"La Raison à la morne", by Saint-Just (1789).

[maelicia.livejournal.com]

Since trf_chan decided this was Saint-Just's month, here I post something related to him.

I tried to translate one of Saint-Just’s early texts, which he wrote around April 1789, after Organt. I say "tried", because some parts of Saint-Just’s writing can be very obscure in French, so the translating work makes it just a lot worse. Thus I tried to give this text as much sense as it could... judging from what I understood of it.

The context of it is another very obscure thing. Abensour and Kupiec present it this way, in the Œuvres complètes : “ The decision which condemned Guillaume Kornmann and gave reason to his wife shocked public opinion. This woman had a lover she financially supported – who was named Daudet – and for this, her husband had her arrested and locked up. In this case, Beaumarchais defended the accused woman's side.

The facts themselves are not what interest Saint-Just the most, but rather the sense of the verdict. This decision was very far from the use of reason and resulted from the state in which royalty, nobility and clergy were. This is precisely through this parable that Saint-Just explains the failure of reason.

This short text is both in continuity and in rupture with Organt. Folly, foolishness, hypocrisy represent the morality of the Court and of the Church, which are still denounced by Saint-Just, but the Third Estate itself doesn’t escape from the critics, inspired from cynicism, illustrated by the presence of Reason at the morgue. But the evocation of the future reunion of the Estates General introduces a connection to reality which is no longer masked, as in Organt.”

A lot of political references which are difficult to understand then. Nevertheless, the subject is very interesting: the death of Reason. Modern theme, isn't it? Actually, it's one of the themes I love to speak about very often...



La Raison à la morne

The day following the verdict on Kornmann’s case, at 7 o’clock in the morning, an unknown woman was found dead in the great staircase. She was brought in the great room, she was exposed to the public, nobody recognised her ; nobody had dared to touch her, since she was dressed in rags and tatter. Daudet, who was walking there like usual, searched through the poor woman’s pocket, he found a letter which was addressed: 'to Reason'. He opened it and read it.

“I am despaired to see the hope to which you are reduced to. There must be no other retreats on Earth for you to be in France. I would have brought you with me, but which figure could you show to the Court? I didn’t wish for the others to see that I knew you. See if you can take the looks of folly to please the queen, those of a whore to please M. De Breteuil, those of a fool to please M. de Barentin, those of Priapus’ hypocrisy and of greed to please the Clergy, those of arrogance and foolishness to please Nobility, and, those of Liberty to please the Third Estate. Truly, I suffer because of your suffering, which lasted for so many centuries. I spoke of you to the king. He answered that he didn't want to welcome strangers in his kingdom. The queen was present and asked me, whispering to my ear, if you were pretty. She proposed to give you the position of Mmes de Polignac and Lebrun (*) but, in the only case that you would be vigorous and plump, and, pretty. Yet, since you don’t like flattery, I’ll admit to you that I presented you the way you were, aged by misfortune, emaciated by an angry hunger and misanthropic by means of men’s discounts, the eyes punctured by the prince de Condé, badly dressed and smeared by the prince de Conti. The queen answered to me “oh, well”…

I suggest you should find the duc d’Orléans, he’s the only one able to recognise you, and he could give you the boutique of a novelties merchant in his Palais-Royal. Once, foolishness sold wisdom ; wisdom will then sell foolishness.

I am quite unhappy of not being able to dare to do the good, and, I don’t know how I will exit from my labyrinth. The cloud of the Estates General will burst, and a storm will get out of it, a storm which will wrap us up with dust ; we will enter one-eyed, we will exit blind. (**)

Don’t give me any advice anymore. You would lose me. Gold is needed and since I can only find some in exchange of honour, you would turn me away from it and we would perish.

Swear that you will remain silent during the holding of the Estates, exactly like you did during the last three years. Tomorrow, Kornmann is being judged ; the wish of the queen and of the whores is against him. I demand you to go and listen the verdict so you can tell it to me after. You can go without fearing M. Lenoir [the police chief] ; nobody will recognise you.”

NEKER [sic]

Thus Daudet started laughing and monseigneur Séguier got back into his carriage to dream of a charge against Reason.

The corpse was brought at the morne (***) where it remained for long.



(*) I suppose he's refering to Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun. Wiki says she shared with Marie-Antoinette the reputation to be "debauched", so it makes sense.

(**) I don't know for you, but I really like that part...

(***) Somehow, I don’t really know what the « morne » means. I’m guessing it should be the morgue, since it would be logical, but my dictionary also says it could refer to a hill or a mound… which would also make a lot of sense, where the corpse of Reason could be buried.

Comments

[trf-chan.livejournal.com]

Oh, wow. Wow. I really did love that. *_* You're right, parts are very obscure, but I understood what was being said in general, and...*swoons* I am suddenly even more enamored with Saint-Just. But for the references to people of the period, it really could've been something written today. It certainly applies. (And all of this reminds me - mom got The Assault on Reason from the library just recently~ Must read it after she's finished)

Thanks for posting and translating! :D

[maelicia.livejournal.com]

He just does that, you know. When he doesn't cause burning hatred, it's sudden love. XD(Admittedly, when I read that small text in my Saint-Just book, I remembered you had spoken of that other particular book about Reason...)

