Bastille Day quiz 2013

1. The “Rive Gauche” of Paris only took on that name during the Revolution, in 1789. Before 1789, the neighborhood to the South of the Seine was called:
a. Là-bas, or “over there”
b. La Rive du Sud, or the “South side”
c. Le Méridional
d. L’Outre-Petit-Pont or the “other side of the Petit-Pont.”

2. What Danish-born author revered Robespierre as a young person and wrote about France as the “holy land” of freedom?
a. Søren Kierkegaard, author of Fear and Trembling and The Concept of Irony
b. Isak Dinesen, author of Out of Africa and “Babette’s Feast”
c. Hans Christian Andersen, author of The Little Mermaid and Thumbelina
d. Niels Bohr, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics for his understanding of atomic structure and quantum mechanics

3. This event of 1870-71 is widely considered the last gasp of the French revolutionary tradition.
a. The Algerian War
b. The slow assassination, by poison, of Émile Zola
c. The Civil war known as “La Fronde”
d. The Commune

4. What novel published in 2013 features a ventriloquist’s dummy made in the image of Madame Defarge, the malevolent tricoteuse of Dickens’s Tale of Two Cities?
a. We are All Completely Beside Ourselves, by Karen Joy Fowler
b. Bad Monkey, by Karl Hiaasen
c. The Powers, by Valerie Sayers
d. 1q84, by Haruki Murakami

5. Where can the aficionado of the French Revolution find a treasure trove of dolls, manga, T-shirts, cheese wrappers, and other icons of the spirit of ’89 from global popular culture right now?
a. At Georgetown University in Washington, DC
b. At the Farragut, TN, Folklife Museum
c. At the Louvre in Paris, France
d. At the Musée de la Révolution française in Vizille, France

6. Which rock song features lyrics that sound like an account of Louis XVI’s last days?
a. The Rolling Stones, “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction”
b. Hall and Oates, “I Can’t Go for That (No Can Do)”
c. Coldplay, “I Used to Rule the World”
d. Gilbert O’Sullivan, “Alone Again, Naturally”

7. According to Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), one of the most demeaning affronts dealt to King Louis XVI and the royal family in October 1789 was that they were brought back to Paris and forced to live in a royal mansion that was converted into a ….
a. Pig sty
b. Bastille
c. Meeting hall
d. Brothel
.
8. What company was raked over the coals as “Marie-Antoinette’s Favorite Airline” in a January 2013 article by the Wall Street Journal?
a. American Airlines
b. Delta
c. Air France
d. United Airlines

9. A New York Times article of March 2013 (“You May Now Kiss the Computer Screen”) mentioned Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette as precursors of a trend that is rising in the USA. What trend is that?
a. The habit of kissing a computer screen (or, in the 18th-century, a life-size human replica) instead of a real person.
b. Unconsummated unions (le mariage blanc)
c. Proxy marriages via the Internet
d. All of the above

10. Which one of these revolutionary-era child icons has been turned into a verb?
a. Gavroche, hero of Hugo’s Les Misérables
b. Louis-Charles, aka le Dauphin, pretender to the Bourbon throne
c. Joseph Bara, the boy hero immortalized in Jacques-Louis David’s painting The Death of Bara
d. Kung Fu Panda, hero of Kung Fu Panda’s French Revolution by Kaylee Mcgrew

