Welcome to the real world and adieu.
Feb. 6th, 2008 06:46 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
maelicia.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
revolution_frSince “fantasy” somehow seems to have suddenly become “appropriate” for this community, I’ve decided to give a try to such “creative writing”. The only luxury I will concede to myself is to be a man, but I will be reasonable in the Gary-Stuishness and therefore, he will be (mostly?) hetero.
Welcome to the real world and adieu
I would be born in the 1760s or 1770s, in Paris. The control of the Church over the spirits of its sheep had diminished over the course of the century… accompanied by a considerable augmentation of pornographic consumption. As in every century, but particularly in this one, bastard children are a common thing. Thus I would be one of them. If I’m lucky, my father would be a bourgeois… and my mother, his maidservant. The son of a bourgeois and a domestique: a “half-breed”, for the coming of a new world. She would be fired by the hysterical bourgeoise, of course, but my father may have appreciated my mother, and so he could be nice and send her money, from time to time, to raise me. He wouldn’t want her to abort or kill me after my birth; he wouldn’t want her to be caught and hanged for her miserable crimes. Maybe he would like me because I would be a son, while his bourgeoise would only give him daughters. He would make sure I got some basic education, that I knew how to write and read, at least. Being a bastard son, I would have no inheritance rights of course. He would have liked to recognise me, but his bourgeoise wouldn’t stand it: she would be very fragile… and she would have the money – or rather, her still living father would have it.
I would grow up in a dark, stinking and dirty quartier of Paris – which they all are anyway – just that this one may have been slightly less dangerous than others, if not for the vermin, diseases and coaches of the rich, always threatening to crush you at every corner of a street. One of the girls next door would be very pretty. I would love her very much. She would be the daughter of a printer. We would discover our… senses against the wall of one of those shadowy and stinking alleys. I would have wanted to marry her, but she would have died prematurely, at fifteen years old. Of one of those diseases that reaped so many of us, those weakened by lack of bread, of fresh air, always corrupted by the smell of shit and urine in the streets.
With the help of a friend, my father would find me an apprenticeship with a candlemaker. In the following years of my existence, I would learn how to survive. Survival: the only way conceded to those with no future, the “invisible”. As I reached my twenties, protest against authority reached a new level: reports of royal scandals, accusatory pamphlets, polemics between the Court and the Parlement de Paris. I would become acquainted with the principles of the Philosophes and read those texts circulating, inspired by the Lumières, and calling for change. At the local café, I would read the news to friends and fellows and, together, we would discuss the issues and take part in the growing public opinion.
And suddenly, one day, I would stop “surviving”. The Revolution would grant to me the right to live. Not at first, of course – the Revolution didn’t yet know what it had done. But it would have given me rights. Given by a Declaration written hastily by men who didn’t want it to go so far, who didn’t weigh the power of the words, though they should have known to. They wanted to hold it back, but it was too late: during the following months, we would have been able to see through them, see that most were aristocrat-lovers and sycophants. But some of these men were willing to go as far as we had the potential to go.
I would have believed in the king, that he welcomed the Revolution as much as we did. But I would have been offended by his traitorous attempt to run from France. I would have been at the Champ-de-Mars, in July 1791, when La Fayette told his men to shoot on the crowd. One of my friends would have died there.
But months would pass and the king would fall. The deputies would change. A Republic would be founded. I would have already started to be active, in the sans-culotte assemblies of the sections, and finally when the Club des Jacobins opened its doors to the poorest. I, who was the merest nothing, would finally become someone: myself.
Now, by this point, you may be thinking: “My, what a self-pitying, boringly politicised and uninteresting killjoy you would be”. Yes, exactly. And you may add “ambitious” and “violent”, for it is coming. I would be a bastard child living in relative poverty and I wouldn’t have had any future if there hadn’t been some blood on the hands of the “vile class” – the men, women and children who are “invisible”. Thus I would have been there, present at the debates of the Convention, when they would be discussing the fate of the ci-devant king. I would have been captivated by the speech of Saint-Just. I would have supported the execution of the king as a usurper of popular sovereignty. Because, as Robespierre said, “Louis must die, so that the patrie may live.”
