Sheer Animal Magentism

[dangermousie]

And here comes my latest in the series of posts of no interest to anyone except aliterati

Combining French Revolution and tackiness in staggering fashion, I present to you revolutionary figures with magnetic hair. Yes indeed. Have you always wondered what Robespierre would look like bald? or Danton with a handlebar mustache? Now you can find out, courtesy of Ebay.

Robespierre

Danton

Mirabeau

Saint-Just

Marat

Camille Desmoulins

Lucile Desmoulins

In case you are interested in what they really looked like,

Robespierre:



Danton:



Saint-Just:



Camille:



Lucille:



And because I am on the French revolution kick, here is a portrait of Andre Chenier. Andre Chenier was a poet, executed during the Reign of Terror (here is an Encyclopedia Britannica article on him) I do love his widely quoted statement: "What is virtue? Reason put into practice. Talent? Reason expressed with brilliance. Soul? Reason delicately put forth. And genius is sublime reason."

Here are his poems in French. I don't read French well at all, so here are translations into Russian Charlotte Corday, Young Captive (it's the third poem on the list). Interestingly, both Pushkin and Tsvetayeva, very major Russian poets were very taken with Chenier, I think probably as an idea of the poet-revolutionary. They wrote poems about him, Pushkin's poem and Tsvetayava's poem are on line. They are, of course, in Russian. I am sure there are English translations of those as well as of Chenier's own poems, but I couldn't find those on-line. There has also been an opera about the guy.




Just for crumpeteer Lavoisier

Lavoisier and Wife:




Brissot:



Fabre d'Eglatine:




Charlotte Corday, killer of Marat:



Lafayette:



Madame Roland:



Terese Tallien, mistress/wife of Tallien and a friend of Josephine's. According to a very fun made-for-TV French flick, Tallien overthrew Robespierre to save his OTP from the guillotine. I am sure her being in jail was part of his issues, but this not being Bollywood, I doubt the movie was exactly on point :) And in a cynical note, they divorced eventually.