What the French need: the spirit of “La Marseillaise”

While I pretty much oppose everything the French Revolution stood for, I’ve loved “La Marseillaise” ever since, in a ninth grade French class, we each had to recite it by memory at the front of the class. I’ve always gotten a charge out of reciting or singing it, and its unabashed bloodymindedness was always a part of what stirred me, though of course that’s a problematic aspect of the song for the contempoary French. The notion of fighting back against savage invaders is morally repulsive to modern Westerners, but maybe it’s an idea whose time has, uh, returned. Here is most of the first verse and chorus, in French and English:

Contre nous de la tyrannie,
L’étendard sanglant est levé. (repeat line)
Entendez-vous dans les campagnes
Mugir ces féroces soldats ?
Ils viennent jusque dans nos bras
Égorger nos fils, nos compagnes!

Aux armes, citoyens,
Formez vos bataillons.
Marchons, marchons !
Qu’un sang impur
Abreuve nos sillons !

Against us the bloody flag
of tyranny is raised.
Do you hear in the fields
The howling of the fearsome soldiers?
They are coming into our midst
To slit the throats of our sons and wives!

To arms, citizens!
Form your battalions!
March, march!
Until the impure blood
Soaks the furrows of our fields!

A reader writes:

I am fond of this song because of its heroic melody and heavy chords. I never read the lyrics before. But this perfectly illustrates what is missing in the West today. It was written and accepted by a generation of Frenchmen who were proud, and willing to defend their country by force if necessary. Force wasn’t an alien notion to them. It was survival. Having the survival instinct is healthy and natural and a positive force for the collective psyche. The multiculti mindset is a perversion, it is not natural—it is suicidal, and a sign of cultural sickness as witnessed by the French reaction to the riots.

The scene in Casablanca where Rick (Humphrey Bogart) instructs his band to play “La Marseillaise” at the same time and over the Germans singing their rally song in the cafe was very moving, one of my all time favorites in a movie.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at November 08, 2005 07:55 PM | Send