Marseillaise,
La
Marx, The Confessions of Karl
Mass Observation
McCarthy, Eugene
Meerkats
Monsanto
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Marseillaise,
La
Largely untranslatable
("Let's go, children of the fatherland, the day of glory has arrived!")
and thoroughly inspiring, the Marseillaise is one of the great songs
of the world. It has impeccably revolutionary credentials, having been
written in Strasbourg in 1792 by C. J. Rouget de Lisle. Originally called
the "War Song for the Army of the Rhine", the song became
popular in Marseilles first, and was taken from there to Paris, hence
the more familiar name. The Paris première is magnificently re-enacted
in Abel Gance's film Napoleon -- quite an impressive feat for
a silent film! The song was banned at the Restoration, and also under
the Second Empire, before being rehabilitated by the Third Republic,
which proclaimed it France's National Anthem.
1. Allons enfants
de la Patrie,
Le jour de gloire est arrivé!
Contre nous de la tyrannie,
L'étendard sanglant est levé! (x2)
Entendez-vous dans les campagnes
Mugir ces féroces soldats?
Ils viennent jusque dans nos bras
Egorger nos fils et nos compagnes!
Aux armes, citoyens!
Formez vos bataillons!
Marchons! marchons!
Qu'un sang impur
Abreuve nos sillons!
2. Que
veut cette horde d'esclaves,
De traîtres, de rois conjurés?
Pour qui ces ignobles entraves,
Ces fers dès longtemps préparés? (x2)
Français, pour nous, ah! quel outrage!
Quels transports il doit exciter!
C'est nous qu'on ose méditer
De rendre à l'antique esclavage!
3. Quoi
! ces cohortes étrangères
Feraient la loi dans nos foyers!
Quoi! ces phalanges mercenaires
Terrasseraient nos fiers guerriers! (x2)
Grand Dieu! par des mains enchaînées
Nos fronts sous le joug se ploieraient!
De vils despotes deviendraient
Les maîtres de nos destinées!
4. Tremblez, tyrans
et vous perfides,
L'opprobre de tous les partis,
Tremblez! vos projets parricides
Vont enfin recevoir leurs prix! (x2)
Tout est soldat pour vous combattre,
S'ils tombent, nos jeunes héros,
La terre en produit de nouveaux,
Contre vous tout prêts à se battre!
5. Français,
en guerriers magnanimes,
Portez ou retenez vos coups!
Epargnez ces tristes victimes,
A regret s'armant contre nous. (x2)
Mais ces despotes sanguinaires,
Mais ces complices de Bouillé,
Tous ces tigres qui, sans pitié,
Déchirent le sein de leur mère!
6. Amour
sacré de la Patrie,
Conduis, soutiens nos bras vengeurs!
Liberté, Liberté chérie,
Combats avec tes défenseurs! (x2)
Sous nos drapeaux, que la victoire
Accoure à tes mâles accents!
Que tes ennemis expirants
Voient ton triomphe et notre gloire!
7. Nous
entrerons dans la carrière
Quand nos aînés n'y seront plus;
Nous y trouverons leur poussière
Et la trace de leurs vertus. (x2)
Bien moins jaloux de leur survivre
Que de partager leur cercueil,
Nous aurons le sublime orgueil
De les venger ou de les suivre!
The Turtle has dim
memories of Mme Mitterrand's attempts to rewrite the words to the song
in the wake of the 1992 Albertville Winter Olympics. At the opening
ceremonies, a young child sang the song, and the First Lady worried
about the anthem's glorification of bloodshed. More detailed information
about this interesting episode would be gratefully
received.
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Marx,
The Confessions of Karl
The practice of
getting famous people to fill out inane questionnaires as a way of effortlessly
filling up space in magazines has deep roots in English history. Confessions
was a popular Victorian parlour game, and Laura Marx got her father
Karl to play on at least one occasion in the mid-1860s, copying the
following questions and answers out into one of her albums in English.
