Quick Review

The Giant of the French Revolution: Danton, A Life by David Lawday

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Read what I will, and watch what I want, there are some historical personages will always be what and where I saw them first; Paul Muni, for example, being no less than three people, or rather all three: Émile Zola, Louis Pasteur and Benito Juárez, being Paul Muni.  Likewise, in print, the first Stuart kings of England, for me, will always be Macaulay's villainous fools.  With George-Jacques Danton, that bellicose giant of La révolution, there are already three of him in my head: the Danton of Georg Büchner's play, Carlyle's "Unhappy Danton," and finally, visually, Gérard Depardieu in Stanislawa Przybyszewska's 1983 film.  So, why another?

Both Büchner and Carlyle, for all their genius, mean to do something with Danton, as did the great Przybyszewska in his film, I suppose, though the great Depardieu can't help but make something more human than rhetorical of the orator.  (And Depardieu, now I think of it, besides being Danton, is also Vidocq,Rodin and composer Marin Marais, though curiously, the actor is not, for me, Dumas, Balzac or Cardinal Mazarin, all of whom he's also played. Couldn't say why.)  The temptation to make something mythic out of a volcano like Danton would seem to have been all but irresistible, specially, as with Carlyle particularly, when making of him the hot opposition to Maximilien de Robespierre's cold reason.  Reading Lawday's book then to see if I might not see a man rather than a force, a speech or a mountain.  must say, not bad.

As Dantons go, this one was pretty lively.  He's younger than I might remember.  He behaves accordingly; making friends, picking fights, getting on as best he might, even falling in love.  Yes, he is a bully, and ruthless, but as almost any brilliant and ambitious young man might be, given the tumultuous times.  The Revolution then is what defines and destroys Danton, as per usual, but most unusually, Lawday describes the Revolution Danton made as an aspect of the life, not the other way 'round.  In fact, what the author does best and most efficiently is rush with Danton from barricade to court, from podium to dock, without the more usual, and elaborate narrative of the History, with a capital "H," forever intruding and talking over Danton.  It's a refreshingly forthright and fast telling of what was, after all, a very brief, if very big, life.

As with any biography that turns on a fall, it is the second half of the book, as it was the last year of the life, that redeems nearly everything, good and bad that came before.  Danton isn't saved, of course, and the Revolution went stumbling bloodily on after him, but Danton provides the last glorious shout, the last truly free sound before the whole is swallowed up in the grim whispers of the committees and the snap of the blade.  Lawday keeps to his pledge to follow his subject to his end.  He is respectful, even affectionate, but unsentimental even as Danton steps into the tumbril; it is a young man, that goes to that untimely end, not an era or a representative of the people.

This isn't the kind of book that I should think will long outlive it's time, like Carlyle's, but what it does it does well and I am glad to have walked with this, very human giant again.



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