L'Âme de la France
Encyclopedia
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
sculptor Carlo Sarrabezolles to three identical monumental statues that he executed in three different materials during the interwar period
Interwar period
Interwar period can refer to any period between two wars. The Interbellum is understood to be the period between the end of the Great War or First World War and the beginning of the Second World War in Europe....
, the first in plaster
Plaster
Plaster is a building material used for coating walls and ceilings. Plaster starts as a dry powder similar to mortar or cement and like those materials it is mixed with water to form a paste which liberates heat and then hardens. Unlike mortar and cement, plaster remains quite soft after setting,...
in 1921, the second in stone
Stone sculpture
Stone sculpture is the result of forming 3-dimensional visually interesting objects from stone.Carving stone into sculpture is an activity older than civilization itself, beginning perhaps with incised images on cave walls. Prehistoric sculptures were usually human forms, such as the Venus of...
in 1922, and the last in bronze
Bronze sculpture
Bronze is the most popular metal for cast metal sculptures; a cast bronze sculpture is often called simply a "bronze".Common bronze alloys have the unusual and desirable property of expanding slightly just before they set, thus filling the finest details of a mold. Then, as the bronze cools, it...
in 1930. 3.2 metres tall, they represent a female warrior with naked breasts raising her arms toward the sky.
Executed from the first of the three models, the newest sculpture is currently located on a pedestal at the entrance to Hell-Bourg
Hell-Bourg
Hell-Bourg is a small village in the Salazie commune of the French overseas department of Réunion. It is the main community in the island's Cirque de Salazie, and is named for the respected former admiral and island governor Anne Chrétien Louis de Hell. Previously the village had been named Bémaho...
on the Heights of the island of Réunion
Réunion
Réunion is a French island with a population of about 800,000 located in the Indian Ocean, east of Madagascar, about south west of Mauritius, the nearest island.Administratively, Réunion is one of the overseas departments of France...
, an overseas département of France in the Indian Ocean
Indian Ocean
The Indian Ocean is the third largest of the world's oceanic divisions, covering approximately 20% of the water on the Earth's surface. It is bounded on the north by the Indian Subcontinent and Arabian Peninsula ; on the west by eastern Africa; on the east by Indochina, the Sunda Islands, and...
. It was presented by the deputy Lucien Gasparin to the commune of Salazie
Salazie
Salazie is a volcanic caldera and commune in the department and region of Réunion.The first settlement of the area took place in 1829 after a cyclone had devastated the nearby coast, and the municipality of Salazie was formed in 1889...
in 1931 and since then has gone through island history in unusual fashion.
At first erected in the little village centre before the town hall, it was quickly dynamited off its pedestal by the priest, then successively kept in pieces behind a hair salon, repaired by welding, and at last moved several kilometres to the place where it still stands. There, it was once again torn off its pedestal by a tropical cyclone
Tropical cyclone
A tropical cyclone is a storm system characterized by a large low-pressure center and numerous thunderstorms that produce strong winds and heavy rain. Tropical cyclones strengthen when water evaporated from the ocean is released as the saturated air rises, resulting in condensation of water vapor...
, then abandoned, face down on the ground, for twenty years before finally being found by chance during construction work in 1968. It was then put back in place, rehabilitated as a memorial
War memorial
A war memorial is a building, monument, statue or other edifice to celebrate a war or victory, or to commemorate those who died or were injured in war.-Historic usage:...
to World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
dead, celebrated in magnificent public ceremonies, registered in the general inventory of historic monuments, and finally classified as such in 2004.
Technical and symbolic characteristics
Like the two other examples, in plaster and stone, L'Âme de la France in bronze is a statue 3.20 m high. It depicts a helmeted female warrior stretching her two arms toward the sky, her right hand ending in a delicate little spray of flowers and, by contrast, her left fist forcefully gripping a shield slipped onto her forearm.This singular V-shaped pose is not random. According to Le Quotidien de La Réunion, “this woman symbolises ‘the victory of a France grateful to her dead’”, in this case the soldiers who fell during World War I, in which the people of Réunion participated, notably led by the aviator Roland Garros. Thus, the figure visually depicts the country’s gratitude toward the poilu
Poilu
Poilu is a warmly informal term for a French World War I infantryman, meaning, literally, hairy one. The term came into popular usage in France during the era of Napoleon Bonaparte and his massive citizen armies, though the term grognard was also common. It is still widely used as a term of...
s through what the Mérimée Database of historic monuments
Monument historique
A monument historique is a National Heritage Site of France. It also refers to a state procedure in France by which national heritage protection is extended to a building or a specific part of a building, a collection of buildings, or gardens, bridges, and other structures, because of their...
calls a “secular allegory”, and the statue can thus be used as a war memorial, as is the case on Réunion.
