Sunday, March 13, 2005
The return of La Marseillaise
La Marseillaise didn't get so inspiring without pulling some emotional levers. Yes, it is a heck of a tune, with soaring peaks at just the right time. But it is also a very martial song, full of blood and and the slitting of throats. The lyrics of the first verse, translated into the English, are as follows:
Arise children of the fatherland
The day of glory has arrived
Against us tyranny's
Bloody standard is raised
Listen to the sound in the fields
The howling of these fearsome soldiers
They are coming into our midst
To cut the throats of your sons and consorts
To arms citizens
Form your battalions
Let impure blood
Water our furrows
Not surprisingly in post-national Europe, people in France rarely sing this song anymore. It is played at sporting events, but apparently the lyrics have fallen into such disuse that many younger people don't know them. This has moved a French member of parliament to introduce legislation requiring that La Marseillaise be taught in the schools.
The first few bars of France's national anthem are recognized in much of the world. In France itself, there's no escaping the tune, although not that many people actually know all the words.
Jerome Riviere, a member of the French parliament, would like to change that. He has proposed an amendment to a school reform bill that would make teaching the National Anthem part of the school curriculum. He was inspired to push for the legislation after one of his nephews asked him about "that soccer song."
"To some of them, it is just a sports song," he said. "It is much more, and I think it is important that they know that."
According to him, the song can teach children about values of liberty, freedom and fraternity which were fought for in the French Revolution. Too few, he said, are familiar with the song and its lyrics.
I agree completely. If the French actually sang the lyrics to La Marseillaise and recovered some of their own martial past, perhaps they would shed a little of the post-modern cynicism that prevents France from defending the Western civilization forged in no small part by its own revolution.
And the next time you hear somebody complain that the Star Spangled Banner is "too military" -- a common complaint in college towns for at least twenty years -- shove La Marseillaise down their throat.
1 Comments:
By 
Unknown, at
Sun Mar 13, 09:34:00 PM:
Great post, Tigerhawk. You're right, La Marseillaise is pretty blood-curdling. But while The Star Spangled Banner may be our official national anthem it isn't our only national anthem. You might like to take a look at my old post Anthems.
And, if I can make a brief commentary on Casablanca, the point of that scene is not merely the power of La Marseillaise, it's the power of Viktor Laszlo. A leader like him can take a powerful symbol like La Marseillaise and turn it into a weapon to unite and mobilize the people. That's why the Germans feared him. Without that scene we'd just have had to take their word for it. But with that scene we saw it. Great film-making.
