The Citizen, 1995-11-22, Page 5Arthur Black
THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 1995. PAGE 5.
I have a problem
with France
Do you?
Do you have a problem with France?
I have a problem with France. .I would like
to do the ambassadorial equivalent of
removing a calfskin glove from my left
hand, grasping it in my right and slapping
France across the face.
It's the nuclear thing. I grew up in the 50s
and 60s — which is to say under the
mushroom cloud threat of Instant
Armageddon. I spent more time than I care
to remember fretting over imagined mood
swings Khruschev or Kennedy might be
going through at any given moment.
I knew - we all knew - that both Russia
and America possessed the power to unleash
a global holocaust at the flick of a switch or
the push of a button. I saw Khruschev bang
his shoe on a U.N. table to make a point. I
watched JFK take us within an ace of
nuclear war over Cuba.
I wouldn't have chosen to ride a bus
piloted by these jokers, much less a planet.
Then it was over. The Soviet Union
collapsed like a cathedral of Crackerjack
boxes. Nuclear war was obsolete. For the
first time in my life I could stop thinking
about The Bomb.
I thought.
Enter a prancing popinjay by the name of
Jacques Chirac. He gets himself elected
National anthems
and
their brothers
Somebody asked me the other day if
Waltzing Mathilda was the national anthem
of Australia. I replied that it was not, had
never been and was not likely to be.
However, when pressed, I had to admit
that I did not know that country's national
anthem, although I would probably
recognize it if I heard it. I went to the
library, got out a record of anthems and
listened to the official one for that country
and had to admit that, while I did recognize
the tune, I probably would not have been
able to place it if I had heard it on the radio.
For those of you whose knowledge of
Waltzing Mathilda is nil, let me bring you up
to date. It is an extremely popular and well-
known folk song about a man who comes to
a premature end, escaping the long arm of
the law. It has a catchy tune, the kind that
sticks with you long after you have heard it
only once.
I am not sure how good the Australians are
about knowing the words of their national
anthem, but I would hazard a guess that
more of them can probably tell you the
words of Waltzing Mathilda than they can of
their anthem.
President of France. He announces that he
thinks it would be a bonne idee idea to blow
up a few coral atolls in the South Pacific.
Using nuclear bombs.
The audacity of this lunatic is
breathtaking, even by French standards.
Chirac single-handedly re-introduced the
spectre of a world-wide nuclear arms
buildup, just when we'd managed to get rid
of it.
Perhaps it's the sheer scope of his evil that
has made our leaders so well ...
unresponsive. Oh, there were a few tut-tuts
and titch-titches from Ottawa, but nothing
very substantive. The Feds willingly sent out
our navy to protect the lowly turbot, but
nuclear explosions by France in defiance of
the world?
Oh, well. I wonder what the government
would do if France decides to hold the next
series of tests on St. Pierre and Miquelon?
Other countries have not been so reticent.
The Aussies, who used to be enthusiastic
consumers of French wines, have virtually
blackballed anything that comes within
kissing distance of a French vineyard. Sales
of French wines in Sweden have dropped by
50 per cent. Japan's largest newspaper is
sponsoring a boycott of all French products
— which could cost the French nearly $3
billion a year. The Germans protest daily
ana venemently. So do the Austrians, the
Dutch, the Italians and the Spanish.
In most countries the anti-French protests
have percolated right down to the street -
literally and metaphorically. The Australian
Trade Association of Legal Prostitutes has
It occurred to me that there are other
countries in somewhat the same situation.
One that comes immediately to mind is Italy.
Would it surprise you to learn that country's
popular anthem comes from an opera, and
one by Verdi at that? The opera in question
is Nabucco (Nebuchadnezzar in English) the
Babylonian king, who lay siege to Jerusalem
and captured it after two days of fighting
(598 B.C.) Thousands of citizens of the city
were taken off into exile. In the opera they
sing a song of great longing for their home
city and it is this song that the Italians were
able to identify with in the 19th century as
they found large parts of their territory under
foreign control.
I am sure that many Italians attending the
opera would be able to sing along with the
chorus and it has the same characteristic as
the Australian song mentioned above. Far
more people would recognize it than they
would the national anthem.
If you heard the German anthem being
sung, and you probably have at sometime, if
you did not know better, you might think
that the Germans were quite a religious
people since the melody is that of a well
known hymn in Protestants churches. No, it
was not written by Martin Luther; it was,
however, composed by someone just as
famous in his own right - the German
composer Franz Josef Haydn. Would that all
national anthem had that famous a heritage.
In getting ready for this article, I talked to
a long-time resident of the British Isles. He
was of the opinion that they, too, had a
melody that could well double as the
announced a boycott on French underwear,
hosiery and cosmetics. Even Australia's
largest chain of adult sex shops and cinemas
has taken all French products off its shelves.
