#marie christine bacquès

[sieclesetcieux]

Collaborative Masterpost on Saint-Just

Primary Sources

Oeuvres complètes available online: Volume 1 and Volume 2

A few speeches

L'esprit de la révolution et de la constitution de la France (1791)

Transcription of the Fragments sur les institutions républicaines (1800) kept at the BNF by Pierre Palpant

Alain Liénard's edition and transcription of his works in Théorie politique (1976)

Some letters kept in Papiers inédits trouvés chez Robespierre, Saint-Just, Payan, etc. (1828)

Fragment autographe des Institutions républicaines

Une lettre autographe signée de Saint-Just, L. B. Guyton et Gillet (not his writing but still interesting)

Two files at the BNF with his writing (and other strange random stuff):

Notes et fragments autographes - NAF 24136

Fragments de manuscrits autographes, avec pièces annexes provenant de Bertrand Barère, de V. Expert et d'H. Carnot - NAF 24158

Albert Soboul's transcription of the Institutions républicaines + explanation of what's in these files at the BNF

Anne Quenneday's philological note on the manuscript by Saint Just, wrongly entitled De la Nature (NAF 12947)

Masterpost (inventory, anecdotes, etc.) - by obscurehistoricalinterests

Chronology

Chronology from Bernard Vinot's biography

Testimonies

Élisabeth Duplay-Le Bas on Saint-Just, as reported by David d'Angers - by frevandrest and robespapier

Élisabeth Duplay-Le Bas corrects Alphonse de Lamartine’s Histoire des girondins (1847) - by anotherhumaninthisworld

Many testimonies by contemporaries (in French) on antoine-saint-just.fr

Representations

Everything Wrong with Saint-Just's Introductory Scene in La Révolution française (1989) - by frevandrest

On Saint-Just's strange representation of "throwing tantrums" - by saintjustitude and frevandrest

Saint-Just as "goth/emo boy"? - by needsmoreresearch, frevandrest and sieclesetcieux

Recommended Articles

Bernard Vinot:

"La révolution au village, avec Saint-Just, d'après le registre des délibérations communales de Blérancourt", Annales historiques de la Révolution française, No. 335, Janvier-Mars 2004, p. 97-110

Alexis Philonenko:

"Réflexions sur Saint-Just et l'existence légendaire", Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale, 77e Année, No. 3, Juillet-Septembre 1972, p. 339-355

Miguel Abensour:

"Saint-Just, Les paradoxes de l'héroïsme révolutionnaire", Esprit, No. 147 (2), Février 1989, p. 60-81

"Saint-Just and the Problem of Heroism in the French Revolution", Social Research, Vol. 56, No. 1, "The French Revolution and the Birth of Modernity", Spring 1989, p. 187-211

"La philosophie politique de Saint-Just: Problématique et cadres sociaux". Annales historiques de la Révolution française, 38e Année, No. 183, Janvier-Mars 1966, p. 1-32. (première partie)

"La philosophie politique de Saint-Just: Problématique et cadres sociaux", Annales historiques de la Révolution française, 38e Année, No. 185, Juillet-Septembre 1966, p. 341-358 (suite et fin)

Louise Ampilova-Tuil, Catherine Gosselin et Anne Quennedey:

"La bibliothèque de Saint-Just: catalogue et essai d'interprétation critique", Annales historiques de la Révolution française, No. 379, Janvier-mars 2015, p. 203-222

Jean-Pierre Gross:

"Saint-Just en mission. La naissance d'un mythe", Annales historiques de la Révolution française, Année 1968, no. 191 p. 27-59

Marie-Christine Bacquès:

"Le double mythe de Saint-Just à travers ses mises en scène", Siècles, no. 23, 2006, p. 9-30

Marisa Linton:

"The man of virtue: the role of antiquity in the political trajectory of L. A. Saint-Just", French History, Volume 24, Issue 3, September 2010, p. 393–419

Misc

Saint-Just in Five Sentences - by sieclesetcieux

On Saint-Just's Personality: An Introduction - by sieclesetcieux

Pictures of Saint-Just's former school, with the original gate - by obscurehistoricalinterests

Saint-Just vs Desmoulins (the letter to d'Aubigny and other details) - by frevandrest

Saint-Just's sisters - by frevandrest

On Thérèse Gellé and Henriette Le Bas - by frevandrest

Saint-Just and Gellé being godparents - by frevandrest and robespapier

On Saint-Just "stealing" and running away to Paris and the correction house - by frevandrest and sieclesetcieux

How was/is Saint-Just pronounced - Additional commentary in French by Anne Quenneday

[sieclesetcieux]

On Saint-Just’s Personality: An Introduction

Saint-Just’s personality is deeply misunderstood.

Saint-Just was a very secretive person, and guarded his personality behind walls. It might come off as surprising, considering how he’s usually depicted, but he actually was very introverted and reserved at the Convention, at the Committee of Public Safety, and during his missions in Alsace and in the North.

He was also a very sensitive person. He didn’t take slights easily (neither did Robespierre). But unlike Robespierre, he was also extremely young and wanted to be taken seriously. He was building off from nothing. So he built his own “myth”: the man (re)born with the Revolution. He made his youth his advantage: he hadn’t been as corrupted as the others by the old ways. This is something that was used by other revolutionaries, for example Marc-Antoine Jullien, who was 19 years old in 1794. They would say their youth made them closer to “nature” – that is, the natural, uncorrupted state of humanity as defined by Enlightenment philosophy.

