Behind a smokescreen of self-criticism, France finds new ways of being inventive

By THEODORE ZELDIN

rance has 360 sauces and three religions. England has 360 religions and three sauces. That is how a French diplomat, in Napoleon's day, summed up the originality of his country. But the image of the French as people who know how to eat with panache has been shattered by the revelation that the favorite dish of three-quarters of them today is steak and chips. They buy 20,000 tonnes of Heinz tomato sauce each year. We are told that the French national identity is fatally threatened--that they are in danger of ceasing to be French.

But visitors to France for the World Cup should bear in mind just how often down the centuries France has reinvigorated itself with foreign tastes. Its cuisine was originally inspired by Italy, its modern politics by England and the U.S., its science and philosophy by Germany. Even the custom of shaking hands was borrowed from the English, who had themselves borrowed it from the Dutch. A sizable minority of French citizens have some foreign blood.

However, after listening to what the French say about themselves, it is hard to decide whether this is a country moving toward suicide, or a country very successfully managing change behind a smokescreen of complaints. I, for one, think the patient has nothing more than a headache and a case of amnesia.

Conferences on French national identity now outnumber the striptease shows which once made Paris the capital of forbidden pleasures. Baring the soul instead of the body, they reveal that nobody in France, even the most traditionalist, wants to just leave things as they are. Everybody repeats that France is in crisis, in many different crises. But they seem to forget that this has always been true, or that France's identity has always been contradictory: at once generous and cruel, brilliant and sordid, disputatious, undefinable. The worry about identity comes from forgetting this, and from trying to define an immensely varied people with simple slogans.

To see how France is constantly reinventing itself out of a mixture of old and new materials, start in a cafe, "the home of liberty," a place where Frenchmen traditionally argued, gossiped, played cards, praised love and the easy-going life. There were once 413,000 cafes in France, but only 67,000 remain; only 4.5 million French people visit one every day--not even drinking wine as they used to (wine accounts for only 11% of sales). Half the population never even set foot in a cafe.

That is because other homes of liberty are offering more satisfactions. The cafes are being replaced by restaurants--people are richer than they were a generation ago--and by clubs and associations, of which there are now more than there were cafes at their peak. French conviviality is not dead, it has merely discovered wider horizons.

To understand this hunger for new encounters, go to Strasbourg. The Pont de l'Europe across the Rhine is being transformed into the center of a new garden, situated half in Germany and half in France. It will contain 37 plaques, with texts by artists and writers from 37 European countries celebrating the end of historic animosities, each in their own language. It may seem uncharacteristic of the French to accept that not everyone needs to write in French. But Strasbourg, at once French and European, has a long tradition of three languages and three religions peacefully cohabiting. Now, 50,000 Alsatians cross the border each day to work in Germany and Switzerland, while managers and officials come from many countries to the Center for European Studies to learn how to navigate the nightmare of the new E.U. regulations. The scientific research institutes are even more international. Alsatian regionalism and food ensure that the city remains unique.

Most young French people do not lie awake at night worrying about their national identity. They have told pollsters that what they care about most is having a good family life and an interesting job. Faith in the family has survived because the family has been adaptable; it is no longer the economic unit it once was, with children working for their father. Formerly the more children you had, the richer you were; today it is the opposite. Though there is talk of a crisis in the family, rebellion within the family is a well-established tradition.

Even those born to privilege see themselves as having to invent a new kind of life. That is the significance of the book, First Novel, just published by former President Mitterrand's 23-year-old love child, Mazarine Pingeot. She speaks for a large minority which may soon be a majority: the children of divorced and estranged parents, children who hardly ever see both parents at the same time. She makes a virtue of that independence, and attacks the romantic ideal of couples fusing to become one person. Her prescription for the trauma of separation is to say that each individual needs to construct a life which incorporates as many experiences as possible. She rejects only conformism, fear and guilt.

