montagnarde1793: (Yes?)
[personal profile] montagnarde1793
Last time, in the "Legacy of History" we explored the profound attractiveness of Maximilien Robespierre. ^__^ Again, I'm really not kidding. I couldn't say why, but it amuses me for some reason. Anyway, in the second part, we learn how this image became so disfigured as to no longer be recognizable.

Revolutionary Monsters

 

            In a footnote to his Histoire de la Révolution française, Michelet reported this anecdote: “A young man … one day asked old Merlin of Thionville, how he had brought himself to sentence Robespierre. The old man seemed to experience some remorse. But then, rising suddenly with a violent moment, he exclaimed: ‘Robespierre! Robespierre! … Ah! If you had seen his green eyes, you would have sentenced him just as I did.”[1]

            By the time Merlin remembered Robespierre’s eyes for posterity, much had already been written on Robespierre’s fateful physiognomy. In her 1818 Considérations sur la Révolution française, Madame de Staël described Robespierre in the following terms: “I once spoke with Robespierre at my father’s house in 1789. He was then known as a lawyer from Artois, very exaggerated in his democratic views. His features were repulsive, his complexion pale, his veins a shade of green…. There was something mysterious in his manner, something that suggested an unspoken terror in the midst of the visible terror his government advocated.”[2]

            Robespierre, who was then thirty-one years old, is presented like a ghost: the paleness of his face and the green color of his veins betray the contemporary fascination with vampires, and would become an integral part of his legend.[3] These details are reproduced, with variations, in countless works on the Revolution. In fact, they may have been inspired not only by Madame de Staël’s unlikely encounter with Robespierre but also by a Thermidorian engraving, done by Tassart and showing Robespierre “drinking blood.”[4]

            In 1821, the Marquis de Ferrières described Robespierre as follows: “He was somber, mournful, suspicious, irascible, vindictive, considering events only in relation to himself. His face had something of the cat and the tiger about it.”[5] The feline characteristics of Robespierre’s face were taking hold of both the popular and aristocratic imagination. They echoed a Thermidorian expression according to which the last months of Robespierre’s political life were a “tigrocratie.”[6] The demonic quality of Robespierre’s gaze was meant to express, better than any political argumentation, both Robespierre’s ascendancy over the Revolution – an hypnotic, mesmerizing effect – and the necessity of destroying him for posterity.

            By 1831, when Nodier drew his physical portrait, Robespierre, once observed as measuring over six feet, had become “a fairly small, spindly man.” “His gaze, was an indescribable shaft of light that flashed from a wild eye, between two convulsively retractile eyelids,” Nodier added, “a shaft of light that wounded when it struck…. With his dreadful good faith, his naïve thirst for blood, his pure and cruel soul, Robespierre was the Revolution incarnate.”[7] Robespierre’s “retractile eyelids” clearly suggest a bird of prey, a thought later echoed by Michelet when he wrote of Robespierre: “He swooped down like a hawk on an already paralyzed bird, and bit the tender flesh.”[8]

            In his 1847 Histoire des Girondins, Lamartine contributed as well to the construction of Robespierre’s monstrosity:

 

Robespierre was small of stature; his limbs were puny and angular, his walk jerky, his attitudes affected … his rather sharp voice sought for oratorical effects but found only fatigue and monotony…. His eyes, very much veiled by the eyelids, and very piercing, were deeply embedded in their sockets; they had a bluish look, rather soft but vague, like steel gleaming in a bright light … his mouth was big, his lips thin and disagreeably contracted at the corners, his chin short and pointed, his complexion a deadly yellow, like that of a sick man, or one exhausted by night watches and meditations.[9]

 

            We can see in these lines the simultaneous shrinking of Robespierre’s physique and the progression of his monstrosity.[10] The eyes in particular have kept their animal quality, but a new element has been invoked; they gleam like steel, a direct evocation of the guillotine, one that Michelet will also repeat a few years later: “His anxious eyes … casting a pale gleam of steel” (2: 61). In the popular imagination fired by early accounts of the French Revolution, Robespierre, like Frankenstein’s creature, was death among the living, an unnatural being betrayed by his green veins and his yellow skin, his deep eye sockets and his mechanical gestures. “His automatic gait was that of a man of stone,” Michelet would add, punning on Robespierre’s name (61).[11]

            By the end of the nineteenth century, Robespierre’s metamorphosis was complete, and he was unrecognizable. Hippolyte Taine, in his passionate hatred of Robespierre, may have given us the most fantastic vision of the revolutionary thinker. Describing Robespierre’s withdrawal from the political scene during the months of the Great Terror, he wrote:

