Saturday, October 17, 2009
Monday, October 12, 2009
Does Benzonatate Cap Get You High
Antonio Castronuovo , The Merry Widow. History of the guillotine , Alternative Press / New Balance, Viterbo, 2009, 248 pp., 14 €.
"The warrior said nothing, and I saw an old man forward into the crowd, who came to the poles of blood, the old man took off his clothes, knelt and prayed. He put one foot firmly on the first rung of the ladder, and, while saliva from step to step, seemed to rise into the sky. I waved the white hair and tanned wrinkled neck, the chest revealed old breathed quietly disclosed under the tunic: cast a last look at the death on France and bound him in alto come un fascio di grano mietuto». Così François-René de Chateaubriand, testimone dell’onda rivoluzionaria e del fatidico Terrore, proietta nell’epopea indiana de I natchez le tappe cadenzate di un macabro rito. La pubblica esecuzione sulla forca di un vecchio religioso sotto i “fasti” del Re Sole si fa richiamo a ritroso di una pratica moderna: la decapitazione col suo efficientissimo strumento, la ghigliottina. Lo spazio di un paragrafo d’arte letteraria – dove a prendere la parola e a “far vedere” è un Indiano d’America – dischiude allora un più tragico scenario: in qualsiasi tempo, sotto diverse spoglie (monarchiche o popolari), la malvagità umana has designed its deadly stills.
In order to keep track of the important documentary study of Antonio Castronuovo, The Merry Widow, published by Alternative Press, enriches and dismay. The crackling cover image introduces us to the trip in the text: a caricature of Robespierre is preparing to rain down the blade of the "sweet mistress" (she always, the ax of the people) on the neck of a stunned royal Louis XVI. And the pages of books is confirmed, the head of Bourbon would roll: Place de la Concorde, Paris, January 21, 1793.
What is singular, however, is the genesis of the tool. Castronuovo this out several times and who has already set about to interpret the volume has not failed to refer to them: "The Merry Widow" was born democrats! In the fall of 1789, just months after the storming of the Bastille, Dr. Joseph-Ignace Guillotin proclaimed before the National Assembly a law can curb the arbitrariness of justice, equality between crime and punishment, irrespective of social class' accused. As a true lover of neighbor, also was lavish to give the country a tool that would put an end to the days of the offender with painful rapidity. The construction of the war machine would then load the reaper the victims of this infernal blazon never cease to follow it.
Boating in the eye of the indents diciannove capitoli che costruiscono il saggio – non senza aver gustato prima un’introduzione dall’eloquente titolo (“Tanto per sbirciare nell’orribile segreto”) – si sarebbe tentati di esclamare: “Ah, controversa cultura dei Lumi!”, o di scandagliare sbigottiti il vero senso della triade patriottica (“liberté, égalité, fraternité”). Dopo un collaudo a base di “pecore” e “cadaveri”, il pasto di fa ben più succulento per la “novella signora del Terrore”; banchetto d’apertura a suon di carne viva: «Si giunse al grande giorno, quando il collo del ladruncolo [un certo Nicolas-Jacques Pelletier] could act as a guinea pig for the new car, finally opened April 25, 1792 "(p. 107). And from there, fattening general. At the very least, varied and balanced binge: intellectuals and doctors to lawyers and notaries, from pickpockets to unscrupulous noblemen and even kings. Up to fulfill a pledge of happier story, the one who acts for which in turn affected: Robespierre gives his head to the "Merry Widow" July 28, 1794.
And the catalog should not end there; republican France would continue to adorn the squares of guillotines until 1977. Unthinkable, perhaps, the century of science and progress, but more conceivable that fanaticism and power. No need of glosses, the passage below (p. 5): "Among the many things I wrote, Laceno [homicidal prisoner of the Conciergerie - 1835] fell on a piece of paper a handful of verses in which greeted the car from there little would have embraced and executed:
Hail to thee, my beautiful girlfriend,
in whose arms I must now leave me!
to you my last thought, I was your
from the cradle!
