Waterland by Graham Swift

Author:Graham Swift [Swift, Graham]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
ISBN: 9780307829801
Google: aDovoJ5x5WMC
Amazon: B00957T5RS
Publisher: Vintage Books
Published: 1983-09-19T07:00:00+00:00

23

Quatorze Juillet

BUT let us not overestimate the actual character or the actual achievements of the Fall of the Bastille. Seven prisoners released (that was all the fortress contained): two madmen, four forgers and a hapless roué. Seven heads – the governor and six of the defending garrison – paraded on pikes. Two hundred or so of the besiegers killed or wounded. The stones of the Bastille itself, a mountain of rubble, carried away by professional contractors and disposed of at a tidy profit …

No, the significance of this tawdry conquest lies not in its tangible gains but in its symbolic value. The king’s citadel captured by the king’s people. Hence that famous tricoloured flag – the red and blue of the city of Paris holding under close guard the white of the house of Bourbon – which became the portable token of revolution, just as the fallen Bastille became its historical archetype. Of revolution – though it was to be waved in the decades to come through two Empires and to find itself flying more and more before the gusty and oppressive winds of nationalism, and even to be crossed in fellowship, in 1904, with the likewise red, white and blue flag of (the old enemy) imperialist and monarchical Britain.

Ah, the idols and icons, the emblems and totems of history. How when we knock down one, another rises in its place. How we can’t get away – even if you can, Price – from our fairy-tales. How even in your teacher’s childhood (if you can picture such a thing), during a great Depression which returns to haunt us in our own unprosperous times, Empire Day was regularly celebrated with no small enthusiasm (and no reference to brewery fires).

And we all know what the French do (seven heads on pikes and a mountain of rubble) every July the fourteenth.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.