 

In vain he detaches himself from the action, and raises his preacher’s eyes to heaven, he cannot help hearing and seeing all around him, beneath his immaculate feet, a cracking of bones and a flowing of blood, the insatiable gaping mouth of the monster he has trained and he bestrides. This mouth grows more ravenous each day, and needs a more ample feast of human flesh, and it is good, not only to let it eat, but even to supply it with food, often with his own hands…. This butchery awakens destructive instincts that civilization had long held in check. His cat’s physiognomy, which was a first that of a worried, but fairly gentle house cat, became the ferocious expression of a tiger-cat.[12]

 

The now familiar feline qualities of the portrait are meant to suggest an untamable creature, a man-eating tiger with a suggestion of rabid disease, “foaming at the mouth when he speaks.”



[1] Jules Michelet, Histoire de la Révolution française, ed. Gérard Walter (Paris: Gallimard, 1952), 2: 61, emphasis in original. This extraordinary reply was widely circulated in the nineteenth century and is reported, with minor variations, by different writers.

[2] Germaine de Staël, Considérations sur les principaux événements de la Révolution française (Paris: Delaunay, Bossange et Masson, 1818), 2: 140-41.

[3] Ann Rigney discusses the pallor of Robespierre’s face in Louis Blanc’s account of the Revolution, and shows how it is interpreted as a sign of his willingness to sacrifice himself. For Michelet, she suggests, it supports his view of Robespierre as a man of “colorless talent” (“Icon and Symbol,” p. 113).

[4] Engraving by Tassart, collection De Vinck, Bibliothèque Nationale, Cabinet des Estampes.

[5] Charles-Elie de Ferrières, Mémoires, 3. vols. (Paris, Baudoin: 1821-1822), I: 343-44. Quoted in E. L. Higgins, The French Revolution as Told by Contemporaries (Cambridge, Mass.: Riverside Press, 1938), p. 135.

[6] See the engraving in the Collection De Vinck: “Miroir du passé pour sauvegarder l’avenir / Tableau parlant du Gouvernement cadavero-faminocratique de 93, sous la Tigrocratie de Robespierre et Compagnie.” Paris, Germinal, Year V. Bibliothèque Nationale, Cabinet des Estampes.

[7] Charles Nodier, Portraits de la Révolution et de l’Empire ed. Jean-Luc Steinmetz (Paris: Tallandier, 1988), vol. I, p. 191.

[8] Michelet, Histoire de la Révolution française, 2: p. 667.

[9] Alphonse de Lamartine, Histoire des Girondins (Paris: Hachette, 1870) I; pp. 41-42. I quote the translation published by Henri Béraud, Twelve Portraits of the French Revolution, trans. Madeleine Boyd (Boston: Little, Brown, 1928), p. 66.

[10] Moreover, if Lamartine’s description sounds vaguely familiar, it may also be because, in its style, it echoes the description of Frankenstein’s monster, published a few years before: “His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same color as the dun white sockets in which they were set.” Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus: The 1818 Text, ed. James Rieger (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), p. 52.

[11] Thomas Carlyle himself would be influenced by the now-familiar monstrous legend. Commenting on the terrible days that preceded Thermidor, he describes “a seagreen Robespierre converted into vinegar and gall.” The French Revolution: A History (London: J. M. Dent, 1906), 2: 329.

[12] Hippolyte Taine, Les Origines de la France contemporaine: La Révolution (Paris: Hachette, 1885), 3: pp. 209-10.

(no subject)

Date: Wednesday, 30 January 2008 22:32 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] maelicia.livejournal.com
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY MAY HAVE HAD VAMPIRE!KITTYTIGER!ROBESPIERRE, BUT THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY WILL HAVE DOMINATRIX!ROBESPIERRE. MWAHAHAHAHAHA. >D

...this is so going on an icon and/or banner and/or anything once I find the image that fits it. >___>

Maxime, I'm so sorry. ;.;

Also:

his veins a shade of green
I didn't know green blood existed. Red, I've seen. Blue, I've heard. But green?... OH, WAIT! MARTIANS!!1!~ Of course.

Taine's description is... a trip. I think the attraction of the last two centuries for fantastic, macabre, horror, etc. has been far too powerful. O.o


Oh, and while we're there. There's one quote I've been searching for MONTHS. I know someone, one of the Thermidorians, but can't remember which, said that Robespierre's grave would never be big enough to be filled by all of their hatred/anger/rage, or something like that. Except I don't remember the exact words well enough, and I don't know who said it, or where I read it (I must have read it in the first months of my Fr Rev "fangirling" and didn't pay attention). I wondered if you knew...

