François Mitterrand between myth and criticism: Annie Ernaux

De Gaulle, Mitterrand, Ernaux

Annie Ernaux, The years (Paris: Gallimard, 2008/2010).

François Mitterrand, “Le Coup d'État permanent.” (1964) In works, Vol. 2. (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2016).

Adolf Kimmel, François Mitterrand (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2022).

Michel Winock, François Mitterrand (Paris: Gallimard, 2015).

Alain Duhamel, François Mitterrand: portrait of an artiste (Paris: Flammarion, 1995).

The comparison of Annie Ernaux' The years (2008) with François Mitterrand's text directed against President De Gaulle Le Coup d'État permanent (1964) is worthwhile because two texts of vastly different genres—the impersonal autobiography and the political pamphlet—capture the same mechanism: the personalization of republican power in a single figure. However, they do so from opposing perspectives and with reversed emphasis, and it is precisely from this reflection that the comparison gains its power. Mitterrand dissects de Gaulle's charismatic rule from the outside, as an accuser—the identification of one man with France, the quasi-monarchical structure of the institutions, the invoked "legitimacy" as a disguise for an illegitimate origin. Four decades later, Ernaux describes the same phenomenon from within, from the position of the collective "on" that emotionally surrenders to the charismatic figure—but now in relation to Mitterrand himself, who in 1981 becomes the projection screen for precisely that personalized hope which he had once exposed as a danger. Specifically, this juxtaposition demonstrates that the Fifth Republic structurally tends to transform even its declared opponents into monarchist-connoted savior figures, and that Ernaux's seemingly affirmative account of May 1981 carries from the outset a critical index that already contains within it the seeds of later disillusionment. By juxtaposing the analytical external perspective of the accuser with the affective internal perspective of the collective subject, not only does a biographical irony become visible, but also a historical-political structural feature of the Fifth Republic itself – and therein lies the insight that motivates this article.

In The years In Ernaux's 2008 novel, there are no characters in the classical sense. The book tells the story of an impersonal "on" and a "nous," a collective voice into which the narrator's autobiography dissolves. Within this framework, François Mitterrand is not a character to whom Ernaux lends psychological depth, but rather a recurring point of reference against which the book traces the changing collective condition over more than thirty years. He appears in almost every phase—from the mid-1960s until his death in 1996 and beyond—and undergoes a movement that exemplifies Ernaux's poetics: The great political figure becomes a mirror in which the shifting hopes, euphorias, and disillusionments of a left-wing collective can be read. Therefore, Mitterrand's significance for understanding the book can only be demonstrated by following this development.

Biographers Kimmel, Winock, and Duhamel paint a remarkably consistent picture of the arc that begins on May 10, 1981, with the first left-wing presidency in France. Winock describes the election victory as the fulfillment of the hopes of a left wing that had only recently embraced Mitterrand, and emphasizes how much the "peuple de gauche" (left-wing people) experienced a belated return to 1936 and the liberation in the atmosphere of change. Kimmel particularly highlights how exaggerated the expectations were: At the party congress in Valence in October 1981, speakers openly demanded that "heads must fall," and even Mitterrand himself, at times swept away by the intoxication of his near-absolute power, allowed himself to be carried away by class-struggle rhetoric and allusions to Robespierre and Lenin. Duhamel most sharply articulates the central promise: During the election campaign, Mitterrand presented himself as the "great exorcist of unemployment," as a social engineer who would solve the employment problem. This is precisely where all three locate the root of the later disillusionment. With the austerity plans of June 1982 and especially March 1983 – the “tournant de la rigueur” – the lyricism of change tipped over into the “sad logic of facts.” ¹Duhamel precisely dates the end of the "romanticism of change" to five or six seasons and shows how the relentless rise in unemployment (over three million in 1995) destroyed the social promise; at Mitterrand's death in 1996, the French admired the man but condemned his work as "terrible failing." Kimmel summarizes Mitterrand's own admission—"In 1981, we may have been dreaming"—and describes the transition from the 110 campaign promises to the "mixed economy" as the entry into a "phase of realism." It is noteworthy that the biographers do not primarily interpret the break as cynicism: Duhamel sees Mitterrand more as a "victim of his own talent," who believed in the efficacy of pure political willpower and overestimated his economic leeway.

