Welcome to 1789...

*laughs* Oh, that's great! And yes, there need to be more pictures of Marat and Simonne. I really like how your Simonne came out, too! Your Marat looks a lot like Sweeney Todd, though (I think it's the messy hair and cheekbones of Marat, when combined with the long jawline). Though of course if that was intentional... XDDDD

I really like the folds on their outfits, Simonne's face, and especially Simonne's hand - I always suck at hands. Very well drawn!

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/BRB DRAWING SWEENEY TODD!MARAT

8DDD Thank you~ /snugs

_{Your icon is mesmerizing 8||||}

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Hm.. Well, you seem to be a bit of a Marat fan? I know he had some pretty banging research going on before he devoted his time to telling the masses precisely which heads needed to roll, and I was wondering, do you know what he did most of his research on?

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He was a scientist and a doctor, before he became a journalist. He published several essays on diseases, heat, fire, light, electricity, and managed to sneak in a few political essays here and there :D

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acolnahuacatl said, he was a scientist, a doctor, and a bit of a political analyst. He wrote several essays on eyes, lenses, gleets (gonhorrea, I think?); heat, fire, light, electricity, etc - he got letters of praise from Ben Franklin and several other assorted important people, and was considered temporarily for the Academy of Sciences (wasn't accepted, possibly unfairly, and hated them ever after that - Goethe, the famous writer, said that his rejection was a glaring example of scientific despotism). Marat also wrote a novel in his spare time (but like most pre-revolutionary-career novelists, don't read it, it's not worth it!).

In regards to politics, he also wrote "Chains of Slavery" - in English, in regards to an English election, in 1774 - in which he basically says a lot of the same things he says in the French Revolution, including proposals for helping the poor, denouncing royal/aristocrat tyranny, etc. When you start looking at his writing, you start going o__O - he was demanding political clubs before the Jacobins were conceived of, advocating nationalized workshops before Prudhon, and is generally pretty awesome. ~~Even given his outright and overly excessive demagogy.~~

Edited Date: 2010-02-23 07:24 pm (UTC)

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Haha... I find it amusing that he was praised by Franklin and Robespierre's letter went ignored. Wasn't he also one of the first to call for price caps on necessities?

I really think it's interesting how, despite making overt calls for the sort of extreme legislation that others were executed for later he managed to go out at the top of his political game as Marat the martyr... Very interesting fellow.

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Well, he was a scientist writing in his scientific aspect, which is somewhat different from Robespierre's letter. And very probably - it's usually a safe bet to assume that Marat was the first on the curve on just about everything...

Well, he wasn't really planning to go out when he did; he was murdered and I'm pretty sure he wasn't expecting that. At the time, actually, between his worsening sickness and his steadily lessening influence on the Convention, he was actually becoming far less important; indeed he was starting to write his memoirs under the assumption that he would have little effect on future politics and would die soon anyway. His assassination was actually the thing that catapulted him out of increasing obsurity into Marat the Martyr (i.e. the worst possible thing to happen to the Gironde).

I will agree that he was an incredibly interesting fellow, though. Anyone who can stare down a hostile entire Convention, then win them over mostly by sheer force of speech and personality, is pretty awesome, even if you agree with absolutely nothing else he says.

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DID SOMEONE SAY STAREDOWN?! (http://community.livejournal.com/revolution_fr/101516.html)

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Yeah, I know he didn't mean to die that quickly, but it did work out in his favor historically speaking.
I always wondered why Corday chose to knife Marat... I mean, he did put out some pretty inflammatory things, but why chose him over some of the more active political figures at the time? Was he just easier to get to and kill, being half dead and in a bathtub and all?

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To a certain degree it did - though only in the short term; because of his outsized influence after his assassination, he was also reviled after the Revolution out of all proportion to his actual deeds and influence. Most people nowadays remember him as the bloodthirsty monster who wanted to kill everyone, without noticing that exaggerations of that sort were relatively common in that time period - Marat was the most radically outright, of course, and certainly called for blood, but people do have a tendency to think of him in exaggerated terms: the absolute, insane monster of the Revolution, just as - equally without solid historical basis - they think of Robespierre as a dictator.

The current running theory, I believe, is that she honestly believed he could do what he claimed to in his papers - he was the friend of the people, the one who called most readily for the Gironde's death...the Gironde, who hated him particularly, made lots of speeches in the provinces about how evil he was, and Corday listened to them and got it in her head that she could do her country a service by killing him. Basically, she thought he was all but running the country and had no actual conception of where political power in Paris stood.

Personally, I always thought the great irony of his death is that he was easier to get to, because he was one of the very few major revolutionaries who would see people - any people, rich or poor, at any time - if they came to visit, without checking, because of his beliefs in egalitarianism. Simmone stood guard at the door as his wife, of course, but that was about it; Corday played specifically on that, sending him notes saying that "as the friend of the people and protector of the poor, I know you'll let me come in and talk to you!" (I paraphrase, obviously). So I suppose there's that too. ^_^

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estellacat.livejournal.com

and Robespierre's letter went ignored
To perhaps state the obvious, we don't know that for sure; we probably have only a small fraction of Robespierre's correspondence. Which is not to say he necessarily got a response from Franklin, merely that the fact that no response has come down to us doesn't necessarily mean there wasn't one.

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I really feel that all people who believe they may one day be important to history ought to save all of their personal correspondence for people to pore over hundreds of years after their deaths...

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estellacat.livejournal.com

Everyone should really adopt that policy, in that case, since such documents might be wanted as examples of the preoccupations of ordinary people as well. Though I suppose it becomes just a *bit* more difficult to control after one's death. XD;

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