Blood in the City: Violence and Revelation in Paris, 1780–1945 by Richard D. E. Burton (review)

Abstract

978 Reviews intellectual mapping which will continue to aid, to fascinate, and to challenge scholars for many years to come. University of Kent Philip Robinson Blood in the City: Violence and Revelation in Paris, iy8g-ig4^. By Richard D. E. Burton. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. 2001. xv + 395 pp. $36.50. Revisiting Paris with Richard D. E. Burton is an exhilarating experience. In an immensely well-informed study ofwhat might be called 'monumentalites', he interprets the major tourist sights as historical sites, illuminating every scene in the flickering glare of violence. His route takes him from the Bastille to the Place de la Concorde, from the Place Vendome and the Invalides to the Hotel de Ville, from Pere Lachaise to Notre-Dame (with Claudel finding his faith again), and from the Sacre-Cceur, the Tour EifTel, and the Champs de Mars to the Vel' d'Hiv' and the poky courtroom where Petain was convicted. Whether even Marian manifestations endow the Rue du Bac with similarly resonant significance might be questioned, but the account of the episode contributes to the overall picture. It is of a city perennially in turmoil, bathed in blood, inflamed by symbols and memories as much as by intellectual ideals or palpable injustices. Atrocity was all the more sinister because it assumed a sacrificial aspect. Beneath the dreams and nightmares of a century and a half Burton sees 'the seemingly irresistible spread of a secular worldview' (p. 265). Perhaps there is an alternative argument. Catholicism in France showed even greater powers of survival than monarchical principles that have manifested their attractions, albeit in quite a variety of forms, through a succession of republics. The consequence was a polarization in attitudes that has militated against gradual development; the norm, as Burton shows so vividly, has been bitter contestation rather than mutually tolerant consensus. Much of the interest of Burton's study, like a good deal of the force of his rhetoric, derives from his concentration on Paris as the cockpit of France, but perspective might come from comparisons with neighbouring states. Burton writes in an engaging style, generously sharing a rich store of information and the reflections of a particularly lively mind. The way some of the evidence is handled may, however, raise doubts. At the end of an account of the killing of the vicomte de Launay after the fall of the Bastille, Burton records how the pastry cook Desnot, who had been assaulted by him, was invited to cut off the head of the corpse. Unable to handle a sabre, he used a kitchen knife he happened to be carrying. As ifthe detail were not gruesome enough in itself and sufficientlyeloquent in its own way, Desnot's knife is described as 'phallic' (p. 33). Beguiling though anthropological interpretations are, the phallus is not an organ with a cutting edge. It is also noted that Louis XVI, for his part, was beheaded by an executioner who had inherited his position and was himself the leading representative of a particular caste. The circumstance is, for Burton, 'a parodic replica ofthe Bourbon dynasty' (p. 44). Point taken, but irony is diminished by the recollection that the transmission of offices down generations was a general characteristic of the ancien regime. Sympathetic on more than one occasion to the unfortunate women whose heads were shaved at the Liberation, Burton is not above inviting sniggers at Louis XVI's phimosis (p. 42). Identifying the Sacred Heart as 'strawberry-like' (p. 179) is not much help in understanding a major force in religious life. It would be easy to go on, for Burton aims hardly less to provoke than to inform in a richly allusive history that has the breath of life and controversy. The publishers MLR, 97.4, 2002 979 are mean with illustrations, the maps of Paris are poor, and the heavy grotesque type for the initial letter of the firstword in each chapter is disfiguring. University of East Anglia, Norwich Christopher Smith L'Expression du sentimentdans I'ceuvre de Benjamin Constant. By Victor Kocay. (Studies in French Literature, 48) Lewiston, Queenston, and Lampeter: Mellen. 2001. viii + 342pp. ?59.95; $99-95This work grew out of an earlier project...