Reading these biographical findings alongside The yearsAn almost complete overlap of the movement's narratives is striking—despite a crucial difference in perspective. While biographers reconstruct the events from the outside, based on polls, party conference minutes, and economic data, Ernaux presents them from within, from the lived perspective of the collective "on." Her lyrical depiction of election night—the tears, the symbols, the need to "revel in symbols and nostalgia"—is, in a sense, the affective inner dimension of that exuberance which Kimmel documents as collective euphoria and Mitterrand's own intoxication. And Ernaux's bitter assessment of the "rigueur"—that May 10th becomes an "embarrassing, almost ridiculous memory," that the "event never happened"—corresponds precisely to what Duhamel describes as the "grande tromperie" and "sentiment d'avoir été dupé" of ordinary people. The juxtaposition is therefore not a coincidental parallel, but a methodological complementarity: the non-fiction works provide the causal chains (oil shock, capital flight, the pressure to integrate into Europe, the abandonment of the Keynesian program) that appear in Ernaux's text only as a diffuse feeling of alienation ("the state was once again distancing itself from us"). Conversely, Ernaux provides what the biographies structurally lack: the lived experience of faith and its extinction, the experience of how a political promise first solidifies and then dissolves in the consciousness of a collective subject. The very markers of distance that Ernaux incorporates into the euphoria (the hovering "semblaient," the retrospective "peut-être") can be linked to Duhamel and Kimmel's interpretation that Mitterrand lied less than he overestimated his own power—both readings describe a hope that, from the moment it arose, already contained the seeds of disappointment. Thus, analytical biography and literary collective autobiography complement each other to form a more complete picture of the same historical process.

The early Mitterrand: a name, a gesture of rejection

At his first appearance, in the context of the 1965 presidential election, Mitterrand was little more than a name with a vague historical aura:

On ne s'avisait pas d'évaluer ce qu'on vivait par rapport aux discours politiques ni aux événements du monde. On this woman's pleasure as a voter against Gaulle for the candidate, François Mitterrand, doesn't have the name plongeait confused in the French Algérie années. Dans le cours de l'existence personnelle, the history is not significant. On était seulement, selon les jours, heureux ou malheureux.

No one thought of measuring their experiences against political speeches or world events. They simply indulged in the pleasure of voting against de Gaulle and for the dashing candidate whose name vaguely evoked the years of French Algeria: François Mitterrand. In the course of their personal lives, history meant nothing. They were simply happy or unhappy, depending on the day.

These few sentences already contain the basic premise that shapes the entire book. Mitterrand appears not as a program, not as a conviction, but as "the pleasure of voting against de Gaulle." ² – as a negative gesture. He is not chosen for something, but against someone. The vagueness with which his name reaches into the past is telling: it "reached vaguely down into the years of French Algeria." ³Ernaux discreetly alludes here to Mitterrand's problematic role as Minister of the Interior and Justice during the Algerian War, without spelling it out – the word "confusément" deliberately keeps the memory vague, just as the political awareness of the young "we" itself is still undeveloped. The third sentence is crucial: "In the course of personal existence, history meant nothing." ⁴Politics and history are external in this phase; they do not touch private happiness or unhappiness. From the outset, Mitterrand marks the threshold between private and collective time—that threshold whose gradual blurring is the real subject of The years at a hunt.

Mitterrand appears a second time in the same early phase, embedded in the chatter of petit-bourgeois family meals. Here, his function is primarily one of contrast: his near-defeat of de Gaulle in the runoff election had "unleashed the dam of disrespect." ⁵ and the general's "sudden senility" was revealed ⁶, which the Chained duck He was now simply called "Charles le Ballotté." Mitterrand is less a person here than a catalyst: his mere existence as a serious opponent demonstrates that Gaullist supremacy is finite. This already suggests that he represents less himself than a possibility—the possibility of a different France.

