The history of Berlin over the past 16 years—more exactly, since the dramatic fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989—offers an almost classic example of how wild dreams conceived in a moment of euphoria can so easily collapse into a mood of grudging resignation. Overnight, the divided city, which had previously had two town...

The vociferous and, at times, incendiary uproar that suddenly erupted in early February with the publication in Paris of 12 “satanic drawings,” supposedly caricaturing Muhammad, offered the world one more proof of the extent to which, thanks to radio, television, and computers, our rapidly shrinking planet has now become a global village. It also offered...

Appearances, as we all know (or should know), are often deceptive, just as one’s memory is often fallible and by no means a sure guide as to what one has really and truly observed.  It may be that I was not sufficiently observant when I first visited Moscow in the summer of 2003.  I must...

Spain, Voltaire once observed (expressing the scorn that many Frenchmen feel for those unlucky enough to have been born on the wrong side of the Pyrenees), is “le pays de la paresse”—the land of laziness.  For a long time, paradoxically, this was part of her charm, part of the magnetic attraction, of the “Byron syndrome”...

Last April, Claude Imbert, editor in chief of the moderately conservative weekly Le Point, dared to make an astonishing mea culpa.  In a minor masterpiece of melancholic irony, he confessed the awful truth that he was a “liberal”—which, in present-day French parlance, means someone who believes in free enterprise as a necessary antidote to socialistic...

One of the sights that most amazed me as I approached the center of Moscow for the first time was a huge poster, stretched across the flat rooftop of a large building not far from the Kremlin, boldly advertising PHILIPS in large letters that needed no further explanation.  Not to be outdone by the famous...

When the French historians of our epoch apply their magnifying glasses to the momentous developments of the first two months of this year, most of them, I think, are likely to conclude that the decisive factor leading to the historic National Assembly vote of February 10—when a massive majority of 494 deputies, compared with only...

When you visit a foreign capital for the first time, sooner or later you are likely to be asked the question: “What do you think of our country?” or “What is your impression of this city?”  In St. Petersburg, which I had visited in May, I had a ready answer: Everything there (the worst as...

I have before me, as I write these lines, a handsome white envelope, marked in pale-blue characters with the six-pronged, anchor-fish-hook-crown emblem of this once imperial and still maritime city, which was offered to me by a friend as I was leaving St. Petersburg.  Inside, against an elegant dark-blue background illuminated by six colored pictures...

Returning to a city you once loved is always a perilous experience, for it is so easy to be disappointed—as happened to me several years ago when I returned to Venice, a seaborne city I had not seen for more than 40 years.  How can anyone be disappointed by Venice?  My answer had little to...

It is an old truism, so ancient that it can probably be traced as far back as Aristotle, that politics is not an exact science.  Indeed, we could say of it what Napoleon, who knew a thing or two about politics, once said with admirable concision of the Art of War: that it is “tout...

Years ago, an Hungarian friend of mine, eager to finish a novel, decided to go to Corsica to find the peace and quiet he craved. Some six months later, after he returned to Paris, I asked him if, during his stay, he had picked up any Corsican. Not much, he admitted, except for a phrase...

In mid-January, those Parisians (like myself) who are still interested in literary matters were aroused from the smug complacency in which we had been wallowing for several weeks, as dazed survivors of the millennial earthquake and the pyrotechnic cancan put on by a shameless Eiffel Tower, by an unexpected thunderclap. The thunderclap was ignited by...

Years ago—so long ago indeed that I hesitate to record the date—a wise lady of Hungarian origin said to me in Vienna: “Oh, to be able to see Venice again for the first time!” It was one of those casual remarks which, behind the smiling mask of a truism, reveals a hidden, monitory depth. Contrary...

We live in an increasingly hysterical, media-manipulated world in which almost nothing is sacred anymore except—the words must be italicized to emphasize their gravity—except popularity, or, to be more precise, what is popular. This was one of the first thoughts that occurred to me when, shortly before 8:00 A.M. (French time) on Sunday, August 31,...

