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NOTES ON ISSUE 12: ALLUSIONS
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…as if the dragon’s teeth had been
sown broadcast, and had yielded fruit equally on hill and plain, on
rock in gravel and alluvial mud, under the bright sky of the South and
under the clouds of the North, in fell and forest….
The reference to “dragon’s teeth” alludes to the legend of the founding
of Thebes: Cadmus, having killed a dragon, sewed the dragon’s teeth (at
Athena’s direction) in the ground; from these an army sprang up, but
fell to fighting one another until only five were left. It
was these five that became the ancestors of Thebes (Sanders 143).
Dickens’ invocation of the founding myth of Thebes is appropriate to
the revolutionary period, in which a new France was being founded
through conflict. Moreover, the fact that the Theban men founded Thebes
by fighting with one another
is appropriate to the domestic events of France during this period:
While the Republic fought to defend itself from its European neighbors,
it waged internal war under the Reign of Terror. As Carlyle puts it,
“Nor
with heroic daring against the Foreign foe, can black vengeance against
the Domestic be wanting” (666).
Though days and nights circled as regularly as when
time was young, and the evening and the morning were the first day,
other count of time there was none.
This passage alludes to the opening passages of the Bible: “God said,
Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it
was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called
the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and
the morning were the first day” (Genesis 1:3-5). Invoking a biblical
moment in which creation rises out of chaos, Dickens comments partly on
the chaos to which France seems to have returned with the execution of
its King (“Hold of [time] was lost in the raging fever of a nation”),
and partly, perhaps, on the Revolutionary calendar which replaced the
traditional Christian-based one with the rise of the Republic. Carlyle
describes the adoption of this calendar as follows:
As to the New Calendar, we may say
here rather than elsewhere that speculative men have long been struck
with the inequalities and incongruities of the Old Calendar; that a New
one has long been as good as determined on. Maréchal the
Atheist, almost ten years ago, proposed a New Calendar, free at least
from superstition; this the Paris Municipality would now adopt, in
defect of a better; at all events, let us have either this of
Maréchal’s or a better, – the New Era being come. Petitions,
more than once, have been sent to that effect; and indeed, for a year
past, all Public Bodies, Journalists, and Patriots in general, have
dated First Year of the Republic. It is a subject not without
difficulties. But the Convention has taken it up; and Romme … has been
meditating it; not Maréchal’s New Calendar, but a better New one
of Romme’s and our own. Romme, aided by a Monge, a Lagrange and others,
furnishes mathematics; Fabre d’Eglantine furnishes poetic nomenclature:
and so, on the 5th of October, 1793, after trouble enough, they ring
forth this New Republican Calendar of theirs, in a complete state; and
by Law, get it put in action…. Now as to the day of commencement, which
offers difficulties, is it not one of the luckiest coincidences that
the Republic herself commenced on the 21st of September; close on the
Autumnal Equinox? Autumnal Equinox, at midnight for the meridian of
Paris, in the year whilom Christian 1792, from that moment shall the
New Era reckon itself to begin. (659-60)
The months of the Revolutionary
Calendar, as Carlyle explains them, are as follows:
Vendémiaire, Brumaire,
Frimaire; or as one might say, in mixed English, Vintagearious,
Fogarious, Frostarious: these are our three Autumn months. Nivose,
Pluviose, Ventose, or say, Snowous, Rainous, Windous,
make our Winter season. Germinal, Floréal, Prairial, or Buddal, Floweral, Meadowal,
are our Spring season. Messidor, Thermidor, Fructidor, that
is to say (dor being Greek for
gift) Reapidor,
Heatidor, Fruitidor, are Republican Summer. These Twelve, in a
singular manner, divide the Republican year. Then as to minuter
subdivisions, let us venture at once on a bold stroke: adopt your
decimal subdivision; and instead of the world-old Week, or Se’ennight,
make it a Tennight, or Décade; – not without
results. There are three Decades, then, in each of the months; which is
very
regular; and the Décadi, or Tenth-day, shall always be
the “Day of Rest.” And the Christian Sabbath, in that case? Shall shift
for itself! (660)
Dickens and Carlyle agree in
disapproving of the secularization introduced by the Revolution.
