"ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND MEN ARE THERE, THEIR HEARTS BEATING IN UNISON"
-- Maxime Vuillaume, My Red Notebooks, Memories of the Commune, 1910 (in French),
evoking the proclamation of La Commune. Other sources show the same euphoria.
The humble take control of their lives...
Proclamation of the Commune, March 26, 1871 by Daniel Vierge, Musée Carnavalet / not exhibited at any of my visits
...then are repressed with a savagery that announces 20th-century carnage.
.
In brief- A most unlikely revolution
- Upheaval
- Carnage
- Ruins and revenge
- Mystification
- An omen and a turning point
- Fraternity that worked
* *
To learn more...
- Beware of the web, where texts are often inaccurate. Exceptions: the blog My Paris Commune and these links toward memoirs, graphic novels, media (all in French).
Basic publications in English:
- Karl Marx's The Civil War in France and his daughter's translation of History of the Commune of 1871 by the fighter and refugee Pierre-Olivier Lissagary.
- The War against Paris (1981) and The Paris Commune 1871 (1991) by Robert Tombs. A Cambridge professor's conservative point of view.
- A three-page story from the right: Alphonse Daudet's The Battle of Père Lachaise in which Communards surrender without fighting after an orgy in the tombs: English translation online.
• A novel: Liberty's Fire by Lydia Syson (2015). Written for teens and useful for adults, particularly the last part on the repression: For reviews, please click.
Ms. Syson is the great-great granddaughter of N.F. Dryhurst, who taught in the anarchist school Louise Michel established in London in 1890, after leaving France to escape the police.
If you read French,
please click on this informal translation:
I had given my copy for the local library's exhibit to commemorate La Commune's 150th anniversary. To my astonishment, an employee came up to me and said, "Here are a few pages I felt like writing..."
Jean-Pierre Sutka gives:
- A list and description of the characters.
- A chapter by chapter résumé.
- A complete translation of the third part of the novel, the part that is most important.
- A movie: The New Babylon, a Soviet silent film (of 1929). The photography is magnificent and the music is the first score of 20-year-old Shostakovich:
"Wonderful example of how while Hollywood was producing comedies and costume extravaganzas, Soviet directors were creating an entirely different cinema, until it all went so horribly wrong."
-- Web site comment
# # #
Most current histories of La Commune
follow a "de-mythication" that downplays
its progressivism and the violence of its repression.
Two works shown on the preceding page
contest that view.
For more in French, please click.
Other works are mentioned when relevant.
