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Throughout this week, writers will present profiles of the main candidates in the French Presidential election. Today François Fillon is portrayed.
He could be a character in one of Balzac's novels. It's easy to see him as a distant cousin of Rastignac. If Angoulême has become Sablé-sur-Sarthe, then studying law has, in similar fashion, led to ministerial briefcases in fine Moroccan leather.
Our country loves trajectories of this kind, which launch austere provincialism into the richly adorned palaces of the Republic. A lawyer's s son aiming for the highest office is impressive.
And the persistence of a country landowner, denigrated as a "collaborator" by a doubting president, evokes admiration.
These intrepid journeys, without which any public career would be monotonous and dull, have certainly made his career interesting.
This local boy's loyalty to his department, while so many others were sent off at the last minute to unfamiliar constituencies, lent his ambition a soft edge and tempered the brutality of his conquering strides.
It imbued his presence with a sense of "France forever" – which was charming.
Father of a big family, married to a discreet Welsh woman, he kept both the show-offs and the fickle at bay. When he heard about the death of Philippe Séguin, he shed tears in his Matignon office. Actually, he is a rather sentimental Rastignac.
His predilection for the oxymoron culminated in his photogenic wearing of a forester's jacket with a Mandarin collar – an unlikely synthesis of tradition and utopia.
Suddenly, the saga was magically transformed into tragedy. We leaped from fiction to drama. Every day, since 25 January, we have been theater audiences. A play is being enacted, and no one knows how it is going to end … or succeed. This play takes us back to Ancient Greece. Oh, and one of its main characters is called Penelope.
It's astounding, how nothing has changed since Sophocles or Euripides. They could have written the tragedy that is currently being played. Judge for yourselves.
Having achieved fame and fortune (namely an unexpected and massive victory in the primaries), the hero becomes prey to hubris. Victory is achieved. The Élysée is within reach. Believing himself to be the equal of the gods, he arouses their jealousy. From now on, he will be their plaything.
Fate (known today as justice) swoops down upon him and his family (this is typically Ancient Greece: wife and family suffer, too). To each his punishment. When Agamemnon believed himself equal to Artemis, she prevented the wind from filling the sails of his boat and he had to abandon his campaign against Troy.
Tantalus stole nectar and ambrosia and was condemned to eternal suffering. Sisyphus will push his boulder uphill forever.
As for François Fillon, he sees the prosecutor's file of charges getting thicker every week. "Him, too!" states one-half of the country, disillusioned, while the other half sees proof of a cover-up.
When he defined the rules of tragedy, Aristotle maintained that tragedy must include several plot twists. The tragedy being played out presently exemplifies this. Newspapers take turns to disclose proceedings, investigate paychecks, and gawp at the excessive generosity of friends.
We realize that we don't know anything about the man who, for five years, was the country's Prime Minister. Blame falls upon an impotent hero. The nation's blood pressure rises. Disasters (called revelations these days) occur one after the other.
The private man sees his secrets displayed in public. The solitary man, who has always preferred to drive alone and to climb mountains without a guide, must now surround himself with experts in law, in communication, in rebirth – in everything.
And, just like in Ancient Greek theater, the Chorus (known these days as journalists) take it upon themselves to describe scenes that would be unbearable for the public to watch.
So we have the arraignment brought forward by 24 hours to spare us the spectacle of a distraught defendant emerging from a judge's chambers. Our frail selves make do with an image-less account of the proceedings on the daily news.
The tragic hero pays dearly for his flaws. And so François Fillon finds himself criticized for certain arrangements which, though frequent and perhaps even legitimate, were not really quite appropriate. The vengeance of the gods is merciless.
The term "tragedy", however, does not necessarily mean that the story ends badly. The tragic hero evokes terror because of his bad actions, admiration for his determination, and pity because of the way fate hounds him. All these feelings result, if the play is successful, in a catharsis.
In La Route antique des hommes pervers, René Girard compares the destinies of Oedipus and Job, two popular heroes who both became scapegoats. Two lives similarly turned upside down: outrage is followed by devotion. Their journeys diverge, however, in the manner in which they are stigmatized by their communities.
Oedipus recognizes his faults while Job, protesting his innocence to the very end, sees his misfortunes increase.
Half-Job, half-Oedipus, François Fillon seems to oscillate between half-hearted contrition ( he "may have made mistakes" and he "returned the suits") and the pride of someone who calls upon the memory of the Resistance, willingly quotes his boss ("Waves do not destroy granite") and declares that he has never acted against the public interest.
In the face of this flawed defense, suspicion stagnates.
How thick-skinned must this man be? He has, in a swift succession, seen praise and condemnation, certain success and waning popularity, rallies of support and multiple defections.
Greek tragedy invented the man who is torn apart, who interrogates himself about his own actions. Out of the three-way conflict in which he finds himself (with the gods, with men and with himself), it is from the last of these that the hero draws his greatness.
So we wait for effects of the struggle to appear on the face of this candidate. To no avail. This fan of bullfighting thrives on adversity. We often attribute a Sarthois placidity to him, when he is in fact half Basque.
François Fillon is a man who believes that his generation brought the country to its knees and that it is his duty to fix this. The cause of his stubbornness is no doubt to be found in this long-held guilt.
In Jours de pouvoir ("Days of Power"), Bruno Le Maire states: "He only reacts when constrained to do so. But when he does, he is able to use constraint as a resource, in a way no one expected of him. Consequently, he surprises everyone and, in politics, surprise is an advantage."
The plot twists aren't over yet.
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