Monthly Discussion Point:: Saint-Just

[trf-chan.livejournal.com]

This month's discussion point is Saint-Just.

Thought we'd change it up a bit and discuss a person instead of an event. ;) Feel free to discuss any aspect of his life, what effect he had on the revolution, your Personal Thoughts on Saint-Just(tm) (the FrenchRevvie's version of Thoughts on Yaoi(tm)! Now with 20% more crazy poetry!), anything.

Comments

[lisotchka.livejournal.com]

Woa! The "Archange de la Terreur", hudge subject! He was born in Burgundy, like me!
I think he was the "writer" of the Revolution: he write a lot of legal texts, trying to make the Revoltion as legal as it could be. As supporter of Robespierre, he was executed on the morning of the 10 Thermidor.

By the way, did you read "La Révolution Française" by Jules Etienne Michelet? It'as a nineteenth century writer, and his books are very cool. It's like Alexandre Dumas of Victor Hugo's litterature!

[sunliner.livejournal.com]

Oh man, don't hate me, but I think Saint-Just is hilarious. Then again, I think mostly every revolutionary is hilarious.

[maelicia.livejournal.com]

I'm going to repress any sort of "Omsb I wuv him" outburst, so I won't put him to shame. XD That being said in case it had never been clear enough. -_-;

This is a good timing, because I felt like posting about one of his texts I read two days ago. La Raison à la morne: a short text he wrote in 1789, right after Organt. It has for context a judicial case, which the final verdict shocked public opinion. But Saint-Just doesn't write about the case, rather about the sense of it: the failure of reason. In his text, he tells the story of an unknown woman who was found dead. Nobody knew her and nobody dared to touch her because she was in rags and tatters. But finally, someone dared to touch her and found in her clothes a letter with the addressee "To Reason". So they read the letter, which was written by Necker, who tells her how he's disappointed that nobody could welcome her and that she must have been more than despaired to think of seeking refuge in France. The conclusion is that the man who read the letter just laughed and the body of Reason was brought to the morgue "where it remained for long".

The death of Reason. Modern theme, eh? I should try to find and type all the ideas Saint-Just wrote that still sound so damn actual.

I could type that short story and post a translation, btw...

[estellacat.livejournal.com]

I have a fairly high opinion of Saint-Just, and not because of his looks either. No more than because my sister has an irrational hatred of him--which I expect goes along with her irrational love of Camille Desmoulins. (Allow to explain: it's not always irrational to hate Saint-Just--for example, it's perfectly logical if you are a royalist and/or a Prussian--nor is it always irrational to like Camille Desmoulins. It's just when these judgments are based entirely on novels and films that it irks me. Both Saint-Just and Desmoulins are both historical figures and ought to be judged as such. They're not characters in a novel--basing one's judgment of them on what any particular novelist has to say is dishonest and irrational. /rant)

I esteem Saint-Just for (among other things) his principles, his loyalty, his eloquence, and his bravery--about in that order. I also find the reputation he has with most people to be undeserved and inaccurate. He's not cold, icy, glacial, frost-bitten, an ice-citizen, or an ice-cube machine. He's also not some beautiful incarnation of death, or of the Terror. And, for the record, he did not "kill" Desmoulins because he was jealous of him/spurned by him/insulted by him/hated his guts/thought his hairstyle was ridiculous/adjust to personal taste. In fact, he didn't "kill" Desmoulins at all. But that, I suppose is another story. /rant #2