The death of Queen Elizabeth II was a blow to me. Old age? It could be. A page is turned. But this is more than a page. It's a book. A big book of pictures, with captions under each one: Elisabeth nursing during the Second World War, Elisabeth's coronation in 1952, official trips to the Southern Hemisphere with her husband Prince Philip aboard the royal yacht Britannia. And so on, right up to the coronation of Prime Minister Liz Truss last Tuesday at Balmoral, two days before her death. She was tiny, smiling beyond the bounds of etiquette, held upright by the last breath of duty, one hand blued by an IV surely removed for the occasion.
A symbol of European civilization
Some people see, or should I say used to see, the «Queen of England» as a grandmother. And one is sad when one loses one's grandmother. As for me, I saw her and wanted her to be a pillar, a symbol of Europe, which may seem strange given Great Britain's ambivalent relationship with continental Europe. The Europe I saw her as a symbol of is not, of course, the political Europe of today. No, it's the Europe of civilization in the face of Nazi barbarism. The Europe of the Gulf Stream against the Europe of the bise.
As you can see, these are metaphors. The bise is not a Nazi wind - in fact, it's a friend when it chases rot off the vine. No, it's rather that the breeze carries with it that black uniform that permanently threatens the tranquillity of temperate societies.
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So the death of Elizabeth II, who, along with Churchill, embodies the resistance of the whole of Europe to totalitarianism, whether it comes from afar or lodges within us, is not good news. With the Queen gone forever, we're losing not so much a grandmother as a protective blanket.
But that's the way it is. You have to be strong and not always seek refuge in the skirts of a providential figure. Facing the unknown, telling yourself that you may have to fight to defend your freedoms, recreating a unifying symbol from a moment of nothingness, drying your tears - that's what being a man is all about.
Antoine Menusier is a journalist. Editor-in-chief of Bondy Blog from 2009 to 2011 and a former senior reporter at Time and L'Hebdo, he is the author of Livre des indésirés - A history of Arabs in France (Editions du Cerf, 2019). Today, he writes for the Swiss media outlet Watson and contributes to the French magazines Marianne and L'Express.
Photo credit: Wikimedia CC 2.0
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1 comment
A big kick in the pants?
In 1940, in a text entitled “Les Amandiers”, Albert Camus noted the following:
...We have to sew up what is torn, to make justice imaginable in a world so obviously unjust, meaningful happiness for peoples poisoned by the misfortune of the century. Naturally, this is a superhuman task. But superhuman tasks are those that take men a long time to accomplish, that's all.
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...It's true that we live in tragic times. But too many people confuse tragedy with despair. Tragedy," said Lawrence, "should be like a big kick in the teeth to misfortune. A sound and immediately applicable thought. There are many things today that deserve this kick (Noces, followed by L'été, coll. Folio, Gallimard, 1959, p.112-113).
These lines, written more than eighty years ago, seem to me to be highly topical.
André Durussel, author A*dS, 1464 Chêne-Pâquier VD