The Last Nights of Ventôse

[elwen-rhiannon.livejournal.com]

"Actually, they were almost the same age, with a difference of two years only, but never really realizing this fact. They both accepted Maxime as the older one with no doubt. Their mutual feelings were much stronger than normal friendship; it was simply love from both sides, in Camille's case with a huge amount of adoration. The condition for his own happiness was Maxime being close to him; an adult child tended to live in a constant exhausting rebelion against his own slave's dependence. Yet the feelings of the older one were probably even stronger, though they did not restrain his being. Maxime's love was 'at least strange', entirely protective, much more passionate than fraternal attachment, not even paternal, but typically maternal. A kind of love hard to bear, painful, monstrously deep, mindless to the point of absurd, full of nervous fear and insatiable tenderness - in the case of a man, of course, hidden extremly well. During the last months, he didn't have time - nor right - to ponder Camille, aching in his all body with a dumb pain he refused to even think about; for half a year Camille had been giving him one stroke after another, deliberately and knowingly hitting the weakest point each time. An incredibly strong attack of malaria, from which Maxime was pulling through with such a toil, was probably the result of this game. A love of this kind is ripped of any dignity so far that the more your darling one harasses you, the more loved he is."

Not mine, though I wouldn't mind it to be. This piece of fanfiction is almost a hundred years old, being a part of a novel by Stanisława Przybyszewska, Ostatnie noce ventôse'a / The Last Nights of Ventôse. Posted in this community because it's one of a very few places where the author's name is recognized, and I think she is worth it.

Translation by me.

Comments

[sibylla-oo.livejournal.com]

We should not forget, though, that there are not historical proofs of such deep feelings on neither of the sides.

[elwen-rhiannon.livejournal.com]

It's a novel, a piece of fiction, not a scholar work. As for the truth, we'll probably never learn, like you say: they took it to their graves. Studying history one can only say that their relationship was strong (to the point) and complicated. Przybyszewska gives one explanation, a possible one we can accept as well as decline, as there is no way of verifying it.

[sibylla-oo.livejournal.com]

Anyway,thank you for translating and posting. Przybyszewska's indeed worth it.
Yes, I know it's fiction. Many people tend to confuse fiction and history, though. Therefore my remark. What proofs do we have, by the way, of a STRONG friendship between the two?

[elwen-rhiannon.livejournal.com]

Apologies for delay.

I know about confusing fiction and history, but this phenomenon will never stop surprising me. Perhaps it is only me as a philology scholar, but how can one take a historical novel, especially written by at least one generation younger writer, and treat it like an actual source. Though some writers actually do more research than others, they should be always taken cum grano salis, at least in my opinion. I never take anything for granted, holding personal opinions marked "subjective", but that's me.

On your last thought - I think much depends on what we both call "friendship" and when we mark it as "strong". Personally, I would never ask anyone to be the best man/maid of honour at my wedding and later the godparent of my first child, were it not a person truly close to me, but perhaps you see it in a different way. Returning to history, I've always been interested with young Maxime's school years. Obviously intelligent yet not from the best of families, in a rather snobistic society, which together creates a high possibility that even if he wasn't ostracised, he wasn't very popular, too. In such circumstances, a relationship of a sensitive child surrounded by maybe not enemy, but indifferent school mates, with one fellow student can become strong and survive years. But perhaps you don't like psychological approach (Adlerian-Freudian, I'd say). On to structuralism then. Why, by the love of the Supreme Being, why was non-sentimental, non-trusting Robespierre whose private space was so small that almost non-existing and for whom the Revolution was all life, why was he keeping up with Desmoulins for so long, having friendly contacts with political oponent, with possibilities, yes, but not so extraordinary that he couldn't be replaced. Even when Robespierre became more antagonistic with Danton. From a purely political point of view, he didn't need Camille that much and "should" actually "forget" about him much sooner (come on, "friends" in POLITICS? with a guillotine in a background?). He didn't. He obviously hesitated. The explanation "loved him" is just one explanation, and a very simplified one. Love is complicated. Like hell. Neither of us has to accept Przybyszewska'a direct "slash" interpretation (though in further parts of the novel she writes a lot about mechanisms of repression), but I think that yes, that was something - not necessairly that - between the two, something strong and rare in Robespierre's life. I'd dare to say Camille's, too. And it finished the way it did.

