A book you will all really love - if you don't have it go out and purchase RA NAO

[momesdelacloche.livejournal.com]

It's called "Danton : the gentle giant of terror" - you are already loving it, aren't you? - and it's by David Lawday.
I WOULD have posted some of the best bits - I mean, the descriptions of Robespierre and the comparisons between the two men are priceless - but it has been taken from my college library and rudely put on the New Books display in the Uper Reading Room of the Bodleian. So if you are anywhere near there, go and see it!
I mean.. I don't know how the author knows half of the stuff... I think - my theory is - he secretly discovered Danton's private diary! but he doesn't want anyone else to know he has it, so whenever he uses information from THE TOP SECRET DIARY OF GEORGES DANTON AGED 34 1/4 he just doesn't site any references at all, and leaves us all open mouthed - like for instance, when he tells us exactly what wine Danton and Camille Desmoulins ordered from their favourite café on a particular day, and that Robespierre turned it down for a glass of milk instead. He had previously written about Robespierre had a "feline" look about him (and "joyless eyes" - [here he did site a source, the lovely Michelet]) which partially explains the milk but other than that...
I mean, you have to see this. This guy has discovered something big, I'm sure. He's just not telling us about it.

Here is a review by a respected person on the French Revolution scene here in England: http://www.literaryreview.co.uk/doyle_07_09.html

P.S. Sozzalicious to anyone I sort of intentionally annoyed. I am just like a lowly deputy of the Plain. Nobody up there on the Mountain need listen to anything I say
P.P.S. But do read this book because you will not be able to put it down (without hurling it across the room and foaming slightly at the mouth)(in amazement)!

Comments

[estellacat.livejournal.com]

I can't speak for the rest of this community, but if you're trying to get a rise out of me, you've failed. I've seen everything in that book before, so, really, it lost its shock value a long time ago. At this point, I just feel sorry for anyone who actually buys that kind of thing without bothering to dig further. *shrugs*

[lucilla-1789.livejournal.com]

As a teetotaller, I love it, how not drinking alcohol makes you suspicious immidiately. Surely only joyless people drink milk.

Is this a British book? Because it sounds British...

[(Anonymous)]

Have you read it before? I thought it was very new.

[(Anonymous)]

Yes it is.
But it's not even that. It's just the fact that half the book is speculation because it is impossible to know what Danton was precisely thinking when he looked Robespierre in the eyes for the first time, or if he "saw death" in them. I don't know how people get away with publishing these things as if they have anything more to add on the topic rather then their own bizartre fantasies or translations of other peoples.

[(Anonymous)]

I mean I could understand it in a film or even in a TV programme but not in a scholarly history book.

[estellacat.livejournal.com]

No, I mean the kind of content the book is sure to contain, based on the author's comments in the radio interview victoriavandal posted, the review posted here and what I know about its author, and the publisher's notice. I may be wrong, but I seriously doubt it.

[(Anonymous)]

I didn't know she posted a radio interview with him. I thought since it was a new book I might post something about it. Excuse me for not having anything more worthwhile to contribute to this community

[(Anonymous)]

A good biography of Danton would indeed be welcome. However, if it plays with the tiring homophobic and mysogynic 20th-century clichés of Danton-manly-good, Robespierre-effeminate-bad, you cannot be angry if a person who is convinced that politics is more than a cockfight finds such interpretation of history boring and uninspiring. Sib.

[la-muse-venale6.livejournal.com]

Milk is for baddies and dictators... *clear sarcasm* u.ú

[trf-chan.livejournal.com]

P.S. Sozzalicious to anyone I sort of intentionally annoyed. I am just like a lowly deputy of the Plain. Nobody up there on the Mountain need listen to anything I say



Helpful hint! Maybe you aren't getting negative responses because of the views you hold but rather the glib and condescending way in which you express them. Just a thought. Unless you already knew that and are continuing to make said comments to be ~*edgy*~.

Ceasing to feed troll now.

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

Good of Doyle to point out the influence of Buchner; Ruth Scurr obliquely referred to '19thc literature' on Radio 3 a few weeks ago, but this play has been phenomenally influential - doing for Danton and Robespierre what 'Richard III' did for the last medieval English monarch. There are some interesting comments on historians in the intro to that book on Norman Hamspon, including the observation that 'one suspects that, in the end...Norman did not find Danton very interesting'(I'll post the link in a second post cos this damn thing jumps).

