Rare Book Monthly

Articles - August - 2024 Issue

« Ça ira, ça ira... » France and the Robespierre’s complex.

For the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games that took place last July in Paris, France offered a show that revealed her complex relationship with her past.

 

 

The opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in Paris took place last July. The ‘bouquinistes’ boxes were quietly aligned along the Seine River (a silent victory: https://www.rarebookhub.com/articles/3441 ) as the athletes sailed the river on ‘bateaux mouches’. Meanwhile, various shows were organized all around. Sometimes this ceremony reminded us of scenes from the Hunger Games movie: an abundance of forced bliss, colours, magnificent stages, loud music, and fireworks—and a slightly disturbing feeling of global debauchery, especially during the second part of the evening.

 

At one point, the French singer Philippe Katerine appeared on a huge dish plate, his almost naked body painted in blue, as the embodiment of Dionysus. Katerine is known for being a humorous and avant-gardiste artist but symbols matter, don’t they? And this was the symbol of the ‘pagan bacchanalia’ orchestrated by French director Thomas Jolly during the second part of the ceremony. Didn’t he re-enact the Last Supper in the background, with Jesus as an obese woman surrounded with transvestite apostles? No, he said, Da Vinci’s painting “wasn’t my inspiration.” All right, what was it, then? He wouldn’t say. His defenders claim it was another painting: Van Biljert’s Les Festins des dieux... which is clearly an iconoclast reinterpretation of Da Vinci’s Last Supper. The Katerine sequence was apparently censored in several parts of the world, including the States and some Middle-East countries.

 

The first part of the ceremony was ‘grandiose’. The second part was boring to me but interesting in the sense that it tended to depict France as a modern country that has broken up with her past—not only with religion and its prudishness, but also with centuries of royalty. As the obscure metal band Gojira started to perform, Marie Antoinette—once Queen of France—was shown holding her severed head in her hands—and the head was singing a revolutionary song: “Ca ira, ça ira, la aristocrates, faut les pendre.../ All will be fine, let’s hang the Aristocrats...” Following the 1789 Révolution, Marie Antoinette was beheaded in Paris in the wake of her husband Louis XVI (https://www.rarebookhub.com/articles/3613). The famous executioner Charles-Henri Sanson (https://www.rarebookhub.com/articles/2309/print?page_id=4354) then showed her head to the audience: Vive la république ! This scene was also very controverted and Jolly said: “It was an artistic representation, and certainly not the glorification of this death tool called the guillotine.” Of course, Gojira and Jolly weren’t calling for murder. It was, no doubt, a peace-and-love ceremony—well, except maybe for aristocrats.

 

The next day the ceremony was globally depicted as a success—the best opening ceremony ever, claimed several international newspapers. It nevertheless illustrates a French paradox. France’s past is a heavy heritage that we French people worship, and tend to despise at the same time—we’re actually struggling to assume it. We rely upon it to define ourselves as a great country (aaaah, le Château de Versailles!) but at the same time, we know we had to break up with it on several occasions. First and most was the Révolution of 1789—which has had such an impact on our identity that we’re still afraid we might not be worthy of it—, or the end of our dominion on various parts of the world. In the days of Louis XIV, we feared “ridicule”; today, we fear we might not be irreverent enough. This is the Robespierre’s complex—a radical revolutionary who sacrificed many to his vision (https://www.rarebookhub.com/articles/1124/print?page_id=2804 ). The second part of the ceremony looked like a spoilt child brutally playing with her heritage like she’d play with toys. On social media, the far left rejoiced. Shocking the conservatives is, they say, a Dionysian delight. Of course, words—or ceremonies—are cheap, as we all know. But lovers of old books know that they have consequences, and should be handled carefully. While the “révolutions de salon” (living room revolutions) take place on TV, the far right is gaining ground by the hour—let’s bear in mind that Robespierre was eventually beheaded too; by the same executioner who killed Marie-Antoinette.