Answers

1. d. L’Outre-Petit-Pont. The South of the Seine was called « the other side of the Petit-Pont » because the Petit-Pont was for many years the only bridge that led from the Ile de la Cité to the area lying to the South of the Seine. The Rive Droite was called L’Outre-Grand-Pont (since the Grand-Pont—what is today called le pont Notre-Dame—was the only bridge that led from the Ile de la Cité towards the Northern neighborhoods.
2. b. Isak Dinesen was a life-long Francophile, as seen in “Babette’s Feast” and Letters from Africa: 1914-1931.
3. d. The Commune. Although the Commune of spring 1871 was relatively short-lived (73 days), the brutal suppression of the rebel communards had long-term ramifications. From the successful Russian Revolution of 1917 to the failed 1989 revolution on Tianenmen Square, those who have sought political change have looked to the Commune for inspiration.
4. a. Karen Joy Fowler, We are All Completely Beside Ourselves.
5. d. The exhibit called “Popular Cultures of the French Revolution, 20-21st century” is on display from June 2013 to April 2014 at the Musée de la Révolution française in Vizille (near Grenoble). The show will likely travel to the US and Canada afterwards, so stand by for more news on that!
6. Any of the above. But today’s audience would probably choose c., the British rock band, Coldplay, “I Used to Rule the World” track from their 2011 album Vida la Vida. Lyrics include: “I used to rule the world / Seas would rise when I gave the word / Now in the morning I sleep alone / Sweep the streets I used to own /People couldn’t believe what I’d become / Revolutionaries wait / For my head on a silver plate / Just a puppet on a lonely string / Oh…who would ever wanna be king.”
7. b. Bastille. Burke describes the royal family’s trek from Versailles to Paris as a funeral march: “After they had been made to taste, drop by drop, more than the bitterness of death, in the slow torture of a journey of twelve miles, protracted to six hours, they were, under a guard, composed of those very soldiers who had thus conducted them through this famous triumph, lodged in one of the old palaces of Paris, now converted into a bastille for kings.” (Reflections on the Revolution in France, Paragraphs 100-124).
8. a. American Airlines was criticized in the Wall Street Journal for declaring bankruptcy all the while holding onto a luxury home for the use of its executives on one of London’s wealthiest streets. (It apparently sold for a cool $23 million.) It is interesting to see how feudal privilege has translated into shorthand for capitalist excess…
9. c. Proxy marriages. The article reads, “These are called proxy marriages, a legal arrangement that allows a couple to wed even in the absence of one or both spouses. They date back centuries: one of the most famous examples was between Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, who were first married in her native Austria in his absence, before she was shipped to meet him in France.” See Sarah Maslin Nir’s article of March 6, 2013.
10. a. Gavroche, the brave street urchin of Les Misérables. The verb is found in the couplet, “Paris sous cloche / ça me gavroche” in the 2007 song by Thomas Dutronc, “J’aime plus Paris.” He is describing what Paris has become: a city for well-off people cut off from lower classes. “Gavrocher” means to “make mad” or “infuriate.” Check it out!

Julia Douthwaite is Professor of French at the University of Notre Dame and author of The Frankenstein of 1790 and Other Lost Chapters from Revolutionary France (University of Chicago Press, 2012). The Bastille Day quiz is a regular feature of “A Revolution in Fiction” since 2011.

Reviews of The Frankenstein of 1790 and other Lost Chapters from Revolutionary France

The reviews are starting to arrive!
- David Coward’s review was published as “The March of the Women” in the the Times Literary Supplement (London) on May 10, 2013.
- Daniel Sullivan‘s review was published in the Ernest Becker Foundation April 10, 2013 newsletter, here.
- Allan Pasco‘s review came out in the February 2013 Choice.

Doonesbury and Marat

This article picks up where the discussion on Go Comics and other sites left off: with an informed linkage to the revolutionary original.

Trudeau’s cartoon strip memorializes his hero just as David did with his 1793 portrait. Subtle differences reveal a less glorious message however: where David put an enigmatic smile on Marat’s death mask to reveal his serenity and wisdom, Trudeau’s hero Razil is portrayed with the gaping stupor of an idiot. Like Razil, Marat wrote quickly, did little research to back up his views, and subsequently few if any of his writings are worthy of reading today. The only reason Marat lives on is David’s masterful portrait and its mysterious aura. Razil will not fare so well; the dopey expression Trudeau inscribed on his face says it all.

Update on ‘Babette’s Feast’: A Parable of French Politics and Cookery from the Age of Revolutions

As an epicurian (married to a chef-de-cuisine, how could I not be in love with food?) “Babette’s Feast” continues to haunt my thoughts. And now, with some recent discoveries, I am more convinced than ever of its debt to revolution. And the need for a remake!
A few thoughts on my discoveries, to intrigue you:

- On the feisty spirit that emerges in Danish!
Thanks to the great book by Frantz Leander Hansen, The Aristocratic Universe of Karen Blixen (2003), nowadays a more bracing and sober accounting is available to English-language readers. Hansen proves that Dinesen, in rewriting the tale for Danish audiences, reinforced the revolutionary tone and threatening aspect of her heroine. Fantastic linguistic analysis! Thanks FLH!*

- On “Babette’s” Sympathy to La Commune and its Ideals
The 2003 translation of the 1891 history of La Commune by Isak Dinesen’s father, Wilhelm Dinesen Paris sous la Commune, Translated from the Danish by Denise Bernard-Folliot, provides the historical subtext that was hugely important to Dinesen: a fact that has been ignored by most readers. WD was very sympathetic to the ideals of La Commune, and this book should be a “must” for anyone seeking a thoughtful eye-witness account of the terrible events. Thanks DBF!

