Dumas and Villenave

.28. Dubreton, J. Lucas. The Fourth Musketeer: The Life of Alexander Dumas. Trans. Maida Castelhun Darnton. New York: Coward-McCann, Inc., 1928. Sometimes, harassed in his work, he took refuge with Schoebel, the Orientalist, in a little summer-house in the rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs, which he called his Parisian desert. There was a palm tree encircled by a varicolored tent over which the tree reared its meager head. "it's a complete setting; a palm tree from the Sahara, and African tent, and a French plume," said Dumas who made himself comfortable...

29. Dubreton, J. Lucas. The Fourth Musketeer: The Life of Alexander Dumas. Trans. Maida Castelhun Darnton. New York: Coward-McCann, Inc., 1928. '...Theodore Villenave, had invited him to take tea that day with his father, who lived at 82, rue de Vaugirard, a little mansion that had been turned into a museum. In the salon, by the side of a bronze urn which had contained the heart of Bayard, Alexander admired a portrait of Anne Boleyn...

99. Barfoot, C.C. and Theo D'haen. Tropes of Revolution: Writers' reactions to real and imagined revolutions, 1789-1989. Amsterdam and Atlanta, GA: Rodopi Press, 1991. p. 318 '...can an historical novel, as a fictional text, have any value as an historiographical text?... and on p. 323. '... since their almost universal adoption of th Waverly or Dumas type of novel is not adequate to deal with every historical subject: at least it seems to be totally unsuited for the French Revolution, which may be altogether too complicated an affair for historical fiction.'

100. Roberts, J. M. The Penguin History of the World. London, Penguin Books, 1980, 1995. p. 693. 'Traditionally it ('revolution') meant only a change in the composition of government and not necessarily a violent one... After 1789 this changed. Men came to see that year as the beginning of a new sort of revolution, a real rupture with the past characterized by violence, by litiless possibilities for fundamental change, social, political, and economic...

Mighty Morphin Historical Objects



	In Serge Heirbrant's contribution to Tropes of Revolution, he points out that historical fictions use the technique of Walter Scott's Waverly and some of Alexander Dumas's novels to convey aspects of the French Revolution. He adds that these attempts cannot represent the complication of an affair like the French Revolution, they are interesting literary works but not historiographical texts99. Interestingly, though Dumas was a pioneer of the historical novel and showed it as a verisimilitude, a seemingly real, almost flawless portrayal of events whether fictional or not, his behavior on one occasion seems very much like that of doing away with the merits of fiction for revolution. It was as if participation in an insurrection, he deemed, was a more powerful political action than writing a historical novel, or even painting a picture, or displaying a museum artifact. It is only now, after the original use of Marxism in politics, that novels are expected to be revolutionary. Revolution is associated with rebellion and demand, but before 1789 it meant, simply, the change in the composition of any government. Since 1789 revolution acquired its taste of violence but also newly characterized epochs with momentous social, economical, and political transformation100. Change was constant and its agency, ecumenical: the world is figuratively smaller. Revolutions leave shadows from which historians invent new revolutions not linked to insurgency. But when Dumas joined the insurgents in their taking of the Artillery Museum near Saint Thomas of Aquinas, his actions, the breaking into the museum to deck himself out in a helmet, a shield, a sword of Francis I, and an arquebuse of Charles IX , took primacy. What Dumas did next, in the immediate short-term gives a clue to the insurrection as revolution. One aspect concerning the appropriated artifacts, is brought out by Dumas 's biographer when he writes Dumas 'in action' trying on the artifacts: he mentions that since Dumas was the author of Henry III, he laid the pieces reverently on his bed before continuing in the insurrection. One possible interpretation is that this is how the historical novel or play (Henry III) is revolutionary, because Dumas's biographer establishes so-called credentials of Dumas as greater than that of the royalty, with Dumas's appropriation of the items. Dumas obviously had mixed feelings about what his novels meant in the insurrection but we cannot say that he held any concern for the novel more than the traditional revolution. After this appropriation, He went to the house of the sister of Amaury Duval, a few steps away, sighted the Louvre through a window and remarked , 'this would be an excellent place to shoot from...'. Thus a visit to another colleague's home(Theodore Villenave's) which had been turned partially into a museum in 1827 before the insurgency in which Dumas participated, shows that, invited to take tea, he did not 'trash' the museum. He admired paintings by Holbein and Lorrain next to an urn with the heart of Bayard; in this instance, whether he understood revolutions solely in art, here he thought that art and artifacts could revolutionize politics.	.28. Dubreton, J. Lucas. The Fourth Musketeer: The Life of Alexander Dumas. Trans. Maida Castelhun Darnton. New York: Coward-McCann, Inc., 1928. Sometimes, harassed in his work, he took refuge with Schoebel, the Orientalist, in a little summer-house in the rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs, which he called his Parisian desert. There was a palm tree encircled by a varicolored tent over which the tree reared its meager head. "it's a complete setting; a palm tree from the Sahara, and African tent, and a French plume," said Dumas who made himself comfortable... 29. Dubreton, J. Lucas. The Fourth Musketeer: The Life of Alexander Dumas. Trans. Maida Castelhun Darnton. New York: Coward-McCann, Inc., 1928. '...Theodore Villenave, had invited him to take tea that day with his father, who lived at 82, rue de Vaugirard, a little mansion that had been turned into a museum. In the salon, by the side of a bronze urn which had contained the heart of Bayard, Alexander admired a portrait of Anne Boleyn... 99. Barfoot, C.C. and Theo D'haen. Tropes of Revolution: Writers' reactions to real and imagined revolutions, 1789-1989. Amsterdam and Atlanta, GA: Rodopi Press, 1991. p. 318 '...can an historical novel, as a fictional text, have any value as an historiographical text?... and on p. 323. '... since their almost universal adoption of th Waverly or Dumas type of novel is not adequate to deal with every historical subject: at least it seems to be totally unsuited for the French Revolution, which may be altogether too complicated an affair for historical fiction.' 100. Roberts, J. M. The Penguin History of the World. London, Penguin Books, 1980, 1995. p. 693. 'Traditionally it ('revolution') meant only a change in the composition of government and not necessarily a violent one... After 1789 this changed. Men came to see that year as the beginning of a new sort of revolution, a real rupture with the past characterized by violence, by litiless possibilities for fundamental change, social, political, and economic...