David Andress's "The Terror"

[tearosefury.livejournal.com]

Well after two days of only taking 45min-1 hour breaks for eating, grocery store shopping and, yup that's it, I finally read all of David Andress's The Terror, which was assigned for my Modern Europe seminar, which happens to be all on France. It was quite good; more the classical narrative style than I expected, but, it was therefore plenty readable. I was surprised actually at how little unpleased I was with sitting for 3-5 hour stints of reading; I couldn't think of anything better to do, at least. But then again it was about *the Terror*, only my favorite topic in history after 1790s politics and the Enlightenment. The politics of the French Revolution are so insanley convulted, confusing and complicated that I think it's really a lifetime endeavor getting a grasp on all the characters, whose side they were at various points and why, not to mention all the various reasons, from political to purely personal, for factional infighting etc. And of course you've never heard every awful detail about how many horrible, horrible things happened; you're never fully done being shocked with the capacity of ideology and political fervor, just as much as religion or any other agent of human inspiration, to inspire the most casual cruelty and justify in the believer's mind actions which are in fact directly opposite to their most cherised ideals.

Imagine a world without the French Revolution? Amongst countless other things - basically modernity, a lot of people would claim - that wouldn't be the same or would never have developed, to me what stands out would be how much less we would know about the human condition, expierence, and our possible capabilities under certain situations and certain mindsets. Truely amazing. And, Andress' conclusion actually made me feeling sorry for Saint-Just, something that had never happened before.