- Third, tucked in the stacks of Hesburgh Library at ND, I found a copy of the 1952 Danish translation by Jørgen Claudi with the fabulous cover illustration featured here. This rendition makes a startling contrast with the tasteful and cleaned-up rendition presented by Gabriel Axel, no?

In my work-in-progress, these elements are juxtaposed to the film and show how much stronger and more menacing the heroine is in the original text (especially in Dinesen’s Danish version). Dinesen’s character does not forget the past or the utopian hopes she once harbored for La Commune. Rather she transforms them into the ultimate beau geste of a consummate artist and an unrepentant radical. For the last supper of Babette’s Feast is not a liturgical rewriting of silent sacrifice but rather a sadly misunderstood celebration of a lost era. However no one realizes it except Babette. (And her new readers today!)

Hope you enjoyed this little taste of work-in-progress. More to come… jd
(updated 3/15/13)

* Thanks are also due to Lise Kure-Jensen who notes that one of the interesting challenges of studying the work of Isak Dinesen is that, after writing her stories in English, she translated many of them back into Danish (her native tongue) and made significant changes along the way. Most notably, she made the Danish translation of “Babette” WILDER! See LKJ, “Isak Dinesen in English, Danish, and Translation: Are We Reading the Same Text?” in Isak Dinesen: Critical Views, ed. Olga Anastasia Pelensky (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1993), pp. 314-321.

Marie-Antoinette action figure and Call for other objets d’art of revolutionary culture

In honor of a fascinating art exhibit opening soon at the Musée de la Révolution française (see below), I would like to share my personal favorite French Revolution toy: the Marie-Antoinette action figure! First found in the Archie McPhee store in Seattle, this edifying little objet d’art is now available via multiple vendors on the internet. An authentic version should feature: 1) the ejectable head with its detachable wig; 2) the two costumes of the queen: regal robes and a fetching peasant outfit.

My friends, students, and family have so enjoyed playing with our Marie-Antoinette that her plastic head socket has gotten a bit out of joint. Thus my question: how, oh how, will I ever get the queen’s head back on her shoulders?!

An announcement : The volume, Les Mythologies révolutionnaires : la Révolution française dans les cultures et imaginaires populaires aujourd’hui, ed. Martial Poirson, is forthcoming, Éditions Garnier !
A query: An exhibit will be hosted at the Musée de la Révolution française in 2013-14 on the topic of « Popular Culture and the French Revolution Today, » organized by Martial Poirson and Museum Director Alain Chevalier (from June 2013 to April 2014). The organizers seek suggestions of objects from popular culture to include in the gallery, for example, novels or popular fiction, school books, images, caricatures, photographs, and any kinds of objects or accessories dating from the last 20 years. Do you have any suggestions on “Musts” of the French Revolution? If so, let us know (we would love to share your findings with the readers of this site) and/or write directly to Martial Poirson.

Version française
Une annonce : Le volume, Les Mythologies révolutionnaires : la Révolution française dans les cultures et imaginaires populaires aujourd’hui sous la direction de Martial Poirson est désormais à paraître aux éditions Garnier !
Une question, un appel aux contributions : Il y aura une exposition au Musée de la Révolution française sous la direction de Martial Poirson et Alain Chevalier, consacrée à “Cultures populaires et Révolution française aujourd’hui”, qui se tiendra à Vizille de juin 2013 à avril 2014. Dans un tel cadre, les organisateurs sont à la recherche de romans populaires, manuels scolaires (moins pour la qualité du récit ou de l’analyse que pour l’objet livre ou de la culture graphique), images, caricatures, photos, objets, accessoires, produits dérivés (des vingt dernières années uniquement), qu’ils pourraient exposer dans différentes vitrines et sur les murs.
Auriez-vous des suggestions “incontournables” ? Faites-nous savoir (nous aimerions bien l’afficher ici pour les lecteurs de « A Revolution in Fiction ») et/ou contactez Martial Poirson.