 

T. Ehrengardt

Rare Book Monthly

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    Sotheby’s, Ending July 10: Book of Hours by the Masters of Otto van Moerdrecht, Use of Sarum, in Latin, Southern Netherlands (Bruges), c.1450. £20,000 to £30,000.
    Sotheby’s, Ending July 10: Albert Einstein. Autograph letter signed, to Attilio Palatino, on his research into General Relativity, 12 May 1929. £12,000 to £18,000.
    Sotheby’s, Ending July 10: John Gould. The Birds of Europe, [1832-] 1837, 5 volumes, contemporary half morocco, subscriber’s copy. £40,000 to £60,000.
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    Sotheby’s, Ending July 10: Ian Fleming. A collection of James Bond first editions, 8 volumes in all. £8,000 to £12,000.
    Sotheby’s, Ending July 10: J.K. Rowling. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, 1997, first edition, hardback issue. £50,000 to £70,000.
    Sotheby’s, Ending July 10: J.R.R. Tolkien. Autograph letter signed, to Amy Ronald, on Pauline Baynes's map of Middle Earth, 1970. £7,000 to £10,000.
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    DOYLE, July 23: WALL, BERNHARDT. Greenwich Village. Types, Tenements & Temples. Estimate $300-500
    DOYLE, July 23: STOKES, I. N. PHELPS. The Iconography of Manhattan Island, 1498-1909. New York: Robert H. Dodd, 1915-28. Estimate: $3,000-5,000
    DOYLE, July 23: [AUTOGRAPH - US PRESIDENT]FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT. A signed photograph of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Estimate $500-800
    DOYLE, July 23: [ARION PRESS]. ABBOTT, EDWIN A. Flatland. A Romance of Many Dimensions. San Francisco, 1980. Estimate $2,000-3,000.
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    DOYLE, July 23: ROWLING, J.K. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. London: Bloomsbury, 2000. Estimate $1,200-1,800
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    Freeman’s | Hindman, July 8. FRANCESCO PETRARCH (b. Arezzo, 20 July 1304; d. Arqua Petrarca, 19 July 1374). $20,000-30,000.
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    Freeman’s | Hindman, July 8. CIRCLE OF ATTAVANTE DEGLI ATTAVANTI (GABRIELLO DI VANTE) (active Florence, c. 1452-c. 1520/25). $15,000-20,000.
    Freeman’s | Hindman, July 8. FOLLOWER OF HERMAN SCHEERE (active London, c. 1405-1425). $15,000-20,000.
    Freeman’s | Hindman, July 8. An exceptionally rare, illuminated music leaf from a Mozarabic Antiphonal with sister leaves mostly in museum collections. $11,500-14,000.
    Freeman’s | Hindman, July 8. Exceptional leaf from a prestigious Antiphonary by a leading illuminator of the late Duecento. $11,500-14,000.
    Freeman’s | Hindman, July 8. CIRCLE OF THE MASTER OF MS REID 33 and SELWERD ABBEY SCRIPTORIUM (AGNES MARTINI?) (active The Netherlands, Groningen, c. 1468-1510). $10,000-15,000.
    Freeman’s | Hindman, July 8. Previously unknown illumination from one of the most renowned Gothic Choir Book sets of the Middle Ages. $6,000-8,000.
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    Forum, July 17: Lucianus Samosatensis. Dialogoi, editio princeps, second issue, Florence, Laurentius Francisci de Alopa, 1496. £10,000 to £15,000.
    Forum, July 17: Boccaccio (Giovanni). Il Decamerone, Florence, Philippo di Giunta, 1516. £10,000 to £15,000.
    Forum, July 17: Henry VII (King) & Philip the Fair (Duke of Burgundy). [Intercursus Magnus], [Commercial and Political Treaty between Henry VII and Philip Duke of Burgundy], manuscript copy in Latin, original vellum, 1499. £8,000 to £12,000.
    Forum, July 17: Bible, English. The Holy Bible, Conteyning the Old Testament, and the New, Robert Barker, 1613. £4,000 to £6,000.
    Forum, July 17: Bond (Michael). A Bear Called Paddington, first edition, signed presentation inscription from the author, 1958. £4,000 to £6,000.
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    Forum, July 17: Yeats (William Butler). The Secret Rose, first edition, with extensive autograph corrections, additions and amendments by the author for a new edition, 1897. £6,000 to £8,000.
    Forum, July 17: Byron (George Gordon Noel, Lord). Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, bound in dark green morocco elaborately tooled in gilt and with 3 watercolours to fore-edge, by Fazakerley of Liverpool, 1841. £4,000 to £6,000.
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    Forum, July 17: Sowerby (George Brettingham). Album comprising 22 leaves of original watercolour drawings of fossil remains of Cheltenham and Vicinity, [c.1840]. £6,000 to £8,000.
    Forum, July 17: Mathematics.- Blue paper copy.- Euclid. De gli Elementi, Urbino, Appresso Domenico Frisolino, 1575. £12,000 to £18,000.

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