1974: the duel, the fading hope

With the televised duel against Giscard in the spring of 1974, Mitterrand moved for the first time into the center of a collective horizon of expectations, which at the same time was already becoming clouded:

Entre le 11 September 73 – les manifestations qu'on vait suivies sous le soleil contre Pinochet après l'assassinat d'Allende tandis que la droite jubilait de voir terminée “la triste expérience chilienne” – et le printemps 1974 – installés devant la télé à regarder ce qui était présenté comme le grand événement, Mitterrand and Giscard face à face –, on availé de croire qu'il y aurait un new mois de mai.

Between September 11, 73 – the demonstrations against Pinochet that people followed under the sun after the assassination of Allende, while the right wing rejoiced at seeing the end of ‘the sad Chilean experiment’ – and the spring of 1974 – sitting in front of the television and watching what was presented as the great event, Mitterrand and Giscard face to face – people had stopped believing that there would be a new month of May.

Mitterrand appears here as the endpoint of a development that leads away from the revolutionary fervor of May '68. The duel is presented as "what was portrayed as the great event." ⁷ Introduced – the distancing wording already betrays the suspicion of media manipulation. Between the coup against Allende and this spring, people stopped believing in "a new month of May". ⁸Mitterrand is thus inscribed, even before he seizes power, into a logic of diminishment: he is not the revolution, but its institutional, parliamentary substitute – that which remains when the belief in a great collective awakening fades. This early skepticism is important for interpretation because it prepares the ground for later disappointment: the euphoria of 1981 is not a naive beginning, but already a resurgence against a backdrop of doubt.

1981: Mitterrand as a mythical projection surface

The true climax of the Mitterrand passages is the election night of May 10, 1981. Here, Ernaux's prose unmistakably shifts into the lyrical, almost liturgical. Mitterrand no longer embodies a person, but rather the return of history itself.

After all, at the end of the day, at the end of the day, the young people, the women, the ouvriers, the professors, the artists and the homosexuals, the infirmières, the young men and women were born facteurs, and on availability envie de la faire à new. C'était 36, the front populaire des parents, la libération, un 68 qui aurait réussi. On availability besoin de lyric et d'emotion, de la rose et du Panthéon, de Jean Jaurès et de Jean Moulin, du Temps des cerises et des Corons de Pierre Bachelet. The mots vibrants qui nous semblaient sincères parce qu'on ne les avait pas entendus depuis longtemps. Il fallait réoccuper le passé, reprendre la Bastille, se saouler de symboles et de nostalgie avant d'affronter l'avenir. Les larmes de bonheur de Mendès France quand Mitterrand l'embrasse, c'était les nôtres.

After all this time, on the evening of a hazy Sunday in May, which erased the defeat of the previous time, history was revisited, with a crowd of people—the young men, the women, the workers, the teachers, the artists, the homosexuals, the nurses, the postmen—and there was a desire to relive it. It was 36, the Popular Front of Parents, the liberation, a 68 that would have succeeded. There was a need for lyricism and emotion, for the Rose and the Panthéon, for Jean Jaurès and Jean Moulin, for Pierre Bachelet's Temps des cerises and Corons. Vibrant words that seemed sincere to us because we hadn't heard them for so long. We had to reclaim the past, recapture the Bastille, revel in symbols and nostalgia before facing the future. The tears of joy shed by Mendès France when Mitterrand embraced him—those were ours.