Nevertheless, the subject of L'Âme de la France has its own individual characteristics that contrast strongly with its martial attributes. First, she was “lovingly fashioned down to the smallest details, from the folds of her dress to her splendid braids”, two long pigtails that “slide down her back”. In addition and even more importantly, she represents a young half-nude woman, her belly and her breasts bared “to the open air”, the slender body and the head turned to the right in a position that is ultimately very sensual.
Origins
Toulouse
Toulouse is a city in the Haute-Garonne department in southwestern FranceIt lies on the banks of the River Garonne, 590 km away from Paris and half-way between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea...
on 27 December 1888 and who attended that city’s école des Beaux-Arts
École des Beaux-Arts
École des Beaux-Arts refers to a number of influential art schools in France. The most famous is the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, now located on the left bank in Paris, across the Seine from the Louvre, in the 6th arrondissement. The school has a history spanning more than 350 years,...
from 1904 to 1907, and its Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
ian counterpart
École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts
The École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-arts is the distinguished National School of Fine Arts in Paris, France.The École des Beaux-arts is made up of a vast complex of buildings located at 14 rue Bonaparte, between the quai Malaquais and the rue Bonaparte, in the heart of Saint-Germain-des-Près,...
until 1914. In that year he was mobilised for service in World War I, in which he fought and was taken captive. Thus until 1918 he was unable to practice his art due to the conflict that would inspire his statues.
In 1921, he made a first model in plaster, now stored in the Historial de la Grande Guerre in Péronne, Somme
Péronne, Somme
Péronne is a commune of the Somme department in Picardie in northern France.It is close to where the Battles of the Somme took place during World War I...
, which won the silver medal at the Salon des Artistes Français
Société des artistes français
The Société des Artistes Français is the association of French painters and sculptors established in 1881. Its annual exhibition is called the Salon....
. That year, he also made at least one 55 cm miniature in green polished bronze and gold, now found in a private collection. The following year, he created a copy in monumental stone, earning him the national prize; he donated this sculpture to the Musée du Luxembourg
Musée du Luxembourg
Musée du Luxembourg is a museum in Paris, France. It occupies the east wing of the Palais du Luxembourg, whose matching west wing originally housed Ruben's Marie de' Medici cycle. Since 2000 it has been run by the French Ministry of Culture and the Senate and is devoted to temporary exhibitions...
in Paris but it is now stored at the Musée Sainte-Croix
Musée Sainte-Croix
The Musée Sainte-Croix is the largest museum in Poitiers, France.Planned by architect Jean Monge and built in 1974, it stands at the site of the former Abbaye Sainte-Croix, which was moved to Saint-Benoît, Vienne...
in Poitiers
Poitiers
Poitiers is a city on the Clain river in west central France. It is a commune and the capital of the Vienne department and of the Poitou-Charentes region. The centre is picturesque and its streets are interesting for predominant remains of historical architecture, especially from the Romanesque...
. Finally, in 1930 he cast the bronze sculpture now found in Hell-Bourg, Réunion.
This last sculpture ended up in Réunion only due to the intervention of a leading political figure, Lucien Gasparin, who was literally “the incarnation of Réunion in the National Assembly from 1906 to 1942”: it was this deputy, born in 1868, who signed the public order at a cost of thirty million francs
French franc
The franc was a currency of France. Along with the Spanish peseta, it was also a de facto currency used in Andorra . Between 1360 and 1641, it was the name of coins worth 1 livre tournois and it remained in common parlance as a term for this amount of money...
on 11 July 1931. Soon after, in the little village centre of Salazie, a commune on the Heights of the island situated in the eponymous cirque
Cirque
Cirque may refer to:* Cirque, a geological formation* Makhtesh, an erosional landform found in the Negev desert of Israel and Sinai of Egypt*Cirque , an album by Biosphere* Cirque Corporation, a company that makes touchpads...
, the statue was placed in front of the town hall.
Setup of the bronze statue on Réunion and wrecking
The bronze statue’s placement before Salazie town hall also situated it right in front of the nearby church, pastored by a conservative young priest born in 1902, Father Gabriel Bourasseau. Having been active in Young Christian WorkersYoung Christian Workers
The Young Christian Workers is an international organization founded by Rev. Joseph Cardijn in Belgium as the Young Trade Unionists; the organization adopted its present name in 1924. Its French acronym, JOC, gave rise to the then widely-used terms Jocism and Jocist...
, he passed through the novitiate
Novitiate
Novitiate, alt. noviciate, is the period of training and preparation that a novice monastic or member of a religious order undergoes prior to taking vows in order to discern whether they are called to the religious life....
in Orly
Orly
Orly is a commune in the southern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located from the center of Paris.The name of Orly came from Latin Aureliacum, "the villa of Aurelius"....
and on Madagascar
Madagascar
The Republic of Madagascar is an island country located in the Indian Ocean off the southeastern coast of Africa...
