revolution_fr | JOYEUX ANNIVERSAIRE, ANTOINE ! Some arts and one question

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JOYEUX ANNIVERSAIRE, ANTOINE ! Some arts and one question

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 ?

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I assume he was a Virgo...but very close to being a Leo.

The woman in my life was born on the 26th...so that's very very close to being an amusing coincidence. My own birthday is very close to Billaud-Varenne's, but not quite that close. (In the day and the month, not the year!)

As far as the differing versions of how he looked...that reminds me of the old story that George Washington (first President of the USA) was portrayed in differing ways. Some even claimed that it wasn't the same man. I think it was Robert Anton Wilson who suggested (probably at least partly joking) that Washington had been replaced by Adam Weishaupt of the Bavarian Illuminati.

Also...the idea of taking portraits from the past and recasting them into the present is cool.

I have always believed he had the Ascendent in Leo :) his Moon was very likely in Leo too (I think he had a lot of typical Virgo features, although !)

Once I had a relationship with a man who was born exactly on the 25th - when he told me it first I thought he would have been the man of my life ! But later I realized it wasn't so XD Nonethless he was rather fashinating. So were you born on 23th April ? Very nice coincidence ! Do you think you are someway similar to Billaud, anyway ?

Well, your story about Washington's portraits suggests me lots of interesting backgrounds like the links with the Masonry etc... I also often wonder what was really the role of the Masonry in French revolution as well.

Oh, I want to portray Antoine in modern clothes as a dark-inclined dandy :D

Very close to the 23rd...the 19th actually. An Aries that missed being a Taurus by a day. I'm glad I wasn't born on the 20th...that was Hitler's birthday! As far as my being like BV...I could see myself doing some of the same things in the same situations as portrayed in the Conte book. But I don't know if I would have had the will required to handle all the bloodshed. But then again, I'm not living in a time and place where the only way to overthrow a corrupt tyranny was by using force. It could be argued that I'm living under a corrupt tyranny right now. But at least it has a time limit and I get to vote on it.

Regarding the man born on the 25th...even if he had the same Sun sign as Saint-Just his moon and planets were probably not the same.

Regarding the Masons...if I recall correctly many of players in the Revolution were Masons. So I'm sure this contributed to events and allowed for some behind the scenes agreements. But I'm very sceptical that there were any "secret chiefs" that we don't know about. The people we all know were such powerful personalities that I don't think anyone was pulling their strings.

We could always start a story that there was more than one man claiming to be Saint-Just and that the real one escaped Thermidor.

Eh, I think that voting, unfortunately, doesn't give us all the decisional power we imagnine it should give...

Of course, his planets are completely different form Saint-Just's. Luckily astrology provides billions of different combinations - so every human being is different from any other else. Even twins :)

I agree. I also know French Masonry liked the revolution and it was pleased with a republican nation which could seconde its interests. So it didn't make remarkably oppositions, I guess !
I have read on an Italian biography about Saint-Just (Mazzucchelli's - the only ever written in my language) that he was very likely a mason from the age of 17. This could explain many mysterious aspects of his life: his surprisingly quick career, the publication of "Organt" (which required much money and courage from the editor), his easy contact with the revolutionary entourage etc. But I have read this thing only there. No other source I know makes mention of an eventual Saint-Just's appartenance to the French Masonry...

Hehehe XD XD

I should also be clear that it's the Republicans that are pissing me off!

Mmm, as a foreign observer who feels though personally envolved because US policy !influences that of the rest of the world, I have to admit, despite feeling the Republicans are such a cr*p, I don't trust on Democrats either. I believe their policy differs only in words. That is to say, Democrats show a cleanness (and a so-called program) that is only a facade (and they are much more intelligent than the Republican because of it !), but beyond the facade they are all the same stuff... Perhaps this isn't the appropriate place for such discussions, though.

Btw.: I have found an interesting article on the web featuring lots of references about Billaud's wig (and other interesting information) ! I'm going to post the link on the thread dedicated to him...

The Democrats want to stay where we are and maybe take a few, timid steps forward. That's not very exciting. But the Republicans want to take us backwards.

Perhaps it's harder to see from the outside, but the Republican attack on true freedom and personal liberty is drastic and clearly makes the Democrats significantly better.

God, I deleted your post again ! Here it is:

If enough people in a democracy voted INTELLIGENTLY it would have an effect. But that's the problem!

If I ever found that book I would buy it...even though my ability to read Italian is not that good.

Mmm, this could work at the age of the French revolution. Nowadays everyone who wants to go into politics needs a big amount of money to finance his electoral campaign, even though he/she could be on a good faith. If you don't have this money, you are invisible. So every politician has wether to be rich of his/her own (and it obviously excludes who is not like that) or to be connected with someone (a multinational, a bank, etc...) who can provide him/her a good budget in order to support his candidature - but asking in change to serve his/her interests. So politics is only a matter of business nowadays - entirely - and this has nothing to do with democracy. I would rather call it plutocracy. I believe that the parliamentary system is unjust (sorry for our friends French revolutionaries who contributed to create it, but times have changed !). It simply doesn't work anymore and it can't be changed from its inside because it reproduces everytime the same mechanism....

Could you really read a book in Italian ? Oh, great ! :D
The author is Mario Mazzucchelli, the title just... "Saint-Just". There are many things I don't like in this book, it features also some interesting details however.

From over here it seems like the parliamentary system is too unstable... ...but at the same time the US system can be too stable and too slow to change.

I still would contend that if the voters were informed and voted it their true interests progress could be made. You may be luckier than us in one way, when you say that your politics is "only a matter of business...entirely" Our politics is also becoming more and more tainted by religious craziness!

