Word: rouget
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...idea of bowdlerizing the ferocious lyrics composed in 1792 by Claude- Joseph Rouget de Lisle, a young captain of the engineers who penned the words on a single, inspired April night, first surfaced three years ago. French human-rights advocate Abbe Pierre called for the song to be altered from "words of hate to a message of love." The abbe's appeal for a kinder, gentler version received only lukewarm support until last month, when the image of an innocent 10-year-old girl warbling "Aux armes, citoyens!" at the Olympic Games struck a note of incongruity that...
Nevertheless, the Marseillaise revisionists claim that they are particularly offended by Rouget de Lisle's xenophobic reference to standards encrusted in the blood of retreating foreigners -- an image, ironically, that members of the ultra-right National Front must actually find quite appealing. But less ideological traditionalists are now rallying against the Milquetoast meddlers, denouncing the notion of tampering with the song that rang through the torchlit streets of revolutionary France as nothing short of traitorous. Sure, the Marseillaise "is ridiculous," concedes novelist Michel Tournier, "but we should leave it alone because, like old furniture, it gains in value over...