Tea at Trianon: Communist Chic

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Saturday, April 26, 2014

Communist Chic

What? Believe it or not, there is such a thing. I know, it's crazy. From Messy Nessy Chic:

There is a phenomenon that exists called ‘Eastalgia’ (or ostalgie), referring to a wistful longing for the Cold War era, Berlin Wall-separated, Stasi-policed German Democratic Republic of the 1970s and 80s. Seriously. The phenomenon has even spawned a bit of an industry catering to those with strangely fond memories of the short-lived communist state and its long queues for food, intimidating secret police, cheap tin can cars and television with only three government-controlled channels. In Berlin, there is a German Democratic Republic museum where visitors can immerse themselves in the everyday communist culture of ‘the good old days’, several shops also sell nostalgic household objects and consumer products of the GDR, and then of course, taking it one step further, is the Ostel Hostel…(Read more.)

Hans Georg Lundahl said...: Heard some Ossies complain about wages in the "Old East" still being lower than in the West.; April 26, 2014 at 4:35:00 AM EDT
The North Coast said...: This only shows you how pernicious nostalgia is. How easily do people idealize a past they could not possibly remember because they weren't even alive then- and how quickly memory fades in the messy present, which always seems more complicated than the world in the rear-view mirror!

When I was growing up, among people born in the Gibson Girl era and who were then pushing the age of 60, my grandmother and aunts would indulge in misty-eyed yearning for "the good old days" when they woke up in a bedroom in rural Kentucky that was 30F and cracked the ice on the wash bowl, and my grandfather, born an urbanite, would reminisce about his mother, the mother of 10 who had to eradicate the rats in the basement of their huge house by literally beating the animals to death, at the hazard of being bit.

Ah, the good old days!! They were awful!; April 27, 2014 at 8:43:00 AM EDT