VIDEO EXTRACT of "La Terreur et la Vertu" - Robespierre and Saint-Just on 9 thermidor

[maelicia.livejournal.com]

Finally!! I just found an extract online of the amazing La Terreur et la Vertu, near the ending of the second part "Robespierre".

This is the antidote needed after Terror! Robespierre and the French Revolution.

This is Saint-Just -- with natural authority, dignity, and a grand, tragic, resolute and sublime aura:

Robespierre et Saint-just 9 thermidor
envoyé par star_vin. -

My translation of the dialogue:

COUTHON – Yes, write. (reciting) “Citizen-soldiers, generals and officers, armies of the Republic. The National Convention has fallen in the hands of rascals...”

(Couthon's voice fades, as Robespierre slowly walks to Saint-Just, who's standing near the window of the Hôtel de Ville.)

ROBESPIERRE – Why don’t you say anything?

SAINT-JUST – You know it. “In the name of the French people…” What people? It is not here.

ROBESPIERRE – Why did you follow me?

SAINT-JUST – “You, who sustain the fragile patrie against the torrents of despotism and intrigue… I do not know you, but you are a great man. You are not only the deputy of a province; you are the one of humanity, and of the Republic.”

ROBESPIERRE – What is this?

SAINT-JUST – You don’t remember?

ROBESPIERRE – No.

SAINT-JUST – One day, back in 1790, a young man from Blérancourt wrote a letter to a deputy he admired through his speeches. This deputy; it was you, Robespierre. This young man; it was I.

ROBESPIERRE – So, you wrote to me?

SAINT-JUST – And I did not change.

ROBESPIERRE – I was the loneliest man of the Constituante. And now, I am alone again. Always.

SAINT-JUST – And I…

ROBESPIERRE – Everything is lost, isn’t it?

SAINT-JUST – Yes, it is lost. It could not be otherwise. Considering who we are, both of us. Considering what we think.

ROBESPIERRE – Why didn’t you help us? Give us any advice?

SAINT-JUST – We possessed seventeen companies of gunners and thirty-two cannons. The Convention only had one company. We had to, at 19:00, lead two companies in front of the main door of the Convention; at the East door, one company; at the West door, two companies. We had to, at 19:30, invade the committees and immediately arrest all the members. We had to, at 19:45, invade the Convention, proclaim the Constitution of 1793 and outlaw Tallien, Fréron, Barras and all the other rotten scoundrels. We had to send, at the School of Mars, two companies to rally the students, the officers and the troops. We had to, at 20:00, in Paris, proclaim the triumph of the Commune. And the Insurrection of the Apathetic would have been crowned the Insurrection of the Bold.

ROBESPIERRE – And you did nothing?

SAINT-JUST – If I had, would you have approved it?

ROBESPIERRE – No…

SAINT-JUST – The People of 10 August had the right to invade the Tuileries. The People of the 31 May and of the 5 September, had the right to invade the Convention. Not the armies.

ROBESPIERRE – Yes…

SAINT-JUST – Today, all that was left to us was the dictatorship of the armies. The military dictatorship. We would have been suspended in a void. Robespierre, consul of the Republic. Saint-Just, consul of the Republic.

ROBESPIERRE – Of which Republic?



Edit: And if someone feels adventurous enough to watch it all in French without subtitles, I think I just found the whole second film online: http://www.dailymotion.com/playlist/xrrkt_star_vin_la-revolution-francaise

This is brilliant. And how apt.

Comments

[maelicia.livejournal.com]

Which part exactly? (Because it does sound like an interesting parallel...)

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=related&v=JiBfEHUHAQU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awUpS6lxCVs&feature=related

if the links work, it's towards the end of part 11 and the start of part 12 - obviously, the motives are different but there is the same sense of stripping yourself of earthly things (sex, etc) in the service of the national (or in this case, Tudor!) interest. It also reminded me a bit of something my neighbour, a judge, said about wearing the long white wig and court uniform: she liked it because it enabled her to cease being herself, with her own personal worries and household concerns, and to become an instrument and representative of the law.

[maelicia.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes, I remembered that scene. (It was a really striking one, I must say.) I wanted to know which part of my comment the parallel was about... I take it from what you say that it was the last part on Saint-Just's self-created myth?

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

Yes.

[maelicia.livejournal.com]

(I hope this is what you meant, because I can't refrain from replying to this. I'll risk it anyway.)

I so agree with you. I mean, this is such a fascinating parallel, even if a bit funny -- I don't think Saint-Just would like being compared to an English Queen (and yet again to a woman -- it's growing old, isn't it?). But it's really, sincerely an interesting concept. My own "theory" of Saint-Just's psychology is that he tried to "regenerate" himself with the Revolution, that he was "born again" with it, and then he was convinced that the model -- his model, his inspiration, etc. -- could work with others as well. No religion could have done that conversion but a revolution did it...

Your parallel is really close to it: it's becoming a whole new public person, cutting away from the past, as the vids you linked show. Thus, it's really different from what an "average individual" (who is more private than public) would do in a "normal situation" -- hence why Hilary Mantel's psychologising of Saint-Just fails, or why it always fails when they do that and call him "a whiny, tantrum-y teenager". They fail to understand the particularities of that context, the incredible, unique and, yes, self-important way they felt. Saint-Just wanted to become that idealized, perfect citizen, perfect patriot, perfect representative of the People he wrote about.

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

Yes, Hilary Mantel thinks he doesn't evolve, just dismisses him as emo teen - I think she's missing out on a fascinating subject! He seems to be trying to incarnate his republican ideal - hence the stoical behaviour on 9 Thermidor (unless he was simply too tired to fight - he seems to have been awake almost all the night before!).

[(Anonymous)]

You are so right. It is not the matter of moral judgement or intellectual analysis of ideas. It is one of the basic principles of a sensible approximation to history. She may find Saint-Just childish and ridiculous, and be surprised why his contemporaries did not see him as such (even Desmoulins, who mocked him for his self-important posing, did not see him as childish). However, for someone dealing with history, this surprise, or incomprehension, should be a starting-point for a productive historical analysis. Because what matters is not Mantel's personal sympathies, but how we explain a person in a particular historical context.

[neuropathology.livejournal.com]

Really? Granted, I've only read A Place of Greater Safety. But it seemed more to me like she views him as the cold, dark, manipulative embodiment of everything evil.

[(Anonymous)]

Yes, but surprisingly she paints him in a very different way in the BBC document. S.

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

The second part of my comment was referring to the historical Saint-Just, rather than Mantel's. In her novel, she has him as Robespierre's bad fairy (I picture it like those classic Warner Bros. cartoons, where a tiny devil and a tiny angel pop up on Daffy Duck's shoulders! Desmoulins being the good angel...). In the TV programme, she had a slightly different take - now, he's an over-indulged child.