montagnarde1793 | The Legacy of History (III)

*sigh*

The Sphinx

Like monsters of Antiquity, Robespierre was the thus constructed as a composite, mythical beast. For Nodier, he was a predator, a hyena with the tawny eyes of a bird of prey; for Taine, a rabid tiger; but for all, indeed (and Michelet would use the word freely) a sphinx. A feline body with a human face, Robespierre was a dramatic reincarnation of the monster who devoured the young men of Thebes. But, as the Sphinx of the Jacobins, Robespierre became a monster whose riddle was never quite solved. Michelet describes his strategy as “so obscure Robespierrists were constantly misled” (2: 596).

Historians have striven to understand the enigma of the sphinx, with varying degrees of success. As Jean-Joseph Goux remarks: “The Sphinx is a ‘head-chopper’. This gives us something to reflect upon. She kills by decapitation to take the soul beyond.”[1] The Sphinx, one recalls, was a female monster – le sphinx or la sphinge – and Robespierre, the man who would soon be represented as the dictator responsible for all the beheadings of the Terror, was also endowed by posterity with an enigmatic sexuality. Known for his austere and celibate life, he became feminized by writers and historians alike. Michelet described him as “more delicate and more feminine” than his sister. (2: 61).

Although his clothes were not the topic of much discussion during his life (during the Revolution, he apparently owned no more than three coats), the extraordinary emphasis given by all writers to his habit of dress also suggests the feminization of the monster. Madame de Staël notes: “He was not badly dressed; on the contrary, he alone wore a powdered wig and his clothes were neat” (pp. 140-41). Ferrières noted that Robespierre “dressed and powdered with immaculate elegance” (p. 135). Nodier, more maliciously and more explicitly, wrote: “Add to this all the trappings of stuffy, prudish, pouting coquetry, and you will almost have him” (pp. 191-92). Hilaire Belloc dedicated a long page to Robespierre’s sober elegance and concluded with words that could apply to an Ancien Regime marquise: “A figure slight but erect and sufficiently well filled, a little dainty and always exquisitely fitted, not disdainful of color but contemptuous of ornament.”[2]

The feminization of Robespierre’s voice also deserves consideration. It is ironic that one of the most successful orators of the Revolution was alleged to have had such a strange mode of speech, “hoarse when low, false when the tone was high, and which in moments of intense excitement or anger turned into a howling rather like that of hyenas.”[3] A howling, perhaps, yet a chant impossible to escape. The seductiveness of Robespierre’s strange voice and eloquence, although unexplained, was begrudgingly acknowledged. Nodier admits, in another reference to Antiquity: “The sirens caused the death of the lovers who were drawn to them by the charm of their concerts; but antiquity does not accuse them of having sung badly” (p. 187). Taine, less willing to be seduced, would write that Robespierre could only “moan” or “foam with rage” (3: 210).

These uneasy accounts of Robespierre’s strange voice also echo the inexpressible voice attributed to the Sphinx when she called on the young men she was about to devour. It was an indescribable sound, comparable to “a rhapsody,” “a song difficult to understand,” notes Marie Delcourt[4]. In Euripides’s words, it was “a song without a lyre, strange to the Muses,” sometimes compared to a muffled rumbling of thunder[5]. In a few decades the posthumous construct of Robespierre’s identity took place: he had become a devouring monster whose voice, simultaneously seductive and horrifying, would lead the country to a bloodbath.

[1] Jean-Joseph Goux, Oedipe philosophe (Paris: Aubier, 1990), p. 63.

[2] Hilaire Belloc, Robespierre (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1902), p. 11.

[3] Nodier, Portraits de la Révolution, I: 191.

[4] Marie Delcourt, Oedipe ou la légende du conquérant (Paris: Droz, 1944), p. 133.

[5] Jean-Joseph Goux gives an illuminating analysis of the Sphinx’s voice in Oedipe philosophe, pp. 53-55.

(And by the way, icon!Maxime would like to point out that he is not a sphinx. Or a siren. Or anything at all that is a mythical creature and/or female.)