1.1.1-Jesuit-space-pirate

Quatre-vingt treize 1.1.1: Le bois de la Saudraie
Trying to catch up with the Quatrevingt-treize readalong because I’m inevitably going to fall behind again next week, so I probably shouldn’t already be behind when I leave…

In which, while ostensibly commenting on a novel about the French Revolution, I ramble about Soviet cinema.

Well, all the really interesting things about this chapter have already been said, including some I hadn’t picked up on, myself (how everyone is referred to by their job/position rather than their name, everyone being metaphorically at sea…).

I’m also one of those people who think in associations, everything reminds me of something else, and for me, the biggest surprise of this chapter was how I kept relating everything to the Russian Civil War – or perhaps I should say to pop cultural depictions of the Russian Civil War, but more on that later.

This was a surprise because the French Revolution has never actually reminded me of the Russian one, much, before (except when people compare Robespierre to Stalin and I facepalm a lot). But I don’t think I’d ever heard the sides in the Vendée referred to by their colours, in any case when people started talking about the Whites and the Blues, my brain kept insisting that one of those colours was wrong. And then that association just kept going. Radoub wasn’t helping, with his “No superstitions!” (“Away with all your superstitions!” – British version of the Internationale) and addressing the other soldiers as “camarades” (which wouldn’t become a political term until significantly later in actual history – I’ve talked about the history of revolutionary forms of address before, in case anyone is interested in that who hasn’t read it already).

But more to the point, they’re fighting a guerilla war in a country whose inhabitants don’t actually think of themselves as French, speak a different language, and are thought of as culturally and politically backwards (I’ve heard rumours that the Bretons will be described as savages at some future point…).

There is an entire genre of Soviet films which are sort of like Westerns, but set in the East during the Civil War and with Asian peoples instead of Indians. This, needless to say, is just as problematic as the depiction of Indians in the Western genre, from today’s point of view.

But it isn’t really equivalent to the depiction of Indians in the Western genre. At least, I haven’t seen a lot of Westerns where the Indians are depicted as people who need to be educated (not just ‘civilised’, and not just in the sense of ‘taught to read and write’, but of political education) in order to become liberated American citizens.

That’s what some of the soldiers’ interactions with Michelle (“No superstitions!”, the whole “what is a patrie?” segment…) reminded me of: Fyodor Ivanovich Sukhov (from White Sun of the Desert, which you should watch, by the way – 10 out of 10 cosmonauts agree*) putting up a sign that reads “Dormitory for Liberated Women of the East” and trying to explain to rebel leader Abdullah’s abandoned wives (whom he hasn’t so much adopted as been stuck with by a superior, but nevertheless takes the responsibility of protecting them very seriously) that they are free, he is not their new husband, polygamy is bad anyway, etc., but not making much headway because they don’t even understand his frame of reference, and neither does he understand theirs.

It has the same quality of unlikely innocence as the soldiers in Quatrevingt-treize, too: the closest he ever comes to taking advantage of them is dreaming an absurdly idyllic scene in which he and his actual wife and all the harem women are sitting around in a meadow, and all of them are doing various productive or educational things like spinning and reading (just to take the absurdity over the top, Sukhov himself is making a sickle. With a hammer.)

Radoub and his men made a similar impression on me: innocently, earnestly idealistic and well-meaning but clueless, while also being battle-hardened soldiers. (Sukhov is a bigger dork, though. And simultaneously much more like a spaghetti western hero. How that even works, I’m not sure, but it does.) Except I expect it will be played a lot more straight and serious here.

I’m trying to remember whether he called the women ‘comrades’, but I’d be surprised if he didn’t, because he’s an idealistic dork. Anyway, that brings me back to Radoub addressing Michelle as ‘citoyenne’, which as fizzygingr pointed out, while it is welcoming her into their community/family, is also forcing a side and an identity on her that she didn’t choose. It’s the French who have decided that France is her patrie, and that she needs to be liberated from the seigneur and the curé and the king.

And here I am, arrived at a point someone else has already made, so there really is little point to this post except to recommend an old Russian movie to you all.


 * This film is ritually watched by cosmonauts before setting off into space. Or so I’ve heard. I mean, I wouldn’t know from experience.

Commentary
Pilferingapples Wow, what an interesting comparison! I’m really loving all the cross-media associations that are coming up in this readalong; these ARE ideas that come up again and again in revolutions, after all. Please remember you can always come back into the discussion any time if you do have to be away a while!