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July 13, 2008
How the Marquis de Sade was finally forced into politics.
And the moral of the story is never lean on the weird. Or they will chop your head off. Take my word for it, Bubba. I am an expert on these things. I have been there. --HST, 1994
Bastille Day is tomorrow, July 14, the French day of independence. According to Hunter Thompson in "Better Than Sex" (a 1994 book about U.S. politics), and some other sources, the Marquis de Sade, Parisian artist and French nobleman, played a role in this opening drama of the French Revolution. As Doctor Thompson notes, the Marquis, a serious artist, was out-front different, wild and independent; he didn't care what people thought or said about him. On occasion The Marquis would run amok on booze and laudanum to blow off steam. The mainstream French aristocracy and clergy were never happy with him. They "not only hated his art, they hated him".
By 1788, the Paris police routinely harassed him, and jailed him a few times. The Bastille itself and then an insane asylum were his homes in the days leading up to July 14. In turn, he began to hate cops--and the government. Well, by the summer of 1789, Paris, in its oppressive July heat, was about to explode anyway and, acccording to Thompson:
The mood of the city was so ugly that even the Marquis de Sade became a hero of the people. On July 14, 1789, he led a mob of crazed rabble in overrunning a battalion of doomed military police defending the infamous Bastille Prison, and they swarmed in to "free all political prisoners"....
It was the beginning of the French Revolution, and de Sade himself was said to have stabbed five or six soldiers to death as his mob stormed the prison and seized the keys to the Arsenal. The mob found only eight "political prisoners" to free, and four of those were killed by nightfall in the savage melee over looting rights for the guns and ammunition.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (3)
Minor Wisdom
Ray Ward, of Minor Wisdom and the (new) legal writer
What About Paris? is the weekend edition of WAC? It lets us get away from subjects which occupy us during the week--like Law and Business. If you're going to have a "blog", there's no reason not to have fun with it. Besides, back in the day, many generations ago, lawyers were not just semi-literate technicians and mechanics. We were a little more. Educated, informed and curious, many lawyers could tell you the difference between Coltrane, Colbert and Voltaire. So we appreciate Ray Ward, a client-centric practitioner, lawyer's lawyer, writer, thinker, blues/jazz enthusiast and Renaissance man who lives in mystic New Orleans. Ray writes Minor Wisdom, our favorite blog. That's right, our favorite. We visit him frequently for inspiration.
And, oh yes, we thank Ray for this link--even if it is about the U.S. Supreme Court:
Supreme Court Rules Death Penalty Is 'Totally Badass'
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 12:00 AM | Comments (2)
"Reading is sexier in Paris"
See The Paris Blog which is running some of the series "Why Paris?" by Laura Elkin at her Maitresse:
I hereby call for a end to clichéd articles about literary Paris, all those which invoke the names of the deities (”Sartre” and “Beauvoir”) in an incantation to raise from the dead the spirit of a Paris that never existed.
Posted by JD Hull at 12:00 AM | Comments (0)