Dunkirk - 1940: From Disaster to Deliverance (Battleground Europe: Channel Ports Series) Book

There's so much to hate about this "classic" that I almost feel a little queasy saying that, at the end of the day, I do think its a great work... of a sort.

Carlyle was a nineteenth century "liberal," which then as now means basically a conservative. He was thus horrified by the French Revolution's "excesses"- both the, I would say, excess of random carnage it eventually gave way to, and its attempts at legitimately egalitarian reform. To his credit, Carlyle makes absolutely no attempt at objectivity. Indeed, this is that rare work of "history" that seems to proclaim objectivity a farce. In that sense,the book, published in the mid-nineteenth century, was quite ahead of its time. The writer presents himself as a man out of time, positioned on the streets of Paris as they were before he was born. A lone man trying his best to understand momentous events as they happen, and taking time out to sermonize about them. His language is that of a person on the street, employing slang, epithets, low humor, and yet it is prose of the highest caliber. I've heard Carlyle's style described as "proto-Joycean", and at the very least this is a for-runner of stream-of-consciousness writing. Indeed, few books I've ever read struck me as such a personal encounter with their author.

That being said, the author is a brilliant boar. His sympathies lie only with royalty, even though he acknowledges that the monarchy had failed and the time of absolutist feudalism had come to an end. He never acknowledges the atrocities committed by the reactionaries, as if the mass murders committed by the revolutionary government happened in a void. (There were horrific excesses committed by the Jacobins, but they were only fighting fire with fire.) And he's blatantly racist- his half page devoted to the Haitian uprisings is so offensive its comical.

So, beyond its literary value, is there any reason to read this tome? I think so. It became, despite its eccentricity, the "official" history of the Revolution in the United States and western Europe. More than that, I think it the proto-type of all depictions of attempts at egalitarian social reorganizations since the French Revolution meant to assert the hegemony of the reaction. "Psychologize the sovereign!" "Atomize the oppressed!" "Pick an individual bad guy (in this case Robespierre) to root against!"

But I have to say again, Carlye was a talented asshole. His, utterly manipulative, depictions of the royal family's last moments are devastating to read in exactly the ways he wants them to be. And his description of the execution of Robespierre shocked me. After simplistically vilifying the Sea-Green for hundreds of pages he acknowledges, after his agonizing death, that Robespierre was merely an overly-determined man in the wrong place at the wrong time- which is to say, a place and time of momentous change. Carlye was truly a conservative with a tragic sense of life- hateful of change, but also acknowledging its inevitability.

I thought the last paragraph an astonishing little meditation on the relationship between writer and reader. I wish to respond to it personally.

Yes, Carlyle, it has been a long, not entirely pleasant journey we have taken together. I tried to listen to what you had to say, but I disagreed with most of it. I can't honestly say I like you, then again I may never forget you. Farewell.