[sibylla-oo.livejournal.com]

First of all, I consider Przybyszewska's historical fiction totally legitimate and insightful (as I explain here: ). I just posed the questions I posed in order to open an interesting debate ;-)

As for Robespierre and Desmoulins.
First of all: yes, I think they were friends during the years of Revolution. I doubt they were friends in the school and I am convinced they had no contact in the long years between the schoolyears and the revolution.

Second: There exists a problem of judging people's from today's poit of view. For example, today in many countries, people choose their bestmen or the godfathers of their children among their friends. In many other countries, and in many more in past, people have chosen them mainly for social prestige or in order to provide their children with support of an influential person in the future. That was especially the case of the godfathers. So, what may to us seem as a proof of a close friendship, might have just meant that Robespierre was in that moment the most influential of Desmoulins' acquaintances. Or not.
Anyway, there are indeed other signs that leave the door open for speculation, I admit it ;-) Though it seems to me that the boom of this speculations in the 20th century has more to do with our Freudian obsessions that with the late 18th century feelings and events, haha

[sibylla-oo.livejournal.com]

BTW, where did you get the idea that Robespierre was "non-sentimental, non-trusting Robespierre whose private space was so small that almost non-existing" from? Now, basing ourselves on historical sources, we know quite for sure that he was very sentimental, after all, he was a Rousseauist and loved all the nature-people-doggies-flowers etc. stuff, to put it simple. In his private space, he loved to play big brother to the Duplay youth, priding himself for solving their petty disputes, and to other revolutionaries, and there were parties where this political brotherhood was cherished at the Duplays almost every night. (BTW, Couthon moved to the Duplays with his family, and still nobody speculates about a love between the two ;-). That's history. The "man without friends" is 20th century fiction. The "cold monster" is a British one.

[sibylla-oo.livejournal.com]

http://community.livejournal.com/revolution_fr/90848.html

We had a debate on jacobin frienship here, too.

[missweirdness.livejournal.com]

Tis so true; I think the rest is made up somehow. Too bad we don't know, but Maxime certaintly has the gravity of being older that i don't disagree on. xD

[elwen-rhiannon.livejournal.com]

Frustrating and fascinating, aren't they? All the things "well never know" about history. Pity that Robespierre's personal papers were destroyed.

[missweirdness.livejournal.com]

It drives people crazy like me =o who don't need to be more than crazy. I wish i could go back and save them..=( i guess we have to speculate on these things.

[highfantastical.livejournal.com]

This is absolutely fabulous! Thanks for posting.

[elwen-rhiannon.livejournal.com]

You're welcome. Perhaps I'll translate more, but I have to choose a part of the book.

[lucieandco.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much for translating that! I have read the two plays of hers that were translated into English and been interested in the novel ever since, but as there is no translation and I do not speak Polish (always mean to sign up for a course - largely for that very reason, in fact - but never do), I've never been able to find out anything more about it than that it also deals with Robespierre. I'm not surprised to see its take on the relationship with Desmoulins, quite in tune with their little scene in "The Danton Case", with Robespierre always fearing that he has 'seen through his most intimate feelings'. What is the rest of the book like, content-wise? I trust it's not all slashy slush?

I wonder what Przybyszewska would have thought of 'fanfiction' that identifies itself as such, slash in particular, since in effect, that is precisely what she is writing - not only with the under-/over-/all-around-tones between those two, but with half of her entire cast at least attracted to Robespierre, if not to one another, and with so much gossiping and quasi-romantic angsting - to exaggerate slightly, she paints the entire revolution as a grand bisexual soap opera ... and yet she doesn't seem to have acknowledged that she was taking things lightly, writing out fantasies. The historical-political inaccuracies in her writings can be explained as 'alternative interpretations adjusted to better serve the expression of her own ideas and concerns' (the dangerous misconceptions that can arise from writers using history in this way without acknowledging clearly that they have not illustrated a fact but created a fiction have been pointed out in the past), but there is so much of these little personal affairs in them that doesn't seem to express either the acting figures' historical personalities nor any personal philosophy of the author's, but just seems to be dreams running wild, and-- well, yes, I wonder if she acknowledged that at least to herself, or if she actually believed that everything, the politics and the personal relations, was the way she presents it.

[sibylla-oo.livejournal.com]

:D I could not have expressed it better. Wow. At least whe TRIES to be honest with the real people she writes about...Anyway.

