Inauguration of Saint-Just's Bust in the Mairie (Town Hall) de Blérancourt

[maelicia.livejournal.com]

"You know how it's difficult to speak objectively of Robespierre and of Saint-Just nowadays, that when they speak of them, it's generally to speak ill of them, and never to remind the good part, [when they posed] the first elements of a social politics.

We brought a monument here to remind everyone who was Saint-Just."


Antoine-Saint-Just.fr reports the inauguration of a bust of Saint-Just in the Mairie (Town Hall) of Blérancourt on 9 May 2009.

You can watch a video of the official inauguration, where they cut a pretty tricolour ribbon for him: http://www.antoine-saint-just.fr/buste090509.wmv (you can download the link).

One of the men in the video says that "Saint-Just is now back in his home", that is the Town Hall, where he began his political career. Gellé and his other enemies from Blérancourt = pwned in the centuries and in the skies.

They placed the bust in the Town Hall next to a great staircase, and facing windows with a view on the places where he walked and lived, like a great place (named Marais), where there were the patriotic manifestations and where he burnt that famous libel.

They placed three quotes on the wall next to the bust so that everybody knows what he said. (They suggest that they may add more.)

"The first is a reference to the optimism of the Enlightenment [...]: Le bonheur est une idée neuve en Europe."

"The second is a reference to a constant aspect of Saint-Just's politics, constantly turned towards the démunis (the poor), among which he was already in Blérancourt [...]: Les malheureux sont les puissances de la terre, ils ont le droit de parler en maîtres à ceux qui les gouvernent.."

"Finally, the third: the Terror. It's impossible to speak of Saint-Just without speaking of the Terror. It's obvious that it's impossible to accept a politics consisting in the physical elimination of political adversaries. Undoubtedly, for us, it's a painful past that refuses to pass. But I am tempted to say that this past refused to pass for Saint-Just himself, since he felt the need to write this beautiful phrase that you could read: La Révolution est glacée. La Terreur a blasé le crime comme les liqueurs fortes blasent le palais."

"So at least, now that this statue is here, it will be able to call out all those who pass next to it."

Comments

[ainokallas.livejournal.com]

;^;

[maelicia.livejournal.com]

Aw, but rejoice, citizen! He's going to be there in the centuries and in the skies!... or until the next political overthrow that will kick his bust out. -_-

[ainokallas.livejournal.com]

I know, I just got a little emotional.

But we're going to make sure that that day won't come, right?

[chip-squidley.livejournal.com]

"You know how it's difficult to speak objectively of Robespierre and of Saint-Just nowadays, that when they speak of them, it's generally to speak ill of them, and never to remind the good part, [when they posed] the first elements of a social politics."

If the issue is between the "good" vs. the "evil" in a person's life and career...how many statues do we have in the USA in honor of revolutionaries that owned slaves?

[estellacat.livejournal.com]

Exactly.

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

And there are loads of statues of Danton. And Camille, who seemed to be pretty happy with the idea of killing political opponents until his private life took a turn for the better. And statues and columns and train stations etc. to celebrate Napoleon's 'look at me! I'm Charlemagne!' mass butchery.

You could see it as perversely flattering, like the Taliban blowing up those Buddha statues because they're scared of what they represent. It's not about the numbers killed, but the ideas, and those ideas are still live issues. That BBC programme was designed to say 'utopian idealism is dangerous - don't try it, kids!' I had a browse at the reactions to the programme on some of the other British/ Irish leftist political blogs and other people had come to that conclusion, too - there has been a lot of ill feeling about bankers, politicians, capitalism in general here recently and talk of a 'guillotine spirit', so maybe that's why the BBC suddenly decided to do this programme now, the establishment kicking back. (Btw sadly this feeling does not translate into a Left wing government because working-class Labour voters have seen 'New Labour' betray them by being Thatcherite so they simply don't vote at all now, allowing the remaining middle-class Left vote to split between lib dem and green and the Tories getting in by default on the first past the post system).

[maelicia.livejournal.com]

That seems very likely. In my eyes, he election of Obama did to the world pretty much what the Revolution of 1830 did: it's "liberal", it's still "rightist", still pretty much "conservative" and "slow" on the whole, but it marks the end of the even more conservative era which pretended to be eternal: like the Capets who had returned on the throne and wanted to bring back the Ancien Régime, the conservatism of the neoliberals wanted to be eternal, and to re-establish the 19th cent. form of "classical liberalism". But nothing is eternal: and 1830 lead to 1848. The world is lead by a tiny oligarchy that is not different from Ancien Régime courts. Capitalism is wearing out and very fastly killing the planet on every level. We're in a worldwide economical crisis. We've got enough of corruption. The world has seen the resurection of révoltes de subsistance (rebellions because of starvation and for food -- sorry, I don't know how to translate them) last year, which we hadn't seen since the Ancien Régime. I think it's that ideology's swan song.

My co-director advised me to write to the French robespierriste societies, so that they protest as well. I've got some contact with the Robespierre one already, so I may just do that. But the Saint-Just one should be warned too -- especially.

[nirejseki.livejournal.com]

This comment just pwns. Just so you know. It sums up perfectly the feeling of the progressive left in America. *saving it and will be distributing it amongst friends*

[trf-chan.livejournal.com]

I am seconding nirejseki. This comment = win.

[estellacat.livejournal.com]

Also very true. On the other hand, I rather like Cato the Elder's sentiments on the matter (or at least the ones attributed to him): "After I'm dead I'd rather have people ask why I have no monument than why I have one."

