Such interesting discussion, I cannot but continue...Those who read this would have to suffer my deteriorating spelling once more. Oh, please, do swoon as much as you feel like. I hope it will not be incompatible with having a critical debate on the topic :-) And yes, the BBC Senzhoost has been beyond my capacity of comprehension. Isn't Hampson's Lucifer better than this dependent adolescent whiner? The BBC portrayal is so incompatible with any testimony on the behaviour of the man on 9th and 10th Thermidor, no wonder they did not show that part. I would be more receptive to a psychopatic depiction (though I would be critical with it, too, as I have developed an alergy to psychology in history), than to such radical misinterpretation. As for Mantel: In the interpretation of history, it is fundamental to understand the people in the context of their period. So, more than Hilary's personal opinion on the "childishness" of Saint-Just's ideas (which I share to some extend: as a 20th-century-person), the relevant question for any serious historical document is how the man and his ideas were perceived by the contemporaries and why they were accepted, feared or admired. And there she fails totally.
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Oh, please, do swoon as much as you feel like. I hope it will not be incompatible with having a critical debate on the topic :-)
And yes, the BBC Senzhoost has been beyond my capacity of comprehension. Isn't Hampson's Lucifer better than this dependent adolescent whiner? The BBC portrayal is so incompatible with any testimony on the behaviour of the man on 9th and 10th Thermidor, no wonder they did not show that part. I would be more receptive to a psychopatic depiction (though I would be critical with it, too, as I have developed an alergy to psychology in history), than to such radical misinterpretation.
As for Mantel: In the interpretation of history, it is fundamental to understand the people in the context of their period. So, more than Hilary's personal opinion on the "childishness" of Saint-Just's ideas (which I share to some extend: as a 20th-century-person), the relevant question for any serious historical document is how the man and his ideas were perceived by the contemporaries and why they were accepted, feared or admired. And there she fails totally.