Thanksgiving Is Ruined |
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January 19, 2009
countdown clock: n ≤ 1 D. Froomkin tossed off a great line last week: Bush has been plenty willing to assert his view of history's verdict on his presidency, even while saying it's too early for others to do so. ---------------------------------------------------------- Victor Hugo once wrote about the verdict of history, in a different context, as follows: Don't worry; History has him in her clutches. The above is from Hugo's Napoléon le Petit. An 1852 translation into English of the pamphlet is here. The French original is here. Another translation of the above-quoted passage is here. TiR found the above bit last summer, in this volume, after a moment of chastizing ourselves for our vast ignorance of Hugo's vast amount of verse. We drafted a blog post but never bothered to post it. TiR instead moved onto chastizing itself over its ignorance of everything else. It wasn't the first time in the past few years that TiR stopped to wonder about "the little Napoléon." ---------------------------------------------------------- Michael W. Jennings' succinct summary (herein) of Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte's reign: His reign combined authoritarianism and economic liberalism; it ended with France's defeat in the Franco-Prussian War. Is Hugo's way of looking at the situation beyond criticism? TiR guesses that it depends on whom you ask. Let's ask this guy: Victor Hugo confines himself to bitter and witty invective against the responsible producer of the coup d’etat. The event itself appears in his work like a bolt from the blue. He sees in it only the violent act of a single individual. He does not notice that he makes this individual great instead of little by ascribing to him a personal power of initiative unparalleled in world history. . . . I, on the contrary, demonstrate how the class struggle in France created circumstances and relationships that made it possible for a grotesque mediocrity to play a hero’s part. Who really knows? ---------------------------------------------------------- After the newspapers reported Louis-Napoléon's derisive dismissal of Hugo's pamphlet, Hugo replied with "The Man Has Laughed." It read in part: While, at the stake, Punishment nails you through, The French original is here. Wow. Shrill! tick tick tick . . . |