This passage is the heart of the entire Mitterrand narrative. Several techniques intertwine. First, the merging of time periods: 1981 is not simply 1981, but simultaneously 1936, the liberation of 1944, and "a '68 that would have succeeded." ⁹Mitterrand's victory becomes the focal point for all the lost or unfulfilled hopes of the French left—it condenses the collective memory of all previous uprisings. Secondly, there is the accumulation of symbols: the rose (emblem of the Socialists), the Panthéon (Mitterrand's famous walk to the graves of Jaurès, Moulins, and Schoelcher), the cherry time (The Song of the Paris Commune). Mitterrand is here a mere projection surface, a container for "lyricism and sentimentality." ¹⁰Thirdly, and crucial to Ernaux's method, the collective appropriation of individual feeling: "The tears of joy of Mendès France [...], those were ours." ¹¹The tears of one individual become the tears of the collective. Mitterrand is the vehicle through which the "on" re-enters "history." ¹², after feeling excluded from power for twenty-three years.

Significantly, even into this euphoria an element of doubt penetrates: "Vibrant words that seemed sincere to us because they had not been heard for a long time." ¹³The “semblance” leaves it ambiguous whether the sincerity was genuine or merely a result of long deprivation. The whole process is described as “intoxicating oneself with symbols and nostalgia.” ¹⁴ described – a euphoria, therefore, whose sobering effect is already taken into account.

In addition, the description of the election poster shows how much Mitterrand has become an image: Around him hovers "the aura of sovereignty, to which his portrait against the background of a village with a church tower lent the power of a self-evidence rooted in old memories." ¹⁵The socialist candidate is inscribed into a deep national memory through the rural-ecclesiastical imagery – Mitterrand presents himself as the embodiment of the “force tranquille”, and Ernaux precisely registers how this staging works.

The turning point of 1983: from savior to administrator

Precisely because expectations were so high, the change is abrupt. With the policy of "rigueur," the tone shifts:

L'atmosphère tournait à la sévérité, le discours - "rigueur" et "austérité" - à la punition, comme si avoir plus de temps, d'argent et de droits était illégitime, qu'il faille revenir à un ordre naturel dicté par les économistes. Mitterrand ne parlait plus you “peuple de gauche”. […] May the 10th of May, a souvenir gênant, presque dérisoire. Les nationalizations, les augmentations de wages, la réduction du temps de travail, tout ce qu'on avait cru être la réalisation de la justice et l'avènement d'une autre société nous paraissait avoir relevé d'une vaste cérémonie de commémoration du Front populaire, de culte rendu à des idéaux enfuis auxquels les célébrants, peut-être, ne croyaient pas. L'événement n'avait pas eu lieu. L'État s'éloignait à nouveau de nous.

The atmosphere shifted to severity, the discourse—"toughness" and "austerity"—to punishment, as if it were illegitimate to have more time, money, and rights, as if one had to return to a natural order dictated by economists. Mitterrand no longer spoke of the "people of the left." But May 10th became an embarrassing, almost ludicrous memory. The nationalizations, the wage increases, the reduction of working hours—everything we had considered the realization of justice and the dawn of a different society—seemed to have sprung from a grand commemoration of the Popular Front, a cult of vanished ideals in which the celebrants perhaps did not believe. The event had not taken place. The state was once again distancing itself from us.

Herein lies the central transformation of the Mitterrand figure: from mythical savior to mere administrator of a “natural order dictated by economists” ¹⁶. That Mitterrand “no longer spoke of the ‘people of the left’” ¹⁷ The linguistic signature of the betrayal is the renunciation of the one word that had sealed the bond with the "we." Particularly revealing is the retrospective reinterpretation from 1981: what was just then "the realization of justice" ¹⁸ It seemed, but now appears as a "major memorial service". ¹⁹, as a cult of vanished ideals, “in which the celebrants may not have believed” ²⁰The added "perhaps" is devastating: in retrospect, it calls into question the sincerity of the entire moment. The terse statement "The event had not taken place" ²¹ This almost completely negates the euphoria of the previous section. Mitterrand here represents the breaking of a promise – and thus proof that the hope that politics could transform collective life was an illusion.

