Volume 54, Number 20 · December 20, 2007
At the Heart of the Terror
By Colin Jones
Fatal Purity: Robespierre and the French Revolution
by Ruth Scurr
Metropolitan, 408 pp. $30.00
A black cloud has always hovered over the name of the French Revolution-ary politician Maximilien Robespierre (1758–1794). The city of Paris has no grand memorial to him. The rues Saint-Just and Robert-Lindet and the boulevard Carnot commemorate other of his colleagues from the Committee of Public Safety, which ruled France during the Reign of Terror (1793– 1794)—but no Robespierre street-name exists in the capital. Since the time of the Popular Front in 1936 there has been a Métro stop—though Métro Robespierre is located beyond the boulevard périphérique in the workers' suburb of Montreuil. It is as if Paris—a city replete with sites of memory—suffers from Robespierre amnesia. Even in his native Arras, moreover, as Ruth Scurr notes in her new account of Robespierre's life, memorabilia are notable by their absence, there is little to be seen in the Maison Robespierre, and the visitor is given the sense that 'Robespierre is someone to be ashamed of.'
Review, 4664 words
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