[lucieandco.livejournal.com]

That's the impression I'm under - that, grotesque though it may seem, given the often far-fetched claims and conclusions her plays make, she herself did believe that her vision of the men and events was as true as if she had been a witness, and that she never consciously altered anything to make a certain point (which, whether one agrees with the point in question or not - or thinks they shouldn't have ab/used historical scenes to get it across - is what Büchner did, even what Wajda did, each using the 'stage' of the revolution to vent their own frustrations), and even less for sheer entertainment value.

It's known that Przybyszewska had a love/hate relationship with "Danton's Death" and dismissed Rolland's "Danton" for reiterating the stereotypes and simplifications made 'popular' by the former (I'm so sad she died before his "Robespierre" came out, she probably would have had a lot to say about it), but I wonder what she would have thought of works in which the authors clearly and consciously distort certain historical persons and events not to make a philosophical or political point (which, though potentially problematic [if the fact/fiction distinction isn't maintained, as we've gone through last month :D], is how half of world literature has come about since ancient times) but just to fit in better with their personal fantasy of the 'soap opera' (e.g. Hilary Mantel's treatment of the Duplays or Saint-Just). She probably would have recoiled in horror - and yet, didn't she do the same thing when (in "The Danton Case" - can't speak for the novel here) she practically reduced Desmoulins to a blubbering baby ready to serve enthusiastically as the squeeze toy for either the supermale Danton or the superman Robespierre (or when she Pyladified Saint-Just, or had Billaud-Varenne, Barère, and Collot d'Herbois bicker about the atmosphere 'loaded with eroticism' that surrounds Robespierre, or how his 'very presence [...] goes to the boys' heads', and so on and so forth) - even if it happened in the purest of intentions? With Przybyszewska, the gap between what she (apparently) thought she was doing (bring An II to life and do justice to the unappreciated and vilified genius of Robespierre) and what she did (apparently) do (project all the processes of her mind - from concrete politics and philosophy to romantic fantasies and frustration at her own career as a luminary, or lack thereof - onto the 'cast' of the French Revolution) is so wide it seems impossible to judge her work by any coherent standards. But it's fascinating.

[sibylla-oo.livejournal.com]

Yes, yes, yes, yes. I will link to this post of yours in order to prove that a literary critique can have the same worries about "making historical persons and events to soap opera" as a historian :D

[elwen-rhiannon.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry for leaving your post unanswered for so long (I didn't feel well).

The action takes place during one night and a day after. To summarize, Robespierre wants to put Dantonists on trial, but hesitates because of Camille. Being seriously ill, he sends for him. Camille comes. They talk for a few hours. Camille promises to leave Danton, convinced that he was
used by him for personal reasons. In the morning, Robespierre waits for Camille's anti-Danton article, but nothing comes. Saint-Just presses: decide, you have to, either them or us all. Robespierre does. The end.

What will you NOT find in the book: sex of any kind, Camille/Lucile (he makes an interesting remark about her, realizing that if he would loose her, he would howl like a wolf for w couple of days, than remarry and forget), Saint-Just lusting after Robespierre (at least I don't see it)

What actually IS there: long talks, repressed and admitted feelings, one kiss, not badly written characters (even somewhat annoying Desmoulins), Robespierre aware of and accepting responsibility for all he did, is doing and will do, Saint-Just running without a thought to hold him and protect from falling on the floor which is exactly what Camille was afraid to do a few hours before

As for the historical-political inaccuracies, writing out fantasies and using history to express one's own ideas, I think it's a convention in historical fiction in general. Richard the Lionheart in Walter Scott's Ivanhoe, evil manipulator Richelieu and pure, innocent Anne d'Autriche in Dumas' Les trois mousquetaires, noble, tormented and perfect Marie Antoinette in Le Chevalier de Maison-Rouge etc. Not to mention literature on much lower level.