Critics have complained that Pingeot is naive and her writing unsophisticated. But she is accessible, which many sophisticated books are not. Her heroine, Agathe, recalls the manifesto of Young People of Today, published in 1913 under the pseudonym Agathon, where the ideal man was a brave soldier, intent on self-sacrifice. That is another example of how French identity is being constantly reshaped. Mazarine Pingeot offers a new model of male and female behavior: men have been cured of violence, but are still romantics. It is the women who are now lucid and strong, inventing new ideals of conduct, keen to live several different lives, and not afraid of suffering in the process.

Taking charge of one's own life is all very well, but there are constraints which no individual can challenge alone. No tour of the country can be considered complete without inhaling the emotions of the protest march, at once a conversation, a public performance and a gamble, because the results are always unpredictable. Every day, somewhere in France, there is a protest march, and one poll showed 79% of respondents ready to participate in street demonstrations for causes that mattered to them, with 57% having already done so at least once. The protest march represents a genuine crisis of traditional representative democracy, if taking to the streets becomes the only way of getting redress for grievances. On the other hand, the protest march is also creating new bonds, filling the gap left by the decay of trade unions and political parties. It is a double-edged weapon against despair.

Meanwhile a new strategy has been invented in France's most heroic war, against boredom. Some sleepy provinces have transformed themselves into extraordinarily vibrant communities. Rennes, for instance, used to be dominated by its aristocratic and legal traditions. It has had the same mayor, Edmond Herve, for over 20 years, who is indeed an austere and reticent lawyer. But, as though to prove that quiet people know how to give talk real meaning, he has made dialogue the basis of his renewal of the city. By listening to the wishes of the existing inhabitants, slums have been restored rather than destroyed. An annual rock festival, drawing 25,000 fans, cuts across social barriers. Plenty of hi-tech jobs hold out the promise of a real future. Rennes is a model showing what a sustained effort can achieve.

It would be easy to produce a frightening picture of France as a mass of resentment and frustration, a place filled with misfits and tragic stories. But the failures must be seen in a context of successes that seldom make the headlines. Particularly interesting is the way small towns are injecting excitement into their quiet pace by assuming an international role. They need to be visited in season, like flowers in bloom. For example, Saint-Die des Vosges, with a population of only 25,000, invented the International Festival of Geography, turning itself into a world capital for a week each year. Angouleme is the capital of comic books. Blois is making a bid to be the capital of amateur lovers of history, with an October festival focused on stories of power and crime. Orsay, without losing its village atmosphere, is home to tens of thousands of scientists. Of the 10,000 cultural events scheduled to take place this year, in tiny towns as well as big cities, many will incorporate foreign contributions. The French do not think that they can win their battle against boredom alone.

That is not surprising, because French industry has depended on foreign customers for much of its history. So too has French art. France could not have been what it was without foreigners. The National Front, in demanding a France without foreigners, is seeking to return to a France that never existed.

To remind oneself how difficult it is to change things, however, visit the Supreme Court of Justice, which recently ruled that a Muslim working in a butcher shop could not refuse to handle pork because the essence of the work contract was that an employee had to obey his employer. That is a good example of the law's inveterate slowness in catching up with opinion. But whatever the law might say, obedience is very gradually giving way to negotiation.

Still, finding an interesting job to match one's education, talents and imagination can be a heartbreaking experience. This is the fundamental challenge of any society, not just France's: how to invent work which is not narrowing and stupefying, rather than simply thinking about finding people jobs, however dull. The French are divided equally between those who see Europe as an opportunity and those who fear it. That division cuts across all party, occupational and age groups. I believe that those who fear it have forgotten their own history.

So when your French meal does not live up to your expectations, remember that the diplomat who sang the praises of France's 360 sauces was Talleyrand, whose cook was Careme, one of the greatest of all experts on sauce. Fifty years after Careme's death, a famous food critic complained that it was impossible to get a meal in Paris where the meat was not drowned in just one brown sauce, which never varied. France has always been a culture of complaint, just like the U.S. Its reputation for arrogance conceals a passion for self-improvement, for shaping human beings into ever more beautiful forms. A slight headache is almost inescapable if one has such ambitions.

Theodore Zeldin is a Fellow of St. Antony's College, Oxford. His most recent book is An Intimate History of Humanity