In the summer of ’93, I would have gone to the Salon organised by David, open to all. I could have heard some – they looked like art students – whisper audibly that the Salon was a failure, that people were too afraid to come. What part of the “people” were they referring to? I would have wondered. I would have seen many people. True, the aristocratic leeches naturally wouldn’t come – having left the country months before. I would have frowned at their words and walked away. I would have concentrated on the art and been especially amazed by David’s Brutus: Brutus, the founder of the Roman Republic, sternly observing us. I would have stood there for a long moment, filled with indescribable emotion.
But this moment of artistic contemplation would have been short-lived. The Republic would already be ravaged by the civil wars: against the Republic, against the Montagne. Europe would have already started to threaten France years before. New military defeats would have only increased my worries and fear for my patrie.
In that same summer, Marat would be assassinated. I would have been outraged like the others, would have screamed for revenge against those who were trying to frighten us. I would have cheered, in September, with the proclamation of the law to save our economy, to help the poorest, to organise the military efforts, to punish the traitors and assassins of the patriots, the law demanded by the Parisian people and pushed on the Convention: la Terreur.
However, the tension would be too strong even for the Montagne: it would rip itself apart. I would have remembered that back when I was learning how to read, I would have studied the tales of the Greeks and the Romans. The Ancients knew the dangers of factions. They taught us that indifference was as fatal as choosing sides. But I would have chosen my side long before, in the early years of the Revolution.
But I wouldn’t have witnessed all the things happening behind the scenes of the political game. With the help of some friends here and there, connections in the Club and in the Commune, I would have been sent on mission as a secretary, helping two representatives of the People supervising the armies and the regions ravaged by war and revolts.
I would have been far from Paris when I learned the terrible news of July 1794… The news that would break my heart and soul. But I wouldn’t have had much time to be crushed, for someone, another member of the Parisian delegation, would denounce me as “robespierriste”. Thus I would have been arrested, brought back to Paris to be imprisoned. Hundreds of my “kind” – as they would call me – would have died in the previous days. I would arrive in Paris the day they would consider they have purified France enough from the “blood-drinkers”.
- “What’s my crime?” I would ask the jail-keeper.
- “Being a valet of the tyrants,” He would reply bitterly.
I wouldn’t know exactly what had happened, so I would ask, again:
- “What happened?”
- “Hah, they didn’t even tell their plan to their valets?” He would sneer, but answer nevertheless: “The conspirators tried to re-establish monarchy by putting back the little Capet on the throne and the Tyrant wanted to be regent. With the help of the Commune and his closest acolytes, he and that scélérat Hanriot wanted to march on the Convention and massacre all the deputies.”
I wouldn’t have listened to the nonsensical lies. I would have thought of my friends. I would have had friends in the Commune. One very good friend of mine, a childhood friend – in fact, my best friend – would have been in the Garde Nationale, close to Hanriot, working with him. I would have thought: He must have been there on that night. He must have died with them. But I couldn’t be sure; nobody would tell me about him. I would have wished to have died with them…
…But I wouldn’t have had the honour of dying for my ideals: the fripons would prefer to keep us locked in prisons, hoping we would all die there, forgotten, silenced, outcast, rejected, while they built “a new world”. Hah. Restoring the old order. Renewing it. Vultures coupling with the old leeches, the hypocrites.
When I would have finally gotten out of that prison, more than a year later, my France, ma République, would not be the same anymore. Oh, it would look the same: they would make you believe it was always supposed to be thus. And you would believe it, for there would be no hope left.
They would tell you the ultimate goal of the Revolution really was to provoke never-ending cycles of inflation, that they’re really sorry the nouveaux riches are richer and give balls all the time, while more and more people live in the streets – they would tell you they’re sorry for that too, and that they’re really working hard to find a solution, but, you know, poverty has always existed.
They would tell you they’re not really invading and stealing other countries: they are freeing them, they are helping them. Their armies only march for Liberty. Yet, “no one likes armed missionaries,” Robespierre had also said…
They would tell you those rich, frivolous, half-dressed bourgeoise whores – you know, the ones who pretend to be Greeks and freeze like geese in the cold streets in Pluviôse? – were liberated women, models for all. Even if that Convention I would no longer recognise had forbidden women to gather in groups of more than five. They would have forbidden them the right of assembly. But of course, this would only be for the women of the “vile class”, certainly not the “proper” women who would take pleasant walks in the beautiful gardens. No, those laws would be for the “tricoteuses de Robespierre”, the “furies of the guillotine”.
