Neuilly Prat
It is certainly grotesque. Leaders of the opposition are calling it surreal, ubu-esque. I think of it more as the stuff of Jacobean drama, perhaps the sub-plot to one of those gloriously energetic plays whose characters have names like Malateste, Ambitioso, Supervacuo or Sarkozy. Like a Jacobean play, Neuilly is a story of a ruler, his courtiers, his family, rivalry, revenge – and loads of Kensington gore.
Nicolas Sarkozy began his extraordinary, ambition-driven career in Neuilly, a well-heeled suburb of Paris – aged 28 he was elected mayor. Neuilly town hall was his base for nearly 20 years and now, with municipal elections looming, he nominated someone very close to him to be his successor there, the dashingly handsome David Martinon. Martinon rocketed into public view as Sarkozy’s campaign director during the presidential election campaign last year, and as a reward for victory was made the President’s spokesman. He interprets for the world what the President is thinking. Martinon is also close to Sarkozy’s second wife Cecilia, and it is rumoured that he owes his position to her influence. So far little different from a Jacobean sub-plot, for crucially of course everyone in the pit knows that Cecilia’s influence first faded then was cut off abruptly by divorce. The wheel of fortune turns inexorably at court, and can turn alarmingly fast.
Now enter Jean Sarkozy, the ruler’s 21 year old son by a first marriage. Although brought up largely in Corsica, he could be seen as Neuilly natural. His father put him to work alongside David Martinon in the Neuilly campaign. Right from the start it went wrong. “Martinon non non” was the cry that greeted the hapless courtier when he arrived to start canvassing – a protest from his own party. Soon the honest Neuilly-burghers were telling the press “A candidate who wanders round our town with a GPS in his hand doesn’t impress.” Then the ruler’s self-assured, enarque spokesman, used to people hanging on his every word, was said to be having a hard time with a splinter faction of his own troops led by – the ruler’s son. The son of the first wife was putting spokes in the wheel of the second wife’s favourite. Then on Saturday a poll placing Martinon second to an “assorted right” candidate ignited rumours that he must go – or perhaps had already gone. On Sunday Jean Sarkozy somewhat gleefully announced that a triumvirate was taking over. On Monday Martinon announced in two brief and bitter sentences his definitive departure. When Jean Sarkozy was asked his reaction he said “Look at my smile.” Now the daggers are outat the palace : the ruler is away in the distant département of French Guiana and at home the court is saying Martinon cannot remain as the President’s spokesman. No reason is given, he must simply go – unlike say Daniel Bouton, who remains immovable at the head of a huge bank despite its catastrophic performance in every respect. Martinon has done nothing wrong. It is mere revenge, as in the best Jacobean tragedy. The favourite of the woman who ousted Jean Sarkozy’s mother from the marriage bed duly despatched, his corpse thrown to the circling press vultures.
I use that bird deliberately because by coincidence (or is it? Is this really the centre falling apart?) in the same week another female power within the court, the darkly beautiful Minister for Human Rights Rama Yade, called the press “vultures”. In an untypical outburst she accused the French press of relentlessly, irresponsibly digging up dirt about the President (she should try the British or American press). They are clearly hoping, she believes, for a kill. Vulture however was ill-advised choice of metaphor – hounds might have been kinder: after all they bay for the blood of an animal still up and running with a chance of survival; vultures, as I understand it, gather only when death is inevitable and imminent. Does Mme Yade sense the President is already no more than carrion?