Turn on your TV set in Denmark, Sweden
or Finland and you're apt to see an ad
showing a beautiful women raising a glass of
wine to her lips. Abruptly, she gags, hawks
up a goober and spits it into her glass. The
voice-over says: "This is what the French do
to our environment. Don't buy French."
And Canada? Well, a few restaurants have
deleted French vintages from their wine lists,
a couple of Chambers of Commerce have
issued proclamations of protest, but that's
about it. Nothing organized. In fact, liquor
control boards in two of Canada's largest
provinces, Ontario and British Columbia,
report that sales of French product are as
good as they've always been.
Good old don't-rock-the-boat Canadians.
Meek and mild to the last.
Well, not this Canadian. I have neither
friends in the French government nor a veto
at the United Nations. I can't stop the French
insanity, but I don't have to enrich their
GNP.
France -has just lost my business, such as it
is. No French wines, no Perrier water, no
Gaulloises or Gitanes. Nothing that carries
the label Made In France. Not until they
come to their senses.
My advice: three words - same as
Scandinavian TV ad. Don't buy French.
Don't wait for Ottawa to register your
displeasure. Ottawa wouldn't react if you
slapped it across the face with a kid glove.
national anthem. He was referring to one of
the sections of Sir Edward Elgar's Pomp and
Circumstance marches. Again readers will
recognize without difficulty the tune which
goes by the title of Land of Hope and Glory.
Having heard it sung in Britain on at least
a couple of occasions, I can honestly say that
those present threw themselves into it with
as much gusto as if it were, in fact, the
national anthem. Perhaps even more!
A related question is what happens in a
country where there is more than one
national language. While the Swiss all sing
the same tune when the national anthem is
played, the Italian and French versions are
under no circumstances direct translations of
the German one. To do so would be very
unSwiss.
Let me explain. If you are ever charged in
a Swiss court, and you find yourself in front
of a French or Italian speaking judge, he will
judge you on the basis of the law as written
in the language he is using. For him the
Italian version of the law is the original, not
a translation from the French or German.
Hence an Italian-Swiss singing the
national language in his language is singing
the original, not a translation.
If you find this a bit strange, just
remember that the French and the English
versions of the Canadian national anthem are
most assuredly not translations; far from it.
Incidentally the anthem was composed by a
French-Canadian which, in view of the
desire of many of them to separate, is
somewhat ironic. But then, so are some of
the words.
The
Short
of it
•
By Bonnie Gropp
The magical memory
tour took me away
You can never go back, but sometimes
isn't it fun to think you have for a time?
Like millions of others on Sunday night I
was glued to my television set watching the
long-awaited (well at least by me) Beatles
Anthology. For two full hours I was able to
gaze once again at the Fab Four, then
experience something this die-hard fan,
never believed she would, the release of the
first Beatles song in 25 years.
Now, my family, who for the most part,
just don't seem to 'get' my fundamentally
life-long fascination with this group, made
the most of the opportunity to tease me
obsessively for my obsession, so that by the
event's end they almost had me-convinced
the Beatles had something to prove, that this
would verify the group had been over-rated
from the first "Yeah, yeah, yeah."
Then as I heard the first chord for the first
time, I was able to relax. It was going to be
okay. Also, after romping down memory
lane, I was not hustled back to the present.
The new song was reminiscent of the group's
previous works, and while some might say
they had played it safe, it sounded like and
felt like the Beatles.
Yet, I did feel something, beyond the
obvious physical absence of the late John
Lennon,• was missing. It didn't take long
after recovering from the initial thrill of
hearing them again that I realized that it
didn't buoy me in quite the same way
because there was clearly no nostalgia factor
with this new work.
Though I love the present I'm living in, I
have to admit that now and then, for a while
at least, it's fun to lose yourself in the past.
Every Beatles song (and I do mean every)
takes me to a place that I was in before and
will never be again. I remember keenly their
first Ed Sullivan appearance almost 32 years
ago. Penny Lane, All You Need is Love and
Let it Be each bring with them a different
set of memories, different faces, different
places.
With a musical history as extensive as the
Beatles', this anthology promises for me an
opportunity to, if not live, then certainly
revisit my past — leaving out the bad parts,
of course.
Perhaps, a major part of the attraction has
been that as their music matured, so did I.
Their earliest songs are my carefree
childhood, full of bounce, simplicity and
exuberant fun.
Anxiously approaching adolescent angst,
they assauged me with musical promises of a
world of love and peace, and comforted me
by expressing my teenage frustrations in
verse. Then later, as I was coming to the
point where I knew I must begin to take life
a little more seriously, I realized their
music, too, had grown, now full of poetic
thought and inspiration.
When they announced that the time had
come to end their association, it was as I was
leaving my own childhood behind, to.have a
child of my own. In retrospect it seems to fit.
I like this new effort, but I don't think it
will have the impact on me that its
predecessors have. For two hours this past
weekend I went on a 'magical memory tour'
and while I wouldn't ever want to 'get back
to where I once belonged', it was refreshing
to recall those times 'in my life'.
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