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Dec. 13th, 2025 10:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsSometimes I think that if I ever gain full comprehension of the various upheavals and rapid-fire political rotations that followed in the hundred years after the French Revolution, my mind will at that point be big and powerful enough to understand any other bit of history that anyone can throw at me. Prior to reading Paris in Ruins: Love, War, and the Birth of Impressionism, I knew that in the 1870s there had briefly been a Paris Commune, and also a siege, and hot air balloons and Victor Hugo were involved in these events somehow but I had not actually understood that these were actually Two Separate Events and that properly speaking there were two Sieges of Paris, because everyone in Paris was so angry about the disaster that was the first Siege (besiegers: Prussia) that they immediately seceded from the government, declared a commune, and got besieged again (besiegers: the rest of France, or more specifically the patched-together French government that had just signed a peace treaty with Prussia but had not yet fully decided whether to be a monarchy again, a constitutional monarchy again, or a Republic again.)
As a book, Paris in Ruins has a bit of a tricky task. Its argument is that the miserable events in Paris of 1870-71 -- double siege, brutal political violence, leftists and political reformers who'd hoped for the end of the Glittering and Civilized but Ultimately Authoritarian Napoleon III Empire getting their wish in the most monkey's paw fashion imaginable -- had a lasting psychological impact on the artists who would end up forming the Impressionist movement that expressed itself through their art. Certainly true! Hard to imagine it wouldn't! But in order to tell this story it has to spend half the book just explaining the Siege and the Commune, and the problem is that although the Siege and the Commune certainly impacted the artists, the artists didn't really have much impact on the Siege and the Commune ... so reading the 25-50% section of the book is like, 'okay! so, you have to remember, the vast majority of the people in Paris right now were working class and starving and experiencing miserable conditions, which really sets the stage for what comes next! and what about Berthe Morisot and Edouard Manet, our protagonists? well, they were not working class. but they were in Paris, and not having a good time, and depressed!' and then the 50-75% section is like 'well, now the working class in Paris were furious, and here's all the things that happened about that! and what about Berthe Morisot and Edouard Manet, our protagonists? well, they were not in Paris any more at this point. But they were still not having a good time and still depressed!'
Sieges and plagues are the parts of history that scare me the most and so of course I am always finding myself compelled to read about them; also, I really appreciate history that engages with the relationship between art and the surrounding political and cultural phenomena that shapes and is shaped by it. So I appreciated this book very much even though I don't think it quite succeeds at this task, in large part because there is just so much to say in explaining The Siege and The Commune that it struggles sometimes to keep it focused through its chosen lens. But I did learn a lot, if sometimes somewhat separately, about both the Impressionists and the sociopolitical environment of France in the back half of the 19th century, and I am glad to have done so. I feel like I have a moderate understanding of dramatic French upheavals of the 1860s-80s now, to add to my moderate understanding of French upheavals in the 1780s-90s (the Revolution era) and my moderate understanding of French upheavals in the 1830s-40s (the Les Mis era) which only leaves me about six or seven more decades in between to try and comprehend.
As a book, Paris in Ruins has a bit of a tricky task. Its argument is that the miserable events in Paris of 1870-71 -- double siege, brutal political violence, leftists and political reformers who'd hoped for the end of the Glittering and Civilized but Ultimately Authoritarian Napoleon III Empire getting their wish in the most monkey's paw fashion imaginable -- had a lasting psychological impact on the artists who would end up forming the Impressionist movement that expressed itself through their art. Certainly true! Hard to imagine it wouldn't! But in order to tell this story it has to spend half the book just explaining the Siege and the Commune, and the problem is that although the Siege and the Commune certainly impacted the artists, the artists didn't really have much impact on the Siege and the Commune ... so reading the 25-50% section of the book is like, 'okay! so, you have to remember, the vast majority of the people in Paris right now were working class and starving and experiencing miserable conditions, which really sets the stage for what comes next! and what about Berthe Morisot and Edouard Manet, our protagonists? well, they were not working class. but they were in Paris, and not having a good time, and depressed!' and then the 50-75% section is like 'well, now the working class in Paris were furious, and here's all the things that happened about that! and what about Berthe Morisot and Edouard Manet, our protagonists? well, they were not in Paris any more at this point. But they were still not having a good time and still depressed!'
Sieges and plagues are the parts of history that scare me the most and so of course I am always finding myself compelled to read about them; also, I really appreciate history that engages with the relationship between art and the surrounding political and cultural phenomena that shapes and is shaped by it. So I appreciated this book very much even though I don't think it quite succeeds at this task, in large part because there is just so much to say in explaining The Siege and The Commune that it struggles sometimes to keep it focused through its chosen lens. But I did learn a lot, if sometimes somewhat separately, about both the Impressionists and the sociopolitical environment of France in the back half of the 19th century, and I am glad to have done so. I feel like I have a moderate understanding of dramatic French upheavals of the 1860s-80s now, to add to my moderate understanding of French upheavals in the 1780s-90s (the Revolution era) and my moderate understanding of French upheavals in the 1830s-40s (the Les Mis era) which only leaves me about six or seven more decades in between to try and comprehend.
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Date: 2025-12-13 05:31 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2025-12-15 02:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-12-15 03:28 pm (UTC)Fourier suggested not only that animals represented abstract truths, but that when new truths were revealed, nature would create the corresponding animals. The relevant passage:
"The hieroglyph of truth in the animal kingdom is the giraffe. Since the characteristic of truth is to surmount error, the animal that represents it must be able to raise his head higher than all the others: this the giraffe can do, as it browses on branches 18 feet above the ground. It is, in the words of one ancient author, “a most fine animal, gentle and agreeable to the eye.” Truth is also most fine, but as it is incapable of harmonizing with our customs, its hieroglyph, the giraffe, must be incapable of helping humans in their work; thus God has reduced it to insignificance by giving it an irregular gait which shakes up and damages any burden it might be called upon to bear. As a result we prefer to leave it to inaction, just as nobody will employ a truthful man, whose character runs counter to all accepted customs and desires. And when the societary order has enabled us to become adept at the use of truth and the virtues which are excluded from our lives at present, a new creation will provide us, in the anti-giraffe, with a great and magnificent servant whose qualities will far surpass the good qualities of the reindeer, which so excites our envy and arouses our anger at nature for having deprived us of it."
(I have written Les Miserables fic with this conceit.)
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Date: 2025-12-15 03:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-12-14 03:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-12-13 06:01 pm (UTC)I feel like I have a pretty decent grasp on French upheavals of 1815-1839, and an okay grasp on the OG revolution and the Commune, but then there's 1848.
There's just. So much 1848 in 1848. It's like the real-life version of Patrick O'Brien's endless 1812.
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Date: 2025-12-13 06:56 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2025-12-15 02:36 pm (UTC)I LOVED the Nadar bits, though. The detail about how they got mail in and out of Paris! The letters photographed and shrunk real small so more of them would fit onto the balloon! And I knew only a tiny little bit about the Franco-Prussian War and the Commune so I was fascinated the learn more about all of that, plus the general political situation in France at the time. It's just, as you say, So Much.
ETA: Oh, for art bits, I was also fascinated by the discussion about the influence of Spanish artists on Manet, for instance the way that he modeled his Emperor Maximilien drawings on Goya's work from Napoleon's invasion of Spain. Surely someone has written about this before and I just haven't seen it.
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Date: 2025-12-18 04:59 am (UTC)(One of the things I feel like I always get from nonfiction is just more of a sense of how everything influences everything else, just a constant "holy shit! these dots too?!" and having Emperor Maximilian show up in this text definitely played into that experience.)