Life & Letters: Memoirs as literature

Laurence Sterne remarked rather a long time ago that they order these matters better in France, and happily this is still the case. Fifteen hundred teachers of literature recently protested about the choice of a set book for Terminale L du bac — the exam taken by 17-year-olds. Their concern is perhaps more political than literary. Nevertheless they denounced the choice of book as ‘a negation of our discipline’. ‘We are teachers of literature,’ they said; ‘is it our business to discuss a work of history?’

Laurence Sterne remarked rather a long time ago that they order these matters better in France, and happily this is still the case. Fifteen hundred teachers of literature recently protested about the choice of a set book for Terminale L du bac — the exam taken by 17-year-olds. Their concern is perhaps more political than literary. Nevertheless they denounced the choice of book as ‘a negation of our discipline’. ‘We are teachers of literature,’ they said; ‘is it our business to discuss a work of history?’

The book that has provoked their rebellion is the Mémoires de Guerre of General de Gaulle, which has replaced Pascal’s Pensées on this year’s syllabus. One of their objections will be familiar enough this side of the Channel. The General’s three volumes are, they say, too difficult for their students. And Pascal is easy?

Defending the choice, Max Gallo of the Académie Française remarks scornfully that the objectors have certainly never read a line of the Mémoires — no doubt a good reason for many to protest, since to teach a book it’s preferable that you should have read it. (Gallo, incidentally, is a socialist, and was indeed a communist as a young man.)

One Parisian student said she had been told that de Gaulle was in the tradition of Cardinal de Retz and Chateaubriand, but thought that, though de Gaulle was a great historical figure, his work was likely to be irrelevant to a ‘lycéenne’ like her.