JOYEUX ANNIVERSAIRE, ANTOINE ! Some arts and one question

[fatimahcrossin.livejournal.com]

Today is the 241th anniversary since Antoine Saint-Just's birth. All the best to my most beloved Citoyen :x !
It's a perfect day to dedicate to him some drawings. I made them with traditional items (pencils, ink, felter-pens) so they are full of mistakes. But I am lazy and I don't have the suppport of an appropriate pc software, so I leave them just as they are. Here the portraits:

Louis Antoine Saint-Just after me + Prudhon

This is my favourite Antoine's portrait ever.
I am sorry because the sentence at the bottom is written badly. But I decided to leave it as it was. Too lazy to change it. 





Louis Antoine Saint-Just after me & Greuze 1

My second favourite Antoine's portrait ever.
Someone say it's not him in the picture (it would be Talleyrand instead) but I don't believe it. The features of this cinically smart, cooly outrageous feline predator are typically Antoine's. More, I love it to be him 


Ps.: I added those golden earrings and stole over the verses on a yellow background from Rimbaud - thank you, Arthur !






Louis Antoine Saint-Just after me & Greuze 2

Other (and beloved) portrait. I have seen it only on a b/w version so the colour (included that kitsch one of his clothes) is mine too.

(If you want to see the portraits in an enlarged and higher definition version then check my DeviantArt: http://www.fatimahcrossin.deviantart.com)



Saint-Just's portraits raise a question - the well-known one of his physical appearence: how did he really look like ?
We know many portraits, prints, engravings etc. all featuring him but each one of them shows a man who looks completely different from the others (I am sure you know all his portraits - if there is anyone who doesn't here it is a good link with a rather complete list of his iconography: http://www.saint-just.net/arts.html).
 Plus, written accounts aren't of much more help. His contemporaries' witnesses vary one from another and they are often in an open contradiction. So again: how did Antoine really look like ?
Despite what it is often commonly said, I believe physical appearence is (at least in a certain way) "the mirror of personality" - an old Sicilian proverb tells - and physiognomy has its reasons to be, I guess.
Antoine was handsome, yes, this appears to be the most common opinion about its physical appearence - how was he handsome ?

Comments

[wolfshadow713.livejournal.com]

Personally, I find Saint-Just one of the hardest figues of the time to make sense of. Robespierre's motivations I can sort of understnad, but there is a distinct element of mystery to Saint-Just. In my experience trying to understand Saint-Just's mind and motivations is like looking into a dark room: you know there are things in there and can vaguely sense them, but you can't make sense of what they are. My first assessment of Saint-Just was that he was simply obsessed with power, but then I realized that is not the case, but I cannot figure out exactly what is.
I think this unfathomability of his character and motivations are what lends him the "aura." It is thus rather appropriate that the pictures of him vary so much.

[fatimahcrossin.livejournal.com]

Mmm, I have to admit I rather find Robespierre more difficult to understand than Saint-Just, but I believe this is just a matter of personality, compatibility etc. Though I know what you want to say.
I think your intuition of his "power obsession" is a close explaination, but not in the sense commonly conceived - because in Saint-Just's case "power" shouldn't be meant in a strict political sense, with a merely "earthly" connotation. A wider range of meanings for the concept should be assumed. The philosophic cathegory of the nietzchean "Uebermensch" and the religious-antropologic archetype of the "dionisiac" would help us rather well. Of course this doesn't mean Saint-Just was some kind of an obsessed "Superman" (OMG !), but he strongly felt pushed to go beyond himself and he was eager of the intense sensations this pursue gives.
I have read very much about him, but I still believe that the keenest descriptions of his personality are that of Albert Camus and André Malraux, who are antropology-inclined philosophers, plus men of action and not professional historians. Saint-Just intensely looked for power as his own's mean to transcend his Ego, so this power had to be something embracing all the aspects of human life: power as a whole expression of vitality. Because of this his behaviour (and his personality in general too) could seem so contradictory and mutable... I guess Antoine was drunk, drunk of himself - or this is what he longed for, at least :)

[wolfshadow713.livejournal.com]

I tend to find Robespierre a bit easier to understand because, in retrospect, the progression of his extremism is devostatingly logical (though when I remember the peaceful and just lawyer from Arras, it is shocking hard on a more emotional level to see that that is the same man who went to the Guillotine in Thermidor).