They would tell you they’re really respecting the original Déclaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen by removing and denying the first article: “Men are born and remain free and equal in rights.” They would tell they’re just vaguely re-interpreting the original meaning. They would tell you the Declaration of 1793 was the gift of tyrants: that the rights to happiness, existence, education, work, social welfare and insurrection against a faulty, oppressive and usurping government were really tyrannical. But I would have remembered those rights, even if they denied them, for they would have been forever marked in my heart and soul.
They would take down the calendar, if only because it would have been too obvious that they no longer believed in the temporal specificity of the Revolution. They would call it the “calendar of the tyrants”. They would hate it: it would mess with their rules of economics and trade with other countries. They would hate the feasts they would be supposed to celebrate – except for one, the one they created, when their slaves would gather to burn a dummy representing to be Robespierre, every 10 thermidor. To celebrate the Feast of Liberty.
Liberty…
I would have asked, outraged, unable to bear silence anymore: “Is there anybody still burning Capet? Or do you hate Robespierre more than the ci-devant real king and tyrant?”
And that would have gotten me beaten to death, murdered, sacrificed on the altar of the triumphant bourgeois society, by a gang of brats – la Jeunesse dorée – organised by Fréron to attack the Jacobins, the now so-called Apologists of the September Massacres, the Apostles of the Terror… even though that exactly was what Fréron used to be.
I would have loved to have married. To have had a family. I wouldn’t have had much to offer: just my love, my principles and ideals, a new world consecrating happiness for all. But I wouldn’t have had children to give them to the fripons.
Never.
As I would have been dying, left alone in my own blood, my last thoughts would have been of something I had vaguely heard about in the previous days: a conspiracy, plotting to overthrow this false regime. I wouldn’t have had much hope in their success. I would have thought they were more likely to be defeated, like me. But I would have died with one comforting certitude: this renewed old regime was born with a thorn in its foot, a thorn that would poison it, slowly, followed by the leg, until the entire body of this new world would rot. Flowers can grow from rottenness. Because the battle always continues. Because the surviving ones will fight to break the pink bubble of the usurping parasites and force them to look at the “vile” and the “invisible” who will tell them: “We exist”.
I would be born in the 1760s or 1770s, in Paris. The control of the Church over the spirits of its sheep had diminished over the course of the century… accompanied by a considerable augmentation of pornographic consumption. As in every century, but particularly in this one, bastard children are a common thing. Thus I would be one of them. If I’m lucky, my father would be a bourgeois… and my mother, his maidservant. The son of a bourgeois and a domestique: a “half-breed”, for the coming of a new world. She would be fired by the hysterical bourgeoise, of course, but my father may have appreciated my mother, and so he could be nice and send her money, from time to time, to raise me. He wouldn’t want her to abort or kill me after my birth; he wouldn’t want her to be caught and hanged for her miserable crimes. Maybe he would like me because I would be a son, while his bourgeoise would only give him daughters. He would make sure I got some basic education, that I knew how to write and read, at least. Being a bastard son, I would have no inheritance rights of course. He would have liked to recognise me, but his bourgeoise wouldn’t stand it: she would be very fragile… and she would have the money – or rather, her still living father would have it.
I would grow up in a dark, stinking and dirty quartier of Paris – which they all are anyway – just that this one may have been slightly less dangerous than others, if not for the vermin, diseases and coaches of the rich, always threatening to crush you at every corner of a street. One of the girls next door would be very pretty. I would love her very much. She would be the daughter of a printer. We would discover our… senses against the wall of one of those shadowy and stinking alleys. I would have wanted to marry her, but she would have died prematurely, at fifteen years old. Of one of those diseases that reaped so many of us, those weakened by lack of bread, of fresh air, always corrupted by the smell of shit and urine in the streets.
With the help of a friend, my father would find me an apprenticeship with a candlemaker. In the following years of my existence, I would learn how to survive. Survival: the only way conceded to those with no future, the “invisible”. As I reached my twenties, protest against authority reached a new level: reports of royal scandals, accusatory pamphlets, polemics between the Court and the Parlement de Paris. I would become acquainted with the principles of the Philosophes and read those texts circulating, inspired by the Lumières, and calling for change. At the local café, I would read the news to friends and fellows and, together, we would discuss the issues and take part in the growing public opinion.
