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 Posted: Mon 07 Nov 2005 05:53 Post subject: France Reconnects to an Old Acquaintance,la Nouvelle Orléans |
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| Quote: | November 5, 2005
France Reconnects to an Old Acquaintance, la Nouvelle Orléans
By ADAM NOSSITER
NEW ORLEANS, Nov. 4 - It's been just over 200 years since the French gave up on their unloved, swampy corner of North America here, but some piece of it has continued to inhabit the Gallic imagination ever since.
That attachment paid off for Louisiana, in money and relief supplies, after Hurricane Katrina, and on Friday it took a more symbolic turn in the form of a quick but apparently heartfelt visit to this stricken city by the French minister of culture, Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres.
The minister came to announce a series of cultural initiatives: a planned exhibition here with the help of the Louvre and other French museums, and benefit concerts across France. But since he was the highest-ranking foreigner to come to this city since the storm (barely trumping Prince Charles, who was due later in the day), his visit was just as much the reaffirmation of a link that has never quite disappeared.
A hundred years ago, there were households here where business was transacted in French and elderly ladies in black guarded against the incursion of English. On Friday, as Mr. Donnedieu de Vabres gazed affectionately at old maps of New Orleans, drawn up by Frenchmen and inscribed in French, he looked with wonder at some of the earliest letters ever dispatched from this city, written in French nearly 300 years ago, and he posed in a French Quarter courtyard that if more Spanish in style than French, at least was distinctly un-American.
Earlier, at the New Orleans City Hall, the minister made a series of French-inflected statements that somehow got at the mysterious way the mother country persists in the spiritual fabric of this city.
Mr. Donnedieu de Vabres, scion of a family of distinguished civil servants, said he had come to New Orleans to "express the solidarity of the French people on a basis very concrete" and to "support some one of your goals." He told the half-baffled local reporters: "You are such a beautiful city, we love and admire you. We want to be à côté de vous" - or by your side.
The New Orleans mayor, C. Ray Nagin, beamed and confessed to his ignorance of French, but said he loved hearing the language spoken anyway. "The French are part of our history, part of our soul, and now they are definitely part of our future," the mayor told reporters, afterward saying France's response to the disaster had been "awesome." As for the projected exhibition of about 50 artworks that the Louvre and other museums are pledging to lend to the museum here, "it's first class, it's world class," Mr. Nagin said, reaching for superlatives.
"This is the first time a country has stepped up with this level of specificity," he said.
The Louvre's director, Henri Loyrette, who accompanied the minister, said the works had not yet been chosen but would make up "a gesture of return, of gratitude."
"Given the special links that exist, this is perfectly normal., Mr. Loyrette said, recalling the solid connections Degas, for one, had with this city.
Help has been both concrete and symbolic. French companies have given $18.5 million in aid. The government has donated 20 tons of emergency supplies. French military divers have helped clear waterways. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is pledging $180,000 to help French-oriented schools in Louisiana, and the city of Clermont-Ferrand alone has given $54,000 to the battered schools of New Orleans. The benefit concerts in France will help displaced Louisiana musicians get back on their feet. "Jazz in New Orleans - that's what the world loves," Mr. Donnedieu de Vabres told the reporters.
Many of the details in this aid initiative remain to be worked out. The French, for example, are pledging to help rebuild the historic Tremé neighborhood, a seedbed of Creole culture, but their role is not yet entirely clear. Mr. Donnedieu de Vabres said France stood ready to help for "everything that has to do with memory, so that we can reconstitute memory."
For the moment, the minister said he had been much affected by his brief view of the devastation here. On the way in, he passed through the browned-out, recently flooded Lakeview area and said he had been very struck by the "disappearance of life" in the neighborhood. "I felt a great sadness," Mr. Donnedieu de Vabres said.
Despite the city's continued, pressing need for outside help, the French are nonetheless not quite prepared to reconsider the deal transacted between Napoleon and Thomas Jefferson in 1803.
"Perhaps I'll pose the question," the minister said, smiling. |
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