Eric Vuillard is a writer and filmmaker turned historian born in Lyon in and who has obtained numerous awards in his “historical” work and acquired fame beyond the hexagon. In he wrote L'ordre du jour which was translated into Spanish the following year with the literal translation of The order of the day . In he had already written Juillet for the time of the French revolution which was translated into Spanish three years later. Vuillard has tried to construct a fresco of the French Revolution in this second book although he has only stayed with a set of facts events of the storming of the Bastille on July . I say this because there is a distance between narrating one of the most important events in modern history – along with the Declaration of Philadelphia of – that changed the world and limit ourselves to a recounting of events centered on the taking of that semi-forgotten powder keg that was the Bastille.
Or at least for the Western world it has been. It is evident that the Frenchman has read The Ten Days that Moved the World by John Reed and has tried to imitate it – or at least he has kept it in mind. Or at least that's what it seems but between Reed's UAE Phone Number masterpiece for the Russian Revolution of and this July there is even more distance than the previously mentioned stretch. We see nothing more than facts in Vuillard's narration but it does not appear at all how everything he narrates could decant over time into the construction of one of the immaterial wonders: the Rule of Law the result of the French Revolution but also of the American one the English one a century before and others of less significance. Voltaire Rousseau Montesquieu Mirabeau Robespierre Danton Marat Condorcet etc. nor the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen nor The Encyclopedia etc. do not appear. That is to say the ideas! that allowed the sacrifice of many citizens of all conditions citizens who gave their lives more or less conscious of what was happening to be seed for posterity do not appear.
For a book about the French Revolution we neither see the revolution nor its subsequent consequences. Bloody revolts have been innumerable throughout history but very few have changed the world and what happened in France or rather in Paris and Versailles in with its surrounding years gave way to a world which was barely recognizable half a century later. Vuillard to be French and narrate an event in his country has missed a golden opportunity but the attempt nevertheless is laudable and the reading of his book is recommended however limited it may be. Better said it is advisable if the reader is aware of its limitations: then he will be able to enjoy it.
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