Dubious parallels, like old prejudices, die hard. Ever since Franklin Roosevelt unleashed his legislative whirlwind in the winter and spring of 1933, and more particularly in France since 1986, it has become a standard cliché to judge a new government’s performance on the basis of its achievements during its first 100 days in office. If...

Many American children who are brought up on Mother Goose stories, as well as other fairy tales, may not know that their author was a 17th-century Frenchman, Charles Perrault. They may also not realize that the fable of the melodious grasshopper (in actual fact a cicada) who whiles away the warm summer months in full-throated...

Two troublesome problems have, from time immemorial, bedeviled political regimes of every sort, from the most autocratic despotisms to the most wildly permissive of democracies. The first is the problem of advancing age and the kind of rigor mentis that is apt to afflict rulers during the final years of their “reigns.” The second, closely...

The recent war in the Persian Gulf has at least had the merit of dissipating one or two myths, even if it has also helped to generate new mirages. One of the most pernicious of these myths was the belief, shared by France’s former defense minister, Jean-Pierre Chevenement, and other members of the Franco-Iraqi Friendship...

Twenty years from now, when future historians look back at the 1980’s, some of them may be tempted to call it the “Decade of the Grand Illusion.” For not since les années folles, as the French still call the giddy 1920’s, has the Western world lived in such a state of deceptive euphoria. The besetting...

Twenty years have passed since Charles de Gaulle faded from the scene—for old soldiers, as is well-known, never die. No one can therefore say just how he would have responded to the present crisis in the Persian Gulf But if there is one thing, in this highly mobile situation, that can be said with a...

Seldom in France’s recent history has the difference between what is truly urgent and important and what the public is concerned with been so apparent as during the past twelvemonth. Last October, at a time when international attention was focused on the flood tide of East German refugees that was surging through the breach in...

Five months ago, in its January 1 issue, Time magazine chose to honor Mikhail Gorbachev as the “Man of the Decade.” Although several prominent Frenchmen have suggested that Pope John Paul II has had an equal influence on the tumultuous events in Europe (notably because of his powerful support of the Solidarity movement in Poland),...

We were driving past the Pavilion de Flore, which punctuates the southwestern extremity of the Louvre’s Grande Galerie, when my neighbor suddenly gripped my arm and exclaimed, “Mira! Estos techos! estas chimineas! Hombre! Estupendo!” (Look! Those roofs, those chimneys! Man alive! Stupendous!) Such was the reaction of the famous Spanish cartoonist, Antonio Mingote, to his...

Since May 1981, when they won a sweeping electoral victory in the parliamentary elections, France’s Socialists have suffered two sobering shocks which, while they have brought many of their soaring dreams plummeting to earth, have made many malcontents. The first shock was administered in 1983 when, after two years of ideological debauch, which resulted in...

Ever since Machiavelli, and probably long before that, successful statesmen have known that a plentiful stock of mendacity, as well as guile, are essential for anyone wishing to get ahead in politics. But what many of them may have forgotten during their arduous climb to the summit is that the often bitter accusations they level...

I have never been a flag-waver, nor felt much sympathy for howling mobs, particularly when bent on destruction. But since this year, 1989, marks the bicentennial of the world’s first and most influential revolution (there is hardly a revolutionary notion or motif that cannot be traced back to Danton, Robespierre, Marat, Babeuf, and their spiritual...

It used to be a pleasure to cross the Seine from the Left Bank to the Right, and to pause for a moment by the Louvre to take in that glorious vista, admired by innumerable busloads of tourists and many others besides: the view one gets, framed by the graceful central arch of the diminutive...

T.S. Eliot notwithstanding, April is almost certainly not the crudest month. For the tens of millions of urban dwellers along the Eastern Seaboard who had to sweat it out this summer in conditions of infernal heat, as for the millions of others who watched despairingly as their wheat stems and cornstalks wilted across the parched...