In 1948, when I had just become old enough to participate in an election, I cast my first vote for that durable old socialist presidential candidate Norman Thomas. This, of course, was a protest against both Harry Truman and Thomas E. Dewey—a throwaway vote—and I have always cast a Democratic ballot since then, although many times despairingly. And so, this past May, when I received a personal invitation to attend the inaugural of François Mitterrand as the president of France, my great surprise was accompanied by a fleeting wonder whether the honor was not perhaps acknowledgment of that lonely vote cast thirty-three years ago. But of course not: François Mitterrand, perhaps alone among chiefs of state of our time, cares for writers more than the members of any other profession—more than lawyers, more than scientists, more even than politicians—and his invitation to me and to six other writers was a simple confirmation of that concern. This nonpolemical account is that of a partisan.
It is interesting, I think, that among les amis du président—the small group of 125 or so of us who gathered at the Arc de Triomphe for the inaugural ceremony—there were no representatives whatever of the diplomatic corps, no members of international officialdom, and a very minimum of pomp and circumstance. Interesting, too, that there were no French writers—obviously to avoid factionalism and jealousy. Two American writers stood with me, all of us dressed informally in ties and jackets: the playwright Arthur Miller and Elie Wiesel, novelist and essayist, chronicler of the Holocaust. The others, dressed similarly, were the Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez, the Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes, Julio Cortázar from Argentina, and Yachar Kemal of Turkey. Having gathered early, a little after noon under a gray sky threatening rain, we were able to observe the other guests as they arrived beneath the great arch with its engraved roll call of battles.
What these personages represented was unequivocal: the heart and marrow of world socialism. They came almost at random, without ceremony. Willy Brandt arrived, followed by Felipe González, head of Spain's Socialist Workers’ Party. There was Olof Palme of Sweden. After him came socialist leaders Mário Soares of Portugal and Bettino Craxi of Italy. Léopold Senghor, the president of Senegal and also a poet and writer, arrived, and shortly after came Andreas Papandreou, leader of the Socialist Party of Greece. But this was not an all-male gathering. Papandreou walked side by side with a radiant Melina Mercouri, whose post as member of the Greek Parliament now competes with her career as actress. Finally, in rather somber reminder of the tragic events of Chile and the eclipse of democracy there, Hortensia Allende appeared. The widow of the slain president was accompanied by another widow, the wife of Pablo Neruda, Chile's great poet. All in all, it was an extraordinary sight, this gathering of iIluminaries and votaries of a cause which had been lost so often throughout European history that its unexpected triumph here had left everyone looking a little bit stunned and solemn. Plainly the mood was celebratory, but the shock of the win was too great and the people seemed to move unsteadily, a little as if at a funeral.
The arrival of Mitterrand was rather anticlimactic. The new president is the quintessential Frenchman: in his plain dark business suit he would merge into a Parisian crowd as indistinguishably as yet another rather well-fleshed lycée professor or lawyer or even the patron of a good restaurant. Thus he looked undeniably the common citizen when he bent down and placed flowers in front of the Eternal Flame, but the sound of “La Marseillaise” played by the army band raised in all of us, I could tell, the same old familiar chill.
At the luncheon at the Élysée Palace I found myself seated next to Claude Cheysson, who had not yet been named foreign minister but who, in an unpretentious way, gave the impression that he knew he was about to be tapped. He is an engaging and articulate man, and he asked me what I thought of the occasion, especially what my feelings were in regard to having been invited, along with the other writers. I said I was certain that all of the writers felt they were paying their respects to a man who, more than any other leader of a major Western nation, seemed prepared to insist on fuller measures on behalf of human rights, and that his presence on the world stage would be a significant corrective to the general rightward drift of power. In a lighter context, I added, writers were very rarely accorded this kind of recognition, especially in the United States—where, since John F. Kennedy at least, such honor was usually heaped upon rock stars, stand-up comedians, and golf champions—and that it was simply fun to help celebrate this day with a president who was so obviously and passionately in love with the written word. (Richard Eder, Paris correspondent of The New York Times, later alluded to our literary presence as part of the “froth” of nouveau radical chic surrounding Mitterrand, but he is wrong. A concern for culture and the intellect is not mere style with Mitterrand but central to his being.) As for Reagan, I told Cheysson, who seemed puzzled by our leader, it was not at all surprising that Americans would finally elect a movie actor as president. To the contrary, it was inevitable, since the American people have glorified movie stars to the point of lunacy and ever since the dawn of the cinema have yearned for a matinee idol to run the ship of state. Cheysson looked depressed but seemed to understand.
