Zavière Gauthier: La vierge rouge : Biographie de Louise Michel (1999); repr. and addition to L'Insoumise (1990)

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:
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Zavière Gauthier: La vierge rouge : Biographie de Louise Michel
Louise Michel in Levallois-Perret
Louise Michel in Marseille

Louise Michel in Marseille, Bouches-du-Rhône (13)

'ICI EN L'HÔTEL DE L'OASIS

EST DÉDÉDÉ LE 9 JANVIER 1905

LOUISE MICHEL

HEROÏNE DE LA COMMUNE

ET MILITANTE ANARCHISTE'

19 Rue Dogommier, where Louise Michel, relentless enemy of the capitalist status quo, died of double pneumonia.

My Jean Giono posts:
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Zavière Gauthier: La vierge rouge : Biographie de Louise Michel
Louise Michel in Levallois-Perret
Louise Michel in Marseille

Cimetière de Montmartre (continued): #10: Maria Deraismes

'MARIA DERAISMES

1828 – 1894

"MON BUT EST DE METTRE FIN AU

PRÉJUGÉ QUI EXCLUT LES FEMMES"'.

 "My aim is to put an end to the prejudice which excludes women."

An anti-Catholic feminist, Maria Deraismes actively supported such anarchists as Louise Michel, André Léo and Elisée Reclus. Her statue stands at the entrance to the Square des Épinettes in the 17e.

André Léo: Cimetière d'Auteuil, 16th arrondissement, Paris

'MME CHAMPSEIX

DITE LÉODILE BERA

DITE ANDRÉ LÉO

ROMANCIÈRE JOURNALISTE FÉMINISTE COMMUNARDE

1824 – 1900'

André Léo was born Victoire Léodile Béra, and unlike her friend the anarchist Louise Michel she was born into a bourgeois family, although she had a revolutionary grandfather. Her husband Grégoire Champseix (1817–63) was a journalist close to the socialist Pierre Leroux and is buried with her. She took her nom de plume from her twin sons (also buried here), and who she was left to bring up after her husband's death.

Léo lived by her pen and worked for the feminist cause, workers' rights, and affiliated herself with anarchist groups. She also lived in Switzerland and Italy – returning to France after the 1880 amnesty – and wrote a huge body of fiction and non-fiction.

Louise Michel in Levallois-Perret: Literary Île-de-France #13

Louise Michel (1830—1905) was born in Vroncourt-la-Côte in Haute-Marne, probably the product of the son of the governor of Vroncourt castle and a servant. She received a liberal education and read Voltaire and Rousseau. She studied in Chaumont (Haute-Marne) and qualified as a primary teacher in 1851.

Later, she wrote (mainly poems) under the pseudonym Enjolras, and would probably have preferred a profession as an author rather than a teacher if it had been possible.

She maintained a correspondence with Victor Hugo between 1850 and 1879, and there are several examples of this and her poetry in the Maison Victor Hugo in the Place des Vosges in Paris.

She is perhaps better known, though, as an anarchist, and for her part in the Commune de Paris. Between 1871 and 1873, she spent twenty months in the Auberive Abbey, which had been transformed into a prison. She was then deported to New Caledonia, for which she left on the Virginie with other communards, singing 'Le Temps des Cerises' as they left: 'Le temps des cerises' was written in 1866 with words by Jean-Baptiste Clément, a song that was to be strongly associated with the Commune de Paris. Yves Montand's interpretation of the song is here.

In New Caledonia, Michel created the paper Petites Affiches de la Nouvelle-Calédonie and published Légendes et chansons de gestes canaques. She moved to Nouméa, the capital, and began teaching.

She returned to France (arriving in Dieppe, where there is a plaque on quai Henri IV) and declared her continuing faith in the anarchist cause. In 1883 she led a demonstration against unemployment which led to looting and confrontation with the police. Instead of being imprisoned, she was sentenced to ten years high police surveillance, although she was released from this in 1886. However, the same year she was sentenced to four months imprisonment for giving a speech in favor of the miners of Decazeville.

She was arrested again in 1890 following a speech she gave in St-Étienne and following a meeting which led to violent demonstrations in Vienne. On being offered provisional release, she refused because her fellow male prisoners hadn't been given such an offer too. On smashing up everything in her cell, a doctor pronounced that she should be imprisoned as a 'mad woman', although the authorities — fearing a backlash — refused. By this time, Michel was sixty years old.

She took refuge in London, where for some years she led a libertarian school. She returned to France in 1895, where she was met at the Gare Saint-Lazare by a demonstration of sympathy.

Michel died of chronic bronchitis in Marseille, and thousands attended her funeral in Levallois-Perret.

Square Louise Michel, the huge space in front of the Sacré-Coeur, was originally named 'square Willett', but changed to its present name in 2004 because of Willett's anti-Semitic activities: he had collaborated in the anti-Semitic paper La Libre Parole illustré et been an anti-Semitic candidate in the 1889 legislative elections.

Louise's statue, depicting her in friendly teaching mode in a prominent position in Parc de la Planchette in Levallois-Perret. Michel also has a street and a métro station named after her here.

 'À la bonne Louise. E. Derré 1905'.

A cat snuggles into her dress.

85 rue Victor Hugo, linking the two names.

 'Louise MICHEL 1830—1905

a vécu dans cet immeuble en 1886.

Institutrice, féministe, écrivain,

Combattante de la Commune de Paris de 1871.

Victor HUGO lui dédia le poème Viro Major.

Inhumée au cimetière de Levallois.'

['... lived in this house in 1886.
School teacher of juniors, feminist, writer,
Fighter in the Paris Commune of 1871.
Victor HUGO dedicated the poem 'Viro Major' to her.
Buried in Levallois cemetery.']

And someone using the anarchist symbol mentions the missing word: 'et anarchiste'.

And in the town cemetery, a guy known for a certain tower in Paris is also buried here, but there's no métro station named after him as far as I know.

'LOUISE MICHEL

29 MAI 1830 — 9 JANVIER 1905

HÉROÏQUE COMBATTANTE DE LA COMMUNE DE PARIS'

'SALUT AU RÉVEIL DU PEUPLE
ET À CEUX QUI EN TOMBANT
ONT OUVERTS SI GRANDES
LES PORTES DE L'AVENIR.

LOUISE MICHEL'

My Louise Michel posts:
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Zavière Gauthier: La vierge rouge : Biographie de Louise Michel
Louise Michel in Levallois-Perret
Louise Michel in Marseille