In my opinion, "little personal affairs", relevant to the plot or not, give literary characters human touch. But much depends on the writer. And if you think Przybyszewska is sexually obsessed, read her father's Requiem aeternam. First sentence - "At the beginning, there was lust" ("Na początku była chuć"; interesting topic of sexuality in modernistic literature, but that'd be another discussion). According to the analyst of her works, PhD Ewa Graczyk, despite the lack of personal contact until she was, as far as I remember, nineteen, she was fascinated with his works and influenced by them (though not entirely). She later married one of her father's followers, but I promised a few posts above to keep Freud out of that. And yes, in her letters she admits to live so deeply in the world of The Danton Case during writing that she saw the events from the play as if she was witnessing them. I don't want to speculate about her mental state (she was a drug addict, too, but it'd need a deeper research to clarify whether she was a such in that particular period of her life), but she was obviously deeply into what she was writing, especially when writing about Robespierre, with whom she was in love with. She writes, by the way, that the only character in The Danton Case she didn't like, was Camille Desmoulins. Which in my opinion gives her even more praise as an author, because no matter how many times I'd shake him myself, I think that he's a very well-written character and according to his biography that I read (the author, Stefan Meller, has rather a good opinion among Polish historians), not very far from historical Camille.


And having a good motivation is a base to learn a foreign language. I've learnt French to read Les Misérables...

[sibylla-oo.livejournal.com]

I am sure lucieandco did not mean the reference to sexual undertones in Przybyszewska (totally obvious, btw, in The Danton Affaire and Thermidor) or to "little personal affairs" as a criticism. After all, in the debate below the entry that precedes by two this one (http://community.livejournal.com/revolution_fr/95311.html), she said, and I agree with her, that "people on this community...aren't averse to the notion of their favourites sharing slightly more than an idea" ;-D In that debate, btw, Przybyszewska often appears as a positive example of a honest historical fiction writer (which does not have to mean she cannot invent things, of course she can, that's what still makes fiction different from history).

[lucieandco.livejournal.com]

Thank you for replying - and apologies, in turn, for making you wait even longer (caught up in my own soap-operatisms for a bit).

I don't think Przybyszewska is sexually obsessed - she doesn't write pornography or anything close to it, and she always weaves those little romantic/erotic insinuations into the contexts of the plot (be it Desmoulins caught between Danton and Robespierre, Saint-Just smiling sadly to see Robespierre go to Desmoulins, or Billaud et al being jealous and afraid of Robespierre's power; all of these can be explained in completely 'unslashy' terms) - which, to me, makes it at once better and worse: the 'personal affairs' all run parallel to the political affairs, which makes the latter more vivid and graspable especially for readers/audiences who aren't well-versed in the historical details (this might be the human touch you speak of), but sometimes the emphasis is placed so that the personal side comes dangerously close to overshadowing the political one. That is where the problem begins or can begin, in my opinion, with the shift of emphasis: in presenting (to go, still, with the example at hand) the final split between Desmoulins and Robespierre in a scene so romantically/erotically charged, she supports - I don't think for a second that she meant to, nor that she even subconsciously believed that 'really the whole thing was all about love/sex', though, well, yes, there seems to be more of that in her interpretation than she acknowledges when discussing either the events or her plays in her letters - a take on the situation that reduces it to that, reduces the conflicts between the central figures to one located on that 'personal' plane. It's a matter of context (which was why I asked what the rest of the novel is like), as always; in the context of the entire play, the political components are (in my opinion) sufficiently (though no doubt questionably in their own right) represented. But there are, in my opinion, more 'personal' scenes/overtones than are a)historically sound and b)necessary for the human touch/vivid-making.
Tackling the play as a play I enjoy these and think they are applied in good measures at the right places in order to create, maintain, and (most effectively) not resolve a lot of tension that would otherwise not be there (except for those readers who are themselves passionately caught up in the history/politics). Tackling the play as a treatment of history, and therefore completely independent of its accomplishments in structuring, pacing, even characterisation (since her Robespierre, even if he is dismissed as a far-fetched interpretation by the historian, surely deserves some credit as a fascinating creation from the non-historically inclined reader - the same goes for a thousand figures immortalised in historically dubious shape by some play or other), I think the representation is potentially damaging at least to the uninitiated reader. I must add, though, that as an uneducated afficionada I cannot claim the faintest expertise in either field, nor back up my impression with any proper theories. I apologise if I am being overly fatuous!

