THE PRINCESS OF CLÈVES AND NICOLAS SARKOZY

6 7 R T H E P R I N C E S S O F C L È V E S A N D N I C O L A S S A R K O Z Y P A U L A M A R A N T Z C O H E N Several reasons could be given for Nicolas Sarkozy’s loss in the last French presidential election. He failed to bring greater prosperity to his country; his administration su√ered a number of scandals under his watch; the brusqueness of his manner damaged his relationship with the media. Yet none of these reasons seems su≈cient to explain why Sarkozy became, over the course of his tenure, a target of disdain and even disgust for a substantial segment of the French populace. The reaction seemed extreme – connected to something fundamental about his behavior that was perceived to be un-French in a particular way: his nickname, ‘‘Sarko, l’Americain,’’ initially used with wry a√ection, became an increasingly hostile epithet. Sarkozy’s image problem can be clarified through an analysis of the seventeenth-century French novel The Princess of Clèves, considered a masterwork in the French literary tradition. I should note that I was inspired to revisit this novel and pursue this analysis because Sarkozy had publicly denigrated it. In 2006, during a campaign event for his first term as president, Sarkozy punctuated his remarks with this reference to The Princess of Clèves: ‘‘The other day, for amusement – one amuses oneself 6 8 C O H E N Y as one can – I was looking at the test material for administrative employees. A sadist or an imbecile – you decide – had put on the test to ask these candidates about The Princess of Clèves. I don’t know if it has often occurred to you to ask the woman at the ticket booth what she thought of The Princess of Clèves – imagine a little the spectacle of it!’’ Two years later, by now ensconced in o≈ce, Sarkozy impugned the novel again during a speech about the value of volunteer work for civil servants. He noted that such work was ‘‘worth as much as knowing The Princess of Clèves by heart. . . . Well . . . I have nothing against, but still, still . . . because I su√ered a lot with her.’’ These remarks met with a firestorm of indignation (after the second was made, the first was dredged up and widely publicized alongside it). Sarkozy was criticizing an iconic work in the national literature and in a notably crude and philistinish way. Everyone with intellectual pretensions in France – a considerable swath of the population – was incensed. Public readings were staged in protest, and banners and buttons widely distributed imprinted with such phrases as ‘‘Free the Princess of Clèves’’ and ‘‘I am reading The Princess of Clèves.’’ All this, unsurprisingly, boosted the book’s ranking on Amazon. And when a hundred French authors were asked to list the best novels ever written, The Princess of Clèves, which in the past was never mentioned, now came in third behind Joyce’s Ulysses and Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past. It is a good thing when a great work of literature is brought to public attention – as Sarkozy’s remarks ironically did for The Princess of Clèves. But his singling out of the novel had additional, more complex value. For if we read The Princess of Clèves through Sarkozy – and Sarkozy through the novel – we can learn a lot about French culture and Nicolas Sarkozy’s incompatibility with it. Published anonymously in 1678, The Princess of Clèves is attributed to Marie-Madeleine Pioche de la Vergne, known commonly by her married name, Madame de Lafayette, a noted salonni ère in the court of Louis XIV. The term salon, introduced by French hostesses like Lafayette in the seventeenth century, is still used to refer to a social group where wit and erudition are the price of admission (in present-day France, Sarkozy would certainly not get in). T H E P R I N C E S S O F C L È V...