Camus' teen goth Saint-Just...

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

Another query - does anyone know the source, if any, for Albert Camus' description of Saint-Just (presumably while a law student) living in a room with black walls with teardrop patterns and the shutters closed? This sounds too teen-angsty to be true, but would be wonderful if it was (reminds me of The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, when in a fit of depression he paints his bedroom black but Noddy's bells keep showing through!). Camus mentions it in the Saint-Just chapter of 'The Rebel'.

Comments

[maelicia.livejournal.com]

It's in Michelet -- though I have no idea where he took it. I have it somewhere on my LJ. I'll search through my (many) posts and come back to you.

[sneerbite.livejournal.com]

I seem to remember, for some reason, that Michelet took this claim from Charles Nodier (which would fit), but I am not entirely sure. You can check in C. Nodier, 'Souvenirs, épisodes et portraits pour servir à l'histoire de la Révolution et de l'Empire'on Gallica. But whether this description comes indeed from Nodier or from someone else, it seems highly unlikely to me. Hope this helps. : )

[livviebway.livejournal.com]

I wonder how on earth Charles Nodier would know. It's not as though Saint-Just poured out his teenage decorating secrets in the brief time they met.

...Ahhh romantic historians.

[sneerbite.livejournal.com]

Well, quite. And as I seem to recall, Nodier claimed a lot of dubious things about this meeting, if it ever indeed took place, as well. LOL. Good stuff.

As I said, I am still not sure that Nodier is the origin of this rumour, but I must defend Michelet in any case, as I am sure he did not make it up himself, but merely - perhaps rather foolishly - took it from somebody else.

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

Well, I suppose about nine-tenths of the stuff ever written about the revolution is fiction, so I think he can be excused because it's so gloriously gothic!

[livviebway.livejournal.com]

*So* true.

[sneerbite.livejournal.com]

Saint-Jules is excused any day in my book, for being one of the first to conduct large-scale archival research on the French Revolution. : ) Also, he nearly bled to death writing its history - that man had nothing left at the end! LOL.

I suppose the temptation of goth was just too much in this particular case - especially in relation to Saint-Just, whom he found so very overwhelming. Smirk.

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

Thank you! - I'll look your reference up (my French is a bit crap but improving - had to, because so little stuff is available in translation!). It does sound very Sorrows of Young Werther-ish, high-Romantic, so the period would fit with Nodier.
The early 19thc historians are all very OTT!

[sneerbite.livejournal.com]

Thank you. As I said, I am really not sure he is the source, it's just a dim memory somewhere in my decaying brain. Could have been someone else - but Nodier, the melodramatic, is likely enough after all. Chop chop. : )

[maelicia.livejournal.com]

Here: my translation: (http://maelicia.livejournal.com/318484.html)

[Saint-Just] had always willingly consulted, since his youngest age, the oracles of death. We have said the oddities of his youth; how, in the middle of a very corrupted town of the province, in a dissolute school of law, in the middle of the inner seductions of a lewd imagination, he created a refuge for himself, a room taut with black and white skulls, in which he lived with alone at some hours with the grand deadmen of the Antiquity, appeared to him this phrase which reflected his life: "The world is empty since the Romans."

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

Thank you - that's wonderful - very OTT! I do hope it's true (because I think that's uncannily like the student bedsit I lived in - dark purple walls and a skull on the desk), but if he means skull wallpaper sadly it sounds rather unlikely...

[maelicia.livejournal.com]

I know I have written it in French somewhere in my notes, but that's somewhere at home. I should check it again. I'm pretty sure I translated it badly too, for the simple reason that I don't even entirely understand what Michelet meant in the original French, especially in the important part of "a room taut with black and white skulls". -_-; He was probably raving.

What's "OTT"?

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

"Over The Top". Camus has 'tears', I think, though I was reading Camus in translation (cheat!), but he's probably got it wrong, because skulls seems more appropriate. I don't know - taut, to convey a sense of stifling or overwhelming, maybe - like being 'wired'?

[maelicia.livejournal.com]

I have Camus in French, and I do remember I've read the part and he says 'tears' (larmes). Hm. Maybe it's an element of old house decoration I don't know. ­>.> Not that I know much on house decoration to start with.

I think he said that the black (probably drapes/curtains?) and white skulls were sort of 'suspended', but I don't quite remember. I think Michelet is a victim of Fr Rev Historian Crack, which has killed so many brain cells over the last two centuries. -_-

[trf-chan.livejournal.com]

XDDD Oh my god, that writing is just priceless in its 19th century historian way. NEVER CHANGE, MICHELET ♥ (Well, you can't, really, as you're dead now ._.;). Where did Saint-Just get all these random skulls from? D:! And a more important question...how did I somehow miss you posting this in your journal last year?!

[trf-chan.livejournal.com]

...Well, okay, more likely it was meant that the walls were painted with skulls or whatever, but I'm still having trouble getting graverobber!Saint-Just out of my head now. XD;

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

Oh - it's just reminded me of a cartoon I saw about Napoleon's wallpaper (the arsenic story that turned out to be due to his lifelong hair oil, not arsenic in the green paper!). I kept it but god knows where - the flowery wallpaper mutates into skulls...

[maelicia.livejournal.com]

I'm sure Michelet is very happy of this unrequested, robespierriste, loveful outburst. XDDD

Um. He probably digged them up? TOTALLY. I think it's also Michelet who says that Saint-Just loved to go in cemetaries (hence where he must have digged up skulls), and that after the execution of the Dantonistes, he went to the Errancis to confirm his principles by feeling the Spirits of the Dead or something like that. Er. Creepy, Michelet, creepy. He's going into that hole in that same cemetary, you know. *panic* Your dreams and fancies DO NOT apply as historical sources.

...For the last question, I don't know? D:? I'm sure I wondered back then. :/

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

Darn, none of the 20thc historian are that much fun! Saint-Just 'Harolding'! (as in 'Harold and Maude'). Oh, this just gets better!
Actually - though I can't really see it happening (well, maybe!)- it wouldn't be too hard to get skulls in the days of shallow graves and catacombs and above-ground tombs...there was a man going round the Glastonbury Festival one year with a sack of them he'd obviously nicked from a crypt-clearance! He was selling them at £50 a head...

[maelicia.livejournal.com]

He was selling them at £50 a head...
Ew. *weeps for the loss of human dignity and innocence once again*

Darn, none of the 20thc historian are that much fun!
It depends. Norman Hampson and Thomas Crow, for only two examples, are quite "amusing" sometimes. .__.

Saint-Just 'Harolding'! (as in 'Harold and Maude').
It would explain why some movies seem determined in showing Robespierre aged of 50 or 60 years old.

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

I like Norman Hampson! Even the Saint-Just book - he sounds like a bad tempered tutor going on about a student he particularly dislikes: "even his spelling was bad!"

Geriatric Robespierres..the 1930's Scarlet Pimpernel was on again a few weeks ago, and I think they must have got him mixed up with Mirabeau! It's the one that starts "June 1792, and Robespierre, dictator of France, is sending dozens to the guillotine..." so old man Robespierre is the least of the problems. Fun, though!

0_0

[pevampire.livejournal.com]

Saint-Just's spelling......*giggle* his handwriting isn't exactly pretty either....(..) that's so cute

[citoyenneclark.livejournal.com]

I think this is another case of historians on crack. Its truly scary what people can come up with.

Did they even have skull wallpaper then? Or wallpaper with tears on it? Or did Saint-Just hand paint the tears and skulls himself? :)