Your favourite
virtue: Simplicity
Your favourite virtue in man: Strength
Your favourite virtue in woman: Weakness
Your chief characteristic: Singleness of purpose
Your idea of happiness: To fight
Your idea of misery: Submission
The vice you excuse most: Gullibility
The vice you detest most: Servility
Your aversion: Martin Tupper
Favourite occupation: Book-worming
Favourite poet: Shakespeare. Aeschylus. Goethe
Favourite prosewriter: Diderot
Favourite hero: Spartacus, Kepler
Favourite heroine: Gretchen
Favourite flower: Daphne
Favourite colour: Red
Favourite name: Laura, Jenny
Favourite dish: Fish
Favourite maxim: nihil humani a me alienum puto
Favourite motto: de omnibus dubitandum
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Mass
Observation
Founded by the journalist
Charles Madge, the poet Tom Harrisson and the film-maker Humphrey
Jennings after fortuitously placed letters in the same issue of
the New Statesman revealed their common interests, the Mass Observation
movement was designed to resolve the problem that many left-wing intellectuals
in 1930s Britain knew little or nothing of "the masses" despite
constantly referring to and championing them.
At the time, anthropology
was a relatively new academic discipline, and was almost exclusively
applied to the study of inhabitants of developing countries. Mass Observation
proposed using the same techniques to examine British society, and recruited
over five hundred unpaid volunteers, who provided reports on everything
from the behaviour of holidaymakers to the time of day men wore bowler
hats to the frequency and type of dirty jokes told in pubs. They also
reported on themselves, meticulously itemising everything they did on
certain predetermined days.
The first major
Mass Observation study was of Bolton and Blackpool between 1937 and
1940, rechristened "Worktown" for study purposes, and similar
studies were carried out on the Blitz and Churchill's 1945 election
defeat, and although interest in Mass Observation dwindled after the
war, a new survey commenced in 1981 . Although often idiosyncratic,
the resulting reports were immensely valuable to everyone from political
activists to historians, and have become increasingly so in successive
decades.
For further information,
see the website of the Mass
Observation Archive at the University of Sussex.
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McCarthy,
Eugene
Click here
to let Dominic Sandbrook tell you all
about the former monk who took on the American political system in 1968,
and lost.
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Meerkats
Although best known
for numerous appearances in acclaimed BBC wildlife documentaries, it
appears that the anthropomorphic behaviour of the meerkat (a kind of
mongoose native to the Kalahari) extends rather further than a propensity
to stand on its hind legs and look quizzical.
According to Professor Tim Clutton-Brock, meerkats have created a society
that appears to run along impeccably Marxist principles. Whereas the
social hierarchies of most animal societies are based firmly on blood
ties, meerkats apparently adopt a principle whereby unrelated females
co-operate with each other to look after and feed their infants - a
clear illustration of the classic Marxist doctrine "to each according
to his needs, from each according to his abilities". It has yet
to be confirmed whether meerkats operate any type of five-year plan
or output quota, but this will doubtless provide plenty of scope for
future research.
This discovery is
entirely unrelated to a recent advertising campaign by London's Metropolitan
Police that used an image of sharp-eyed and alert-looking meerkats to
promote vigilance amongst the populace. In the lifts in Borough tube
station in South London, an aspiring advertising executive augmented
this message still further by adding a Private Eye-style speech
bubble in which one of the meerkats appeared to be enquiring "Is
that your car, sir?", a phrase drivers from London's many
ethnic minorities are all too familiar with, and which suggests possible
future employment opportunities for ambitious meerkats as their societies
evolve to ever more sophisticated heights.
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Monsanto
The Turtle is not
terribly fond of the Monsanto Corporation in general and of its Terminator
Gene in particular. Let Raj
Patel tell you why. Entertaining and informative criticism of the
company can also be found in Private Eye #957 (21 August 1998),
p.16, and in The Guardian of 25 November 1998, where writers
from Greenpeace and Monsanto have a go at one another.
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