The reason why the French both admire and hate America, is because it represents everything the French wish for: to have a wholly republican tradition, that is to say, to have no tradition. What really troubles the French is the inescapable horizon of their pre-1789 tradition.
Yes, but it's the admission of a failure to integrate in today's world. The battle over the pre-1789 heritage of France was fought and won by the Romantics during the Bourbon Restoration and then later commented on by reactionary authors like Balzac, Stendhal & Flaubert.
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So the fight over the interpretation of the Ancien Régime & its art was already felt as lost by the 1830s, you can clearly feel it in Balzac and Stendhal when they describe the slow passing of impoverished provincial aristocrats who were stripped of their rights & lands.
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