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=0-0GsggVM8MC&pg=PA1&lpg=PA1&dq=hampson+doyle&source=bl&ots=fsrybq78j1&sig=pF8Kp06wz8d-BdzVorGJeZOxJXY&hl=en&ei=VaZfSoWNKNerjAemvZ3ZDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1

[misatheredpanda.livejournal.com]

*squint* Have I missed something? I don't see anything particularly bad here - def not enough to warrant the label 'troll'.

Errr this is me not wanting to accidentally stir up any drama :x just thought I'd say.

[estellacat.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm sorry if I came off a bit abrupt there; that wasn't my intention. It's just that it seemed to me you were implying that I couldn't really critique the book without reading it--if that is the case, you're absolutely right, I can't and I shouldn't try. But I can make a pretty good estimate based on the sources I mentioned above, which tells me it would probably be a waste of my time to read it in order to, essentially, make a more mediocre version of M-H Huet's critique of the common portrayal of the dichotomy between Robespierre and Danton from her book Mourning Glory.

That aside, by all means, contribute whatever you can. After all, if everyone were a translator, where would I be?

[estellacat.livejournal.com]

This is a bit off-topic, but about Norman Hampson: I read his biography of Robespierre a few years back, and while I can't remember the details, I don't remember having a particularly favorable impression. (Oddly, what stands out most in my recollection is how unrealistic I found it that the priest-figment was so much more sympathetic to Robespierre than the Communist-figment, considering the actual record on the thoughts of most real priests and Communists. Really, it was a rather round-about way for Hampson to state his agreement with Condorcet's accusation that Robespierre was like the leader of a cult. Perhaps I'm one of the "unimaginative" persons critiqued in that introduction you just posted, but I must admit, I rather wonder why he bothered.)

I got a copy of Hampson's biography of Saint-Just too, but I'm afraid I stopped reading after he referred to him as Lucifer; I just couldn't take him seriously from that point on.

It seems to me, if I'm not mistaken, that you've recommended Hampson a few times in this community. To be blunt (though I hope not rude), I want to ask: why? I am genuinely curious to learn your thoughts on the matter, because I have a great deal of respect for the way you express yourself in this community. So, care to share?

[estellacat.livejournal.com]

Have I missed something?
This: http://community.livejournal.com/revolution_fr/86721.html?thread=1012161#t1012161.

[misatheredpanda.livejournal.com]

I see, no further comment.

[estellacat.livejournal.com]

Me neither. Except this: I have a headache. >.>;

[lucieandco.livejournal.com]

(Straying very far from the topic at hand, but--)
What is amusing about this - Büchner's influence - is that Büchner's play does not actually suggest that "if only [Danton] had prevailed, the bloody climax of the Terror might have been avoided"; its protagonist spends every line of his dialogue that is not copied, jumbled and pasted from actual speeches going on about how there is really no point in anybody doing anything at all (other than, perhaps, indulge in the odd basic earthly pleasure-- but even here, Danton goes beyond the now-stereotypical roaring, living masculinity into excess that is not only repulsive to more than just Robespierre but clearly motivated not by joie de vivre but by boredom and existential despair) because the world is going to the dogs anyway regardless of man's feeble attempts to bring some order into the chaos - as was by this time Büchner's own opinion. His Robespierre, too, is more pathetic (pitiable even) than anything, and is quite clearly shown as not being 'in control' of the force of nature that is the Revolution (which is, in turn, illustrated and glorified by the play's Saint-Just - who, apart from being a complete fabrication and most likely introduced mainly a vessel for another side of Büchner's personal philosophy, is also shown up as Not Really Aware What He's Got Himself Into by means of a deliberately faulty mythological allusion in his great speech). But it continues to be read that way! I wonder why, it's so glaring. The only thing suggesting a Dantoniste idea behind the play is the fact that it is framed around the last days of Danton and that its Danton claims to 'understand' 'the people' ('la rue', as Wajda would have it later) 'better' than Robespierre, but even that is undermined in the way the actual people are actually depicted, namely as not caring much one way or another who exactly is acting in their interest or how that interest is defined as long as they're making a good show of it. The same cynicism is turned against absolutely everything/everyone. In fact it's surprising the play isn't more often explicitly quoted by the cynical front in the war on idealism, it's brimming with catchy lines of that order.

