Comparisons have a limited tensile strength. The more they are drawn the weaker they get, until eventually they snap and become useless.
Since Charles de Gaulle came out of retirement to become President of France in 1958 the obvious parallels between Gaullism and royalism have been stretched perilously thin. To remark that De Gaulle tends to think and act more like a king than an elected official is both true and important. To remark the same thing for the thousandth time is perhaps amusing but rather pointless. The resemblances between De Gaulle and Louis XIV or Napoleon still make handy gimmicks for political cartoonists, but they have long since ceased to illuminate the methods and aims of French government.
Pierre Viansson-Ponte's anecdotal sketch of the DeGaulle regime has the usual shortcomings of books which capitalize on the General's imperious manner and medieval pride. The King and His Court adds little to the existing stock of useful insights into DeGaulle's personality, if only because it is impossible to increase infinity.
Saws Resharpened
The special virtue of this book is that it digs far behind the public facade of the Fifth Republic, Viansson-Ponte confirms a startling number of cliches about De Gaulle's dictatorial techniques from the vantage-point of an insider. In crediting these cliches The King and His Court of course says nothing new, but is does give the American reader a renewed sense of how deeply De Gaulle's pretensions direct the fortunes of modern France.
Viansson-Ponte is a court chronicler without being courtier. As political editor of the prestigious Le Monde, he has free access to inner government circles even though he is not a Gaullist. This position gives him a rare detachment: he is able to write knowledgeably about De Gaulle while avoiding both the admiration of a follower and the jealousy of an opponent. The King and His Court resembles the Duc de Saint-Simson's colorful Memoirs about life with Louis XIV, full of sympathy and gossip, yet it retains the ironical view-point of a journalist somewhat skeptical about De Gaulle's lofty designs.
The General's regal bearing amounts to much more than theatrical bravado. "Despite haughty denials, shrugs of the shoulder, feigned indignation, General De Gaulle is, by temperament, a monarchist." Viansson-Ponte believes that if De Gaulle could restore the French throne he would gladly do so. But as a matter of practical policy he is resigned to democratic forms, if not to democratic substance, in French politics. This in no way diminishes the General's self-esteem:
He is at ease among kings, both deferential--noblesse oblige--and self-confident. It is true that he never thought seriously of founding a dynasty. But he reigns, and what is more he governe... Thus his very real power compensates for what heredity has not bestowed on him.
In the first half of The King and His Court Viansson-Ponte describes the public rituals and private tactics by which De Gaulle exercises his enormous power. There is, for instance, the formal introduction, a clipped ceremony in which the subject is supposed to accept the General's greeting and then hold his peace. De Gaulle has an effective way of dismissing upstairs who presume to start a conversation with him:
A certain empty, vacant stare signifies that you have suddenly become transparent, virtually non-existent; a special way of moving the lips without uttering a sound makes it plain that the General is no longer listening, that he is preparing to greet the next person.
DeGaulle behaves with the same lofty reserve whether at the Opera or the Comedie Francaise, a formal dinner or a private lunch at Colombey, his country estate. Viansson-Ponte also sets down De Gaulle's etiquette as Chief of State (liturgy), his ways of communicating with the public (sermon), and his relations with foreign dignitaries (kinship and rank).
L'etat, c'est Charles
In all of his affairs De Gaulle rules absolutely. Everything he does is calculated and stage-managed, every movement planned with grand destinies in view. Even when reading newspapers "only one thought is uppermost in his mind: his image as a historical figure." On road trips through the provinces De Gaulle gives precooked three to six-minute speeches in small towns, twenty-minute orations in large ones; a dozen times a day the General's itinerary calls for him to say "a few words to the people." Even the catechism of the press conference is carefully rigged, with coached interrogators planted in specific seats in the audience.
If the Fifth Republic is really a benevolent despotism, the popularity of the despot has apparently soothed the conscience of the French people. Television is the most successful purveyor of the Gaullist cult, and the General uses it like a professional actor. He commands sympathy as skillfully as he commands votes.
Millions of Frenchmen are growing old with him--"Look," they say, "he seems tired tonight," or conversely, "Charlie's in good form." Entirely unlike the Big Brother of George Orwell's 1984 he resembles an elderly uncle, "someone you would like for your grandfather," as the Readers Digest once put it.
