On Bastille Day, a Grieving and Afflicted Nation

The primary sense of the French adjective “affligé ” is “grieving,” or “in distress,” which is undoubtedly the meaning intended by President François Hollande when he addressed his nation, just before four this morning, after rushing from the theatre festival in Avignon to meet with his Cabinet in the capital. “France est affligée,” he said. For the third time in a year and a half, France is grieving a major terrorist attack. This time, the means was a truck; the place was Nice; but the grief, the horror, the fear are the same as before. Eighty-four people, ten of them children, who had gathered with hundreds of others on the Promenade des Anglais to celebrate Bastille Day with a fireworks show over the Mediterranean, have been killed. Two attacks made a pair. Three make a series. Just yesterday, Hollande announced that the state of emergency put in place after November’s attacks in Paris would finally come to an end on July 26th. It has now been extended once again. “France is going to have to live with terrorism,” Prime Minister Manuel Valls said after the Cabinet meeting. “Affligé ” can also be translated as “afflicted,” and, if the word carries with it a sense of cursed inevitability, both its senses have begun to seem equally, horribly valid in France.

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