Zavière Gauthier's La Vierge rouge is a partly fictionalised biography of Louise Michel: she introduces conversation, mixes her own words and thoughts with those of Michel, generally turns a biography into a novelised creation, and yet it works.
Born in 1830, Michel was the product of a servant (Marianne Michel) and – most probably – Laurent Demahis, the son of Étienne-Charles Demahis, the owner of a ruinous castle near the very small village of Vroncourt-la-Côte, Haute-Marne. The castle no longer exists, although a memorial to Michel with interpretation boards stand near its place.
Michel received a good and liberal education and later left to teach in Paris. One of her pupils was Mathilde Mauté de Fleurville, who Paul Verlaine married. Michel wrote a brief verse predicting a good future for the marriage, although the world of course knows otherwise.
She is most known, of course, for her anarchistic views, her activities in the Paris Commune, and her friendship with Victor Hugo, with whom she probably had a brief sexual liaison. From a physical and psychological distance, she loved the Communard Théophile Ferré, who was killed in the fighting and buried in the cemetery in Levallois-Perret, where Michel was buried in 1905.
The most interesting part for me came when she was deported to New Caledonia (then the French version of the UK's Australia), to a penal colony where she not only learned the language of the native Kanaks, braved her way into gaining their respect, but sided with them against the prison authorities. They showered gifts on her when she felt she had to leave to see her ailing mother.
After the New Caledonian episode Michel's life – return to prison, followed by seemingly hectic lecture tours all over France – seemed to come as an anticlimax, but then perhaps it was for her to some extent. It is in the nature of the French to love many of their anarchists, and I find it fitting that a large area in front of the Sacré-Cœur has been named after her, and that a statue of her (with a representation of one of her beloved cats snuggling around her skirt) is in Lavallois-Perret.
My Louise Michel posts:
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Zavière Gauthier: La vierge rouge : Biographie de Louise Michel
Louise Michel in Levallois-Perret
Louise Michel in Marseille
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