[lucieandco.livejournal.com]

Hm. Now, if one were to pretend the book made no claims to historical fact at all and approach it as one would a work of fiction/decidedly subjective interpretation, would it have any merit? Any literary quality, any outlandish (and preferably unheard-of) interpretation that could warrant a claim to artistry or make for exciting insights into the befuddled mind of the writer? It does come across as possessing some cheap entertainment value, at least, but there's ever such a lot of that around in 'historical' 'biographies' already - and it gets so repetitive, too.

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

I generally like his stuff - he's not florid, he's not writing 'look at me' history, he puts all the facts down on the page, even if he does sometimes make the occasional sarcastic comment alongside. He regards Robespierre as a tragic figure, rather than a monster (that's rare in English historians!), and doesn't simply dismiss him as paranoid - time and again, Hampson reminds readers that there WAS some sort of foreign plot. He has said he finds Saint-Just fascinating, even though he evidently loathes him (though in the secular English tradition, comparing someone to Lucifer carries Miltonic connotations, rather than simply biblical). Unlike most modern historians, he's lived through experiences of a similar intensity to the ones he writes about - though got more right-wing as he got older. He reminds me of the donnish Hector in Alan Bennett's The History Boys, who is of a generation swept away to make way for the flashy style of Irwin (based, I once heard, on Schama) - hence those nicely biting remarks about po-mo academe in the intro to the Saint-Just book. 'Life and Opinions' is one of my favourite history books covering any period - it reminds me of disentangling hair, unpicking various strands - in answer to the Doyle point in that intro, I did get the Tristram Shandy reference (my degree was English Lit). Many historians claim their 'story' is definitive, THE history of XYZ - 'Life and Opinions' is a rare beast, in that it admits such a thing is impossible.

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

Btw, though every comment I've ever heard on the Irwin character says it's clearly meant to be Schama, Bennett has denied this, saying - get this - Schama lacks the political agenda and 'persistently jeering tone' of the other TV historians, from which I can only conclude Bennett has never read one of his books or seen one of his programmes!!!

[estellacat.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

Everything you mention here about Hampson is true, and I can see why you would appreciate him compared to other English historians. I don't really object to the literary style of "Life and Opinions" so much as it's frequent lack of straightforwardness--to fall back on the example I used earlier, I'm nearly certain that what he was trying to say was not that a priest would like Robespierre, but that Robespierre was like a priest, which is not really the same thing. I prefer historians who are upfront about those kinds of things. Also, the sarcastic comments irked me a bit, but I suppose that's rather a minor point.

Mainly, my issue is: Hampson is all right as far as English historians go, but I've read so many French historians that are just a cut above anything I've read in English (with a few notable exceptions such as Timothy Tackett and some French historians who write in English, like J-P Gross), that I don't really have much patience for him--or most other English historians, for that matter.

(Not that all French historians are good--Furet being a, or perhaps the, case in point--or all English historians bad, but one thing that definitely turns me off the latter group is the annoying tendency of many of them to write in such a way that says, "I am English. This book is being written from the perspective of an Englishman. Since I'm contractually obligated to dislike the French, let me insert some stereotypes about them or even some jokes at their expense, even though this does not help my analysis in the least. Robespierre was very unusual for a Frenchman, wasn't he? Did I mention that I'm English?" ad nauseam, though obviously, I'm exaggerating to make a point. Typically, at least. By the way, lest it sound like I'm picking on the English in particular, American historians have been known to do this as well--I just happen to know of more American than English historians who manage to avoid it, or at least keep it to their introductions instead of constantly inserting it into the main text.)

By the way, it would make a great deal of sense of Irwin were based on Schama. "It doesn't matter what the truth is; that's not what you're looking for. What you really want is to make a sensation!"

[estellacat.livejournal.com]

Ha. Ha, ha. HAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA. That's priceless, truly. XD

[estellacat.livejournal.com]

Thank you for that. Especially the last sentence.