[bettylabamba.livejournal.com]

Man, you are so totally groovy. Thanks!

[maelicia.livejournal.com]

Even if Saint-Just's groovier, I'll happily take the thanks -- because understanding and translating his texts isn't easy at all. -_-;

Awwwwwww, and I get a Saint-Just icon in which he tries to remember his own speeches. ^____^ ♥ Me wuvs that red waistcoat very much....

S-J: wild and obscure!

[bettylabamba.livejournal.com]

hehe...you can use the icon if you like. just credit me.

because understanding and translating his texts isn't easy at all

jeez, i glanced at his oeuvres on google books and had brain fart.

i don't know why S-J's writings haven't been officially translated and published in english. i mean, he's pretty fucking famous and important and oh so handsome. i hope S-J scholarship gets more popular and fresh texts get written.

Re: S-J: wild and obscure! -- Aw, yes. XD

[maelicia.livejournal.com]

Hee, I think I'll do that. ^.^

ROTFL. You could call it like this. XD

They really should be translated and published. Maybe the Anglo-Americans would understand him slightly better... well, it's already too late for most of them, and we can say it's already lost, but at least, some fangirls could STFU after they actually read something he wrote -- and stop jugding him only from Enrico's "LRF", Wajda's "Danton", Mantel's "A Place of Greater Safety" or Przybyszewska's plays. (Admittedly, it would be a big step for Reason if he was judged from reality, rather than fiction.)

Re: S-J: wild and obscure! -- Aw, yes. XD

[bettylabamba.livejournal.com]

I don't really go for fiction, just movies. Even then, I know the movie's an interpretation and has little, if any, basis in reality. I don't get how the fork some teachers use Danton as some kind of a "learning tool" or whatever in a forking classroom. They might as well put on Monty Python.

The dearth of decent S-J material in English is a tragedy. I bought Hampson's debacle (worst $35 I ever spent IMHO) and I can't find any other books on the net for less than $70. Arrrrg.

[morgan-wang.livejournal.com]

Its strange that either he's hated or loved. Rarely you find someone who is in the middle. Has anyone here read Curtis's bio of him? or what his friend Thuillier's said about him after he died? I'll see if I can find it again and post it.

[maelicia.livejournal.com]

It seems strange and I often ponder why it is as such. Why 200 years later, it could still be such a passionate fight for him or against him. In fact, I think that he, like Robespierre, provoked it himself. It's unconscious (or not; it depends). They have personalities you cannot possibly forget, they don't want want you to forget them and, in a way or another, History fobids it. Even if you do try, you realise that you cannot tell the story of the French Revolution without mentionning them -- at the very least, you cannot tell the story of the French Revolution without mentionning Thermidor. For this, you cannot forget them -- and even if you tried, you couldn't, because they're on the path of History. I think you can't avoid being attracted to read about them, to know them and thus you hate or you love. Most importantly, there are the ideals or "horrors" they represent or seem to represent. But it's deeper than just that: in most cases, the hatred, or love (and I plead guilty to the love), is too irrational, completely outside from the scientifical debate, overtly partial, to be only superficial. I think it is true that they awake something: hatred for the political opponents, for the cynical ones who have been deceived and disappointed with idealism and "utopia"; love for those who feel close to their political idealism, those who see hope through them. I think you can't ignore Saint-Just and Robespierre, because they awake political engagement -- not to remind, again, how much historiography is intertwined with contemporary politics, from the right to the left, from neoliberalism to social-democracy, from fascism to communism, and for the survival of our democracies.

I've read Vinot's biography (but not Curtis') and he said: "And if [Saint-Just], when he lived and after his death, provoked judgements so divided and different, it's that the reasons to hate him (but not to scorn him) are as strong as those to love him (but not to admire him)." It summarises, I guess.

I don't have what Thuillier wrote -- I didn't know he had... I know Gateau wrote something in the preface of the Fragments des Institutions républicaines which were published in 1800, but I don't have the whole thing completely, since it's quoted in Vinot.

[morgan-wang.livejournal.com]

Even historians are biased. My all time favortie hate quote of SJ is when in the introduction Hampson calls him, "a satanic monster" and ends the book with calling him "the devil himself" That just seems a bit extreem...

I the author Hilliary Mantel wrote a really intesting artical on Robespierre, here's the link:
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n08/mant01_.html

or its this one:
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v22/n07/mant01_.html

By the way, this group is really great! Most groups don't really have that many discussions.

[maelicia.livejournal.com]

The bias of historians is a very interesting thing to study: it's almost as interesting as the history of events itself. And, yes, Hampson's ludicrous comparisons to Saint-Just's "satanic being" is very amusing -- I'm still trying to figure out what is the scientifical point in comparing Saint-Just to Lucifer in his conclusion.

Oh, yes. I've read through those articles. They're not too bad, even if I dislike Mantel.

[morgan-wang.livejournal.com]

Oops, I ment Gateau. Thuillier died in prison. I'll post Gateaus' eulogy of Saint-Just, maybe its longer than the one in Vinot.