It is as if Paris were taking a break for a few days from being Paris and France from being France. From bad moods and pessimism, from constant complaints and dissatisfaction. “This country that is doing well and in which its inhabitants feel bad,” the left-wing demographer Hervé Le Bras summed up in a book. The conservative writer Sylvain Tesson says the same thing in other words: “A paradise inhabited by people who believe they are in hell.” Le Bras and Tesson were generalizing, of course, but one could also quote Sartre, who maintained that France was not a country but a neurosis.
Now this France seems to have taken a holiday from itself. The Olympic Games have transformed it.
It was not what was expected. The champions of pessimism had been preparing for the worst for years. Chaos on public transport. Terrorist attacks (a famous security expert once described the opening ceremony on the Seine as “criminal madness”). Strikes, demonstrations, riots. The putrid Seine – who would bathe in it? On the eve of the Olympic Games, 36% of French people felt indifferent, according to a survey by the Ifop institute. 23%, uneasy. 5%, angry.
But today the pedestrian has approached Montmartre to watch the women’s road cycling race, and what he sees is the opposite of anger, indifference and anxiety. Good vibes and joy. A euphoria that at times makes you think: “Not too much, not too little.” They are coming. The cyclists are going up here, up the rueLepic, “the river that irrigates the country and sends tributaries into the depths of the neighborhood.” It was written in the 1930s by Léon-Paul Fargue, author of The pedestrian of Paris. Inspirational title.
And on this very street that Fargue frequented, which is both a river and a modest mountain route in the heart of the city, speaks Bertrand, a Breton who is enjoying the Games in the capital: “We have never seen Paris with this atmosphere: everyone is smiling.” “In general it is not so much fun,” says his friend Philippe. “Although it is true that the Parisians have left.” Laughter.
France seems like another country and Paris, another city. The opening ceremony was a success. There were no attacks. The triathletes swam in the Seine. Parisians and even the police are smiling. If there has been no government since the elections of July 7, what does it matter? And then there are the medals: at the last count, 44 for France and 12 golds. And Léon, the prodigious swimmer and new national idol. When the balloon with the cauldron rises over the Tuileries at dusk, it is a festival of “ooohs!” and “waa …
“It’s a breath of fresh air that frees us from the bad atmosphere for a few days,” he says in the rueLepic Emmanuel, another Breton, waiting for the cyclists. “We French needed it.”
And then? There is a precedent: London 2012. In the novel The heart of England,Jonathan Coe described that moment thus: “England seemed a calm and settled place: a country that felt good about itself.” That could have been a description of France in the summer of 2024. Then the good vibes were cut short: Brexit. Will the same thing happen?
When this dream ends, at midnight on August 11, France will still be there. The France of neuroses. The one that feels bad about itself. The one that lives afflicted by real problems (social fractures, political paralysis, rampant populism) and imaginary ones (threatened identity, uncontrolled crime, civil war just around the corner). The homeland of specialists in seeing the glass half empty. Allow me to be a little French.:the hangover can be phenomenal.
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