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.

[highfantastical.livejournal.com]

This is absolutely fabulous! Thanks for posting.

[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.

[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*