Perhaps not consciously, but Sarkozy running away from the press on Monday – he who normally walks so confidently towards them – indeed looked like a doomed creature. The press simply wanted a statement about Neuilly, nothing to do with the President’s private life. It is quite absurd for Sarkozy to claim it is not his problem: certainly it is only a sub-plot, but Martinon was his nomination and is/was his man, who had worked hard to build good relationships with many of the same people asking for a statement. Sarkozy’s own son has himself assumed a major role in this chaotic tale and nobody believes that the father was not party to the son’s actions. And Neuilly was Sarkozy père’s fief for 20 years. Contrary to what M. Sarkozy says, it has everything to do with him
One can of course pooh-pooh the whole thing as a piece of ephemeral theatre. But like any good sub-plot it echoes in a minor-key all the elements of the main story: the ruler’s attempt to control everything, even who is to be mayor of a Paris suburb. The anger that control engenders in people, and when things unravel Sarkozy is fast-vanishing dust in the middle-distance (a family trait: his son Jean allegedly has the same tendency on his motor-bike). The influence of his court, of his three wives to whom, paradoxically for a control-freak, he seems to capitulate easily. And finally the bloody despatch of a key member of the ruler’s team – for David Martinon will, I fear, be swiftly followed by others and, as in any good Jacobean drama, we will soon see a stage littered with corpses. But certainly Neuilly is only a sub-plot – the real tragedy is elsewhere and on a much larger scale: all those changes that France must embrace if it is to get out of the downward spiral.
On that subject I like what Theodore Zeldin, a British member of Jacques Attali’s committee on making France more competitive, told the FT at the weekend:
“He [Zeldin] is enthusiastic about the possibilities for change but expresses frustration with the commission’s intensely technical discussions of subjects and the cobwebs of laws and regulations preventing new initiatives. “The tendency of experts is to fiddle around with their expertise rather than trying to find new solutions,” he says.
“His solutions are far more radical: founding new towns with affordable housing near the coast that can draw food, energy and water from the sea; posting school teachers to foreign countries for a year to experience different cultures; inviting the world’s 100 richest people to the Elysee Palace and asking them to create a global university.
“In reforming France, or any other country, Zeldin argues it is vital to avoid, rather than provoke, confrontation. It is better to allow old problems to wither while encouraging new possibilities to emerge alongside.”
But tragically such fresh ideas are shoved aside in what is fast becoming a tale of unbridled personal ambition and bloody revenge.
February 12th, 2008 at 9:24 pm
Jacobean drama is not part of our culture. Enarques are ,and they are far too civilized to have their blood shed; NS has ambitions for this country, the son does what his father suggests (he belongs to a clannish family which doesn’t work along lines which are familiar to us) Cecilia has very nearly broken this man. It is true that she is a huge threat. But all these people actually like each other, that’s my belief. That is why you will be proved wrong and if you are not i Will for ever keep my peace and be rather glad because all this forecasting of disasters I find utterly obnoxious
February 13th, 2008 at 6:55 am
On your first comment I beg to differ: Jacobean drama is very much part of French culture (John Webster’s lost play “Guise” was about the French court and the Duc de Guise). The fact that you do not know this does not mean the thread is not there. As to hoping I am proved wrong - I wasn’t aware I was trying to prove anything, simply show (non-literal) parallels. The fact that I call it a tragedy means I hope sincerely that it will not happen - my deepest wish is that France does pull itself out of the downward spiral in which it finds itself (one cannot simply ignore the debt/public deficit/lack of competitivity in the labour market: they have to be addressed) and returns to a state of optimism based on real improvements. The longer people remain entangled with “grotesque” stories such as Neuilly, the Nouvel Obs SMS, SocGen et j’en passe, the longer this will take - and the longer it takes the deeper the mire.
February 13th, 2008 at 8:56 am
A great piece, the best yet. Keep them coming.
February 13th, 2008 at 11:59 am
I just happen to be a sixteenth-century scholar. I meant, and I am somewhat well-placed to say this, that “the French” know hardly anything about the late 16th century. I wonder if énarques even have a sufficient knowledge of the”Guerres de Religion”, such an important precedent for the French Revolution, which is the only reference that the French would begin to understand. Now the French Revolution is not a Jacobean drama. It is the people against the privileged classes. The mores of the aristocracy in late 16th century are not relevant to account for what may be going on in France. No Shakespeare and company.
