Susan Dunn
THE DARK SIDE OF JULY 14TH
When we write the date
July
J.J/h
or when we see it in a news–
paper, who among us does not immediately think of the taking of the Bastille
and the celebration of the founding of the Frcnch Republic? July 14th is one
of only a handful of indelible landmarks in our historical consciousness. And
yet the choice of dates was arbitrary. The French could have chosen, for
example, June 20th, the date of the Tennis Court Oath when the Third Es–
tate solemnly agreed not
to
disband until a Constitution f()I" France had been
written. But could a playful "tennis court" compare to a forbidding prison as a
vivid image of nationalism?
It
might have evoked a thoughtful message of
political courage and democratic institutions, but a Bastille it was not. For a
holiday that commemorates thc French Revolution, what better symbol could
there be than that of the Parisian crowd's violent liberation ofa dungeon-like
prison that stood for the Middle Ages as well as an oppressive
ancien
regillu' ?
The one date that the French could not have chosen was January 2
J
st.
And yet the French Republic was really born, not on July 14th but on J an–
uary 2
J,
1793. The decapitation of King Louis XVI was the crowning of the
people as sovereign. "Lugubre enfantement du vingt-et-un janvier"
("Lugubrious childbirth ofJanuary 21st"), Victor Hugo wrote. Ifone event
marks the demise of the
(lucien rlgi1Ile,
its values and myths, and symbolizes
the transference of authority and power from monarchy to people, that
event was surely the public execution of the king. But it should not strike us
as surprising that the lurid guillotining of an unfortunate king was not consid–
erated an occasion for jubilation. July 14th was undoubtedly a better and
safer choice. The year 1789 permits the French
to
think of their Revolution
in terms of
liberti, tigaliti, fmterniti
and the Declaration of the Rights of
Man; it encourages them to think of their heroism, not of their collective guilt.
The year 1789 was the benign axis of the Revolution; 1793 - the year of
the Terror - was its antithesis. The year 1789 calls for national commemo–
ration, 1793 for national forgetting. In 1952, Camus said that the French
glorification of the execution of a "weak and good king" was a "repugnant
scandaL" In fact, for Camus the regicide was the most signiticant and tragic