The name of the strong man of Old Scripture had
descended to the chief functionary who worked it; but, so armed, he was
stronger than his namesake, and blinder, and tore away the gates of
God’s own Temple every day.
The Parisian executioner in this period was called Samson, and was
descended from a long line of executioners (Sanders 144-5). Carlyle
identifies Samson as the executioner working the guillotine that
beheaded the King and the victims of the Terror: “In plain words,
Terror of the Guillotine was never terrible till now. Systole,
diastole, swift and ever swifter goes the Axe of Samson…. Swift and
ever swifter goes Samson; up, finally, to three score and more a Batch”
(724).
Dickens, who later refers to Samson as
a “barber” and to the guillotine as a “National Razor which shaved
close,” may be playing with the possibilities of the pun on the
biblical Samson, who was done out of his strength when Delilah cut off
his hair (Judges 16:17). The reference to tearing away “the gates of
God’s own Temple every day” seems to be a pun on biblical elements
also, conflating architecture toppled by Samson with the “temple” of
the body destroyed by the executioner (the body-as-temple metaphor
appears in the bible, cf. Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians [3:16
and 6:19])
(Sanders 145). However, just which biblical incident Dickens refers to
when he describes the tearing away of the temple gates is unclear: In
Judges 16:3, Samson “took the doors of the gate of the city [of Gaza],
and the two posts, and went away with them, bar and all, and put them
on his shoulders, and carried them up to the top of a hill that is
before Hebron.” He is more famous, however, for his revenge on the
Philistines (Judges 16:21-31), who blinded him after Delilah cut his
hair: Called into a religious gathering of the Philistines, Samson – on
pretense of resting between two pillars – “took hold of the two middle
pillars upon which the house stood, and on which it was borne up…. And
he bowed himself with all his might; and the house fell upon the lords,
and upon all the people that were therein.” Of course, it may not be
necessary to choose between these incidents, as they are really two
variations on the same story – in the first, Samson removes the gates
of Gaza in revenge upon the citizens of Gaza, to whom his presence was
given away by a harlot (Judges 16:1-3); and in the second, Samson pulls
down two pillars and the hall they support in revenge against the
Philistines, to whom he was given away by another faithless woman,
Delilah.
…among the many unhappy souls in prison and the
shadow of death…
The “shadow of death” is the shadow of impending execution; yet the
phrase, introduced here in the context of a prayer, may also allude to
a portion of Psalm 23: “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the
shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and
thy staff they comfort me.”
What private solicitude could rear itself against the deluge of the
Year One of Liberty – the deluge rising from below, not falling from
above, and with the windows of Heaven shut, not opened!
This passage compares the “deluge” of the French Revolution and the new
French Republic to the deluge of the biblical Flood. Genesis 7:11
describes how “[I]n the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the
second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all
the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven
were opened.” The implication seems to be that the destructive element
of the Revolution, though unlike the biblical flood to the extent that
it lacks divine sanction, will have similar consequences: The French
“deluge” – perhaps punning on the “Reign” of Terror – will ultimately
sweep away, through utter annihilation, the sins of a people.
…“the short and the long of it is, that I am a
subject of His Most Gracious Majesty King George the Third;” Miss Pross
curtseyed at the name; “and as such, my maxim is, Confound their
politics, Frustrate their knavish tricks, On him our hopes we fix, God
save the King!”
Miss Pross’ maxim comes from a verse (the second stanza) of “God Save
the King”:
O
Lord our God arise.
Scatter [his] enemies,
And make them fall.
Confound their politics,
Frustrate their knavish tricks.
On thee our hopes we fix.
God save us all!
“God Save the King,” or “God Save the
Queen” (depending on the gender of the monarch ruling at the time), is
a patriotic English anthem. Full lyrics and sound clips of “God Save
the Queen” (or King) can be found in the Modern History Sourcebook,
online at www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/rulebritannia.html;
Americans may recognize the tune as that of “My Country ‘Tis of Thee.”
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