I'm glad we're not the only ones who understand--as is always the case in history, there's more at stake than history. It's a pity that so many countries these days don't even have a real Left to vote for... By the way, could you link me to some of those blogs? Because I've been rather hard-pressed to find any negative reception of the show on the internet outside this comm.

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

There was a very lengthy discussion on 'Lenin's Tomb'a few days ago - as the name suggests, it's a Marxist website. I found other comments by googling 'BBC2 Robespierre', "Robespierre Zizek', etc. I think what comes across still bears up Orwell's coments 60 years ago and Chesterton's a century ago, that most (British) people only know of the Revolution through Dickens, to which I'll add, and the 'Scarlet Pimpernel' and 'Carry On Don't Lose Your Head'.

Here's one of the best random ones I found today, from a blogger called woodscolt : "Two dubious experiences at the weekend – first, the BBC’s Terror! Robespierre and the French revolution (classy exclamation mark there). This featured plenty of re-enactment (my absolute worst thing), with an inappropriately chiselled and actorly Robespierre, and Simon Schama making lots of spurious comparisons between the Terror and the Chinese cultural revolution, the Russian revolution, and Hitler. And probably just about any other historical atrocity that came to mind, if he’d been given the space. I wouldn’t mind that – the talking heads were quite interestingly balanced, with Slavoj Žižek declaring that ‘A revolution without violence is like beer without alcohol, or coffee without caffeine’, and the wonderful Hilary Mantel giving a humanist view of Robespierre as a man overwhelmed by events and the purity of his moral aims.

But interspersed with the footage taken from 1930s films about the revolution they also showed scenes from the Khmer Rouge revolution, the Iranian revolution, even the recent protests in Iran. This ‘all revolutions are created equal, violence can never be justified, revolutionaries are inevitably corrupted by power’ liberal orthodoxy is utterly boring and completely stifles any kind of interesting analysis of the historical meaning of the French revolution and the Terror, or indeed of any kind of revolution. The nadir of taste came when they read out the names of the Girondist faction (in the accepted style of TV-memorial: solemn music, pictures of the executed fading slowly in and out of view) and at the end segued into a list of the old Bolsheviks executed by Stalin: Zinoviev, Kamenev, etc. Look! All revolutions are the same! They all finish the same way! Everyone ends up dead! So don’t even think about it, kids."

That last sentence made me laugh, because I'd posted practically the same words to maelicia earlier today!

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

http://leninology.blogspot.com/2009/07/proposal-for-refoundation-of-committee.html

That's the Lenin's Tomb link (I think it's a general far left website, though that presumably includes a fair number of Socialist Workers Party (SWP) people, and they give me the creeps!)

[estellacat.livejournal.com]

Whatever else they may think over there, the review's certainly apt enough. (And the far left seems to be the only political grouping that knows its history--make of that what you will. I'm not familiar with the SWP people though.)

[estellacat.livejournal.com]

That's pretty sharp for someone who doesn't know the period--I'm glad there are still people out there who won't just mindlessly imbibe whatever the Schamas of this world throw at them. (That said, if this blogger were more familiar with the Revolution, I think s/he might well share my opinion on Mantel and Zizek: with friends like these, who needs enemies?)

[(Anonymous)]

Sad, isn't it? That's the manipulation of our era. Masked in a so-called plurality of opinions. Cheap psychoanalysis or hypertheoretical bloodlust detached from a particular historical conext are not the only alternative of an "understanding" approach to the Jacobins. Sib.
P.S. Maelicia, are you planning to post your essay here?

[estellacat.livejournal.com]

Yes, it is sad, precisely. And moreover, it is even possible to understand historical actors without agreeing with them--if it were a question of real historians trying in good faith to understand the people and events of this period and disagreeing, I would be all for that. But that was obviously never the point here.

[maelicia.livejournal.com]

P.S. It's coming. And it's coming here. (And going to be advertised in many places.) Very likely tonight. Depending on your time zone, you're sure to be reading it by tomorrow morning. I guess. >_> *silly time zones*

Edit, many, many, many hours later: There's still a part left to translate. That's (probably? or not?) going to be tomorrow then. At one point. Eventually. >_>;;

[chip-squidley.livejournal.com]

And not to mention all the memorials to Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis...and I suspect their rebellion lead to more loss of life than the Terror.

[estellacat.livejournal.com]

Not to mention the toxicness of the cause they were fighting for...

[chip-squidley.livejournal.com]

Indeed!

Yet it is amazing how much nostalgia for that "lost cause" still seems to lurk in the American psyche. Even where I live, near San Fransisco, it's not impossible to come across a Confederate Flag portrayed in some form or another.

[estellacat.livejournal.com]

I've noticed that too. It's bizarre.

[chip-squidley.livejournal.com]

That flag turns up in the weirdest places. I have a very very very rudimentary knowledge of Russian, so sometimes I browse Russian livejournals just to see if I can pick out a few words. I once came across one that featured a Confed flag with Stars of David in place of the "regular" stars. I really wish I would have known enough to figure out what that was about!

[estellacat.livejournal.com]

Wow, just when I thought it couldn't get any more strange...

[trf-chan.livejournal.com]

You should read the book Confederates in the Attic (http://www.salon.com/books/sneaks/1998/03/10review.html). It's an excellent book, basically about the Civil War's continuing resonance in America (and especially the South) today. One of the most interesting/strange things I've read in a long time.

[chip-squidley.livejournal.com]

I actually have seen that book during my frequent bookstore browsings. It looks interesting.

So many books...so little time!

[trf-chan.livejournal.com]

So at least, now that this statue is here, it will be able to call out all those who pass next to it.

Awwwww. ;___________; This makes my soul feel good.