1791 · Paris
by FRENCH REVOLUTION — [MARECHAL, Sylvain (1750-1803)]
Paris: chez les Marchands de Nouveautés, 1791. 8vo (215 x 139 mm). [1] leaf, 46 pp. Self-wrappers, stab-stitched as issued, untrimmed (front and back pages dust-soiled, slight crease in first leaf, small dampstain in upper margins of first few leaves). A few marginal pencil marks.***
Only edition of a rare Revolutionary pamphlet advocating the abandonment of politics, redistribution of wealth, and return to a state of “Nature.”
The pamphlet appeared in January 1791 (Dommanget, p. 179). By 1791 the Assemblée constituante had abolished feudalism, suppressed the monastic orders, and forced the clergy to come under secular governance, but only those men owning significant property could vote, and no attempt had been made to disrupt the social structure that had created a yawning chasm between the haves and have-nots. Maréchal found this impardonable. In the voice of Mother Nature, he accuses the Assembly (whom he addresses as “Children”) of having accomplished nothing; there are still rich and poor, they have maintained “the monarchy and all its consequences, commerce and all the low passions that keep it alive, religion and all the errors that cause it to exist...” (p. 14). The social and political constructions built by men have simply shifted, “like an incurably sick man changing position in his bed” (p. 13). Dame Nature calls for a redistribution of property (“I don’t like kings, I like the rich still less” — p. 33) and abolition of complex political structures. All that is required, she says, is a return to the state of nature, in which patriarchs rule their own families and everyone lives happily in a state of perfect equality.... “In bringing mankind into existence, my goal was certainly not to create rich and poor, masters and servants, citizens and soldiers or priests, representatives and those represented. You should have studied better my plan and your own character” (p. 12). The new government’s solemn oaths, religious consecrations, speeches and ceremonies celebrating liberty are shallow and meaningless. Return to your roots, reject politics: man’s only true roles are to be a son, a spouse, and a father, and men should live off the land, in “an archipelago of small, self-governing families” (Perovic, p. 54) that are sufficiently distant from each other to avoid conflict. (Women are utterly subservient in this “egalitarian” fantasy.)
After 1788, when he was jailed after publishing his Almanach des Honnêtes Gens, the poet, political theorist and activist (and on and off librarian of the Bibliothèque Mazarine) Sylvain Maréchal published all his works anonymously. In them he hammered away at his pet theme of social equality, in a foretaste of 19th-century utopian socialism and anarchism or communism. An atheist and anti-monarchist (although he speaks here favorably of the King’s character), he was one of many “Grub Street” writers of the time, who were forced to scrabble a living from piecework, pamphlet and journal writing, but he differed from his peers “in his lack of political opportunism and unwavering commitment to a radically atheistic and egalitarian ideology. This makes him both one of the last atheists in the erudite tradition and one of the very first `professional’ revolutionaries, an exemplar of a new social type: the militant atheist” (Perovic, p. 54). Indeed this pamphlet is striking in its absolute rejection of politics and breathtakingly simplistic advocation of a return to a mythical golden age.
The construction of the pamphlet is eccentric, collating π1 (conjugate with “C1”) A-B8 “C1” (= π2) C6 (C1 signed C2, etc.).
OCLC locates copies at the BnF and British Library only. Martin & Walter I: 437. Cf. M. Dommanget, Sylvain Maréchal, the godless man (2023), pp. 179-186; Sanja Perovic, The Calendar in Revolutionary France (Cambridge, 2012), chapter 2, “Between the Volcano and the Sun: Sylvain Maréchal against his time” (53-86); E. Manucci, “The Anti-Patriot Patriarch: Utopianism in Sylvain Maréchal,” History of European Ideas 16 (1993), 4–6: 627–32. (Inventory #: 4411)
Only edition of a rare Revolutionary pamphlet advocating the abandonment of politics, redistribution of wealth, and return to a state of “Nature.”
The pamphlet appeared in January 1791 (Dommanget, p. 179). By 1791 the Assemblée constituante had abolished feudalism, suppressed the monastic orders, and forced the clergy to come under secular governance, but only those men owning significant property could vote, and no attempt had been made to disrupt the social structure that had created a yawning chasm between the haves and have-nots. Maréchal found this impardonable. In the voice of Mother Nature, he accuses the Assembly (whom he addresses as “Children”) of having accomplished nothing; there are still rich and poor, they have maintained “the monarchy and all its consequences, commerce and all the low passions that keep it alive, religion and all the errors that cause it to exist...” (p. 14). The social and political constructions built by men have simply shifted, “like an incurably sick man changing position in his bed” (p. 13). Dame Nature calls for a redistribution of property (“I don’t like kings, I like the rich still less” — p. 33) and abolition of complex political structures. All that is required, she says, is a return to the state of nature, in which patriarchs rule their own families and everyone lives happily in a state of perfect equality.... “In bringing mankind into existence, my goal was certainly not to create rich and poor, masters and servants, citizens and soldiers or priests, representatives and those represented. You should have studied better my plan and your own character” (p. 12). The new government’s solemn oaths, religious consecrations, speeches and ceremonies celebrating liberty are shallow and meaningless. Return to your roots, reject politics: man’s only true roles are to be a son, a spouse, and a father, and men should live off the land, in “an archipelago of small, self-governing families” (Perovic, p. 54) that are sufficiently distant from each other to avoid conflict. (Women are utterly subservient in this “egalitarian” fantasy.)
After 1788, when he was jailed after publishing his Almanach des Honnêtes Gens, the poet, political theorist and activist (and on and off librarian of the Bibliothèque Mazarine) Sylvain Maréchal published all his works anonymously. In them he hammered away at his pet theme of social equality, in a foretaste of 19th-century utopian socialism and anarchism or communism. An atheist and anti-monarchist (although he speaks here favorably of the King’s character), he was one of many “Grub Street” writers of the time, who were forced to scrabble a living from piecework, pamphlet and journal writing, but he differed from his peers “in his lack of political opportunism and unwavering commitment to a radically atheistic and egalitarian ideology. This makes him both one of the last atheists in the erudite tradition and one of the very first `professional’ revolutionaries, an exemplar of a new social type: the militant atheist” (Perovic, p. 54). Indeed this pamphlet is striking in its absolute rejection of politics and breathtakingly simplistic advocation of a return to a mythical golden age.
The construction of the pamphlet is eccentric, collating π1 (conjugate with “C1”) A-B8 “C1” (= π2) C6 (C1 signed C2, etc.).
OCLC locates copies at the BnF and British Library only. Martin & Walter I: 437. Cf. M. Dommanget, Sylvain Maréchal, the godless man (2023), pp. 179-186; Sanja Perovic, The Calendar in Revolutionary France (Cambridge, 2012), chapter 2, “Between the Volcano and the Sun: Sylvain Maréchal against his time” (53-86); E. Manucci, “The Anti-Patriot Patriarch: Utopianism in Sylvain Maréchal,” History of European Ideas 16 (1993), 4–6: 627–32. (Inventory #: 4411)
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