Andre Malraux
ON SAINT-JUST
"I don't have much use for that wild man.
He wants France to be a Spartan republic,
but what France needs is to
be
a land
of plenty."
-Remark attributed to Danton
Saint-Just the historical figure
is
indistinguishable from
Saint-Just the legend: this has been clear ever since the literature
about him began to be written. After pamphlets and panegyrics gave
way to so-called "objective studies," which transformed him into a
mere politician, Saint-Just became unintelligible. This book
1
seeks,
through historical methods- and using the greatest wealth of docu–
mentation so far brought together- not to disprove the legend, but
to discover the key to it. Albert Ollivier does not equate the revo–
lutionary spirit simply with .an extreme exaltation; and we must not
read his biography as we would one of Robespierre. Even though he
lays siege to his subject from all sides, as he would have Robespierre,
he knows that Saint-Just has certain subterranean .aspects which defy
such encirclement.
"All the Robespierres, the Dantons, the Saint-Justs, now, it seems
to me, lie deflated on the strand," wrote Barres around 1920: and
yet the French revolution was only the first of five which the world
had in store for it.
Our French revolution
is
the legendary moment of our history;
greater than that of Louis XIV, and less blurred than that of Saint
Louis. It inspired the young men of France as the Nibelungenlied
inspired those of Germany, as Plutarch had stirred the youth of other
times.
It
marked a transformation of the world; it was a period of
unlimited possibilities, when sons of innkeepers became kings, and
sons of petty noblemen became emperors--when ancestry counted
1
Saint-Just et la Fo rce des Choses,
by Albert Ollivier, to which this essay.
which appeared originally in the
Nouvelle Nouvelle Revue Franfaise,
is the preface.