The second term: “Tonton” and getting used to it

In the following years, Mitterrand lost his messianic aura and became a familiar fixture of the era. After the change of power in 1986, the simple statement was: "Mitterrand was loved again." ²² People love him again, but only because the right wing brings even less happiness. Before his re-election in 1988, resignation is complete.

The whole shape, par report à 81, the heart is not like this, no one's eyes are not attentive to the viewer, and the Mitterrand guard is waiting for Chirac. Il était Tonton, rassurant, un homme du center, entouré de ministres bcbg, dont les gens de droite ne craignaient plus rien.

In any case, compared to '81, the heart wasn't in it; we had neither expectations nor hope, only the desire to keep Mitterrand instead of getting Chirac. He was toned, reassuring, a man of the center, surrounded by fine ministers whom the right-wingers no longer feared.

The contrast to 1981 is deliberately stark: "compared to '81, the heart wasn't there." ²³The bearer of collective salvation has become "Tonton" – the cozy uncle, "reassuring". ²⁴, “a man of the middle” ²⁵, before whom “the people of the right no longer feared anything” ²⁶The 1988 election is no longer a source of hope, but rather damage control: "Keep Mitterrand instead of getting Chirac." ²⁷Following his re-election, the sentiment was expressed as follows: "Mitterrand's re-election restored our peace. It was better to live under the left without expecting anything than to constantly get upset under the right." ²⁸Mitterrand now represents the opposite of 1981: not a new beginning, but "calm". ²⁹, life “without expecting anything” ³⁰It has become a habit, a comforting background presence in an era where politics no longer holds any promise.

The late Mitterrand: embodiment of decay and time

In the end, Mitterrand transforms into an allegory of transience itself. The aging, ailing president becomes indistinguishable from the book's central theme: the passage of time.

C'était a vieil homme exténué aux yeux enfoncés trop brilliants, à la voix détimbrée, a dépouille assist de chef d'État dont les aveux sur son cancer et sa fille secrète signaient l'abandon du politique, obligeaient à ne plus voir en lui, par-delà ses compromises et ses ruses, que la terrible figuration du “temps qui reste”.

He was an exhausted old man with sunken eyes that shone too brightly, with a toneless voice, a seated shell of a head of state whose confessions about his cancer and his secret daughter sealed the end of his political career, forcing people to see in him, beyond his compromises and his schemes, only the terrible embodiment of 'time remaining'.

Mitterrand's physical decline – "an exhausted old man" ³¹, “a sitting shell” ³² – becomes the visible embodiment of passing time. His confessions about cancer and his illegitimate daughter seal the “abandonment of the political.” ³³To the extent that the human being emerges, the politician disappears. The formula "the terrible embodiment of 'remaining time'" ³⁴ This is the key: Mitterrand no longer embodies a political direction, but rather the memento mori that hangs over the entire book. His disappearance from politics foreshadows his death.

This death in 1996 is recounted with great objectivity, yet elevated to a collective event:

On regardait without comprendre l'énorme titre à la une du Monde, FRANÇOIS MITTERRAND EST MORT. La foule was reformait come en December, sur la place de la Bastille, dans la night. On continuait d'avoir besoin d'être ensemble et c'était la solitude. The evening of May 10, 81, in the town of Château-Chinon, Mitterrand, was heard by the President of the Republic, and was called “quelle histoire”.

They gazed, without fully grasping it, at the enormous headline on the front page of Le Monde: FRANÇOIS MITTERRAND IS DEAD. The crowd gathered again, just as it had in December, in the Place de la Bastille, at night. The need to be together persisted, and it was loneliness that fueled it. It came back to us that on the evening of May 10, 81, in the town hall of Château-Chinon, when Mitterrand learned he had been elected President of the Republic, he had murmured, "What a story!"

The circle is complete: The crowd at the Bastille is reminiscent of the jubilation of 1981, but now the gathering is only "loneliness". ³⁵And the famous "what a story!" ³⁶ The memory of election night 1981 carries a double meaning – it refers both to the improbable political career and, in Ernaux's words, to the history of an entire era that was linked to this man.

