French intellectuals have heaped scorn on a proposal by French President Nicolas Sarkozy to bestow the country’s greatest posthumous honor upon the writer Albert Camus, accusing the rightwing leader of trying to cash in on the thinker’s popularity with little respect for his politics or personality.
Sarkozy said in Brussels last week that he thought it would be an “extraordinary symbol” to transfer the Algerian-born author’s remains to the Pantheon, the resting place for heroes of France, on the 50th anniversary of his death in January.
“I thought it would be a particularly pertinent choice,” he told journalists, while cautioning that no decision had yet been taken. “[It is] a project that is extraordinarily close to my heart.”
An Elysee adviser, Georges-Marc Benamou, told journalists last month that Camus’s “non-conformism in relation to France’s elites” appealed to the president, the son of a Hungarian immigrant who prides himself on not having come from the conventional politician’s background.
But the idea of a rightwing leader often accused of authoritarian tendencies and anti-intellectualism celebrating the life of a man who made a career out of political resistance and literary endeavor has outraged many Camus experts. They suspect Sarkozy is using a golden opportunity to bask in the reflected glory of a charismatic hero, whose ideas are being feted by the mainstream half a century after he died in a car crash.
“I don’t think Albert Camus has any need of Sarkozy. I think Sarkozy has greater need of some intellectual sparkle,” said Olivier Todd, a biographer of Camus, on French radio.
Jeanyves Guerin, another academic, said that while the author of The Outsider and The Fall deserved to be honored, other politicians had had more right to order it than the current French president.
“Sarkozy is the friend of [former US president George W] Bush, [Libyan leader Muammar] Qaddafi, [Russian Prime MinisterVladimir] Putin, [Italian Prime Minister Silvio] Berlusconi. His politics are the antithesis of the values and ideas which Camus defended,” Todd said.
Sarkozy has said he would only be able to act with the approval of Camus’s children, who hold the rights to his estate. The writer is currently buried in the cemetery of Lourmarin, the southern village to which he moved in 1958.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not