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

[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.