What Mitterrand is for understanding The years means

From these milestones emerges Mitterrand's true significance for the book. First, he represents a timescale. In the concluding section, Ernaux notes that the media divide people into "generations of de Gaulle, Mitterrand, '68, and the baby boom." ³⁷, and elsewhere it says about the young people: “Mitterrand was their de Gaulle, they had grown up with him, fourteen years, that was probably enough” ³⁸Mitterrand structures the collective biography; his fourteen years in office, as Ernaux writes, congeal into a “bloc” of congealed time, from which one can see how much one has aged.

Secondly, Mitterrand embodies the life cycle of a political hope. No other figure in the book traverses such a complete arc: from the vague name to the mythical savior figure of 1981, the disappointing administrator of "rigidity," the reassuring "tonton," and finally to the allegory of death. This arc condenses the entire affective history of the French left between 1965 and 1996—the flaring, fading, and eventual extinguishing of the belief that politics could transform collective life.

Thirdly, and most profoundly, Mitterrand serves the core principle of the book: the indistinguishability of personal and national time. Mendès France's tears are "ours." ³⁹Mitterrand's physical decline is the "embodiment of the remaining time" ⁴⁰, and thus also of his own fleeting life; his death triggers the same need for community, which immediately reveals itself as loneliness. Mitterrand is the place where grand history and private aging coincide. That is precisely the program of The yearsAn “impersonal autobiography” in which the self exists only as the intersection of collective experiences. By recounting Mitterrand’s rise and fall, Ernaux simultaneously recounts the rise and fall of a hope, the passing of an era, and—subtly embedded within it—her own aging. Mitterrand is thus not just one of the book’s themes among others, but one of its central pivots, where the poetics of impersonal autobiography are most clearly revealed.

Mitterrand as author and as myth: Le Coup d'État permanent and The years

Mitterrand's arguments against de Gaulle (1964)

Before a comparison can be drawn, the two strands of Mitterrand's indictment against de Gaulle must be examined. Le Coup d'État permanent (1964) to reconstruct.

The first argument concerns the illegitimate origin of power. De Gaulle's return in May 1958 was not an "arbitrage" between a humiliated state and arrogant vassals, as the official narrative claims, but a coup d'état: De Gaulle inspired a political conspiracy and exploited a military mutiny to overthrow the existing—albeit decaying—republican order. "From May 13 to June 3, 1958, General de Gaulle carried out a first coup d'état." ⁴¹Mitterrand interprets the term "legitimacy," which de Gaulle incessantly invokes, as a symptom of a guilty conscience: those who constantly have to justify their origins rule "par effraction," by intrusion. Mitterrand places de Gaulle in a Bonapartist tradition—he compares him to "a Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte inhabited by the bourgeois virtues of a Louis-Philippe I." ⁴² —and sees in Gaullism the synthesis of monarchical megalomania and Jacobin passion for unity, thus the classic matrix of “personal power”. The constitutional referendum victory of 1958 was a “manière de sacre”, a self-coronation act organized according to the Napoleonic plebiscite model.

The second argument concerns the erosion of the rule of law after the seizure of power. The real "permanent coup d'état" is not the singular event of 1958, but its daily continuation: "a coup d'état every day." ⁴³De Gaulle reduced the Prime Minister to a mere order-taker – he was “his adjutant, the others his henchmen.” ⁴⁴ —disempowering Parliament by stripping it of its legislative powers and confining it to a “ghetto d’interdits,” and gradually neutralizing every check and balance: the Constitutional Council, the Conseil d’État, the independent judiciary. What remains, according to Mitterrand's image, is a “monarch surrounded by his domestic staff.” ⁴⁵ towards a deceived people. The famous taboo term also belongs here. Mitterrand openly calls the regime a dictatorship: "I call the Gaullist regime a dictatorship because, all things considered, it most closely resembles one, because it inexorably tends towards a continuous strengthening of personal power, because it no longer depends on him to change course." ⁴⁶He further intensifies the accusation by speaking of a "dictature qui s'ignore," a dictatorship that does not acknowledge itself, which he considers more dangerous precisely for that reason than an openly declared one. He interprets the "secteur réservé" in foreign policy, which the constitution makes no provision for, as proof that France's foreign policy no longer belongs to the nation, but to "a single man and, worse still, a lonely man." ⁴⁷. Mitterrand's distinction is important: his accusation is directed against de Gaulle's personalized exercise of power, not against the republican institutions as such – a distinction that anticipates his own later term as President of the Fifth Republic.