Your assessment of Saint-Just as a bit of an "Uebermensch" is intersting. It would be a good subject for debate. He clearly embraced the notion that social convention must be broken and should be broken by the "right" people to bring change, but he lacks the "noble man's" spontineaty and was obsessed with notions of morality, obviously believing in a clearly defined good and evil--traits of the slave morality as explained in Geanology of Morals. Still, for all practical purposes, I think your classificaiton is accurate, though more in Dostoevsky's interpretation of the Extraordinary Man (see Crime and Punishment) than a pure nietzchean interpretation.

[wolfshadow713.livejournal.com]

On a tangentially related note, I'd be interested to know Fydor Dostoevsky's take on Saint-Just; it would have been quite interesting, I'd imagine.

[fatimahcrossin.livejournal.com]

I don't think Dostoevsky ever wrote something about Saint-Just (if someone here has some information about please tell us !) but they have something to share, indeed...

[wolfshadow713.livejournal.com]

To my knowledge, he didn't, but I think he would have been capable of providing a good deal of insight about the inner workings Saint-Just's mind.

[fatimahcrossin.livejournal.com]

I believe it too...

[hanriotfran.livejournal.com]

No; as far as I know Dostoyevsky didn't write anything about Saint-Just. He is an entire Dostoyevskyan's character, tough.

But all French Revolution is somewhat a Dostoyesvyan play...Oh; I'm under "Danton's" of Wajda's influence. I know, I know...Forgive me . :D

Hanriotfran (Vanesa)

[fatimahcrossin.livejournal.com]

During these days I am reflecting on the archetype of "dionysiac" for a project I have with a friend of mine... It has much to deal with Saint-Just. I noticed how it requires a great amount of hyper-sensitivity and on the other side a lack of affectivity for close, concrete individuals. This is near to many dostoevskian characters...

[hanriotfran.livejournal.com]

Yes. Saint-Just has much of a "dionysiac" archetype on him...And he had a great sensitivity for "the general world" without being able to approach concrete individuals. I think this very thing makes of him a great character for a good fictional-history book or a movie, or a play...But this goes for other Revolutionnary types as well. I can't understand why there's no more GOOD movies about French Revolution characters. They could be real human dramas!

A good movie about Collot d'Herbois could be a great succes. Did you read Michel Biard's book about him? It has a lot of info and shows the man was quite a character! His life before the Revolution was very interesting.

HanriotFran (Vanesa)

[fatimahcrossin.livejournal.com]

Yes, I also wonder why there isn't a really good rev-related film yet !
Actually many major revolutionaries shared with Antoine this kind of sensitiveness (which has much to deal with a well-defined specimen of narcissism !), but I see the so-to-say "dionysiac" only in him... Hopefully some director will notice it and think about a wonderful drama :)

No, I didn't read it. I have to admit, I don't know Collot very well. Though I am sure he was very, very interesting his own way. As you already know, I rather prefer his friend Billaud - and often think of writing a screenplay for a film about his incredible life ! One about Collot would be a good idea too, nonethless...

[fatimahcrossin.livejournal.com]

Yes, Robespierre's career looks more fluid and regular in its development. It seems to follow the rational laws of cause and effect... though I have to admit I feel much more at ease with Saint-Just's mysterious ups and downs !

I believe he was an "idealist", in an ethymological sense rather than in that usual of "a-dreamer-who-wants-to-change-the-world". His action followed an idea and lacked, of course, spontaneity. It wasn't the generous gesture of a pure passionate man. His behaviour was submitted to a preminent intellectual interpretation of the world - an abstraction. This splitted up his world in two parts, the Good and the Evil as you say. Yes, you're right - he was a moralist, of that same stuff of some religious leaders who are strongly convinced they are called "on a mission" (despite this is f*ckin' irrational !) and want to shape the rest of the world according to their ideas. I believe that the concept of "Extraordinary Man" works very well with him !
I guess it is not a case that Camus in his essay "The Rebel" discusses both Saint-Just's and some dostoevskian characters' revolutionary attitude. Ivan Karamazov from Dostoevsky's "The brothers Karamazov" (-> btw. is it the right English title ?) makes me think of Saint-Just a lot. His perception of the world is intellectual (or at least he makes all the efforts to do so - he wants to control life with his thoughts), he has a conversation with the Devil (symbolizing the Unconscious, the part of the world every moralist uses to reject), he creates the perfect crime having his father killed by another character who looks as his alter-ego (or better, his degenerated caricature)... Saint-Just stands on the other side - the side of the Perfect Virtue performer, opposite to the Perfect Crime performer, but the spirit is the same !
More, at the end of the book we find out Ivan fails and he is driven to madness despite nobody really attacks him (btw. it would be interesting to debate about Saint-Just's behaviour in Thermidor)...