Professor François Pierre Guillaume Guizot Delivered His Initial Lecture As Professor of Modern History at the Sorbonne (Reprinted in His MEMOIRS)
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FRANÇOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT THE 3D CENSORSHIP OF THOREAU Not only was A YANKEE IN CANADA censored, not only was THE MAINE WOODS censored, but Thoreau’s JOURNAL was censored as well! We are all familiar with the censorship in 1853 of A YANKEE IN CANADA by Thoreau’s friend George William Curtis, whose editorial correction of “very flagrant heresies” and “defiant Pantheism” led to withdrawal of the manuscript from Putnam’s Monthly Magazine. We are all familiar with the censorship in 1858 of THE MAINE W OODS by bigoted, timid, mean, cowardly James Russell Lowell (definitively no friend of anyone as “low rent” as Thoreau), whose suppression of the concluding observation “It is as immortal as I am, and perchance will go to as high a heaven, there to tower above me still” on behalf of The Atlantic Monthly led to Thoreau’s demanding from him an apology. There has been, however, a 3d instance of censorship, one that took place in 1887 of which we seem until now to have been unaware. Unlike these previous two censorships to which Thoreau had been able to react –and to which Thoreau did react– this is a censorship that occurred after his death against which he was therefore defenseless. When, in the Year of Our Lord 1887, Thoreau’s friend H.G.O. Blake went to publish extracts from Thoreau’s journal in the WINTER volume, he suppressed the final remark in Henry’s journal section about our worshipful reprocessing of DWM George Washington: “But we are not sorry he is dead.” This shattering final remark tied a knot in the tale. It is almost as if Thoreau was uttering more truth than his friend Blake considered that HDT WHAT? INDEX M. GUIZOT FRANÇOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT the general American public could be able to bear! For what is it, to point out that in fact we are not sorry that General, then President, George Washington is dead? –It is to point out that our usage of these “founding father” figures has little to do with them as actual human beings, having instead to do with them in abstraction, as functioning cogs in a public process. While he was still alive this human being might begin to misbehave, and sadly embarrass us. Only when one of these actual human beings has been safely interred, do we dare thus to iconize him — reduce him to a functionality as a cultural artifact. Thus it comes about that –although of course we do not face this unsentimental fact– we’re not at all sorry he died. “NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project M. Guizot HDT WHAT? INDEX FRANÇOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT M. GUIZOT 1787 October 4, Thursday: François Pierre Guillaume Guizot was born at Nîmes, France in a bourgeois Protestant family. NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT M. Guizot “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX M. GUIZOT FRANÇOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT 1794 April 8, Tuesday: François Pierre Guillaume Guizot’s father was executed at Nîmes, France during the Reign of Terror. Madame Guizot took her 7-year-old son to Geneva, where he would be educated. Although the mother was a Calvinist, she was sympathetic with the theories of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. She was a strong Liberal, and she even adopted the notion inculcated in EMILE that every man ought to learn a manual trade or craft. She had her son taught to be a carpenter, and he did in fact construct a table with his own hands, one which still exists. In the work which he would entitle MÉMOIRES POUR SERVIR À L’HISTOIRE DE MON TEMPS Guizot would omit the details of this early life. LIFE IS LIVED FORWARD BUT UNDERSTOOD BACKWARD? — NO, THAT’S GIVING TOO MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN’S STORIES. LIFE ISN’T TO BE UNDERSTOOD EITHER FORWARD OR BACKWARD. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project M. Guizot HDT WHAT? INDEX FRANÇOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT M. GUIZOT 1805 Nicolò Paganini was appointed by Napoléon’s sister Princess Elisa Bacciocchi as the court solo violinist at Lucca. WALDEN: Near at hand, upon the topmost spray of a birch, sings PEOPLE OF the brown-thrasher –or red mavis, as some love to call him– all WALDEN the morning, glad of your society, that would find out another farmer’s field if yours were not here. While you are planting the seed, he cries, –“Drop it, drop it, –cover it up, cover it up, – pull it up, pull it up, pull it up.” But this was not corn, and so it was safe from such enemies as he. You may wonder what his rigmarole, his amateur Paganini performances on one string or on twenty, have to do with your planting, and yet prefer it to leached ashes or plaster. It was a cheap sort of top dressing in which I had entire faith. NICOLÒ PAGANINI THE BEANFIELD HDT WHAT? INDEX M. GUIZOT FRANÇOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT Between this year and 1814 a Kingdom of Italy would be created, embracing Lombardy, Venetia, South Tyrol, and Istria, with Milan as its capitol (Napoléon Bonaparte king, Eugene Beauharnais viceroy). Piedmont, Genoa, Parma, and Tuscany would be ceded to France. Baron Joseph-Marie de Gérando accompanied Napoleon into Italy. At Paris, publication of the baron’s ELOGE DE DUMARSAIS, — DISCOURS QUI A REMPORTE LE PRIX PROPOSE PAR LA SECONDE CLASSE DE L’INSTITUT NATIONAL. He was selected to became a member of what later would become the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres of the Institute of France, where there was an open position due to the death of the translator of RECHERCHES SUR LA NATURE ET LES CAUSES DE LA RICHESSE DES NATIONS D’ADAM SMITH, the marquis Germain Garnier. At the age of 18, François Pierre Guillaume Guizot arrived in Paris and entered the family of M. Stapfer, formerly Swiss minister in France, to serve as tutor for his children. He soon began to write for a journal edited by Suard, the Publiciste, and was introduced to the literary society of Paris. THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project M. Guizot HDT WHAT? INDEX FRANÇOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT M. GUIZOT 1809 Sylvestre François Lacroix was elected professor at the École Polytechnique, filling the chair in mathematics vacated due to ill health by Professor Joseph-Louis Lagrange. Coronation of Joseph Bonaparte in Madrid. In the war between France and Austria, Austria defeated Emperor Napoléon I. Arthur Wellesley, in command in Portugal, defeated the French at Oporto and Talavera and was created Duke of Wellington. His brother Marquis Wellesley was appointed Foreign Secretary. The Emperor of the French divorced his Empress Josephine. During this First French Empire, François Pierre Guillaume Guizot prepared a collection of French synonyms. THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT October: At the age of 22, François Pierre Guillaume Guizot reviewed François-René de Chateaubriand’s MARTYRS, winning that author’s approbation and thanks. He continued to contribute extensively to the periodical press. At Suard’s he had made the acquaintance of Mlle. Pauline de Meulan, a contributor to Suard’s journal. When her contributions were interrupted by illness, they were immediately resumed and continued by an unknown hand, and it would be discovered that it was M. Guizot who was filling in for her. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project M. Guizot HDT WHAT? INDEX M. GUIZOT FRANÇOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT 1811 Publication of François-Auguste-René, vicomte de Chateaubriand’s book about his 1806/1807 travels in Greece, Palestine, Egypt, and Barbary, ITINÉRAIRE DE PARIS À JÉRUSALEM. Although the author was elected to the Académie française, because he was planning to use his acceptance speech as an opportunity to criticize the French Revolution, he would not be able to occupy a seat in the institution until the Bourbon Restoration. François Pierre Guillaume Guizot published an essay on the fine arts. WHAT I’M WRITING IS TRUE BUT NEVER MIND YOU CAN ALWAYS LIE TO YOURSELF M. Guizot “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX FRANÇOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT M. GUIZOT 1812 Prussia agreed to allow French troops free passage in case of war with Russia. In June, Napoléon Bonaparte invaded Russia with a “Grand Armée of Twenty Nations” of 550,000, then returned in defeat in the winter with no more than 100,000 escaping Russia and only some 20,000 managing eventually to return to their homes in France.1 François Pierre Guillaume Guizot translated Edward Gibbon’s THE HISTORY OF THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE, with additional notes. Louis-Marcelin de Fontanes, grand-master of the university of France, selected him to take the chair of modern history at the Sorbonne. He got married with Mme. Pauline de Meulan. 1. Although it has been conventional to ascribe his defeat to an unexpectedly severe Russian winter, actually that winter was unexpectedly mild one. Some of the French fell of heat prostration and sunstroke during a persistent summer heat wave, some drowned during an attempt to ford a thawed river, and then many were carried away by a lice-borne infection. HDT WHAT? INDEX M. GUIZOT FRANÇOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT December 11, Friday: Professor François Pierre Guillaume Guizot delivered his initial lecture as Professor of Modern History at the Sorbonne (reprinted in his MEMOIRS). His patron Louis-Marcelin de Fontanes, grand- master of the university of France, had clued him in to all the conventions, and nevertheless the newly minted professor omitted in this lecture to make any of the usual obsequious remarks about the all-powerful Emperor Napoléon I of France.