(no subject)

Date: Wednesday, 30 January 2008 22:45 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] estellacat.livejournal.com
Why does that sound like a bad movie advertisement? This is leading me to picture that as a movie, which can't be good. (XD)

I think Maxime might be permanently scarred.

And the sad thing is, all the 19th century historians seem to have adopted the greenness... It would be pretty bizarre to have green blood though. The point of course, is that it's monstrous and they wanted to turn him into a monster.

I think Taine had read too many Gothic romances. Really, one would think you'd know that if you can write something like that it's time to put the novels down. >__>

I know the quote you're talking about, but I can't remember off the top of my head who said it. I'll have to go look through the different places it could be cited...

(no subject)

Date: Wednesday, 30 January 2008 22:51 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] maelicia.livejournal.com
OMG IT COULD BE TEH MOVIE ADVERTISEMENT FROM TEH XXX MOVIE THAT COULD BE MADE FROM TEH EBIL PLAY ZIGGY AND I WROTE!!! :O (XD)

Yes. But I think he already is. Or has been. For long. >___>

Well, Martians can have green blood. It's such a proof of humanity's nonsense and absurdity, you know. :D

As in: it's time to stop trying to write history and to write novels instead? XD

Ooooooooooh!!! You're putting an end to a very long mental trauma trying to find where the hell I had read that. :D :D :D :D :D

(no subject)

Date: Thursday, 31 January 2008 01:36 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] estellacat.livejournal.com
OMSB, it actually could. O__O

Indeed. Poor thing. D:

Oh, yes. If they're from outer space, I suppose they can have green blood. O Reason, save us!

Or stop reading novels, since they're clearly messing with his ability to write history.

I'm sure I've read it in more than one place, so it ought to show up eventually...

(no subject)

Date: Thursday, 31 January 2008 15:46 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] maelicia.livejournal.com
Mom just reminded to me that Vulcans in Star Trek have green blood. Wikipedia tells me they also have a greenish skin tone because of this. Also, they are super-rational, lack emotions and appear to be cold. Awww, Sci-Fi, where would Reason be without you.

I thought it may have been in Hamel, or on the web that I had found that quote, but I can't remember clearly...

(no subject)

Date: Thursday, 31 January 2008 18:20 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] estellacat.livejournal.com
Oh dear, so he's supposed to be a Vulcan now? O.O;

It sounds like something Hamel might have cited. I'll have to check.

(no subject)

Date: Wednesday, 30 January 2008 23:27 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] trf-chan.livejournal.com
That quote is familiar to me, too. I'm thinking it might have been Barère for some reason. O.o;

(no subject)

Date: Wednesday, 30 January 2008 23:29 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] maelicia.livejournal.com
I was thinking it could have been Collot or Billaud. Well, one of the three assholes. -_-; It means we three must have read the same book then, though I don't know which. XD;

(no subject)

Date: Wednesday, 30 January 2008 22:37 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] zigsternenstaub.livejournal.com
Notice that most of these "accounts" were by aristocrats, or would-be aristos? Though it is interesting that he was reported once at over 6 foot. I never really thought of him as being particularly tall.

(no subject)

Date: Wednesday, 30 January 2008 22:51 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] estellacat.livejournal.com
I did notice that... I think it may be the point, in fact. After all, by the time these "accounts" were written, even the Thermidorians themselves--or at least quite a few of them--were having regrets. Who would be so intransigeantly ridiculous if not aristos and would-be aristos?

Apparently the feet the "German visitor" was using were closer to 11 inches than 12, so that would make the claim more reasonable...

(no subject)

Date: Wednesday, 30 January 2008 23:22 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] trf-chan.livejournal.com
It would almost be funny how desperately they've been trying to establish Maxime's OMG!EBIL! by exaggerating the ugliness of his appearance to epic proportions.

...Except that apparently it works. ;.; Why can't people see how ridiculous this is?

(no subject)

Date: Thursday, 31 January 2008 01:46 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] estellacat.livejournal.com
I think people can now see how ridiculous this is for the most part - which is why the revisionists and their ilk don't use the same techniques anymore - but at the time it was really believed that a person's physiognomy was determined by his character (or vice versa). And such a belief was popular for so long because it was in keeping with what people want to believe on a subconscious level. And the sad thing is, even if we've moved beyond judging people's characters by their appearance on an intellectual level as a society, we certainly haven't on that subconscious level, which is why these myths can perpetuate in less obvious forms.

