summer reading

During the move I snagged a few books off my mom’s bookshelves for some light bedtime reading. One was on the diplomacy of Henry Kissinger and the other was The Scarlet Pimpernel. Of course, the tumultuous nature of moving soon swept one of my finds away to the depths of some mysterious box, not to be seen again until the next move, no doubt. Fortunately, considering how brain-dead lugging heavy boxes around in 100 degree heat can make you, I was left with Pimpernel and not the tome on diplomatic intricacies (Sorry, Henry!). I’d never read it in school and had always shied away from it due to its title’s similarity to The Red Badge of Courage, upon mention of which my mom would always roll her eyes and gag, having been forced to read it in high school. But what with the cable being out I settled into it and was pleasantly surprised.

The story follows the tragically uncommunicative and distrustful relationship between a French woman and her husband the Scarlet Pimpernel, an English nobleman who risks his life to save members of the French nobility from the clutches of the bloody revolution. I was deeply immersed in a condemning chapter about the dirty French revolutionists when my brother spotted my reading choice.

“Isn’t it awesome?” he said. “It made me feel all conflicted. I didn’t know whom to cheer for.”

This caught my attention, because if you know anything about my brother it is that he rarely read any books assigned in high school and even when he did he refused to remember or absorb anything useful from them. But I immediately realized why he’d remembered it so well—why the preachy text about the evil injustice of the French nobility’s savage beheadings had stuck with him through the mish-mash of forgettable school-assigned novels: growing up in France, we’d been taught the opposite perspective of the gory revolt. To us, the storming of the Bastille and the mass executions of the nobility were glorious feats of victory, not repulsive acts of insurgence or terrorism. On Independence Day we marched tirelessly through the streets of our town alongside our classmates, proudly clad in the bleu, blanc et rouge fashion of the revolutionists. Somewhere my mom has pictures of our first patriotic parade to the town’s center—me in a lace cap and striped skirt, my two brothers in red rooster caps and ragged blue, white and red trousers. I want to say that our faces were smeared in red paint to denote the blood that the French patriots shed during their epic battle to overthrow the monarchists, but that may only be the impression that I’m left with. One thing I’m certain of: we knew all of the verses to La Marseillaise and chanted them boisterously in our march through the streets.

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!
March, march!
Let impure blood
Water our furrows!

Talk about the swelling pride of patriotism! It’s one thing to sing the tame American anthem at the start of a Little League game, it’s quite another to feel your young blood boiling at the battle cry of the revolution. The guillotine was our instrument of freedom, our equality the currency of brotherhood! Forget national monuments or Masonic symbolism, before the Euro came along French cash was emblazoned with the bloodied faces of its liberators, its most prominent feature an imposing woman who managed to convey nationalistic pride while simultaneously flashing everyone with her large rebellious breasts! What could be more French than that?

By chance, I followed the reading of Pimpernel with a public television broadcast on the British royal family. Its emphasis on its haughty royalty and stoic fortitude in the face of war and scandal made me understand for the first time exactly what separates the Brits from the French, and made me wonder at the interpretation of history that we’ve chosen. I’m not sure which one is more accurate, but at least I’m still questioning my own.