And suddenly, one day, I would stop “surviving”. The Revolution would grant to me the right to live. Not at first, of course – the Revolution didn’t yet know what it had done. But it would have given me rights. Given by a Declaration written hastily by men who didn’t want it to go so far, who didn’t weigh the power of the words, though they should have known to. They wanted to hold it back, but it was too late: during the following months, we would have been able to see through them, see that most were aristocrat-lovers and sycophants. But some of these men were willing to go as far as we had the potential to go.
I would have believed in the king, that he welcomed the Revolution as much as we did. But I would have been offended by his traitorous attempt to run from France. I would have been at the Champ-de-Mars, in July 1791, when La Fayette told his men to shoot on the crowd. One of my friends would have died there.
But months would pass and the king would fall. The deputies would change. A Republic would be founded. I would have already started to be active, in the sans-culotte assemblies of the sections, and finally when the Club des Jacobins opened its doors to the poorest. I, who was the merest nothing, would finally become someone: myself.
Now, by this point, you may be thinking: “My, what a self-pitying, boringly politicised and uninteresting killjoy you would be”. Yes, exactly. And you may add “ambitious” and “violent”, for it is coming. I would be a bastard child living in relative poverty and I wouldn’t have had any future if there hadn’t been some blood on the hands of the “vile class” – the men, women and children who are “invisible”. Thus I would have been there, present at the debates of the Convention, when they would be discussing the fate of the ci-devant king. I would have been captivated by the speech of Saint-Just. I would have supported the execution of the king as a usurper of popular sovereignty. Because, as Robespierre said, “Louis must die, so that the patrie may live.”
In the summer of ’93, I would have gone to the Salon organised by David, open to all. I could have heard some – they looked like art students – whisper audibly that the Salon was a failure, that people were too afraid to come. What part of the “people” were they referring to? I would have wondered. I would have seen many people. True, the aristocratic leeches naturally wouldn’t come – having left the country months before. I would have frowned at their words and walked away. I would have concentrated on the art and been especially amazed by David’s Brutus: Brutus, the founder of the Roman Republic, sternly observing us. I would have stood there for a long moment, filled with indescribable emotion.
But this moment of artistic contemplation would have been short-lived. The Republic would already be ravaged by the civil wars: against the Republic, against the Montagne. Europe would have already started to threaten France years before. New military defeats would have only increased my worries and fear for my patrie.
In that same summer, Marat would be assassinated. I would have been outraged like the others, would have screamed for revenge against those who were trying to frighten us. I would have cheered, in September, with the proclamation of the law to save our economy, to help the poorest, to organise the military efforts, to punish the traitors and assassins of the patriots, the law demanded by the Parisian people and pushed on the Convention: la Terreur.
However, the tension would be too strong even for the Montagne: it would rip itself apart. I would have remembered that back when I was learning how to read, I would have studied the tales of the Greeks and the Romans. The Ancients knew the dangers of factions. They taught us that indifference was as fatal as choosing sides. But I would have chosen my side long before, in the early years of the Revolution.
But I wouldn’t have witnessed all the things happening behind the scenes of the political game. With the help of some friends here and there, connections in the Club and in the Commune, I would have been sent on mission as a secretary, helping two representatives of the People supervising the armies and the regions ravaged by war and revolts.
I would have been far from Paris when I learned the terrible news of July 1794… The news that would break my heart and soul. But I wouldn’t have had much time to be crushed, for someone, another member of the Parisian delegation, would denounce me as “robespierriste”. Thus I would have been arrested, brought back to Paris to be imprisoned. Hundreds of my “kind” – as they would call me – would have died in the previous days. I would arrive in Paris the day they would consider they have purified France enough from the “blood-drinkers”.
- “What’s my crime?” I would ask the jail-keeper.
- “Being a valet of the tyrants,” He would reply bitterly.
I wouldn’t know exactly what had happened, so I would ask, again:
- “What happened?”
- “Hah, they didn’t even tell their plan to their valets?” He would sneer, but answer nevertheless: “The conspirators tried to re-establish monarchy by putting back the little Capet on the throne and the Tyrant wanted to be regent. With the help of the Commune and his closest acolytes, he and that scélérat Hanriot wanted to march on the Convention and massacre all the deputies.”