I can read some Italian very slowly. My abiltiy to read Spanish and French is much better. It's also very hard to find Italian books where I live. I did find a book called _Telestreet_ written by some people in 2003 that were trying to challenge Berlusconi using pirate television. I'm slowly working my way through that. I also came across a book on Dante that seems to match my reading level.

I do have a book about Saint-Just on the way from France written by Bernard Vinot...and the one on Collot d'Herbois

Mmm, this is impossible nowadays because voters are informed through the mass-medias and mass-medias are entirely biased - they are only over-powerful and over-manipulated means of propaganda... but yes, though we have the Pope right at home in Rome, I notice in US there is an amount of religious frenziness that is bigger than here in Italy...

Fine ! Italian is very close to Spanish, quite similar to French. What book about Dante are you reading btw. ?

I believe Vinot's is the best biography about Saint-Just ever. Still quite curious about that one on Collot... have you got them finally ?

I get the impression that many Europeans love the Pope, but that few of them actually do what he says.

Our media might be a little (just a little) less controlled than yours. Plenty of shows attack from both the left and the right...as long as they get good ratings, that's what matters over here. My understanding is that the government has much more direct control of the media in Italy.

I did get the books. As soon as I finish this other French book I'm reading I will probably start the Saint-Just book. I haven't started the Dante book, but it's title is _Dante, le sue opere, il suo tempo_ by Claudio Redi

Right ! This is the Catholic Syndrome: millions people go to the Mass at Sunday, but when they are right outside the church forget they are catholic :)

Yes, Italian medias are almost directly controlled by political parties - everyone has his newspaper at least. I know that in US media don't belong to one rather than another (actually in US there are not so many parties as in Italy) but they are financed by big economic oligopolies, so they can't be reliable either...

Curious to hear about your new books !

Our media is corporate owned. But if they're ratings are high enough they are sometimes allowed to talk about real issues.

I did start the Saint-Just book!

In Italy it happens too, rarely. Only rarely...

And you've just finished it :D

Yeah, I posted a question on Freemasonry this week - you have to root around a bit but biographies do occasionally say that x or y was a mason but don't go further! I wondered how Robespierre could afford to campaign in Artois, but it might explain it if he had financial assistance from his lodge - his grandfather or great grandfather was a founding freemason in the region, according to Ruth Scurr's book.

have read your post, it's weird we have had the same thought at the same time :D !
Once I read (I don't remember the source, but it was reliable enough, I believe) an article about French Freemasonry during the French Revolution (making lots of allusions but not details, like always). It seems that the Duke of Orleans was one of the bosses, and all the people he paid (Camille Desmoulins & Danton included) were masons. But it would be very likely if also Robespierre, Saint-Just and many of the Conventionals were masons or at least in connection with any of its lodges (although in opposition to the Duke of Orleans, maybe, but we don't have elements enough to draw out the inner logic into it). Mazzucchelli, the author of the Italian biography about Saint-Just, makes some remarkable observations about the famous Letter to Daubigny and he claims Saint-Just entered Freemasonry when he studied in Reims...

When I wrote..."But I don't know if I would have had the will required to handle all the bloodshed. But then again, I'm not living in a time and place where the only way to overthrow a corrupt tyranny was by using force"...I was in a more mellow mood.

Today I'm so disgusted with the politics in my country that I'm feeling a lot more empathy for BV's willingness to "remove" the regressive elements of his society.

Hehehe, I would remove all the politic estate in my own land, whether with force or not. All in a whole block !
None deserves to be rescued. This is how things go on nowadays...

(I deleted your last 2 posts for a mistake - I'm sorry ! I added one here and I will add the other in my next one - in italics)

No worries on the deletions...computers sometimes rebel too!

As far as your politics...you have Berlusconi again...and from what I can tell from over here that is not a good thing!

(There are too many posts here - that makes me confused :D)

Yes, Berlusconi is a complete crap, but the pseudo Left-winged government which we had before wasn't much better. Berlusconi put the army around in all the major Italian towns (mine among these !), but it was the so-called Left-winged government which completely destroyed our Welfare State and reduced most of Italian people to poverty...
I haven't been voting since years !

It even made the news over here that they had to send in the army to deal with garbage problems in Naples. I guess the Camorra took over the job and was just leaving the trash all over the place...including the toxic stuff.

There may be more to it than that, of course...we only get brief bursts of news about things that don't involve us!

Hehe, so have you heard about it ? Actually Berlusconi sent the army in Neaples to fight the demostrators (they were thousands people) who protested against that garbage invasion... of course it is not only a Camorra's business. There are collusions with local politicians, factories who don't want to pay taxes for garbage and yes, you get the impression the government has all the interest to leave things just as they are.

Unfortunately Berlusconi sent the army also in many other big towns (mine included !) to "fight against baby-gangs and small criminals" - this is the excuse !! But then you find out all these soldiers are highly specialized and equipped, they often come from missions in Kosovo, Iraq or Afghanistan... so, should we believe they have been sent around to find supermarket thieves and angry students ??
My Goddess.

I hope you get this...my computer is acting weird!

It sounds like the trick they use in Mexico...where they send in the army to fight the drug cartels. But then it turns out that they only attack the cartels that aren't paying enough bribes...leaving the ones that are paying enough to take over the spoils.

Are the areas Berlusconi sends the troops places that voted against him?

Hehe, it is the same ! :D

Actually he sent the troops anywhere... also in places which voted mostly for him. There is a great rise of violence in Italy, especially in the suburbs. People are angry, desperate, they can hardly afford a less than decent quality of life - and Berlusconi is afraid of revolts, that's the question !

I would ask why they can't get rid of that guy, but we've had Bush for 8 years!

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JOYEUX ANNIVERSAIRE, ANTOINE ! Some arts and one question

Saint-Just...Virgo?

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