The Saint-Just people think they know via novels and movies doesn’t really exist. I can’t think of any fictional representation that accurately portrays him. How people think of Saint-Just is basically several different “fanon” interpretations, some built by his enemies, some built by people who did appreciate him but didn’t quite understand him – which didn’t help much in the end.

This is important to point out because in the end these are the sources we have to learn who Saint-Just was as a person:

What those who knew him wrote about him (sometimes writing many decades later, which naturally impacts memory)

The little insight we can gleam from the few personal notes he left here and there in notebooks (and an unsent letter) that were never meant to be read by anyone

I know this seems obvious, but people often forget that historical figures are not fictional characters. They were real, living, breathing, human beings. They were people, and people have flaws and contradictions. People don’t necessarily remain the same at 20 years old, at 25, at 30 and so forth. People change.

The Saint-Just who writes Organt before the Revolution isn’t the Saint-Just who writes L’Esprit de la Révolution et de la Constitution de France in 1790 and isn’t the Saint-Just who gets elected deputy to the Convention in 1792. The Saint-Just who writes an unsent letter to Villain d’Aubigny (usually dated of July 20 1792, though it’s a topic of debate) is a Saint-Just no one was supposed to see. Same with most of his personal notes they built the Fragments des Institutions républicaines with.

Most importantly of all, a person will appear different to different people in different contexts. It’s a matter of perspective.

If you only take Desmoulins’ and Hilary Mantel’s and Tanith Lee’s perspectives on Saint-Just, well, I’m sorry to say, that’s not Saint-Just. That’s a perspective of Saint-Just.

Moreover, Saint-Just has many faces, many images, many legends, some of which he created himself while he was alive.

Victor Hugo was influenced by the Romantic Historians of the French Revolution, Michelet and Lamartine specifically, and their descriptions of Saint-Just to create Enjolras.

This is how you can find this connection making it even through novels that don’t like Saint-Just very much:

“He has a mind of fire and a heart of ice.”

- Bertrand Barère on Louis-Antoine Saint-Just

“It is a thing unheard of that a man should be as cold as ice and as bold as fire.”           

- Bossuet on Enjolras, in Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“...Camille felt an instant aversion, as to the touch of ice, which is what the young man most resembled. Chiseled from an ice floe.”

- Camille on Saint-Just, in Tanith Lee, The Gods Are Thirsty

Thus, even traces of this Saint-Just lives on in Tanith Lee's book.

Main testimonies

Most of them are here, in French, and some have been translated. If not, I will work on it. I will repost them on this tumblr as well, along with additional information about their author, their reliability, their personal biases, etc.

Sources by Saint-Just’s hand

While some revolutionaries have enough correspondence to fill entire volumes, Saint-Just comparatively left few letters behind. We do have one letter that gives incredible insight into his state of mind, but it’s important to remember this letter was never meant to be read by anyone. It was an unsent letter, found in his things after Thermidor, and then made public against his wishes, much like most of his personal notes. It is, however, an amazing letter nevertheless, but it’s important to keep this context in mind: he did not want you to see him like this.

Secondly, we have a lot of decrees he wrote during his missions. Though most don’t say very much, they do give clues on his personality, on his attitude, on his perspective. In some cases, he would write a quick postscript to a letter written by Le Bas and addressed to Maximilien Robespierre. Interestingly, while Le Bas would use the “vous” with Robespierre, and admitted to his wife Élisabeth he felt closer to Augustin than to Maximilien, Saint-Just always uses the “tu”. This isn’t just a matter of revolutionary zeal – the whole “vous vs tu” question during the Revolution is another, much more complicated story.

Finally, we have personal notes scattered through the manuscript that became known as the Fragments des Institutions républicaines. It’s a strange document to study and refer to. There is, indeed, a project he was working on concerning the Republican Institutions. There are at least two drafts. But the document has other things has well: from notes he later used in speeches (you can pinpoint the similarities) to a very short fictional romance between a man and a woman that’s hard to interpret.

The document known as the Fragments des Institutions républicaines was made from random papers found on him when he was arrested, taken from his apartment, and in a notebook that Barère kept. Pages are missing. Some pages are obviously torn. This is the one place where he confided some of his deepest thoughts, which reveal a great deal of insight on the Revolution and on his role, as well as his mental state. It was written in the last months of his life, when he could feel what was coming.

Saint-Just wrote fiction: yes, there’s the much maligned, very misunderstood Organt. In the same period, which is shortly before the Revolution, he also wrote a play called Arlequin Diogène, a short story called La Raison à la Morne, and a very short epigram of 8 verses, Épigramme sur le comédien Dubois qui a joué dans Pierre le Cruel.

Most of these must be treated as any work of fiction regarding their author: separating fiction from the author is complicated. Is he referencing his own life? Is he even aware that he is? The context of their redaction, however, gives a lot of information and some insight on himself. One of these texts is extremely interesting in order to study his personality. It’s a sort of foreword to Organt titled Dialogue entre M... D... et l’auteur du poëme d’Organt. The format almost resembles that of an interview. This is important as this is Saint-Just the Author, as he wants to be seen. The style is trenchant, concise, straight-to-the-point. Here Saint-Just the Author of 1789 meets Saint-Just the Representative of Year II.

(This post in an introduction to a series of several posts in the process of being written. Please be patient. If you want to know more, feel free to send me questions though! I’ll try to answer as well as I can.)