Assembled by the editorial director of France's Éditions Gallimard, these 11 essays focus on the central role of the state in French history. The essayists, some of France's leading contemporary intellectuals, use the concept of lieux de mémoire
(places of memory) to explore a wide array of topics, such as the symbolism of Versailles, the changing legacy of Charlemagne, the importance of memoirs in the construction of French history, and the omnipresence of French regionalism. Alain Guéry's brilliant essay describes the philosophical underpinnings of French statism: "The originality of the French is to have made the common good into an attribute of the state." Thus, whenever the French have confronted a crisis, they've sought statist solutions. Hélène Himelfarb's fine contribution argues that in 1871, after France's crushing defeat by the Prussians, the victors used the Château of Versailles—which had symbolized French power since the time of Louis XIV—as the spot where humiliating peace terms were signed. In 1918, France returned the favor, also at Versailles. These essays, it must be said, reflect the French love of abstraction. This can be a delight, as in Himelfarb's essay, or a reason for hair-pulling frustration, as with Alain Boureau ("The King"), whose prose gets lost in a theoretical thicket: "the kings of the Old Regime served as a concrete and empirical representation of the social bond, prior to any political theorizing, in exactly the same way as the mnemonic trace or representation of an archaic event serves to structure the contradictory affects that make up the personality in the Freudian system." Nevertheless, the majority of these essays are worthwhile for those with an interest in France's proud national identity. Illus. (Oct.)