Mitterrand relies primarily on historical analogy: He systematically places de Gaulle in the same line as Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte and Pétain, invoking the centuries-old republican trauma of "Bonapartism" and "Césarism" to delegitimize the general as a reincarnation of personalized power. Secondly, he employs the rhetorical twist of the key term: He turns the concept of "legitimacy," invoked by de Gaulle, against its originator by interpreting it as a symptom of a guilty conscience, and he connects the word "dictator" to the general through the paradoxical formula of "the dictatorship that does not know itself." Thirdly, he uses ironic denigration and antithetical imagery, for example, when the prime minister is reduced to a mere "adjutant" and the ministers to "folks," or when the regime appears in the image of a monarch surrounded by "domestic servants." Fourth, he utilizes the anticlimax and intensification inherent in the title itself: transforming the singular "coup d'État" of 1958 into a permanent, daily-renewing usurpation through the formula "coup d'État de tous les jours." Finally, he lends literary momentum to the indictment through a pamphlet-like tone, scholarly allusions, and rhythmic periodic language – the mixture of legal precision, classical references, and polemical verve makes the text a "plaidoirie à charge," an artfully composed indictment against de Gaulle's personal claim to power.

The same phenomenon from two sides

A revealing tension arises when one compares Ernaux's Mitterrand with the Mitterrand who himself took up his pen in 1964. Le Coup d'État permanent Mitterrand leveled precisely the same criticism of the personalized, quasi-monarchical presidential regime that he would later embody as president. His central accusation against de Gaulle was that he had established a regime in which France's foreign policy no longer belonged to the nation, "but to a single man and, worse still, a lonely man." ⁴⁸It is precisely this reduction of the Republic to a single figure that Ernaux describes in Mitterrand's 1981 post – in an affirmative way – as the poster with "the aura of a sovereignty […] rooted in old memories". ⁴⁹, the savior in whom collective hopes converge.

The two books thus illuminate the same phenomenon from opposite perspectives. Mitterrand analyzes the mechanics of charismatic power from the outside, as an accuser; he exposes de Gaulle's "legitimacy" as a rhetorical need of a man who rules "par effraction," by intrusion. Ernaux, on the other hand, describes the same charismatic power from within, from the perspective of the collective "on" that submits to it. What Mitterrand denounces in 1964 as a deception—the identification of one man with France, which he identifies as the Gaullist keystone: "he will identify France with de Gaulle." ⁵⁰ —, the we in The years Two decades later, the focus shifts to Mitterrand himself. The irony is both historical and literary: the most incisive theorist of the dangers of "personal power" becomes the projection screen for precisely that personalized hope which he once dissected.

What the comparison means for the interpretation of The years means

This finding deepens our understanding of Ernaux's method. For Ernaux was not unaware of the irony. Her account of the Mitterrand cult of 1981, as has been shown, contains, from the outset, an inherent doubt – "words that seemed sincere to us." ⁵¹ —and the subsequent disillusionment of the “rigueur” confirms that the collective subject had been taken in by a staged performance. If one reads The years with Le Coup d'État permanent In the background, Mitterrand's rise to "Tonton" and finally to "terrible figuration du 'temps qui reste'" appears as the ultimate confirmation of his own early writings: The Fifth Republic transforms even its declared opponents into monarchist figures. Mitterrand himself never denied this continuity – he allowed Le Coup d'État permanent even reissue it during his presidency.

