My Last Word
(extract from Le Jour de Gloire)
‘The National Festival (14 July) I walk the streets. The firecrackers and flags amuse me like a child. It is stupid though to be joyous on a fixed date decreed by the government.’
Guy de Maupassant (1884)
‘On n’habite pas un pays. On habite dans une langue ’ ‘One doesn’t live in a country. One lives in a language.
Emil Cioran (1952)
…So here I am on the Jour de Gloire in a country I live in the language. I may not always be understood, since I pronounce words from the stomach rather than the mouth which means I probably understand French people better than they do me. One secret – in fact an open one – is they’ve learned to leave a lot unsaid in order to allow themselves to glorify the Republic with their visually articulate hands. Napoleon, though he hid his hands in pocket, set the glorious standard. In sum, the body is a thing to sacrifice. But World War One tore the glory down. Still, bloodlust survived the loss of a generation of young men. Petain chez Hitler gave it a ringside outlet against French Jews, Communists, Gypsies and homosexuals. In the ignominious wake of Vichy, bloody but unbowed sentiments lost their cutting edge and went underground when, after a few executions, the majority forgave themselves, and some even lived to fight another day with the slaughters in Algeria, quietly put aside when de Gaulle withdrew the French settlers. But forgetfulness is not a French characteristic. While proud to celebrate national unity, their peace of mind and conscience is a subliminal torment that gets them out on the street protesting against no matter what.
I’m not sure the French like themselves.
The Revolution (1798) changed the world and the good it achieved still lingers as the second-best hope for humanity. Liberty, equality and fraternity. Viva La France, I declaim. But not yet. I’ve been angry and sad at the things that you do. Still, because the first-best hope – Anarchism – is forlorn, I will never leave you. Though I will allow myself a few parting words when I do.
‘Let my last words be the same as the first,’ said my poet friend Ed Dorn for he aspired in the end to Dadaism. I’m not so sure for myself. My mother said my first words were not as expected but ‘It’s not fair’. But in any language, no matter how pronounced, that’s a bad start. Nevertheless, the science of speech development has dismissed such utterances – even dada and mama – as simply a release of wind, a grunt of air.
Ideally last words ought to be a final statement to the left behind. It’s never too soon to consider one in advance. I begin with a world-historical precedent. Christ’s Seven Last Words. Over the years I’ve pondered them in seven languages and, inevitably, the number of words varies according to the tongue. In English – O God (O God) why have you forsaken me? - it is either seven or nine, depending on whether you repeat ‘My God’ or not. In Aramaic it is four. Ella, Ella, lama, sabach? In Latin there are two versions. The least common one is Pater dimitte illis non enim scuint quid faciunt? which comes to eight. Gaelic’s A athair maith doibh mar ni fios doibh cad a dheinid mounts to ten. But we Irish like to sprunk (Dutch for using ten words when seven would suffice). The French is typically perverse: Pere remets-leur car il ne savent ce qu’il font (9). But I always return to Psalm 22, King David’s anticipation of Christ’s verbal exit. I’ve done several transliterations. The latest in thirty-three words is, ‘I am a worm buried in the dust of death. Deliver me from the dog that wants to dig me out. Let me sink until I reach soil where I can grow again.’ Most commonly Christ’s Last Words is Deus meus, Deus meus, utquid dereliquist me? Which is indeed seven. Being easier to sing, no doubt, is why the ‘lucky number’ stuck. All that sacred music. Moreover Latin, the vulgate, wasn’t a dead language at the time, and maybe Jesus used it as a transference for the God-forsaken Pilot, and not a descent into self-pity or despair (the only unforgivable sin).
But playing with Christ’s last words doesn’t help a human not of the Word. I’m contemplating instead a non-verbal farewell. A moment of silence has a certain conclusive poetry about it, though could others be trusted to keep it? Can the world go silent for even seven seconds? Someone is bound to break in to spoil the effect with a mobile phone or a barking dog. It was the same for Jesus, A sob from Mary Magdalene, or a ‘No, God’ from apostle John would have broken the silence.
Tonight, as a humble sinner, I’m dumbing down my aspirations and just crave silent fireworks. I’ve nothing against breaking up light into its component rainbow, but why has it to be with warlike bangers and crackers? Silent fireworks would mean children could enjoy them without fear. But I worry that their squeals of delight would break the spell. I would feel obliged to join in to drown them out. No, silence does not exist as an absolute, even in death, what with keening and/or choirs of angels.
It's strangely consoling to be the same age as Catherine Deneuve, an eternal beauty and ex-Marianne, the symbol of France. Despite a look at the male line in the family tree, I’m shyly hopeful of longevity. Perhaps not as long as Deneuve’s mother who died recently at a hundred and nine. Wishful thinking is not intelligent, but it’s better for the health than fatalism, and I’m encouraged by Hilaire Belloc:
‘Of old when folk got sick and sorely tried
the doctors gave them physic, and they died.
But here’s a happier age: for now they know
both how to make men sick and keep them so’.
.
I like to imagine my farewell scene. It will be Bastille Day years hence, and I, a fluent French speaker, aged one-hundred plus, am passing away from usage normale surrounded by the Académie Françoise in its final session, all forty-one of the Immortals, installed in their armchairs with their feathers on the ready to jot down my last words in their bloc-notes. I’ve decided to keep them to a single word to spare my last breath. ‘Maddy, Maddy, Maddy,’ I will holler. Three times, for this venerable body, though hard of hearing, should, like every French schoolboy, be familiar with the Code Vagnon’s help-cry for sea-farers.
I would only know for sure that my last word was understood if at the ultimate moment I was looking into the heavenly eyes of someone like Arletty, alias Garence (Les Enfants du Paradis, 1946), and saw the complicit amusement that takes away the pain. But that would be too much to expect, even in the College des Quatre Nations, Paris, where the Académie Immortelles meet. Though nearly immortal, dying aged ninety-four (1992), Arletty was blinded for her sins age sixty-five. On the other hand, my personal Marianne, the physiotherapist who cured my bad back, no doubt is still alive and dancing, but I wouldn’t want to complicate her life by going public with our unilateral love. Official recognition will have to do with two raised arms and a European star-stuck banner circling M’aidez, M’aidez, M’aidez. Although I’m beyond help now. But I don’t mind. I only want to signal my end in order to get the parade underway. The Champs Elysées has opened up its boulevards for the cortege. A Fanfare band in circus-gauds strikes up ‘Les Flots Bleus’ (the same tune as ‘When you are in love it’s the loveliest night of the year’, Mario Lanza). On reaching the Arc de Triomphe, the jokers play ‘C’est n’est qu’un au revoir, mes fréres’ (a transcription of 'Auld Lang Syne') and steady themselves for the finale, which has to be Le Internationale (which doubles for Anarchists):
Debout les damnes de la terre.
Debout les forcats de la faim.
La raison tonne en son cratére.
C’est l’eruption de la fin.
(Rise up, the damned of the earth.
Rise up, the prisoners of hunger.
Reason thunders its volcano.
This is the eruption of the end.)
And so, a mellow old man with a resigned smile takes the salute from President Michael de Montaigne the Second. His pronunciation will drop the ‘e’, so it segges into salut, salvation. The cheers are silent ones. Mouths opened. La France is struck dumb. Speechless. Nobody is protesting.