Amuse-Bouche No. 25:
by Julia Frey (julia.frey@aya.yale.edu)
Warning. You can wish someone or , but you don’t say “Happy Bastille Day” ...Or Bastille Day at all. In France, the national holiday is called (abbreviated . on calendars) or more simply . So, I asked Isabelle and Laurent, how come English speakers call it Bastille Day and the French DON’T? This apparently innocent question opened up a can of worms (which the French would call “”—a hornet’s nest—or “ ”—a bag of knots). My friends had lots of theories on the matter. Although nobody seems to know who first used the expression in English, they both thought a reasonable explanation is that French and non-French alike recognize the taking of the Bastille as the beginning of the French Revolution, and a symbolic victory for “” (human rights).On the other hand, the actual date, July 14, doesn’t mean much, especially when stacked with all the other French known only by their dates ( etc.). Which leads me to an aside: the names of months generally are not capitalized in French, but if they refer to a “” (holiday), they are capitalized because they’re considered proper names. named for saints are feminine even if the saint was male, because it’s “,” thus (Valentine’s Day). Most identified by their dates are (lay, nonreligious), and commemorate solemn historic occasions (battles won, wars ending, etc.), whereas religious holidays usually have real names: (Christmas), (Whitsunday), (Easter). Even though France is (a country with separation of church and state), it’s striking that and (All Saints’ Day) are all national holidays. In fact the French have an amazing number of legal holidays, eleven in all, four of which usually fall in May, which explains why you can never get anything done in May.
Now back to what I was saying... . is probably called “Bastille Day” in English because “Bastille” is a brief, concise and unambiguous reference to the storming of the prison of the Bastille in Paris on July 14,1789, by 954 men and one woman, armed with pikes and miscellaneous firearms, yelling “” (Everybody out of the pool).The actual event was a little disappointing. After a short battle, the nonmilitary governor in charge of the fortress, by then mostly being used as a hospital, simply gave up. When the victors finally made their way down to the “dungeons,” which turned out to be spacious, almost luxurious, they discovered there were only seven prisoners left in the place. The others, including the Bastille’s most famous inmate, the Marquis de Sade, had been transferred somewhere else shortly before. Disappointed, the conquerors dragged an old suit of armor and a printing press out into the courtyard, to be displayed as instruments of torture. Late that afternoon, when it was discovered that the humiliated governor had tried to commit suicide, he was dragged through the streets and finally decapitated by a local butcher. His head and those of several dead soldiers were stuck on pikes and paraded around the neighborhood, setting the tone for the bloody executions that would follow.Despite rumors to the contrary, the Bastille was not ripped stone by stone from its foundations by the angry crowd. A contractor named Palloy was hired to dismantle it. Most of the stones were recycled to build a bridge, the Pont de la Concorde. He made money on the side by selling rings set with chips of stone from the walls and patriotic medallions hammered out of the fortress’s iron chains.
So why did the populace attack the Bastille? Because the Bastille symbolized Royal tyranny. (pre-Revolutionary) France was an absolute, at times despotic, monarchy, ruled (in this case, i.e. at that time) by Louis XVI . The King could arbitrarily lock up anyone he wanted, whenever he wished, without any stated reason, by simply creating a “” These notorious letters were a particularly French phenomenon, thus the term is untranslatable, although in this context means the royal seal. The most infamous ordered the indefinite imprisonment or exile, without trial, of the individual named therein. The verb describing this behavior? (to put into the Bastille), of course.
Even in Paris today, you frequently hear “” when there’s . Careful, warns Isabelle. Do not translate this as “a popular manifestation.” The noun would be “demonstration,” and it’s in the sense of , i.e., a street protest by left-wing, usually working-class dissidents who feel their constitutional rights have been violated. Recently, this battle cry has been heard in support of “” (the “without papers,” i.e., illegal immigrants) and at a general strike against attempts to raise the retirement age in France from 60 to 62. U.S. citizens are more (sheep-like, not gregarious), having accepted the advance from age 65 to the current 67.5 without so much as a murmur.I was surprised to learn that officially, does NOT celebrate the 1789 storming of the Bastille. It commemorates , organized on the same day in 1790, one year later. That night, Paris, in the presence of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, partied on the Champ de Mars to celebrate the success of a peaceful revolution and the principle of a constitutional monarchy. Bad guess. The revolution continued, ever more violent, until Napoléon Bonaparte became Premier Consul nine years later in 1799. Nonetheless, the was renamed in 1880. Virtually everybody in France will tell you, though, that commemorates (the capture of the Bastille). “,” says Laurent. , it turns out, means the lungs of a butchered animal, and the expression means to feed someone false information, over a long period of time. But careful, cautions Laurent, it’s to say the least, in the direction of , since (to stuff ) has all the same connotations as in English (sexual, over-feeding, plus in French, to beat someone up and to get drunk). (adj. soft) can be associated to (the brains you eat, as opposed to , the brain you think with).In any case, like the rest of us, the French are always happy to have (a day off). (dancing in the streets) is often the night of July 13 instead of 14, because people may have to go to work early on the morning of July 15. Early on the morning of July 14, there’s a (parade), with soldiers marching to , the French (national anthem). In Paris, the French Air Force loudly buzzes the Champs Elysées, spewing exhaust smoke tinted (the colors of the French as well as the U.S. flag—the “blue, white, red” in France, the “red, white and blue” ). Before dark thousands of arrive at the Champ de Mars in time to picnic on the grass and crane their necks past to look at —the spectacular fireworks set off from the Trocadéro, across the Seine.One final warning! The French are amused or shocked or both by the blatant (nationalism) of Americans, by the Stars and Stripes dangling from our houses. As my friends remind me, (We’re not as patriotic as you Americans). is just another vacation day. In short, you can wish someone , and so on, but you don’t wish people Happy Bastille Day, in either English or French. When it first came into existence in 1880, a few noble families, including that of the artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, flatly refused to recognize the holiday. To them, it symbolized the decapitation of some of their favorite relatives. Even today, one or two Royalists are still waiting for the Monarchy to be restored.©Julia Frey, 2010