For understanding The years Does this comparison mean that Ernaux's Mitterrand not only encapsulates the affective history of the left, but also reveals the structural paradox of the Fifth Republic: an institutional system whose critique and embodiment can coincide in the same person? Ernaux thus writes, without explicitly stating it, the history of a republic that repeatedly tempts its citizens—and its presidents—to personify the political in a single figure?

1. “Triste logic of failures”>>>
2. “pleaser of voters against de Gaulle”>>>
3. “Plongeait confusion dans les années de l'Algérie française”>>>
4. “Dans le cours de l'existence personnelle, l'Histoire ne signifiait pas”>>>
5. “débondé l'irrévérence”>>>
6. “brusquement révélé la sénilité”>>>
7. “This is present as the grand event”>>>
8. “un nouveau mois de mai”>>>
9. “Un 68 qui aurait réussi”>>>
10. “lyrism and emotion”>>>
11. “Les larmes de bonheur de Mendès France [...], c'était les nôtres”>>>
12. “dans l'Histoire”>>>
13. “The mots vibrants qui nous semblaient sincères parce qu'on ne les avait pas entendus depuis longtemps”>>>
14. “Se saouler of symbols and de nostalgia”>>>
15. “The aura of souveraineté à laquelle son portrait sur fond d'un village with a clocher d'église conférait la force d'une évidence enracinée dans de vieilles mémoires”>>>
16. “Ordre naturel dicté par les économistes”>>>
17. “ne parlait plus you 'peuple de gauche'”>>>
18. “the realization of justice”>>>
19. “vast ceremony of commemoration”>>>
20. “Auxquels les célébrants, peut-être, ne croyaient pas”>>>
21. “L'événement n'avait pas eu lieu”>>>
22. “On re-aimait Mitterrand”>>>
23. “par rapport à 81, le heart n'y était pas”>>>
24. "racial">>>
25. “un homme du centre”>>>
26. “les gens de droite ne craignaient plus rien”>>>
27. “Garder Mitterrand plutôt que d'avoir Chirac”>>>
28. "The réélection de Mitterrand nous rendait à la tranquillité. Il valait mieux vivre sans rien attendre sous la gauche que s'énerver continuellement sous la droite">>>
29. "tranquility">>>
30. “sans rien attendre”>>>
31. “un vieil homme exténué”>>>
32. “une dépouille assise”>>>
33. “l’abandon du politique”>>>
34. "la terrible figuration du 'temps qui reste'">>>
35. "solitude">>>
36. “quelle histoire”>>>
37. “générations de Gaulle, Mitterrand, 68, baby boom”>>>
38. “Mitterrand is a member of Gaulle in Europe, he is available to the great with joy, he has everything, he has two assets.”>>>
39. “les nôtres”>>>
40. “figuration du temps qui reste”>>>
41. “From May 13th to June 3rd, 1958, the general de Gaulle resigned and became a premier coup d'État”>>>
42. “Un Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte qu'habiteraient les vertus bourgeoises de Louis-Philippe Ier”>>>
43. “a coup d'état de all les jours”>>>
44. “The Prime Minister is the aide de camp, the other ses ordonnances”>>>
45. “A monarque entouré de ses corps domestics”>>>
46. “J'appelle le régime Gaulliste dictature parce que, tout compte fait, c'est à cela qu'il ressemble le plus, parce que c'est vers un renforcement continu du pouvoir personnel qu'inéluctablement il tend, parce qu'il ne dépend plus de lui de changer de cap”>>>
47. “A un homme seul et, pis encore, à un homme seul”>>>
48. “Mais à un homme seul et, pis encore, à un homme seul”>>>
49. “The aura of sovereignty [...] enracinée in many memories”>>>
50. “Identifier of France to de Gaulle”>>>
51. “des mots qui nous semblaient sincères”>>>