Health, or guillotine, sublime atonement
subtract that man to man, and redeem us from crime, within the
anything, my hope and my faith, "
Pierino Gallo
"The warrior said nothing, and I saw an old man forward into the crowd, who came to the poles of blood, the old man took off his clothes, knelt and prayed. He put one foot firmly on the first rung of the ladder, and, while saliva from step to step, seemed to rise into the sky. I waved the white hair and tanned wrinkled neck, the chest revealed old breathed quietly disclosed under the tunic: cast a last look at the death on France and bound him in alto come un fascio di grano mietuto». Così François-René de Chateaubriand, testimone dell’onda rivoluzionaria e del fatidico Terrore, proietta nell’epopea indiana de I natchez le tappe cadenzate di un macabro rito. La pubblica esecuzione sulla forca di un vecchio religioso sotto i “fasti” del Re Sole si fa richiamo a ritroso di una pratica moderna: la decapitazione col suo efficientissimo strumento, la ghigliottina. Lo spazio di un paragrafo d’arte letteraria – dove a prendere la parola e a “far vedere” è un Indiano d’America – dischiude allora un più tragico scenario: in qualsiasi tempo, sotto diverse spoglie (monarchiche o popolari), la malvagità umana has designed its deadly stills.
In order to keep track of the important documentary study of Antonio Castronuovo, The Merry Widow, published by Alternative Press, enriches and dismay. The crackling cover image introduces us to the trip in the text: a caricature of Robespierre is preparing to rain down the blade of the "sweet mistress" (she always, the ax of the people) on the neck of a stunned royal Louis XVI. And the pages of books is confirmed, the head of Bourbon would roll: Place de la Concorde, Paris, January 21, 1793.
What is singular, however, is the genesis of the tool. Castronuovo this out several times and who has already set about to interpret the volume has not failed to refer to them: "The Merry Widow" was born democrats! In the fall of 1789, just months after the storming of the Bastille, Dr. Joseph-Ignace Guillotin proclaimed before the National Assembly a law can curb the arbitrariness of justice, equality between crime and punishment, irrespective of social class' accused. As a true lover of neighbor, also was lavish to give the country a tool that would put an end to the days of the offender with painful rapidity. The construction of the war machine would then load the reaper the victims of this infernal blazon never cease to follow it.
Boating in the eye of the indents diciannove capitoli che costruiscono il saggio – non senza aver gustato prima un’introduzione dall’eloquente titolo (“Tanto per sbirciare nell’orribile segreto”) – si sarebbe tentati di esclamare: “Ah, controversa cultura dei Lumi!”, o di scandagliare sbigottiti il vero senso della triade patriottica (“liberté, égalité, fraternité”). Dopo un collaudo a base di “pecore” e “cadaveri”, il pasto di fa ben più succulento per la “novella signora del Terrore”; banchetto d’apertura a suon di carne viva: «Si giunse al grande giorno, quando il collo del ladruncolo [un certo Nicolas-Jacques Pelletier] could act as a guinea pig for the new car, finally opened April 25, 1792 "(p. 107). And from there, fattening general. At the very least, varied and balanced binge: intellectuals and doctors to lawyers and notaries, from pickpockets to unscrupulous noblemen and even kings. Up to fulfill a pledge of happier story, the one who acts for which in turn affected: Robespierre gives his head to the "Merry Widow" July 28, 1794.
And the catalog should not end there; republican France would continue to adorn the squares of guillotines until 1977. Unthinkable, perhaps, the century of science and progress, but more conceivable that fanaticism and power. No need of glosses, the passage below (p. 5): "Among the many things I wrote, Laceno [homicidal prisoner of the Conciergerie - 1835] fell on a piece of paper a handful of verses in which greeted the car from there little would have embraced and executed:
Hail to thee, my beautiful girlfriend,
in whose arms I must now leave me!
to you my last thought, I was your
from the cradle!
Health, or guillotine, sublime atonement
subtract that man to man, and redeem us from crime, within the
anything, my hope and my faith, "
Pierino Gallo
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