How the French Think: An Affectionate Portrait of an Intellectual People by Sudhir Hazareesingh (review)

propaganda.And after 1916, many illustrations would hint at the disenchantment that Wilfred Owen famously called the “pity of war”. The relationship of popular imagery to the psychological impact of a murderous,seemingly endless conflict had an especially brilliant iteration in France, where a century-long tradition of illustrated books and periodicals that commented, often acerbically, on public affairs was a deeply ingrained feature of the culture. In their catalogue to the exhibit, Harris and Edelstein refer to art historian Clément-Janin’s pioneering 1917 study of an extensive private collection of such images as a significant starting point of interest in war illustrators. Their essay provides context for numerous illustrated journals of the times, whose artists turned enthusiastically to the subject of war as soon as the conflict broke out. They emphasize central artistic figures whose styles indelibly mark this material: the truculent Lucien Laforge and René Georges Hermann-Paul; former fashion artists turned war illustrators like Barbier and Lepape, Iribe and Eduardo Benito, Brissaud and Robert Bonfils, whose stylized, pochoir-colored war prints asserted the critical importance of panache for French morale; the great children’s illustrator André Hellé, and the unique stylist Charles Martin, each of whom produced masterpieces handsomely reproduced here. Hellé’s Alphabet de la grande guerre (he also executed a much rarer Alphabet de la grande paix) features his typically squat, foreshortened soldiers who made it easy for children to identify with the heroic poilu. As for Martin, his album Sous les pots de fleurs contains an image entitled“Le cafard”that has become an iconic representation of depression among the trench soldiers. Its publication in 1917 uncannily coincided with the period of mutiny on the French front. More than a hundred illustrations are collected here, beautifully printed, meticulously and aptly annotated; all the more reason, then, to discover the erroneous identification of a 1915 image from the satirical war journal La Baionnette as a portrait of David Lloyd George (53). Lloyd George was indeed the source of the quotation that provides the image’s legend, hence perhaps the confusion. But the big man in profile, boasting a thick mustache, wearing a broad cloak and a decorated General’s cap; this man gazing across a battle landscape, binoculars in hand is most assuredly Joffre. Of all French officers, he was the one most often depicted in illustrations when after the “miracle de la Marne” he came to embody the values the artists assembled in this invaluable work initially strove to promote. Skidmore College (NY) John Anzalone Hazareesingh,Sudhir. How the French Think: An Affectionate Portrait of an Intellectual People. London: Allen Lane, 2015. ISBN 978-0-465-03249-5. Pp. 448. £13.60. Cet universitaire lettré, empreint de la vie littéraire française contemporaine, se propose de définir la manière dont les Français pensent, tant dans le contenu que dans le style et l’expression. Dès l’introduction, Hazareesingh plonge dans un contexte politique récent en analysant le discours de Dominique de Villepin au Conseil de 244 FRENCH REVIEW 89.3 Reviews 245 sécurité des Nations Unies en 2003, moment où la France s’est opposée aux États-Unis sur l’intervention en Irak contre le régime de Saddam Hussein. D’une certaine manière, ce choix à premier abord surprenant est remarquable, parce qu’il incarne l’essence de l’esprit français, tel que l’auteur nous le décrit. On y trouve un appel à la logique et la raison, rappel cartésien de l’ontologique Cogito. Descartes, père de la philosophie moderne, à qui est consacré le premier chapitre, nous est aussi présenté comme le père de la nation française dont vont se réclamer de nombreux mouvements, du rationalisme républicain du début du siècle passé jusqu’à l’existentialisme sartrien qui voit dans le Cogito la fondation du libre arbitre. Descartes va incarner l’universalisme des principes républicains de solidarité, de paix et de fraternité. Hazareesingh nous explique comment l’aspiration métaphysique française se sécularise au moment de la Révolution de 1789 et se retrouve dans l’humanisme politique utopique et...