence of their 10% unemployment?
