In French culture, intellectualism runs deep. It’s not uncommon to have feuds by contemporary philosophers or scholars followed by the media and even become front page news.<\/p>\n
Recently, I was reading about a feud between two French scholars engaged in a public feud. They threw insults at each other through opinion pieces printed in newspapers, including the insult “Rastignac.”<\/p>\n
For those who haven’t heard of Rastignac, this is a somewhat common insult in France. Once again its origin shows the deep culture of intellectualism in the country, as Eug\u00e8ne de Rastignac is the name of a character in Honor\u00e9 de Balzac’s\u00a0La Comedie Humaine<\/em>. To be called “Rastignac” is to be called a social climber or an opportunist. (Another word for such an opportunist in French is arriviste.<\/em>)<\/p>\n Many of Rastignac’s sayings from\u00a0La Comedie Humaine<\/em> are well known, perhaps most famously:\u00a0La vie humaine se compose de deux parties : on tue le temps, le temps vous tue<\/em>. (“Human life is composed of two parts: you kill time, then time kills you.”)<\/p>\n Here’s a description of the character from\u00a0Le P\u00e8re Goriot<\/em>:<\/p>\n Eug\u00e8ne de Rastignac avait un visage tout m\u00e9ridional, le teint blanc, des cheveux noirs, des yeux bleus. Sa tournure, ses mani\u00e8res, sa pose habituelle d\u00e9notaient le fils d’une famille noble, o\u00f9 l’\u00e9ducation premi\u00e8re n’avait comport\u00e9 que des traditions de bon go\u00fbt. S’il \u00e9tait m\u00e9nager de ses habits, si les jours ordinaires il achevait d’user les v\u00eatements de l’an pass\u00e9, n\u00e9anmoins il pouvait sortir quelquefois mis comme l’est un jeune homme \u00e9l\u00e9gant.<\/em><\/p>\n “Eug\u00e8ne de Rastignac had a completely southern face, white skin, black hair, and blue eyes. His appearance, his manners, his\u00a0usual\u00a0bearing marked him as belong to a noble\u00a0family, where his earliest training must have been in accordance with high-class traditions. If he was thrifty in his dress, wearing on ordinary\u00a0days last year’s clothing, nevertheless when he could go out from time to time dressed as an elegant young man.”<\/p>\n Can you think of any other characters who have become so well known (either in English or French literature) that they have become insults?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In French culture, intellectualism runs deep. It’s not uncommon to have feuds by contemporary philosophers or scholars followed by the media and even become front page news. Recently, I was reading about a feud between two French scholars engaged in a public feud. They threw insults at each other through opinion pieces printed in newspapers…<\/p>\n