On Hooper’s Les Misérables, or the importance of not being too earnest

What can you say about a film that you hoped to like but didn’t? That it was schmaltzy and sincere? That it had nice horses and a pretty heroine? Or should you admit that it made you want to move to the back to the multiplex and cast your eyes down, out of compassion for the actors’ dignity?

The one thing I learned from sitting through Tom Hooper’s 2012 remake of Hugo’s 1862 novel, is that earnestness can be overdone. Sincerity fascinates, but only when it motivates action toward an admirable end, such as, say, bringing justice against people who commit war crimes. But sincerity for its own sake is, well, embarrassing.

Watching Les Misérables, I felt like a stranger who stumbled into a school play in a rich neighborhood. The sets were gorgeous (if unFrench), the costumes were well-made (check out the stitching!), and the actors had shiny white teeth and good haircuts (even Fantine’s Pixie looked cute). The only problem was, the actors are not my relatives, and I do not care how hard they were trying. Plus, they kept looking at me! Every view was a close-up of those poor actors whose lips, dental work, and nose hair were available for scrutiny. Not to mention their poor voices, quite clearly strained by the demanding score. What was Hooper thinking?! (More to the point, what was Russell Crowe thinking?!)

While waiting for the show to be over, I did make one significant discovery, however: Eddie Redmayne bears an uncanny resemblance to Jerry Mathers, star of the 1950s sitcom, Leave it to Beaver! It was their sincerity that gave it away. But wait, Beaver’s freckle-faced goodness was imbued with an impish sense of humor. And some episodes of Leave it to Beaver were truly suspenseful. (Who can forget when Beaver was stranded in that giant Teacup!) Sorry about that, Jerry.

But I’m mostly sorry for those of you who’ve actually read and love Les Misérables. Instead of heading to the multiplex, I suggest you check out Raymond Bernard’s 1934 version, with a stunning Jean Valjean played at his earthiest best by Harry Baur. (Available in the Criterion collection). Who needs a remake with this film on hand?

L’affaire Depardieu / The Depardieu affair, by Sonja Stojanovic

The actor Gérard Depardieu has given back his French passport and is moving to Belgium to avoid paying taxes. This is a gross simplification of what has sparked a polemical debate in French cultural and political circles.

Philippe Torreton, another French actor, in a virulent column published on December 17, 2012 in the French newspaper Libération calls out Depardieu on his fiscal exile.

The column addresses Depardieu using the informal you “tu” instead of the polite and more formal “vous” and attacks him using lines from Depardieu’s famous film, the adaptation of Edmond Rostand’s play Cyrano de Bergerac; he accuses him of leaving his country in the midst of a crisis.

This column sparked a response from French actress Catherine Deneuve who took to writing a column published on December 20, 2012 also in Libération, entitled “Monsieur Torreton”. According to her, she not so much defends Depardieu as scolds Torreton for his pettiness and debasing words. Then, she finishes her short piece with a dramatic “What would you have done in 1789, [to think of it] my body is still trembling” and the oft quoted statement about tolerance taken from Voltaire.

Also jumping on the bandwagon is Laurence Parisot, the president of the MEDEF, France’s largest employers’ union. She remarks that the current politics are reminiscent of a climate of “civil war” and aligns herself with Deneuve. “I say like Catherine Deneuve said this morning in Libération, we have the feeling today that one is looking to recreate something that is relating to 1789, one needs to realize how insufferable this is for many talented people and this is why they are pushed to leaving, let’s not invert the order of things”.

Why bring up 1789? Who is exactly this (new) nobility and why is their (fiscal) exile something to accept / defend / deplore? Since when is the super rich paying taxes viewed as something negative – revolutionarily speaking? And why would Deneuve tremble at the thought of 1789? Both she and Depardieu would have been part of the Third Estate back then. Are the French starting to regret the legacies of the French Revolution?

What do you think?

1789, Les amants de la Bastille & The Frankenstein of 1790, par Alexane Bébin

Je vous joins le lien d’une nouvelle comédie musicale, 1789, Les amants de la Bastille, tout un programme… En fait j’ai d’abord découvert le clip sans entendre la musique et les images m’ont beaucoup fait penser aux propos du chapitre un du Frankenstein of 1790 and other Lost Chapters from Revolutionary France. On y voit un personnage qui est devenu “fille légère” à Versailles et qui, je cite le site officiel: “retrouvera sa dignité en prenant la tête de la révolte des femmes qu’elle mènera jusqu’au Roi, à Versailles” prenant les armes et menant un petit groupe de femmes échevelées jusqu’au portail du château, ainsi que Marie-Antoinette et Lafayette…
Je vous laisse découvrir cette nouvelle interprétation de la marche des femmes sur Versailles, la chanson s’intitule “je veux le monde.”
Grands remerciements, Alexane, pour cette piste!