The reason I pointed this out the way I did (and contrasted it with fanfiction, or with the Mantels, Lees, and many, many film makers of this world, who seem to have no concrete historical/political objective at all, but merely a taste for the 'playground' of the era and the 'characters' involved; the entire debate, I guess, boils down to whether or not one thinks that real life should be used for 'playing with' in a piece of fiction if there is nothing more to it than that) is that it seems to clash so with her self-proclaimed ambition to write, so to speak, the definite dramatisation of the events, one that isn't coloured by personal interest or taste (in this she also meant to counteract Büchner) - whereas what she wrote definitely is, both in her interpretation of, especially, Robespierre as a political thinker (his visionary monologue at the end of "Thermidor") and in the way she styles his aura, so to speak. (TBC)

[lucieandco.livejournal.com]

(How much of that is owed to her being in love with him, how much to her identifying with him - as a genius unappreciated by lesser beings and destroyed by the hostile circumstances of a world not ready for him/her - both of which she was at least partly aware of doing, may never be known.)

"Les Misérables" is a good example of this (though a bad one in other points; Hugo includes quite a few 'pages of history' for which, in providing them as a contextualisation of his action, he implicitly claims accuracy, even though in writing a novel he is not sworn to any such thing): Hugo could have called his Enjolras Charles Jeanne and placed his barricade at Saint-Merri, but he doesn't, he takes a very real insurrection and in its context realistically sets up a fictional barricade, where the personal tragedies of his characters can play out against a background of greater affairs, with a fictional leader, whom he can depict as as many ideals incarnate as he likes - imagine he had given the whole radiantly beautiful charming/terrible angelically chaste firy/icy marble Spartan treatment to Jeanne! (Perhaps most notable in this context is that he doesn't give it to Saint-Just in his "93".) In my eyes, that would have done damage to the historical personnage, and unnecessarily so, since the adventures can be told, the same great points made through fictional characters. And that in turn applies a thousand times to fiction that doesn't want to make Great Points in the first place.
It's different again (as Sibylla said) in cases where the author makes it absolutely clear that they are primarily playing around - for instance, I would not even be tempted to take Naomi Novik's word on the Napoleonic Wars and thereby come to believe that Admiral Nelson survived Trafalgar, because it's clear that she's playing merry hell with history (and aware of it) from the fact that There Are Dragons! I could (in keeping with what I said above - I've probably contradicted myself five times over by now ;D) demand that she stay away from all real persons, but I do think it's different, since she actually creates a whole 'nother history that every reader can easily distinguish from the real one, as opposed to taking said real one and making changes so small/realistic there remains a temptation to believe it - or believe the author believes it.

There is a 'biographical study with selected letters' of S. P. in English that I have read by Daniel Gerould, who also edited the translation of the two plays, and Jadwiga Kosicka (the biography is short, but understandably so, but I wish there were more letters); going by that, she was a morphine addict from circa 1921 onwards until the end of her life, so all she produced while understanding herself as 'exclusively a writer' would have been created under the influence of the drug. Taking the longevity of her habit into account, I wouldn't 'blame' it for any oddities in her writing (that is to say, not to the extent of claiming that she would have turned out something altogether less idiosyncratic without it), nor for her mental state - the three forces (morphine addiction and destitution, mental imbalance, writing) all seem to have enabled one another.
I've not read any of her father's writings (another thing I always mean to do) so I can't compare them in style, but he seems to have been one of the most decisive influences in her life, artistically and otherwise; she spent some of her later years trying to 'improve' the flaws in his writing. As for leaving Freud out of it, her second Revolution-related play (after the first completed draft of "Thermidor"), "93", apparently (as I understand it, nothing has survived of this even in Polish?) centered around a young aristocrat who denounces her father in order to see his reaction ... yeah.

[maelicia.livejournal.com]

I've always known (expected, believed) that somewhere, Przybyszewska had written and left behind some "fanfiction". ...And exactly as I expected, it would be a total failure of characterisation. *shudders*

[elwen-rhiannon.livejournal.com]

I'd agree on "poorly written", as it is a matter of literary taste and personal limits of tolerance, but I'd hesitate before saying radically whether a historical character I've never known was characterised well or not. I might say, though, that I like/dislike the author's vision. But that's me.

If you meant something else, I'm sorry.

[sibylla-oo.livejournal.com]

For "poorly written", I'd quote a completely different novel: Tanith Lee's Gods are Athirst. Besides plagiating the title to Anatole France, she writes badly enough for a non-native speaker to be immediately aware of it and appalled.

[elwen-rhiannon.livejournal.com]

Is it really THAT bad? Many people recommend it, I haven't read it, but hacve it on my search list.

[sibylla-oo.livejournal.com]

You can read parts of it and of other revie novels in estella's post on this site:
http://community.livejournal.com/revolution_fr/26839.html