February 13th, 2008 at 3:52 pm
That’s a seriously interesting point. I am sure you are right that few French people know much about the late 16th Century (France) and even less about late 16th/early 17th century English drama. But I am after all writing a blog in English, and although I am deeply flattered that a few French people also read the blog (and I hope will continue to do so) I have to assume that my reader-ship is predominantly English, and that many of them (for the reasons I give below) would know exactly the plays I am referring to. I don’t mean that to sound snobbish (which it does) but (again for the reasons I give below) that is part of an educated English person’s culture (and again I make the assumption that only educated English people care enough about French politics to read this blog).
The seriously interesting point is your final statement that “the mores of the late 16th century are not relevant to account for what may be going on in France” (today). There I disagree. If you look at the enormous success over the past 40 years of a theatre company like the Royal Shakespeare Company, you see that it is due very largely to the ability of certain directors to take a late 16th/early 17th century text and make is highly relevant to the lives people are living now - politically, socially and psychologically. It is one of the supreme greatnesses not only of Shakespeare but some of his contemporaries to write plays that really do live now, and perhaps the supreme discovery of directors like Peter Hall in the 1960’s to realise that.
February 13th, 2008 at 3:55 pm
That’s a seriously interesting point. I am sure you are right that few French people know much about the late 16th Century (France) and even less about late 16th/early 17th century English drama. But I am after all writing a blog in English, and although I am deeply flattered that a few French people also read the blog (and I hope will continue to do so) I have to assume that my reader-ship is predominantly English, and that many of them (for the reasons I give below) would know exactly the plays I am referring to. I don’t mean that to sound snobbish (which it does) but (again for the reasons I give below) that is part of an educated English person’s culture (and again I make the assumption that only educated English people care enough about French politics to read this blog).
The seriously interesting point is your final statement that “the mores of the late 16th century are not relevant to account for what may be going on in France” (today). There I disagree. If you look at the enormous success over the past 40 years of a theatre company like the Royal Shakespeare Company, you see that it is due very largely to the ability of certain directors to take a late 16th/early 17th century text and make is highly relevant to people’s lives now - politically, socially and psychologically. It is one of the supreme greatnesses not only of Shakespeare but some of his contemporaries to write plays that really do make a sense of today’s world (as well as their own) and perhaps the supreme discovery of directors like Peter Hall in the 1960’s to realise that.
February 13th, 2008 at 4:27 pm
Thank you for bothering to reply. I have always taught that Shakespeare is our contemporary. No great merit in that, everybody in my generation thought so. But I also contend that there would have been no French Revolution if Shakespeare had been French. It seems to me that educated British people cannot do without a world picture that is largely Shakespearean. In France, unless you belong to the rapidly vanishing tribes Denis Tillinac has met in la France Profonde (cf. Dictionnaire Amoureux de la France) you think all are equal, period. And when you have a dark and nasty soul, you cannot believe that some, your”betters” are different from you. Only hypocrisy saves the day. A monarch like Mitterrand (I can’t even spell the guy’s name properly, I believe) is a caricature of the French psyche. Now Shakespeare would have helped the French , I mean “la gauche” to see that the man was an unpalatable human being. There is something wrong with the imagination of the French. The language is too precise. When you have chosen to say one thing, there is no room for further qualifications. So there is some hope as long as you deal with NS in English. I certainly haven’t had time to read Jacobean drama. Anyway facts of the late 16th century were hotter than fiction. I recommend “Histoire et Dictionnaire des Guerres de Religion” (Bouquins). I want only to add one more thing. Why should aristocratic tragedies be the lot of our President? He comes from a “bon enfant” background with a hard-working mother. I bet he has chosen Guéant, Guaino and Martinon because they are nice chaps. I may be erring dramatically but I have some experience of when human beings go seriously wrong. So let us hope for the semi-best.
February 14th, 2008 at 8:13 am
Many thanks for that. Is French more precise than English? I honestly don’t know: if any reader has a point of view on that, I’d be interested. English, after all, has a much larger vocabulary, wouldn’t that suggest you can be more nuanced with it?