Stefan Zweig on the Life of Marie Antoinette: How She Perceived the French Revolution
Here is another passage from Stefan Zweig’s book MARIE ANTOINETTE. A brief comment from me follows.
“From the first moment to the last, Marie Antoinette regarded the Revolution as nothing more than a filthy sea of mud, to which the sluices had been opened by the basest passions of humanity. She had not the remotest understanding, either of its historical justification or of its constructive will, being concerned only to maintain with the utmost resolution her own divine right as ruler.
“Let us not deny that this lack of understanding was Marie Antoinette’s supreme defect. Since she was no more than an average woman, narrow-minded where political issues were concerned, having neither the will nor the training that would have made her competent to see beneath the surface of the abstract world or to grasp conceptual relationships, nothing but the immediately human aspect of things close at hand could appeal to her. Seen at close quarters and contemplated sa the expression of our fallible humanity, every political movement looks confused and muddled. Invariably, an ieal becomes caricatured as soon as its mundane realization is attempted. How could Marier Antoinette be expected to do anything but judge the Revolution by what she thought of the personalities who were its leaders? And, as always happens in days of convulsive change, the loudest and most conspicuous were by no means the sincerest and the best. How could the Queen be otherwise than suspicious when the members of the aristocracy who were the first to espouse the cause of liberty were men of dubious reputation, heavily burdened with debt, and the most corrupt among their order– such men as Mirabeau and Talleyrand? How could Marie Antoinette believe the cause of the Revolution to be great, to be honorable, to be moral, when she saw that Philip, Duke of Orleans, who was avaricious, covetous, apt for unsavory intrigue, posed as an enthusiast on behalf of the new doctrine of fraternity? What could she thing of the revolutionary movement when the National Assembly chose as its favorite Mirabeau, a man both corrupt and obscene, spawn of the nobility, one whose manifold transgressions had earned him numerous terms of imprisonment, and who had subsequently made his living as a spy? Could a religion be divine which set up its altars to such as he? Was it reasonable to ask her to believe that fishwise and prostitutes who raged through the streets carrying human heads on pike-points were really the vanguard of a new humanity?
“Because she could see nothing but outbursts of uncontrolled violence, Marie Antoinette could not believe in the slogan of liberty; because she saw only individual human beings, she had no inkling of the glorious ideal which, invisible and impalpable, animated this savage and world-shaking movement. Hidden from her eyes were the great humanist and humanitarian achievements of a new development from which we derive the most magnificent principles of our mutual relationships. Freedom of religion, opinion, and the press; freedom of occupation and the right of public meeting; the revolution which engraved equality of classes, races, and creeds, upon the tables of the law which have become the modern heritage; the revolution which swept away the shameful vestiges of the Middle Ages, the rack, the crovee, and slavery– never could she discern these spiritual aims behind the crude uproad and tumult of the streets, and never did she try to understand what was afoot. All that she could catch a glimpse of amid the limitless turmoil was chaos. Veiled from her sight were the heralds of a new order which was to arise out of these horrible convulsions. From the first day till the last, therefore, she hated both leaders and led with the fervor of a defiant heart. The upshot was inevitable. Since Marie Antioinette was unjust to the Revolution, the Revolution was unjust to Marie Antoinette.”
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Comment from ABS:
I was struck by this passage both because it was so intriguing, this notion of the enduring glorious underlying reality covered over by the excrescence of the immediate human actors, and because I felt unable either to embrace or to reject Zweig’s overall argument.
Zweig speaks of Marie Antoinette’s “lack of understanding” being her “supreme defect.” Which fits with the portrait of Marie Antoinette, from her marriage to the French dauphin at the age of fifteen up until the Revolution upended her comfortable existence: Zweig emphasizes her thoughtlessness, her lack of discipline, her superficiality, her lack of inquiry into the world around her except as it bore upon her amusement. Surely, in that context, it is no suprise that Marie Antoinette would have no great insight into the great historical meanings of the political upheavals around her.
But…I wonder: How readily can ANYONE, witnessing the immediacy of such events as the French Revolution, see through the thuggishness, the pettiness, the brutality, the manipulations, the betrayals, the hypocrisies, of the immediate human drama to see what long-term fruits may arise out of some such revolutionary social and political movement? Would Zweig, with all his sensitivities and well-developed, sophisticated awareness, had he been at Marie Antoinette’s side throughout those events, have discerned those things to which, he says, Marie Antoinette was blind due to some “supreme defect” that made her “[in]competent to see beneath the surface…”?
But I also wonder something still more basic: To what extent is it more ACCURATE to see beneath that surface of “fallible humanity” to that “great humanistic and humanitarian achievement”? Which is the more real?
Zweig evidently sees the French Revolution as having bequeathed to his European world “a new development from which we derive the most magnificent principles of our mutual interests.” Perhaps that’s so. At the same time, that Revolution led to Napolean’s dictatorship and war-mongering, and some of those great principles had already been given expression in the American Constitution.
But whatever one thinks of the French Revolution, how would Zweig speak of someone in Marie Antoinette’s place going through the Russian Revolution. That one led to Stalin’s regime of terror and mass murder. But many peple thought that it would represent a great human achievement embodying great principles. Would a Marie Antoinette in Russia in 1917 have suffered from some “supreme defect” if she had responded to the immediate brutalities and failed to appreciate that Revolution as Marie Antoinette, in eighteenth century France, “unjustly” failed to appreciate that revolution?
I respect Zweig, and I do not dismiss his view in this passage. But I do wonder.
January 30th, 2010 at 6:00 pm
These kinds of things are interesting to me only as it causes us to reflect on the over-all human experience.
Liberty for human beings in organized society is largely an ideal and even the ideal is not the same in the various mentalities.
For earlier Americans of Christian values it meant ‘Liberty in law’, ie, that adhering to the principles of righteous living we should be free from the tyranny of human government.
For the modern ‘moral majority’ it seems to mean we have a right to personal freedom because there is a written constitution and a government founded by God fearing men ( regardless that they may be somewhat hedonistic themselves )
and to the liberal-progressives it seems to mean that regardless of the laws of godly morality, regardless even of the original intent of the original drafters of The American Constitution . . none of that matters; “because we have a constitutional right to do whatever we want to regardless and anyone who disagrees is divisive”.
Ho ! ho !
And Zweig’s notion of the eq
January 30th, 2010 at 6:09 pm
And Zweig’s notion re the equality of classes . . what could that mean ?
If there were total equality what would be the distinction of ‘classes”?
Whatever.
One thing I notice . . however perfectly or imperfectly the ideal ever held sway in America . . if that ideal is really that there shall be government of the people, by the people and for the people . .
On a scale of one to ten what is the state of the ideal in the U S today ?
Why do you think that is ?
February 1st, 2010 at 2:38 pm
David R said,
It still means that to me, David R. It’s just that you and I seem to have certain differences as to what righteous living means.
You seem to have a major misunderstanding there, David R. Sex-positive morality is way deeper and way more important than you may realize. In that respect you have misrepresented, whether intentionally or otherwise.
Larry
February 1st, 2010 at 2:52 pm
I think “class” these days generally relates to borrowing power in monetary currency. I am sure you see that individuals with different levels of borrowing power can be treated equally in various other ways, yet that one simple numerical distinction would remain, to be referred to as “class.” That seems clear enough to me.
Certainly I am aware of a different definition of “class” that seems to refer to a personal intelligence, elegance, and grace that doesn’t necessarily relate to money. But I don’t think that’s what people are referring most of the time when the term is used, and it doesn’t seem likely that Stefan Zweig was referring to that. Granted I haven’t read the book.
Larry