Whispers in Paris: Giscard d’Estaing Eyes the Nobel Prize

Whispers in Paris:

Giscard d’Estaing Eyes the Nobel Prize

President Giscard d’Estaing’s declaration in support of the Palestinians’ right to self-determination, followed by a blunt and unusual attack on the occasion of the 17th birthday of his “friend” Yasser Arafat, stirred things up in Israel. In Paris, they whisper that this is not just the preserve of members of the Gaullist opposition and the Jews of France. Giscard — so the evil and decidedly irresponsible tongues whisper — dreams of the prize as “another stage” in the process for which Begin and Sadat received their prize. But according to the same reports, Giscard’s candidacy is meeting with absolute opposition from the prize judges in Oslo. A Norwegian newspaper expressed their view when it accused the French president of pursuing a “show policy.” Some are therefore suggesting that the disappointed president try for the Oscars now...

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Mary Capella’s Blood Wedding

These days, July 31, 1978, the day of the attack on the Iraqi Embassy in Paris, was brought up for discussion before the international tribunal in The Hague.

The affair ended, as we recall, in an unexpected drama, when Iraqi security men opened fire on the terrorist, who had surrendered to the French police, and killed his escort, the young French inspector Jacques Capella. The gunmen were released and flown to Baghdad. There were a few police demonstrations and the matter quieted down. The forgotten side of the affair belongs to Mary Capella, widow of the murdered policeman and mother of his young son. Mary was Jacques Capella’s “common-law wife” when he was killed. Only nearly a year after his death, in May 1979, did she “marry” him, through the personal intervention of the president of the republic, in order to secure their son’s future.

That future does not look particularly secure. The Iraqis promised to put her husband’s killers on trial in Iraq, but it is clear that the two deportees will never be tried and Mary will receive no compensation. The Iraqi Embassy tried to “put an end” to the affair by paying the widow a one-time sum of 300,000 francs. But she is demanding justice. She bears, she says, a feeling of hatred toward her husband’s murderers, but also toward those who let them escape punishment “for diplomatic reasons.”

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After 343 Years: A Woman in the Academy

The celebrated French Academy, founded in 1637, took a historic step in its history when it elected [illegible] a woman to its ranks. This is Marguerite Yourcenar, 77, born in Belgium, living in the United States, and known for her books [illegible].

The sex is new, but the age is quite suitable. A quick glance at the list of members of the French Academy, on this occasion that has come along for those who long ago forgot it existed, shows that it is by no means the “supreme expression” of French thought and literature today. Most of its members are elderly, and the overwhelming majority are retired politicians from the governing parties, as well as second- and third-rate writers, whose Academy membership may have speeded up the sale of their books a little. In any case, it is not the salary that attracts them. 1,200 francs a month is really not much.

The great do not apply to the Academy, and it is not particularly interested in them either. Jean-Paul Sartre never asked to enter under “the dome.” Louis Aragon, the greatest living poet in France today, is not a member. He is a Communist, unfortunately for him. The late writer André Malraux was never even a candidate. But one can go further back. Émile Zola was rejected again and again by the Academy, which called his books “garbage.” Victor Hugo was accepted only on his third candidacy. A look at those sitting there today reveals the man who entered alongside Yourcenar. Michel Droit is a veteran journalist who wrote a few things about General de Gaulle, and his best-known literary work is an antisemitic letter against the singer Serge Gainsbourg, in which he suggested that Jews like him “sit quietly.” A distinguished member of the Academy is former foreign minister Maurice Schumann, yet, for some reason, no one can remember the title of a book he wrote. Edgar Faure, who was president of the National Assembly, “planned” his way into the Academy, by contrast, with the help of several books that were indeed printed, but hardly read. Evil tongues accuse Mr. Alain Peyrefitte, justice minister and Academy member, of having had an entire team of experts write his only book on China...

That is more or less the picture; the end matters more than the beginning, but the honors are substantial, as is the snobbery. The French Academy is increasingly establishing its position as a kind of additional French House of Lords. Somewhere between the Senate and the old people’s home.

“Red Danny” Sells Books

Remember Daniel Cohn-Bendit, “Red Danny,” the leader of the events of May 1968 in France? He fought for a long time for the right to return to France from his exile in Germany. And these days he has been appointed sales manager at the renowned Paris publishing house Stock.

So “Red Danny” has come from the barricades (seen in the center of the photograph from the days of the stormy demonstrations) to paper and print. But the road was always, in fact, two-way.

Christina Onassis’s Mistake

Christina Onassis apparently made a mistake when she decided to conduct her divorce case against her Soviet husband, Sergei Kauzov, in the court of Saint-Moritz in Switzerland.

The authorities suddenly remembered that the wealthy heiress was, in fact, a permanent resident there, and seized the opportunity to demand two billion Swiss francs in income tax from her. That, by all accounts, is too high a price for a divorce in the fresh air of the Swiss mountains.

Christina is not consoled even by the local authorities’ promise to devote a substantial part of the money to developing the services provided to regular visitors at the winter sports center.