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 Lisieux
: Thérèse superstar
Is there a Doctor in the Basilica?
Une carmélite
de Lisieux morte à vingt-quatre ans devient en quelques années
une célébrité internationale. Proclamée sainte
en 1925, en un temps record, Thérèse Martin (en religion
sœur Thérèse de l’Enfant Jésus et de la Sainte Face),
devient, ce 19 octobre 1997, docteur de l’Église par la volonté
de Jean-Paul II.
A quoi est due cette phénoménale ascension ? France
3 Normandie a mené une enquête d’où sont sortis un
livre et une émission. Un reportage lucide qui a su prendre du recul
sur l’image d’Epinal souvent véhiculée pour évoquer
la petite sœur. Nos confrères se sont appliqués à
souligner le génie de Thérèse, son message très
moderne, et le talent médiatique de ses sœurs. Dans cette émission
et dans cet ouvrage sur la vie posthume de Thérèse une autre
figure s’impose : celle de sa sœur Céline, en religion sœur
Geneviève de la Sainte Face. Photographe et peintre, elle fut le
premier reporter de Thérèse et sa première propagandiste.
C’est donc à elle que la rédaction a souhaité donner
la parole en imaginant cette interview qui évoque le prodigieux
destin de "la plus grande sainte des temps modernes".
"Nestor & Nelson"
au Havre :
Nestor, une chambre !
Grâce à deux entrepreneurs astucieux, Côme
Frapier et Georges-François Rey, vous pouvez trouver une chambre
d’hôtel très rapidement où que vous vous trouviez en
France. Ne perdez donc plus de temps à courir la ville à
la recherche d’un hôtel : Nestor & Nelson sont là pour
vous servir. Et pour vous, c’est gratuit.
No
more Heartbreak Hotels
Remember that spur-of-the-moment decision to hop
on the ferry and enjoy a quiet weekend on the Normandy coast? It was not
exactly the height of summer, so surely there would be no need to book...
Famous last words, these, as not even the most nondescript establishment
in the shabbiest resort turned out to have a vacant room.
There is nothing more soul-destroying than trying to find a hotel room
late at night, which is why the Nestor & Nelson bilingual emergency
hotel reservation service is likely to be a resounding success. Apparently,
only half of us actually bother to book in advance, perhaps in a bid to
reinject a little spontaneity into our lives. This revealing statistic
came to light when Côme Frapier and Georges-François Rey commissioned
a detailed market study prior to launching their new business. Research
also revealed that Nestor and Nelson were the two names most associated
with the notion of service.
Every day of the week, night or day, customers, many of whom will inevitably
have mobile ‘phones, can now dial 08 36 69 67 57 to find hotel accommodation
in France within a given thirty-kilometre radius. They are not charge anything
for this service, as the two hundred hotels on the company’s computer file
pay an annual membership fee of 3,000 francs per annum, plus 15% commission
on the first night of any booking (‘partner’ hotels pay 8-10% commission
on every night booked).
The two ex-Parisians chose to locate their company in Le Havre, ‘which
has all the potential of a major provincial city, plus convincing economic
partners’. The city’s free zone offers cheaper property rentals and tax
concessions, the only condition being that local residents make up at least
20% of the workforce. Although youth training in the area leaves much to
be desired, the company has already taken on four ‘very good’ people and
hopes to create up to forty jobs over the next three years. If only Nestor & Nelson
had been around in Bethlehem two thousand years ago...
La Marianne de mai 1968
Quel âge
aviez-vous en 1968 ?
Vous étiez d’accord, ou pas d’accord, avec ces jeunes qui remettaient
en cause notre société de consommation ?
A l’époque une photo avait fait la une de nombreux magazines. Elle
montrait une Jeanne d’Arc triomphante au cœur du mouvement étudiant.
Notre consœur Annick Cojean, du Monde, a eu la bonne idée de rechercher
cette héroïne. Elle s’appelle Caroline de Bendern. Elle est
anglaise et habite aujourd’hui en Normandie. Elle prépare un livre
à paraître en mai 1998, pour les trente ans du mouvement.
Caroline avait vingt-sept ans à l’époque et aucun problème
d’avenir. Le destin en a décidé autrement. Elle n’est pas
près d’oublier ce joli mois de mai...
 "On
est en route vers la Bastille. Je viens de grimper sur les épaules
d’un copain. On demandait quelqu’un pour porter le drapeau et moi, j’avais
si mal aux pieds à force de piétiner que j’ai saisi l’aubaine.