Insider’s guide to “The Frankenstein of 1790 and other Lost Chapters from Revolutionary France”

Dear Readers,
I am delighted to announce the publication of The Frankenstein of 1790 and other Lost Chapters from Revolutionary France. I wrote this book in the hope of making some of the greatest stories every told come back to life. But I am also a scholar deeply engrossed in the political history of revolutionary France, so it may be a bit detailed for general reading. Hence this little tip:
If you want to jump forward to parts that were the most fun to write, skip to the Codas.
1. Chap. One’s Coda reveals L. Frank Baum’s ties to 19th-c feminism, and highlights the links between the Versailles marchers of 1789, the fish-selling poissardes, and Baum’s plain-spoken character, Our Landlady, who famously declared: “it’s the conceit o’men as is the biggest stumblin’block ter universal sufferin’ o’women!”
2. Chap. Two shows how Shelley’s Frankenstein can be understood as a mechanical invention rooted in 18th-century automaton tales and the Mechanical Theaters of London and Paris.
3. Chap. Three unearths parallels between the lowly rooming-house boarder Old Goriot and King Louis XVI in his powerless (and clueless) last years.
4. Chap. Four argues that Robespierre’s biographers made him into the first truly “modern” villain, and shows why high school teachers are quite right to teach Dickens’s Tale of Two Cities, before ending with the dark humor of Flaubert’s Dictionary of Received Ideas.
5. The Conclusion brings the Revolution up to date with a glance at a notorious film, a couple advertising campaigns, and some food for thought from the Arab Spring.
p.s. There are also lots of pictures.
Happy Reading!
–Julia D.

Breaking News in Revolutionary Art: Johann Rousselot’s “Freedom Fighter” series

The most exciting art from the revolutionary scene this fall comes to us from Johann Rousselot, the Paris-based photographer who is already known to readers of A Revolution in Fiction thanks to his fabulous work on India in the DIGNITY exhibit (Amnesty International) which opened this spring in the USA (see “Teach This!” posting no. 10). We at Notre Dame were proud to welcome him to campus in February, and to feature his work in the DIGNITY exhibit, soon to launch its tour of the USA.

Now showing in Perpignan, Rousselot’s new work called “Freedom Fighters” draws on photographs he took on site in Egypt, Morocco, Syria, Libya, and Tunisia, and which mix formal portraits with a variety of text (graffiti, Facebook), and montage techniques. They are all gripping, gorgeous, and powerfully wrought; check out his site!

To appreciate the continuity with the art of the 1790s, consider Rousselot’s portrait of Mouad Belghouat (alias L7A9D; El Haked – The Outraged) alongside the “Mysterious Urn” (ca. 179-99) (featured in our posting of May 13, 2009).
Rousselot’s caption explains that Mr. Belghouat, an engaged rap singer, was imprisoned for political reasons from September 09th, 2011 to January 12th, 2012. He quickly became an icon of the protests nationwide organized by the M20 – Movement of the 20th of February (2011). Seen among the royals on this wall, his portrait forms an ironic riff on celebrity-mongering or act of lèse-majesté. But if one day the caption disappears, his portrait may confound viewers seeking a straightforward political message. They may well wonder which side it supports, just like the enigmatic mixture of monarchical and republican iconography in the “Urn.”

As Rousselot explains, the M20 – Movement of the 20th of February –set up many protests in the main cities of the kingdom, and called for a boycott of the legislative poll of November 25th, 2011 where the king Mohamed VI attempted to calm down the Moroccan street and avoid any propagation of the Arab spring. “Graphic inspiration for this series came from the ubiquitous presence of the framed picture of King Mohamed VI in virtually every shop, hotel, train station, and administrative buildings of course. I decided to replace his image with those of the militants, like a lese-majesty crime.”

Bravo to Johann Rousselot for this brave and beautiful testimonial to the revolutionary spirit!