, whence he was sent to Réunion at the end of two years. He had already worked as a vicar at Champ-Borne and on the Plaine des Cafres
Plaine des Cafres
La Plaine des Cafres is a plateau on Réunion Island, one of the French volcanic islands in the Mascarene Archipelago in the southwestern Indian Ocean...
before arriving at Salazie, where he rebuilt the old wooden church into an enlarged stone parish church.
Describing the monument to the dead as “shocking”, the priest began to mobilise the faithful in favour of its destruction, and launched “a politico-religious battle” nevertheless attributed by some to a maneuver taken up by Lucien Gasparin, a profoundly anti-clerical descendant of affranchi
Affranchi
"Affranchi" is a former French legal term denoting a freedman or emancipated slave. It is used in English to describe the class of freedmen in Saint-Domingue and other slave-holding French territories, who held legal rights intermediate between those of free whites and enslaved people of color...
freed slaves. In an attempt to defuse the situation, inhabitants proposed covering the statue’s naked breasts with clothing, but mayor Didier Fontaine rejected this solution.
However, several years later, the Third Republic
French Third Republic
The French Third Republic was the republican government of France from 1870, when the Second French Empire collapsed due to the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, to 1940, when France was overrun by Nazi Germany during World War II, resulting in the German and Italian occupations of France...
fell to Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
during the Second World War, and Father Bourasseau took advantage of the change in political regime to obtain from Vichy
Vichy France
Vichy France, Vichy Regime, or Vichy Government, are common terms used to describe the government of France that collaborated with the Axis powers from July 1940 to August 1944. This government succeeded the Third Republic and preceded the Provisional Government of the French Republic...
the right to take down the statue. A first attempt involving parishioners pulling the statue with ropes failed to take it down. They finally resorted to dynamite which succeeded in bringing it down, breaking its arms in the process. The debris was kept in a hangar behind a hairdresser's shop in Salazie.
Removal and fall into oblivion
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
and the conversion of Réunion into a département saw the return to favour of the bronze L’Âme de la France; as a result, its arms were welded back on. However, it was moved out of Salazie centre toward Hell-Bourg, at the entrance of which it was set up and is still found today, in a little garden decorated with several fanjans (tree ferns). It was placed facing a large kiosk
Kiosk
Kiosk is a small, separated garden pavilion open on some or all sides. Kiosks were common in Persia, India, Pakistan, and in the Ottoman Empire from the 13th century onward...
and the town hall annex of the period, which has since been dismantled and rebuilt behind the statue.
The young woman’s back precisely faces the cliff that separates the cirque from the plateau that opens onto the Bélouve Forest, which dramatizes its placement, served by a high pedestal and a cast-iron décor. Moreover, today it faces a commemorative plaque
Commemorative plaque
A commemorative plaque, or simply plaque, is a plate of metal, ceramic, stone, wood, or other material, typically attached to a wall, stone, or other vertical surface, and bearing text in memory of an important figure or event...
dedicated to the poet Auguste Lacaussade situated on the other side of the lane that passes through Hell-Bourg and thus sits at the heart of a space devoted to public representation and commemoration.
Although this new site allowed the controversy to die down, the statue was not well-sheltered. Soon after its relocation, it was ripped off its pedestal by a devastating tropical cyclone known locally as the cyclone of 1948. Thrown to the ground a second time, it lay abandoned, face-down, for twenty years until the place was refurbished: in 1968, communal workers rediscovered it intact under grasses and construction debris.
Rehabilitation and listing
Joan of Arc
Saint Joan of Arc, nicknamed "The Maid of Orléans" , is a national heroine of France and a Roman Catholic saint. A peasant girl born in eastern France who claimed divine guidance, she led the French army to several important victories during the Hundred Years' War, which paved the way for the...
, the patron saint of France, and on 14 July 1974, according to Le Quotidien de La Réunion, “Hell-Bourg finally rendered it a homage worthy of this name, with flowers, trumpets, joy and serenity”.
The bronze L’Âme de la France and its pedestal were inscribed on the general list of Monuments historiques
Monument historique
A monument historique is a National Heritage Site of France. It also refers to a state procedure in France by which national heritage protection is extended to a building or a specific part of a building, a collection of buildings, or gardens, bridges, and other structures, because of their...
on 22 October 1998 by arrêté (administrative act). Then, on 5 May 2004, the war monument ensemble was classified, again by arrêté. This national recognition has helped promote the image of Hell-Bourg as a picturesque village of great interest to the cultural heritage, a view supported by the nearby presence of buildings such as the Maison Folio, likewise classified.
As of 2007, the statue is an object of particular attention for one of the heads of the Salazie ecomuseum, Marc Pesseau, “its lover and above all the guardian of its history”. According to him, several shadowy areas remain to be filled in the statue’s history, but he is passionate in his research. Moreover, he notes that the institution over which he presides is working to renovate the pedestal, funds for which the French state must eventually decide to appropriate through the Direction régionale des Affaires culturelles
Direction régionale des affaires culturelles
A Direction régionale des Affaires culturelles is a service of the French Minister of Culture on each region of France...
.