The Long Shadow of the Guillotine. Life Stories from Paris in the Nineteenth Century

The Long Shadow of the Guillotine. Life Stories from Paris in the Nineteenth Century

220 pages

Hardcover with illustrations

Genre: Humanities, History, Narrative Nonfiction, Nonfiction
László F. Földényi tells the story of the aftermath of the French Revolution as a montage full of images and asks who we are when we have lost our heads

Even before the French Revolution, there were occasional executions by guillotine, but it was not until 1791 that death on the scaffold was used across the board and for everyone. Until then, social status and the nature of the crime determined the choice of the execution method. Now the industrialisation of killing began. Because everyone becomes equal in front of the guillotine.

And while contemporaries are still puzzling over whether the consciousness of the decapitated can live on separate from the body in the face of all the severed heads, László F. Földényi creates his very own narrative of the long 19th century in his richly illustrated essay – based on our entry into headlessness. At the same time, the new technology of photography was introduced. Only its widespread dissemination made it possible to free the moment from the transience of life, to immortalise it as much as to kill it. This leads not only to a new understanding of time and space, but also to a change in perception itself. From then on, everything appears fragmented, as if the cut of the falling axe continues indefinitely: the bodies, the city, the poetry and the painting. A completely new image of man emerges, which portrays him as a bizarre, violent, headless being and which continues to have an effect right up to the present day.

German title: Der lange Schatten der Guillotine - Lebensbilder aus dem Paris des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts
ISBN: 978-3-7518-2040-0
Publisher: Matthes & Seitz Berlin
Publication date: 31.10.2024
Sold to: Hungary

Licence

Non-fiction

Sample translation

Hungarian original available

László F. Földényi, born in 1952 in Debrecen, is a Hungarian art theorist, literature specialist and essayist. He holds a chair for art theory at the Academy for Theater and Film in Budapest. Since 2009 he is a member of the German academy for language and poetry. His books Places of the Living Death (2017) and Praise of Melancholy (2019), published by Matthes & Seitz Berlin, have been translated into several languages.

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