Love letter to France, “country of my favorite ideas”

[This article was published on March 30, 2025 and republished on June 9, 2025, on the occasion of the first anniversary of the dissolution of the National Assembly.]

For half a century I have lived in this country, “the true paradise on Earth by the grace of God,” according to Heinrich Heine [1797-1856]. This resident of Düsseldorf [and Paris] called himself a “German Frenchman” and was the most French of Germans. Heine had traveled to the part of France that became my second home, Brittany , “to collect beautiful folk songs,” but what he found “were people burning with enthusiasm for the Revolution” …

I have never seen “my France” as I do now: in complete disarray—and above all, troubled by its own disarray. It is like the fear of fear in those of us who are prone to neurosis; it is more serious than any concrete fear and constantly engenders new fears. The raw reality that France faces is already harsh. The old reflexes, the old instincts, the capers, the tricks that have always helped are no longer of any use. French sentiment, which is so wonderfully formed in the deepest convictions, is eaten away by disarray.

To be