revolution_fr | 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 ?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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

JOYEUX ANNIVERSAIRE, ANTOINE ! Some arts and one question

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