Anarchy 89/Whitsun in the streets

214

Whitsun in the streets

P.B.

The most re­volu­tion­ary im­pres­sion of Paris over the Whitsun week­end was that of the simple free­dom of move­ment and human con­tact in and around the Sor­bonne; a sim­pli­city which ought to be a na­tural way of beha­viour, but which now comes as a sur­prise in a modern city.

  In the Sor­bonne

  But there is a seri­ous­ness

  In con­trast to the free­dom of the Sor­bonne,

  It is pre­sum­ably

  Posters, slo­gans, pamph­lets, news­papers,

  However, they had no clear idea

  Despite the pro­lifer­a­tion

  I have an im­pres­sion

  One of the most hope­ful signs

  A “Com­mis­sion of Inter-Profes­sional Rela­tions”

  Practic­ally every edu­ca­tional in­stitu­tion in Paris

  The main work of the stu­dents

  The Sor­bonne so clearly stands for some­thing,

  It is more dif­fi­cult to pre­dict

View from the Island   Chris­topher Logue, poet laure­ate of the Left, asked earn­estly what We in Brit­ain could do: that, said Cohn-Bendit wear­ily, is your prob­lem. Ken­neth Tynan, in a kimono short, kept in­quir­ing how re­bel­lion could suc­ceed with­out army sup­port. Among icon­o­clastic cheers, Cohn-Bendit resorted to (Anglo-Saxon) four-letter words. You felt, break­ing free of the sham­bles, that the only thing our Fidel­istas will be able to do with pav­ing stones is drop them on their feet. —the guardian, 13.6.68.