22 September 2021

Flora Tristan, Dijon (21), La Côte-d'Or (21)

Flora Tristan (1803-1844), as this Allée named after her says, was a writer, a feminist and a, er, revolutionary. She has her eccentricities, though, and her Le Tour de France : Journal 1843-44 has some weird things in it. She visited Dijon from 18 to 24 April 1844, was in no way interested in seeing the sights, and was more interested in meeting intelligent workers. She'd expected to find a kindred spirit in the worker and poet Antoinette Quarré after Lamartine's good words of her, a great and beautiful 'girl of the people', full of physical and mental energy. But she found Quarré ugly, deformed, grotesque, and with red hair! She continued her search for like-minded people in Dijon with mixed reactions.

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