(no subject)

Date: Thursday, 31 January 2008 21:48 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] josiana.livejournal.com
...That's so silly that I'm amazed anyone ever believed it. D: I could understand saying he was pale and had pockmarks, but that kind of makes a parody of itself. Also, for Maxime to have blue skin, his family would have to be very inbred, and I don't think that happened.

I'm amused by the mental images of rabid!Maxime, though.

Also, aren't most people's veins a bluish green color? D: Why is that bad?

(no subject)

Date: Thursday, 31 January 2008 22:37 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] estellacat.livejournal.com
It's mind-boggling, isn't it? I suppose if you have a fixed picture of something and a description reinforces it... No, I really have no idea. It does really become a self-parody at a certain point. No, if anyone involved in the Revolution was inbred, we know who they were. :P

Poor Maxime. Foaming at the mouth can't be all it's cracked up to be.

I guess they meant that they were just more green then usual? I don't really know. D:

(no subject)

Date: Friday, 1 February 2008 00:29 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] josiana.livejournal.com
It makes me sad. :(
Poor Marie Antoinette. ;___; I think she's the only one. Or the only one with noticeable deformities because of it.

Photobucket
I decided that this required artistic representation.

Oh. ;_____;

(no subject)

Date: Friday, 1 February 2008 00:52 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] estellacat.livejournal.com
Me too. I think there are still some people who think that there's a kernel of truth to this stuff even now too. >__>
Well, Capet was probably pretty inbred too... Not to mention all the aristos.

XD! Poor Maxime. Clearly he's been bitten. By what though? O.o; The tricolor exclamation points are a nice touch.

I'm sure it's perfectly normal to have greenish veins. Provided they don't glow in the dark. In which case you might have been exposed to radiation or something like that.

(no subject)

Date: Friday, 1 February 2008 00:55 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] josiana.livejournal.com
The thought makes my eye twitch. D: D: D:
Aww. Probably. I haven't studied them much, so I wouldn't know for sure. ;__;

A kitten. Thank you. :D They amused me.

.......Eeeep.

(no subject)

Date: Friday, 1 February 2008 01:03 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] estellacat.livejournal.com
Hopefully that's not everyone though. >.>
Well, there's only a given number of people the aristos--and especially the royalty--would be allowed to marry and it's rather small so... You do the math.

It would explain the whole tiger/cat thing. O.O That probably sums up a lot of Maxime's thoughts, actually. Except when they're tricolor ellipses.

In the 18th century that couldn't happen though.

(no subject)

Date: Friday, 1 February 2008 01:08 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] josiana.livejournal.com
Let's pretend.
>___>

Yes. I thought ahead. Also, rabid kittens amuse me. Awww, probably.

But...but radioactive jacobins from space. ;____; It would be so funny.

(no subject)

Date: Friday, 1 February 2008 01:46 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] estellacat.livejournal.com
Okay. ;-;
It's a disturbing thought, I admit.

Yes. So cute and yet so crazy and dangerous. XD Or at least cutelittledrawing!Maxime.

ROTFL. It would, now that you mention it.

(no subject)

Date: Friday, 1 February 2008 01:53 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] josiana.livejournal.com
If only they were green. O_O I'm sure he can think in emoticons too. :D

It would be so Meaningful and Symbolic.

(no subject)

Date: Friday, 1 February 2008 01:58 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] estellacat.livejournal.com
What, you mean kittens aren't green? O.O! Especially tricolor ones. XD

And entertaining too. *nods*

(no subject)

Date: Friday, 1 February 2008 02:01 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] josiana.livejournal.com
No. D: They have blue ones, though. Aww. Poor thing. There are so many colors he can't use. ;__;

:D

(no subject)

Date: Friday, 1 February 2008 02:25 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] estellacat.livejournal.com
That's too bad... :(Dye? Oh, he can use them if he wants to. Especially green. XD

(no subject)

Date: Friday, 1 February 2008 02:28 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] josiana.livejournal.com
As long as it wouldn't hurt it. Oh, good. I would hate to think he was being deprived of his rights. ;-;

(no subject)

Date: Friday, 1 February 2008 02:32 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] estellacat.livejournal.com
No, I don't think that would be such a good idea, actually. >__> Thought he wouldn't use purple and gold anyway. For obvious reasons.

