It would be the easy way out to sum up my semester in Paris by dragging out that dog-eared and dusty Hemingway quotation: "If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast."
And then I could write all about how the beauty of Paris will always remain in my memory as a savory reminder of the blissful time I spent here. You've heard it all before.
But despite Hemingway's searing penchant for conciseness, Paris is a bit more complicated than his little nugget of wisdom suggests. In reality, Paris is certainly a feast, but it's rarely moveable.
When I first came to Paris I expected that, as a developed Western nation on par with the United States, France could easily be compared with America. In my earlier columns I explored the differences between a French and an American McDonald's, the French and American university systems, and even the differing ways French and American kids party, just to name a few topics.
I don't regret this approach. You can't escape your origins. I am an American citizen and my perspective will naturally be that of an American. I am not one for objectivism and I don't see any problem with preferring one way of life over another, even given the inherent biases. Often, I prefer the American way of doing things. Sometimes, however, the French really are onto something.
But the longer I was in Paris, the more I realized that despite the superficial similarities, the French and American ways of life can be so drastically different that they cannot be understood in the context of each other.
That's not to say that comparison is futile, but rather that to really understand the French one can only be in France, and preferably (some say necessarily), in Paris. And this was perhaps where Hemingway was off the mark. Aside from the air of sophistication that comes from telling people you've lived in Paris, what gifts does Paris bestow on those who have lived in her hallowed apartments?
If anything, what I take from Paris may only annoy my American friends and family back home: a snooty predilection for red wine, insatiable cravings for a good baguette, and a poor work ethic (3 schooldays a week for me, 35 hours a week at work for the French).
No, Paris is only a feast in the present tense, here, in this moment. To observe the eloquent dance of manners at a French dinner table, to take in the glittering magnificence of a fully stocked patisserie, to observe how a Parisian can simultaneously be cloyingly polite and devastatingly rude, to witness the incredible pessimism of the French and then have that betrayed by their 85 percent voter participation rate; this is the feast of living in Paris.
The French way of life - dominated by a bloated protectionist state riddled with corruption, cozy but expensive social welfare programs and an always impending threat of collapse - defies all logic to the individualistic American looking in. But to live in the French capital is to see this chaotic symphony harmonize, and to realize that in spite of it all, the French usually make this whole mess work and work surprisingly well.
Once you leave Paris, France ceases to make any sense, and all you're left with is a wistful nostalgia for its aesthetic beauty. Unlike the American way of life, which aches to be transported and transplanted around the world, the magic balancing act of life in France wishes to remain a hidden secret. Try to take the feast with you and it spoils in transit.
To be fair, all is not perfect in this land of paradoxes. In my last column, I predicted that in the imminent French presidential election the French would probably embrace the status quo and the Socialist candidate S?©gol??ne Royal, who had been trailing in the polls, would make a comeback.
But on May 6, the French went to the voting booths and chose the conservative Nicolas Sarkozy as the next president of the Republic. This silver-tongued son of immigrants styles himself as a Margaret Thatcher-type and says the days of France's swollen welfare government are on their way out.
On the way in: a liberalizing economy where people are going to have to work harder, longer and more efficiently. In other words, a place more like the United States.
Surely this wouldn't be such a bad thing. It's been the road toward success for other countries. But as I prepare to leave Paris after five months of living in this odd but surprisingly robust nation, part of me hopes that the famous French stubbornness and aversion to change will manifest itself again and thwart Sarkozy from altering the magical but precarious balance in French life too much.
So it is not to Hemingway or Sarkozy but to another revolutionary French leader that I give the last word on France. Near the end of his career, Charles de Gaulle said of his country, "I have tried to lift France out of the mud. But she will return to her errors and vomitings. I cannot prevent the French from being French."
I don't think I'd have it any other way.
Adam Winograd is a junior majoring in international relations. He can be reached at Adam.Winograd@tufts.edu.
