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[misatheredpanda.livejournal.com]

CAMILLE DESMOULINS IS 250 TODAY!

I don't actually have anything to commemorate the event, sadly. However I would like to encourage you to spare a thought (and perhaps a few words, if you feel so inspired) for this man who slipped into history - and more than a few peoples' hearts in the past 250 years - against the odds. I could never express how grateful I am for it.

Comments

[estellacat.livejournal.com]

The ideas are so relevant it is often difficult to put their holders in context.
Very true. This applies especially to discourse. We may think we understand a word, but often a word's connotations are very different now than they were then. Take the word, "dictator," which I recently posted about. When you say "dictator" in the 1790s, people take that as a classical reference. Not exactly the reaction you get now.

We might accept today that politics is the preserve of at best pragmatic you-scratch-my-backers and at worse the wholly corrupt, but in the 1790s this was far from a foregone conclusion.
Speaking for myself, I'm personally not resigned to the idea that politics must necessarily always equal corruption, but you're right that it's a common enough idea now and that this wasn't at all the case in the 1790s. Actually, I think someone like Robespierre had a far healthier idea of what politics can be than a lot of people today. He was aware of the corruptibility of those in power, but the very fact that this led him to say that they need therefore to be watched carefully means that he was not resigned to letting them get away with their corruption - something which I think too often accompanies cynicism about politics these days. I mean, how the hell does it make any sense to encourage honest people who have ideals to do anything but get involved in politics?

I would like to know what this current obsession is with historians in proclaiming their subject pointless?
I have no idea. For my part, I think history is one of the least pointless subjects. I mean, every other subject has a history. History is context. History is everything we know so far that can't be observed at this moment. How could studying that be pointless?

I always think Robespierre's letter to Camille about the National Guard, the put-your-wife-down-and-write-me -some-copy sounds quite friendly and joshy, but other people seem to think it's self-obsessed and bullying. Of course, I'm reading it in translation, so I might be missing something.
No, I don't think you're missing anything. That's how I've always read it, and I've read it in the original. Though translation issues do often seem to trip up anglophone historians. Translating "je suis peuple" as "I am the people" instead of "I am of the people," for example. There's a big difference in meaning there. If you're an anglophone historian who doesn't know French as well as you should, you might not realize that "peuple" is in fact functioning as an adjective here, the way nouns often do in French when there is no adjectival form. What he's literally saying is very difficult to convey in English. It's something like "I am indistinguishable from the mass of the people (as opposed to above them)." It certainly does *not* mean "I am the people incarnate," which is what the first English translation, which I've seen in a number of anglophone sources, means.

Scurr's methods in general struck me as pretty irresponsible. She cited, as I recall, very little in the way of recent studies, and still less in French (primary sources aside). And then when she finally manages to cite a French source she can't even be bothered to engage with it, despite the fact that her primary audience is certainly not scholars. (Her biography of Robespierre brought absolutely nothing original to the subject of Robespierre or the Revolution.)

[maelipstick.livejournal.com]

Take the word, "dictator," which I recently posted about. When you say "dictator" in the 1790s, people take that as a classical reference. Not exactly the reaction you get now.

I've been reading your post and should comment when I get my brain together, but the democracy is crap only dictatorships achieve anything is a line you get a lot in public health, it apparently being much easier to put in needle exchange programmes etc when one doesn't have to worry about voter reaction. (True. Although conversely, it is much easier to shoot drug addicts too. But I digress.) But no, nobody thought of Hitler and Stalin in 1790.

Though translation issues do often seem to trip up anglophone historians.

So an Anglophone can get double tripped - missing the historical context as well as the finer linguistic meanings. Perhaps it's because I'm from the crinkly, embarrassing, bilingual bit of the UK but I'm very wary of translation issues as there is a fair bit that doesn't go smoothly between languages. (I can't quite articulate this point correctly, but one of the things I like about LTeLV is it's Frenchness, the idea that this is what they actually sounded like, I dunno.)

I mean, how the hell does it make any sense to encourage honest people who have ideals to do anything but get involved in politics?

It's the current prevailing wisdom. Fortunately, prevailing wisdom can change.

History is context. History is everything we know so far that can't be observed at this moment. How could studying that be pointless?

And if it is so pointless, why do people keep changing it?

Scurr's methods in general struck me as pretty irresponsible.

Do you know what really anoys me about her. She never shuts up and lets her subject speak. She seems constantly to be diving in telling one what Robespierre thought, which unless she had a crystal ball and a clairvoyant to hand, seems pretty dodgy ground to me.