I wouldn’t have listened to the nonsensical lies. I would have thought of my friends. I would have had friends in the Commune. One very good friend of mine, a childhood friend – in fact, my best friend – would have been in the Garde Nationale, close to Hanriot, working with him. I would have thought: He must have been there on that night. He must have died with them. But I couldn’t be sure; nobody would tell me about him. I would have wished to have died with them…
…But I wouldn’t have had the honour of dying for my ideals: the fripons would prefer to keep us locked in prisons, hoping we would all die there, forgotten, silenced, outcast, rejected, while they built “a new world”. Hah. Restoring the old order. Renewing it. Vultures coupling with the old leeches, the hypocrites.
When I would have finally gotten out of that prison, more than a year later, my France, ma République, would not be the same anymore. Oh, it would look the same: they would make you believe it was always supposed to be thus. And you would believe it, for there would be no hope left.
They would tell you the ultimate goal of the Revolution really was to provoke never-ending cycles of inflation, that they’re really sorry the nouveaux riches are richer and give balls all the time, while more and more people live in the streets – they would tell you they’re sorry for that too, and that they’re really working hard to find a solution, but, you know, poverty has always existed.
They would tell you they’re not really invading and stealing other countries: they are freeing them, they are helping them. Their armies only march for Liberty. Yet, “no one likes armed missionaries,” Robespierre had also said…
They would tell you those rich, frivolous, half-dressed bourgeoise whores – you know, the ones who pretend to be Greeks and freeze like geese in the cold streets in Pluviôse? – were liberated women, models for all. Even if that Convention I would no longer recognise had forbidden women to gather in groups of more than five. They would have forbidden them the right of assembly. But of course, this would only be for the women of the “vile class”, certainly not the “proper” women who would take pleasant walks in the beautiful gardens. No, those laws would be for the “tricoteuses de Robespierre”, the “furies of the guillotine”.
They would tell you they’re really respecting the original Déclaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen by removing and denying the first article: “Men are born and remain free and equal in rights.” They would tell they’re just vaguely re-interpreting the original meaning. They would tell you the Declaration of 1793 was the gift of tyrants: that the rights to happiness, existence, education, work, social welfare and insurrection against a faulty, oppressive and usurping government were really tyrannical. But I would have remembered those rights, even if they denied them, for they would have been forever marked in my heart and soul.
They would take down the calendar, if only because it would have been too obvious that they no longer believed in the temporal specificity of the Revolution. They would call it the “calendar of the tyrants”. They would hate it: it would mess with their rules of economics and trade with other countries. They would hate the feasts they would be supposed to celebrate – except for one, the one they created, when their slaves would gather to burn a dummy representing to be Robespierre, every 10 thermidor. To celebrate the Feast of Liberty.
Liberty…
I would have asked, outraged, unable to bear silence anymore: “Is there anybody still burning Capet? Or do you hate Robespierre more than the ci-devant real king and tyrant?”
And that would have gotten me beaten to death, murdered, sacrificed on the altar of the triumphant bourgeois society, by a gang of brats – la Jeunesse dorée – organised by Fréron to attack the Jacobins, the now so-called Apologists of the September Massacres, the Apostles of the Terror… even though that exactly was what Fréron used to be.
I would have loved to have married. To have had a family. I wouldn’t have had much to offer: just my love, my principles and ideals, a new world consecrating happiness for all. But I wouldn’t have had children to give them to the fripons.
Never.
As I would have been dying, left alone in my own blood, my last thoughts would have been of something I had vaguely heard about in the previous days: a conspiracy, plotting to overthrow this false regime. I wouldn’t have had much hope in their success. I would have thought they were more likely to be defeated, like me. But I would have died with one comforting certitude: this renewed old regime was born with a thorn in its foot, a thorn that would poison it, slowly, followed by the leg, until the entire body of this new world would rot. Flowers can grow from rottenness. Because the battle always continues. Because the surviving ones will fight to break the pink bubble of the usurping parasites and force them to look at the “vile” and the “invisible” who will tell them: “We exist”.
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Date: 2008-02-07 03:52 am (UTC)I can appreciate fantasy, but the realism of this story is quite moving :)