The Emergence of Social Space: Rimbaud and the Paris Commune by Kristin Ross (review)

Book Reviews documentation, in footnotes and bibliography, accurate and virtually complete. Two appendices follow the five chapters: (1) literary references from Michelet’s geographical and anthropological overview, the Tableau de la France; (2) most interesting observations from the historian’s correspondence and private Journal on such contemporaries as Ben­ jamin Constant, Mme de Staël, Lamartine, George Sand, Hugo, and of course his favorite poet, Béranger. The study compares Michelet’s ideological views with received opinions of literary his­ tory: “ His judgments illustrate a highly personal manipulation of history and myth in order to parade a private obsession. They come to the reader, however, not as pedantic commen­ tary, but as a lively experience” (p. 1). Michelet, in his extraordinary prose, passionately applies to authors the strict standard of his secular religion of progress and collective action (by le peuple) by which the French nation came into being. The historian’s contradictions are as significant as his ideas: Michelet is often moved by literary quality—e.g., Ronsard’s poetry—when he disparages his subject’s actions. Literature, as history, must serve the heart as well as the cause of freedom. In the seven­ teenth century, Michelet favors Fénelon over Bossuet, while admiring the orator’s rhetoric, Molière over Corneille and Racine; but he exalts the eighteenth century which prepared the Revolution. Williams’s analysis of Michelet’s Rousseau allows him to clarify the historian’s basic mission to transform the consciousness of his readers, inspire emotional convictions that would impel them to transform society. Williams often points beyond his own modest perspective with tantalizing suggestions for further study, although he tends to understate the fecundity of Michelet’s tensions. Detailed studies of prominent works or authors would dramatically illustrate the vitality of the historian’s overwhelming estheticism (which he feared) and provide remarkable inter­ pretive insights. (His friendship with the young Hippolyte Taine, sensitively cited by Williams, would make a fine beginning.) This thoughtful monograph provides a clear entrance into Michelet’s powerful non-historical works that highlight the energy which drives the histories: profound ambivalences, a battle between moral convictions and emo­ tional prejudices, and concisely-stated intuitions of genius—all conveyed with the narcissis­ tic pleasure of an original and dynamic prose. E d w a r d K . K a p l a n Brandeis University Kristin Ross. T h e E m e r g e n c e o f S o c ia l S p a c e : R im b a u d a n d t h e P a r is C o m m u n e . Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988. Pp. 170. Kristin Ross’ most important contribution with her new book, The Emergence o f Social Space: Rimbaud and the Paris Commune, is her formulation and examination of a theory of space. Ross’ elegant use of the “ extra-literary,” i.e., cultural, historical, and political components, exemplifies the novel and significant angle which her study assumes: that of “ social space” and everyday life. “ Social space” is the mediation “ between the discursive and the event” (p. 8); the author explains that it is a synonym for everyday life, which in turn is that which “ remains after all specialized activities have been eliminated” (p. 9). Ross successfully maintains that the significance of everyday life rests in that it is the middle term, lying between subject-oriented phenomenology and object-based structuralism. Everyday life concerns both the interior subject and exterior, objective structures. Ross’ VOL. XXX, NO. 4 113 L ’E sprit C réateur knowledgeable reading of Rimbaud’s poetry is hence “ centrifugal,” informed by extraliterary elements. Ross opens her book with a thoughtful introduction wherein she sketches out the specific terms and a Marxist framework which she uses in her study. In the first chapter, Ross weaves back and forth adroitly betwen Rimbaud’s and the Commune’s transforma­ tion of space, linking them, e.g., via their common construction of barricades through a sort of bricolage; the Communards use everyday objects for radical ends while Rimbaud uses specific Parnassian “ tools” or romantic images in radically utilitarian ways. This com­ parison of structural...