The socialist leveling process did not, at this luncheon, extend to the food, which began with pâté de foie gras truffé des Landes (a delectable dish originating in Mitterrand's native region), accompanied by a Château d'Yquem 1966, and ended, after an incredible raspberry dessert, with Dom Pérignon champagne 1971. Time magazine had reported that Mitterrand is indifferent to food, but here again the reporting was wrong. I was sitting only a few seats away from the president, and one could tell from the gusto with which he put away the elegant white spears of asparagus that he cares at least as much about eating as he does about attractive young women—all of these admirable tastes transcending party politics.
Afterward we stood in the garden of the palace and chatted with Mitterrand. For better or for ill, I was aware of no cordon of security guards, only Mitterrand himself looking a little withdrawn and ill at ease, but enjoying himself nonetheless as he talked with the well-wishers. There was a remarkable atmosphere of casualness. It might have been a garden party almost anywhere in France. The conversation, while not exactly momentous, sticks in the mind. When we spoke of America, Mitterrand seemed as mystified about the country as Cheysson had been about Reagan. “A vast, strange continent,” he said, “so enormous and mysterious, so difficult to understand. But the people are wonderful. I wish I could say the same for your foreign policy.”
When Elie Wiesel asked what it felt like to be president, Mitterrand paused, and a look of honest surprise came to his face. “I still can't believe it,” he murmured. Such fine candor required from me—the old Norman Thomas rooter—a compliment, and I told him that I had voted for him in my heart. He spoke in English for the first time. “I appreciate that,” he said.
Toward the end of the afternoon we were scheduled to join with the other amis du président for a triumphal walk up the short street that leads at a right angle from the boulevard Saint-Michel to the Pantheon. Miller, Wiesel, Fuentes, and myself set off in our car, but the driver became confused and let us off not at a point where we could gain admission to the intersection but at a corner in the midst of the crowd. The throng in the streets was enthusiastic, noisy, wildly cheerful, and unbelievably huge. Both Fuentes, who had been Mexican ambassador to France in the mid-1970s, and Wiesel, who had lived for a long time in Paris after World War II, said they had never seen such droves of people in the streets. Only the very cheerfulness of the mob prevented it from seeming menacing. People were everywhere—along the curbs, in the alleys, and on the sidewalks, waiting for the presidential motorcade to cruise up the boulevard to the intersection.
Meanwhile, the four North American writers were unable to penetrate the crowd or to get past the barricades that firmly lined the boulevard. Over and over again we tried to push through, waving our cards of admittance, but there was simply no way to penetrate the throng. In despair, we were about to give up and go to a bar and look at the proceedings on television when we spied Melina Mercouri in her car, accompanied by Andreas Papandreou, also hopelessly blocked. It was she who saved the entire situation. After a hurried conference with the four of us, she debarked from the car and pushed her way to the barricade. There, with pleading, with Greek gesticulations, and with overwhelming charm, she persuaded a very senior police official to let us through the barricade.
And now ensued the most remarkable procession any of us could remember. The broad boulevard Saint-Michel, utterly deserted but lined on either side by tens of thousands of people. Starting up its center four writers, the president of the Socialist Party of Greece, and Melina Mercouri, whose presence brought forth a vast roar from the crowd as she grinned gloriously and brandished a socialist rose. A heady and thrilling moment indeed, even when—as Fuentes pointed out—the crowd surely thought that the five gentlemen in their raincoats were Mercouri's bodyguards.
This is not the place to reflect on the future of socialism in France. That night at dinner some very rich Parisians I know dined on lobster as if at a wake, casting bleak auguries for the future, their voices heavy with bereavement. The history of the Socialist Party in Europe is hardly one of unalloyed success, and who knows what vicissitudes of the future might mock François Mitterrand's day of glory, as they might mock Ronald Reagan's or, for that matter, that of any man bold and brave enough to seek power. But as a fellow writer I found it very difficult—as we all stood in drizzling rain on the ancient gray steps of the Pantheon, listening to Beethoven's “Ode to Joy” while Mitterrand basked serenely in his hard-earned triumph—not to reciprocate the feeling of the inscription to me he wrote that day in one of his own books: “In gratitude and in hope.”
[Boston Globe, July 26, 1981.]