(no subject)

Date: Friday, 1 February 2008 02:35 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] josiana.livejournal.com
If it was nontoxic, and the kitty didn't mind...>__> Although I think it would be kind of pointless. Of course. :D Virtuous Maxime is Virtuous.

(no subject)

Date: Friday, 1 February 2008 02:39 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] estellacat.livejournal.com
Just a bit. I don't think my kitties would like it much. D: Is there any other kind of Maxime except Virtuous Maxime?

(no subject)

Date: Friday, 1 February 2008 02:41 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] josiana.livejournal.com
I don't think Grantaire!kitty would mind. But he's orange, so the color wouldn't turn out well. ...um. Scary!OOC!Dominatrix!Maxime. :D;;;

(no subject)

Date: Friday, 1 February 2008 02:53 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] estellacat.livejournal.com
One of my cats is white, so the color would take, but she would protest. Oh. I forgot about him. *hides*

(no subject)

Date: Friday, 1 February 2008 03:01 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] josiana.livejournal.com
Alas. D: We will have to give up on the possibility of green kitties, then. But he loves you. ;____; He just expresses it differently.

(no subject)

Date: Friday, 1 February 2008 05:12 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] estellacat.livejournal.com
*sighs* 'Twas a nice dream.
...Didn't they make cats that glow green though?
I suppose that would make sense; since I love all Maximes (even though the non-OOC ones don't go around demanding people's loyalty and threatening them if they don't comply), I suppose it makes sense that even Scary!OOC!Dominatrix!Maxime would like me. XD

(no subject)

Date: Friday, 1 February 2008 05:16 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] josiana.livejournal.com
Oooh. I don't know. That would be cool, though slightly needless. Awww, logic. I'm sure Scary!OOC!Dominatrix!Maxime appreciates your understanding.

(no subject)

Date: Friday, 1 February 2008 05:31 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] estellacat.livejournal.com
I think they somehow spliced their genes with a kind of glow-in-the-dark jellyfish, if I remember correctly... Well, it's not his fault he is the embodiment of everything that historical!Maxime wasn't. D:

(no subject)

Date: Friday, 1 February 2008 05:34 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] josiana.livejournal.com
:D Awesome. I wonder if they sell them. I know. ;__; He didn't ask for terrible characterization. And it isn't as though it stops him from being a perfectly respectable fictional character.

(no subject)

Date: Friday, 1 February 2008 06:10 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] estellacat.livejournal.com
It would probably be very expensive to get one of they did. I just wish people would stop confounding him with the real thing. It makes me sad. D:

(no subject)

Date: Friday, 1 February 2008 06:21 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] josiana.livejournal.com
I know. :D I just wondered. I don't particularly want another cat.</strike I know what you mean. D:

(no subject)

Date: Friday, 1 February 2008 19:51 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] estellacat.livejournal.com
Of course, I'm not even sure they're selling them in any case. It would probably be better if OOC!Maxime didn't exist, despite the fact that I like all Maximes...

(no subject)

Date: Friday, 1 February 2008 22:12 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] josiana.livejournal.com
Probably not. >.> Alas. I don't really need to bankrupt myself buying a new cat anyway. I know. :( Or if he only existed in fanfic written like that on purpose.

(no subject)

Date: Saturday, 2 February 2008 04:29 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] estellacat.livejournal.com
And then there's always the issue of how ethical it is to make new genetically engineered cats when there are so many unwanted ones in shelters... Well, that would be ideal, wouldn't it? *sighs* Pity reality doesn't seem to measure up, at present.

(no subject)

Date: Saturday, 2 February 2008 06:27 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] josiana.livejournal.com
That's true. But there are always unwanted cats. :( Alas. ;___; We can hope.

(no subject)

Date: Saturday, 2 February 2008 19:36 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] estellacat.livejournal.com
Which is why one should adopt them. :D Whatever happens it will assuredly take a long time.

(no subject)

Date: Sunday, 3 February 2008 01:39 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] josiana.livejournal.com
Alas. ;___; I don't think I can adopt any more at the moment. Probably. ;_____;

(no subject)

Date: Sunday, 3 February 2008 02:30 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] estellacat.livejournal.com
XD I didn't mean constantly; this obviously only applies to people looking to acquire more cats. It's most unfortunate. D:

(no subject)

Date: Sunday, 3 February 2008 03:17 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] josiana.livejournal.com
;-; It probably won't get worse?

(no subject)

Date: Sunday, 3 February 2008 08:09 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] estellacat.livejournal.com
Well, I really hope not. O__O

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