I write too I guess… have this
Saint Just and Everything Between the Archangel’s Wings and Legs (A parody of the Thermidorian Church)
So give a young man wings and he’d soar so high he’d crash into the blade of the guillotine. Engulfed in flames of passionate despondence, watch as Antionus-cum-Icarus rips feather and quill from his flesh, for he is bound to fall - but what does he care? For his pen’s dipped in ink of bird fire and lust.
Now… where do I begin, for the Saint Just is as much mythos of the enlightenment, as servant to his sensitivities. I think with him, there are many places we can begin, there’s no right one, but we can’t be more wrong than wrong. To me, he seems almost sculpted of stone and water - this love child of the enlightenment fuckboy and Roman muse.
Perhaps I wanna take him as Maximilien’s Antinous. He is beautiful - almost like a little girl - and tragically young. Immortalised in libels and oil paint. Funny how he considered himself a student of the Romans - for I bet he’d never guess that someday, I’d look at him the way he looked at them. Yes… … Maximilien’s Antinous, but wouldn’t that make him Hadrian? Bizarre stuff to say about The Incourruptable. Perhaps The Incorruptible in bizarre in the sense that he is Incorruptible ?
So maybe Antinous and Hadrian isn’t quite the comparison. Perhaps Bonnie and Clyde is harsh and political sex deviant Romeo and Julliet is what the Thermidorian want us to believe. So, I really do think that they are simply ‘The Incourruptible and The Archangel’. Bird winged little man holding a scythe, and attack dog of the smaller man in pastels. Jaded yellow toothed lover of the pretty manchild, enabler and career councillor borne from the fire of hell. but we are all sons and daughters of Hades.
Okay, but let’s be so for real right now. What do we make of Archangel Antoine? Seated at the right hand of Father Robespierre? For the Father fills a wicker basket with wine of blood of traitorous enemies of the state. But wicker baskets are never full… …
High priest Danton, with his acolyte Desmoulins watch, as the Supreme Being takes a wine glass of traitor’s blood. Out of his trance, Desmoulins recoils - TRAITOR!! As High priest Danton sticks his fingers into the donation jar. Such is the “Church of Revolution’.
Sure, we could give them the grace of being called fallen angels, cause ‘angel’ is a pretty word. But let history remember them as The Courruptible and The Archdevil.
Cause Lucifer was once an angel. So maybe being 26 is being one of the most powerful men in France (land of absurdities, as much as any place on earth might be), and maybe it’s the existential dread of being mortal. Then again, since we’re talking in words of religion, the chapel that is the convention is the opera stage of politics, and it’s leading man is Robespierre, leading lady the androgynous and slightly ambiguous Saint Just.
There’s not an appropriate way to end this, so let me give you an observation. So you can’t put Marie Antoinette next to Saint Just (doesn’t do him much honour) but we can see a stark similarity between how propaganda handled them - and a contrast to how it handled Robespierre. in the sense that her femininity was weaponised against the Austrian bitch. Strangely, Saint just was painted in similar shades of libels. Robespierre is to so many a statue of political plaster and evil, Saint just is Adonis in political hell. Political slave to sex and desire… gosh, to talk about a man who never calmed down, I do need to calm down! Perhaps then and now, it shows us that it wasn’t being a woman that was wrong but rather simply being perceived as one. Cause there’s perceivable femininity in blonde curls and a soft doll face.
In short, Thermidorian Saint Just is the Thermidorian Robespierre’s toyol.
(This is a dramatic work, and a parody of the perception of figures in the French Revolution, and should not be read without prior context. note that this represents these figures as tropes and plot devices in propaganda more than who they actually were. This is an intentional artistic choice)
Gais, to clear up me comparing SJ to Marie, I only compare them in how propoganda treated them, and not what they did to deserve or not deserve it here’s some clarification:
also I in no way defend Marie, and in fact I deeply dislike her. She was ultimately a rich and privileged woman who only started caring when the problem started to affect her, and to say that she was ‘just a woman’ and to call her apolitical is very sexist, as she had a lot of political agency. she had a duty towards the French people to try to solve their problems even if she didn’t cause them, and she didn’t solve any of them - in fact she was a contributor. Also why would I pity a woman (yes not a girl), who wouldn’t have recognised me as a person with rights? she’s not a feminist icon, in fact she was a victim of the patriarchy but also one of its pillars. as to someone out there screaming at me that she was only consorting with foreign armies out of self preservation, you can say that cause it’s true. At the very end of the day, it’s true about anyone, but why do we defend someone who wouldn’t have defended us. so yes, if you’re the richest of the rich I won’t have a problem with you supporting her - that’s just class solidarity - but I will find it funny if an ordinary person supports her. Yes she was someone’s wife, someone’s mum, someone’s daughter and sister, and yes, a woman just like any other, but she was also something a lot of women aren’t - a monarch.
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