Our Man in Paris: The mystery of the Académie française

Although I mangle it every day, I adore the French language – the music of its vowels, its ability to convey abstract thought and elegant bitchiness. An article in a Paris newspaper last week started with the words: "Un distingué journaliste, célèbre au Québec." (A distinguished journalist, famous in Quebec...)

This would be the equivalent of writing in a London newspaper: "A distinguished journalist, famous in Ross and Cromarty..." But that rough translation does not convey the delicacy and malevolence, to Parisian ears, of the original put-down.

The man who wrote the words is a high priest of the French language – Maurice Druon, 84. Since Druon is a great lover and eloquent defender of linguistic purity (in English as well as French), he will not mind if I describe him as a walking contradiction-in-terms: he is "the retired Perpetual Secretary of the Académie française". In a world league table of oxymorons, he would concede first place only to that wonderful American institution, the Secret Service Uniformed Branch.

The object of Druon's scorn was the most courageous man in France, Louis-Bernard Robitaille, correspondent in Paris for the French-Canadian newspaper La Presse for the past 25 years. Robitaille has written a well-researched and sometimes uproariously funny book that puts the boot into Druon's beloved Académie, one of the oldest and most sacred of all French institutions.

No Frenchman would have dared to write such a book (Le Salon des immortels, Denoël, €20). It is, in fact, the first book of any substance written on the Académie française by a non-Academician since the institution was founded by Cardinal Richelieu in 1635.

The role of the academy is to protect the purity and integrity of the French language. Its 40 members, elected for life and known as "the immortals", are given permanent numbers like members of a football squad. On important occasions, they wear a black uniform, brocaded and embroidered with green silk, a bicorn and a ceremonial sword.

Their principal occupation is the tending to the academy's official, French dictionary: a work that resembles the tapestry of Penelope, the rock of Sisyphus or the painting of the Forth Bridge (before Railtrack stopped painting it). It took the original academicians 59 years to produce the first edition.

More recent members (their average age is currently 76) have been working on the 20th-century edition since 1935. After the first 45 years, they had reached the letter "F". Since 1980, thanks to the intervention of Druon, work has speeded up. After 67 years' work, the academy has now reached the letter "M" and the word "Mappemonde".

French TV interviewers, when respectfully questioning a member of the Académie française on some important cultural question, invariably conclude, with a polite grin: "And how is the dictionary?" The academician invariably replies: "Le travail avance, le travail avance." ("The work progresses. The work progresses.")

In the English-speaking world, the Académie is often mocked as a Canute-like body, trying officiously and pointlessly to hold back the inescapable evolution of the French language. Before I read Robitaille's book, I wrongly believed that the academy energetically manned the front-line trenches against the invasion of French by Anglicisms and neologisms, and had invented such words as "logiciel" for software, or "ordinateur" for computer.

Not a bit of it. The French government has another network of committees, advised but not controlled by the Académie, whose job it is to ban or create words. "The unspoken truth is that the Académie française does nothing, or next to nothing," Robitaille told me. "Its members, or rather some of its members, meet for maybe 90 minutes a week. They put out maybe five pronouncements on the language each year, which are generally ignored."

Despite its "irreproachable uselessness" (Robitaille's phrase), membership of the academy is much sought after by the great and good. The election of even obscure new members is reported on the French TV news, with the same solemnity as a government reshuffle, or the Oscars.

The mystery of the academy, says Robitaille, is how it has maintained its extraordinary prestige while achieving so little. He attributes this to a mixture of French nostalgia for royalty (the academy is the last royal institution) and a mystical association of literature with power.

Druon, the retired perpetual secretary, complains that Robitaille, as a transatlantic French-speaker, misses the point. The pomp and prestige of the Académie are part of its justification: they symbolise France's love affair with its own language and culture.

To be fair, the academy is not quite so obscurantist as the Anglo-Saxon world imagines. It has its own website (also Druon's doing) where you can consult the incomplete dictionary. The words "un jean" (a pair of jeans) and "un hamburger" (a hamburger) are included and therefore officially recognised as French. However, "le footing" (jogging) is not. On present, accelerated, progress, we will have to wait at least another 12 years before the academy considers the Frenchness of "le weekend".

The perfect candidate for a tart attack

For a long time, my least favourite mainstream French politician has been Jean-Pierre Chevènement, the humourless and lugubrious, anti-American, anti-European, pro-Saddam Hussein former interior minister. The prejudice was then confirmed when I saw him turn out in the aftermath of the Mont Blanc tunnel disaster in 1999, wearing an undertaker's black suit and a lamb's wool scarf in a delicate shade of purple.

My prejudice has just been further confirmed.

Last March, Chevènement was the deserved target of a custard-pie attack ("entartement") by the veteran, Belgian pastry-terrorist, Noël Godin. The previous victims of Godin's attacks include most other French politicians, as well as the Microsoft chairman and software mogul Bill Gates. None of them has taken any legal action against Godin.

However, in the name of a "certain idea of democracy", Chevènement has now sued Godin for "pre-meditated assault". If he is found guilty when the judgement is handed down next month, the entarteur will face a fine of €5,000 (£3,000). Chevènement has also asked for €50,000 (£30,000) in damages.

In his defence, Godin said that he had been waging a "pastry crusade" against pomposity for 33 years. In all that time, he had never seen a face more deserving of "entartement" than Chevènement's. In other words, then, the ex-interior minister was guilty of extreme provocation. Like the United States, Godin claimed a right of pre-emptive assault.

Table music

Fast food and rock music go together like burger and chips, don't they? Not in France. The French rock group Aston Villa (crazy name, crazy guys) released a new album last week called Strange. One of the tracks is entitled "Slow Food". The lyrics recite the menu, and recipes, from the three-star restaurant run by the celebrity chef Pierre Gagnaire, on the Rue Balzac (meals from £120 a head).

The leader of the group, Doc Muller, is a dedicated gastronome. His song is a tribute to the foody movement, also called Slow Food, which began in Italy 16 years ago. The movement's symbol is a snail.