It’s not every day that a French prime minister visits Quebec. It’s not every day that Quebec is the guest of the Paris Book Festival either. If what happened last week is anything to go by, it’s not an exaggeration to talk about a reunion. It is so true that friendship between two peoples and between two people cannot exist without a form of perpetual reunion.
We could even add that it was about time. After a six-year hiatus and four successive postponements, the alternating meeting of prime ministers finally took place. But above all, Gabriel Attal may have been the youngest Prime Minister of the Fifth Republic, but he knew how to brilliantly follow in the footsteps of his prestigious predecessors.
Let’s say it straight away, the French Prime Minister did not deserve anything. Knowing the little interest that its president, Emmanuel Macron, has in Quebec and in the defense of the French language and culture, we could expect the worst. On the contrary, his speech was a sign that, despite a real erosion of its diplomacy, the Fifth Republic is still capable of remaining faithful to the tradition established by its founder. In France, a prime minister can also deviate from the line of his president. This is what François Fillon did in 2008 during the 400e anniversary of the founding of Quebec by delivering one of the most beautiful speeches in the history of our relations.
In front of the representatives of the Quebec people, Attal was able to evoke the roots which mean that part of the destiny of the French and Quebecers will always be irremediably linked. At the heart of this common destiny, there is history, of course, language, obviously, culture, obviously, but more. In this era which marks the return of religious wars, the French Prime Minister was right to speak of secularism. This word that the English language cannot even name sets us apart across the continent. As it distinguishes France in Europe. As also distinguishes us this desire not to sink into Islamist or Anglo-American communitarianism and to preserve all its meaning to the beautiful word nation.
This return of politics in our relations is more than welcome. Likewise, we were right to remind the Prime Minister that, during the last two referendums, France had chosen to “accompany” Quebec whatever its choice. Should she refuse to do so again, she would betray not only Quebec, but also the feeling that lies dormant in the hearts of French people of all political affiliations.
The arrival of around forty writers at the Paris Book Festival, of which Quebec was the guest, was also a success. Everywhere in the press, Quebec was in the spotlight. We can only rejoice in this cultural solidarity at a time when American mass media exercise undivided domination over the cultural world, and particularly over youth.
The success of several young Quebec publishing houses in France, which have chosen to distribute their books directly there instead of selling the rights, demonstrates how the French no longer imagine French-speaking literature without us.
A strange impression remains. Almost a feeling of discomfort. Leafing through the special section published by the daily Release and strolling between the books stacked on the tables, one might have thought that Quebec authors were only of interest because they were the most progressive, the most feminist, the most ecological, the most queer, the most # MeToo, the most immigrationist, the most “open” to “inclusive” language, to homosexuality, to transidentity and to “ sensitivity readers “. And what else! I know well that literary notebooks tend, in France as in Quebec, to resemble catalogs of societal demands. But it is as if some people thought that being the heirs of 450 years of an exceptional history was not enough to arouse the interest of our cousins and that we had to compete in leftism to make us interesting. As if we had something to teach fans of Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Christine Angot.
There is a hint of a colonized spirit in this escalation. At the time, faced with this impious France, didn’t our font frogs say they were more Catholic than the Pope? Duplessis also liked to present the inhabitants of his “Belle Province” as “improved French”. Sixty years later, it is no longer Catholicism that is successful, but leftism. However, the process is exactly the same. It expresses a strange contempt for what we are.
Because, with all due respect to the devotees of yesterday and the activists of today, it is not primarily for its progressive virtues that our literature is appreciated in France. But simply because it is the reflection of a people with an exemplary history and a language which is neither more nor less “free” than the others, but whose flavor is unique. Transforming the act of writing into an ideological gesture has always marked the death of literature.