Je n’aurais voulu ni du drapeau rouge - à cause des communistes
qui ont saboté le mouvement - ni du drapeau noir, car je ne connais
rien aux anarchistes. Mais le drapeau vietnamien me convient comme le symbole
d’une guerre que toute la jeunesse dénonce. Soudain, je sens plusieurs
objectifs braqués sur moi. C’est incroyable, il faut toujours que
je les repère ! Une sorte de flair, je suis mannequin... Alors,
j’ai comme un réflexe professionnel. Instinctivement, je me redresse,
mon visage se fait plus grave, mon geste plus solennel. Je voudrais à
tout prix être belle et donner du mouvement une représentation
à la hauteur de ce moment.
Au fond, je prends la pose. Et je suis piégée par cette pose.
Parce que d’un coup l’émotion me gagne : cette foule qui converge,
juste, ardente, lumineuse, avec toutes ces bannières, et ce symbole
si lourd au bout de mon bras... Je deviens exactement ce que j’essaie de
paraître. Je ne joue plus aucun rôle, je suis à fond
dans le mouvement et dans l’instant, et consciente, moi, l’aristo anglaise,
d’une responsabilité."
Aujourd’hui Caroline de Bendern mène dans un village normand
une vie qui n’a rien de princier. Ce coup de théâtre dans
son destin ne l’a pas aigrie. Un peu triste peut-être, elle se souvient
pourquoi elle se battait en 1968.
"J’avais l’impression, dit-elle, que la société marchait
sur la tête. On se révoltait contre la société,
contre ce qu’elle devenait. On aurait voulu que ça change. Ça
a changé, mais pas dans le bon sens. Enfin, il y a des choses qui
ont évolué dans le bon sens ; l’attitude par rapport
au racisme, par exemple. La jeunesse maintenant est plus mûre."
The
Errant Heiress
It was thirty years ago that Count Bendern tore up his will and testament
and told his granddaughter Caroline never to darken his door again. A little
extreme? Maybe, but then what else can an aristo do when, splashed across
a million front pages, he finds a photo of his expensively-educated and
carefully-nurtured heiress rubbing shoulders with thousands of ‘revolutionaries’
in Paris?
In fact, Caroline had already made it clear she was not cut out for the
kind of life he had mapped out for her. After being expelled from numerous
boarding schools in England, she was sent to Vienna to meet the right sort
of people, but resolutely avoided the glittering salons, preferring instead
to frequent artists and musicians. This heinous crime led to her allowance
being cut off, at which she headed first for Paris, to become a model,
then for New York, where she met Andy Warhol, Lou Reed and Otis Redding.
‘It was the prelude to May 1968, our heads were full of dreams, the world
was opening up to us’.
Back in Paris, Caroline Bendern took part in three ‘subversive’ films.
Then came the momentous month of May. ‘It was great fun, because it wasn’t
a real war. We didn’t feel any hatred and there was nothing tragic about
it, whereas if a revolution like that were to break out today, it could
be terrible. Teenagers have genuine worries and people are going hungry’.
The picture was taken during a march to the Bastille. Sore feet meant
Caroline was only too glad to be offered a chance to be hoisted aloft and
carry a flag (the Vietnamese one to symbolize ‘a war denounced by all young
people’). Her model’s instinct told her that every lens was trained on
her. ‘I straightened my back and took on a more serious and solemn expression.
I adopted a pose and immediately became trapped by it.
I became exactly what I was trying to seem’. This said, she was certainly
not a student at the Sorbonne and ‘couldn’t have cared less about French
politics, because I was concerned about the whole of humanity’.
‘You’re cut off’ turned out to be the last words Count Bendern ever
spoke to his granddaughter, as he died shortly afterwards. As for Caroline,
she fell in love with jazz musician Barney Willen and together, they set
off for Africa to make a film with a group of friends. The project did
not work out, but the music went on, first with Barney, then with jazz
infant prodigy Jacques Thollot. Today, the couple lead a rather hand-to-mouth
existence in a small village in Normandy -there are few breaks for fresh
talent in the cynical world of showbusiness.
While refusing to be classified as a ‘soixante-huitarde’, Caroline keeps
faith with the movement of thirty years ago, appalled by the popularity
of Le Pen. Occasionally, she recognizes a former comrade-in-arms on television,
now well and truly part of the system, and remembers those who refused
to conform and are now dead. In a corner sits a black file full of press
cuttings featuring the May ‘68 photo. ‘It’s just a picture of me, but certainly
not all of me, not a mirror image’.
Ironically, Caroline has never received any royalties for the picture that
disinherited her. Instead, she has had the freedom to rebel and to fight
for a different society. There has certainly been plenty of change over
the last three decades, though not necessarily of the right kind. ‘Conditions
are getting more and more difficult. Money is very unevenly distributed.’
And if she could live her life again?
‘If I’d known what would happen to me, maybe I’d have thought about
it more carefully. But I didn’t really think it over at all. Perhaps I
should have done!’
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