And once again about love

I mean, about love. After this post, I started reading the Love.doc file and still can’t stop. There I have collected various historical facts about the quirks and vicissitudes of love. Some I've already used in novels, others obviously won't be needed.

Here, for example, is a story that is definitely not useful for any novel. In literature, this would look like tear-squeezing kitsch. Only real life can afford dramaturgy of such intensity.

Many studies and literary texts have been written about the morals that reigned in the prisons of the French Revolution. The material is really juicy: horror and obscenity, blood and love, the sublime and the base - everything is mixed.

At the Paris Conciergerie, prisoners of both sexes were kept together - at least during the day, the cell doors were open.

Conciergerie: day like day

The prisoners had virtually no hope of salvation. With rare exceptions, we left here only in one direction.

Usually this way:

And this was not the worst ending. The ending could very well have been like this:

Mob breaks into prison to finish off 'enemies of the people'

But still, the revolution preferred to observe formalities. The court worked on the same conveyor belt principle as our “troikas” of 1937, but ordinary Conciergerie prisoners had to wait for their turn for the next world for months. Still, 2,780 death sentences during the year of the Jacobin terror is a lot of bureaucratic work.

The majority of the prison population, naturally, were “formers.” The nobles of the Old Regime were not distinguished by strict morals before, and in the face of imminent death they completely forgot about decency. Many people began to seek oblivion in carnal joys. Revolutionary newspapers and popular prints vividly described the unprecedented debauchery that reigned in the dungeons - this confirmed the thesis about the moral decay of the aristocracy.

But the point, of course, was not a matter of decomposition. It was life that finally frantically hurried to grab its own - until death powerfully knocked on the door of the dungeon.

However, in the midst of this physiological hysteria, deep, true love also arose from time to time. Because in a moment of danger, as you know, base souls sink even lower, and sublime souls rise even higher.

Prison love during the Terror had no future. What lay ahead was not the crown, but the guillotine. Therefore, the Conciergerie lovers dreamed not of living happily ever after, but of dying together. It was considered incredible luck, the highest happiness, if a loving couple was lucky enough to be included in the same sentence list. But in this lottery it was difficult to draw a winning ticket. Every day, in the prison yard, from where the convicts were taken on carts to the place of execution, heartbreaking partings took place.

And then one day someone resourceful (history has not preserved the name, even the gender is unknown) thought of shouting loudly at the moment of separation: “Long live the king!” For such a terrible crime they were executed without sentence or delay. The villain (or villainess - for some reason I think it was a woman) was grabbed and thrown into a cart. The lovers hugged and went to meet the guillotine as if to an altar, completely happy.

Subsequently, this know-how was used several times at the Conciergerie.

Well, tell me, can a modern novel withstand such a scene? “Ugh, what vulgarity!” - the reader will exclaim, ashamed of the tingling in his eyes. And he will be absolutely right.

I told you this Bollywood story not to make you sob, but to compare my feelings with yours. When I first read about the tragic love happy endings of the era of Terror, I had the feeling that this (I deliberately switch to clerical language so as not to get emotional) is not depressing, but positive information about human nature.

Subsequently, I tried to rationalize this impulse as follows (as written in the file): “In the confrontation between Love and Death, the first, it would seem, has no chance of winning. Even the marriage vow says: “Until death do us part” - they say, then, due to force majeure, all obligations are canceled.

That’s how it is, but whenever love turns out to be stronger than the fear of death, and lovers prefer a joint journey into the Unknown to separation, it turns out that Death, although he received double spoils, did not win, but lost. Great experts in this matter are the Japanese with their Shinju tradition. But about shinju some other time.

Disclaimer: This post is in no way intended to promote suicidal behavior. Any member of the Noble Assembly who commits suicide will be immediately banned by the moderator.

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