Zavière Gauthier: La vierge rouge : Biographie de Louise Michel (1999); repr. and addition to L'Insoumise (1990)

Zavière Gauthier's La Vierge rouge is a partly fictionalised biography of Louise Michel: she introduces conversation, mixes her own words and thoughts with those of Michel, generally turns a biography into a novelised creation, and yet it works.

Born in 1830, Michel was the product of a servant (Marianne Michel)  and – most probably – Laurent Demahis, the son of Étienne-Charles Demahis, the owner of a ruinous castle near the very small village of Vroncourt-la-Côte, Haute-Marne. The castle no longer exists, although a memorial to Michel with interpretation boards stand near its place.

Michel received a good and liberal education and later left to teach in Paris. One of her pupils was Mathilde Mauté de Fleurville, who Paul Verlaine married. Michel wrote a brief verse predicting a good future for the marriage, although the world of course knows otherwise.

She is most known, of course, for her anarchistic views, her activities in the Paris Commune, and her friendship with Victor Hugo, with whom she probably had a brief sexual liaison. From a physical and psychological distance, she loved the Communard Théophile Ferré, who was killed in the fighting and buried in the cemetery in Levallois-Perret, where Michel was buried in 1905.

The most interesting part for me came when she was deported to New Caledonia (then the French version of the UK's Australia), to a penal colony where she not only learned the language of the native Kanaks, braved her way into gaining their respect, but sided with them against the prison authorities. They showered gifts on her when she felt she had to leave to see her ailing mother.

After the New Caledonian episode Michel's life – return to prison, followed by seemingly hectic lecture tours all over France – seemed to come as an anticlimax, but then perhaps it was for her to some extent. It is in the nature of the French to love many of their anarchists, and I find it fitting that a large area in front of the Sacré-Cœur has been named after her, and that a statue of her (with a representation of one of her beloved cats snuggling around her skirt) is in Lavallois-Perret.

My Louise Michel posts:
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Zavière Gauthier: La vierge rouge : Biographie de Louise Michel
Louise Michel in Levallois-Perret
Louise Michel in Marseille

Cimetière du Père-Lachaise (continued): #19: Félix Pyat

Félix Aimé Pyat (1810–89) was a journalist, playwright and active in the Commune de Paris. He is perhaps especially remembered for his rather farcical duel with Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in which two shots were fired but never reached a target. They shook hands afterwards. The two papers he founded in 1871, Le Combat and Le Vengeur, were both banned, although the latter made a reappearance during the Commune.

Paris 2015: Jean Baptiste Clément, Cimetière du Père-Lachaise #7

'J. B. CLÉMENT
1836 – 1903
AUTEUR DE
"LE TEMPS DES CERISES'

As suggested on his tomb – which is very difficult to find, but impossible if you consult the new guide to the cemetery: it's in fact tucked right away in the 75th division, nowhere near the suggested (and not even indicated) 9th: a rare case of the earlier map triumphing over the new. Jean Baptiste Clément, as his tomb highlights, is best remembered for his song 'Le Temps des cerises', which was written in 1868 and has strong links to the Paris Commune of 1871. This link is to a modern version this this still popular song: Geike Arnaert: Le Temps des cerises

Henri and Gérard Baüer: Cimetière de Charonne #2

Henri Baüer (1851–1915) was a writer, critic and journalist and the son of Alexandre Dumas fils. He was a communard officer who took part in the semaine sanglant at the end of May 1871 and as a result was exiled to New Caledonia for seven years.

 

On his return to Paris he wrote for the conservative Écho de Paris, becoming an influential drama critic. He strongly supported the naturalist theatre, was a Dreyfusard, and was the only critic to support Alfred Jarry in the Ubu Roi scandal. He left l'Écho de Paris in 1898.

Gérard Bauer (1888–1967) was Henri's son and Dumas fils's grandson. He too worked for l'Écho de Paris (for a much longer period than his father), and published five volumes of chronicles, a novel and a short comedy.

Jules Vallès in Maisons-Laffitte, Yvelines (38), France: Literary Île-de-France #19

Jules Vallès (1832—85), a pseudonym of Jules Louis Joseph Vallez, was born in Puy-en-Velay (Haute-Loire). He was of the extreme left and created the paper Le Cri du peuple, which published eighty-three issues between 22 February and 23 May 1871. He was elected to the Commune de Paris 26 March and condemned to death in 1972. He went into exile in London between 1873 and 1880.

His most well known works of fiction are perhaps the autobiographical novels concerning the life of the main character whom he called Jacques Vingtras: L'Enfant (1879), Le Bachelier (1881), and L'Insurgé (1886).

'Jules VALLÈS

Ércrivain — Journaliste

1832 — 1885

séjourna en 1832

dans cette maison'

'Jules VALLÈS

Writer — Journalist

1832 — 1885

stayed in this house

in 1832'