Huet 2007 - Faces of Disaster

The Face of Disaster
Author(s): Marie-Hlne Huet

Source: Yale French Studies, No. 111, Myth and Modernity (2007), pp. 7-31
Published by: Yale University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20479368
Accessed: 17-01-2016 23:49 UTC
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/
info/about/policies/terms.jsp
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content
in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship.
For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Yale University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Yale French Studies.
http://www.jstor.org
This content downloaded from 209.175.73.10 on Sun, 17 Jan 2016 23:49:22 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
MARIE-HELENE
HUET
The Face ofDisaster
It is said thatwhen Danton mounted the scaffold in the Spring of 1793,

he told his executioner: "Executioner, show my head to the people, it's
well worth a look!" Danton's formidable face was widely recognized
for its rugged features and blunt determination (hehad once declared,
"Nature gave me the stern face of Liberty"). This explained his last, de
fiant words, as did the executioner's well-known practice of grasping
the decapitated heads of the guillotine's most famous victims by the
hair and holding them up before the crowd gathered towitness the ex
ecutions. The executioner's victorious gesture did not always produce
its desired effect: in the case of Louis XVI, the people had been kept too
faraway from the scaffold to see anything. After Charlotte Corday's be
heading, when the executioner's assistant held up her head and slapped
her face, the crowd responded with indignation. But the gesture did sig
nal a special kind of victory over certain enemies: whether conspira
tors or aristocrats, they were all traitors to the Revolution. Itwas a ges
ture reserved for themost famous names, an ultimate distinction that
restored to the victims a privilege they had once enjoyed. The guillo
tine was known as the great "equalizer," but the executioner's gesture
reestablished the hierarchy that death had stolen from its victims. Dan
ton, the plebeian who had so dominated the politics of the young Re
public, commanded on the scaffold a distinction that had first been ac
corded to aKing.
As scholars and historians have often noted, engravings of the Rev
olution's executioner displaying his victims' decapitated heads to the
people recall themythic image of Perseus holding the head ofMedusa.
But in images from the Terror, the focus has shifted from the trium
phant hero to the defeated monster. The executioner was often left out
of the engravings, which showed a quasi-disembodied hand-the vic
YFS 111,Myth andModernity,
ed. Edelstein and Lerner, ? 2007 by Yale University.

7
[
MAPIwR
F.RAt. vtRI?V14crioN,
POI
'
9UR
RS
ONG R.1t
I
IRS
1,
){. }
> 'i'
kttt~
a/e
n
p'm
uaat
roi a t
i&ll
ttill
..
I. ? w,ttq
Yf/ab'
/'I A?'
le l't
yd
Se lz
Vo
ei
et
4'e
#.Li
I)P'I IV c
t
?
IZtIA'e'00A1 /N'& A'
ce
l, ?i
t.'t,
a
4ate
1AI04.rte $0ttt'.cP
llk})I
o'tdw
tv? Natm jju et ic/k bl? aw hi'tw
e tt'kb
Air te,'ll9t
~ 'A.crmitt&
ru't
45) n
COt
4,
/i
/
,/rte/
etC/c 1:
'1t
.cet/a wtt&
. 'Ca 4 t,ettt-t P,t
fthtt
- pt .t
x,
'los
flo\
t
at
a
a...
ya
tetCt.
i
tYt4ttttt
.t'ht
&~
'taa'va
4itt 'e
,et, tote
Figure 1. Villeneuve, Qu'un sang impur abreuve nos sillons. Engraving.

Paris, Cabinet des Estampes.
N
itOBE.S.PIE
j.. f A xt .zt
c Cutilia
>
surnoan
M...e
Carnava.l.et. Photo: F.....

...... . . ............
....... .
....... ...
.~~~~~~~~~~~~~4
10 Termdor an2e
.........
.....
..
a
Ter.o
..
nodo-ne,
Wrdlbl.iqueo
.. ......
.............
era orubqe anoy
usw
denrvg.Pi,
r. ).....,-., ; *.**/~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
:.
**
s*N
..............
=
<
*~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~.........
^tJ..'vi.*ietf
t:.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Figure
2. Maximilien
10 Thermidor,
Muse'e
Carnavalet.
surnomme'le
Robespierre,
an 2e de
Photo:
la Re'publique.
Frank
Anonymous
Catilina
wood
moderne,
engraving.
execute'
Paris,
Ward.
10
Yale French Studies
the
tor, after all, was not a single individual but the people-clutching
heads of the various monsters that had attacked or betrayed theNation
(from Louis XVI to Robespierre). [Figures 1,2] For the Revolutionaries,
it seems, Medusa never died, could not be slain. Perseus's triumph had
to be endlessly repeated to ensure victory.
For JeanClair, the reappearance of themyth ofMedusa during the
Revolution is symptomatic: "Medusa reappears every time the normal
order of things is upset and chaos threatens.... Her iconography dur
ing the upheaval of theRevolution is particularly significant, andmore
significant still is her connection, from that point on, with the unique
machine thatwould become known as ... the guillotine. Medusa had
undoubtedly been associated, from her beginnings, with the theme of
decapitation. A beheaded monster herself, she presides over the bloody
sacrifice of humans' decapitation, which they rightly call 'capital pun
ishment."'
Clair describes the form of the guillotine as "the perfect arrange
ment of a rectangle, a trapezoid, and a circle....
In all cosmogonies and
traditions, the circle is the perfect, primordial form within which the
various hierarchies of creation were written and inflected. But the guil
lotine reverses the traditional pattern, inscribing the circle within a
square that itself is cut off by a trapezoid inscribed within a second
rectangle. The guillotine is not only the instrument of a detheologisa
tion of the universe: it is the instrument of a negative cosmology."'
[Figure 3]
By a strange coincidence-one
thatwould profoundly influence the
career of Theodore Gericault-the
early nineteenth century's most fa
mous shipwreck was that of theMedusa, a frigate on her way to Sene
gal carrying 395 passengers, weapons, money, and a bust of King Louis
XVIII. In 1818, when Gericault began his monumental painting The
Raft of theMedusa, he prepared for the work by collecting body parts
from nearby hospitals andmaking several studies of severed heads. One
of these now hangs in the Stockholm national museum as Tetes de sup
plicies: decapitated heads of executed criminals, lying on a sheet-a
post-Revolutionary link between the guillotine and the frigateMedusa
[Figure 4].2 But Gericault's Etude shows no sign of the executioner's
1. Jean Clair, M?duse,

? une anthologie
Contribution
des arts du visuel
(Paris: Gal
are my own unless
in this article
otherwise.
1989), 127. Ail translations
specified
See Nina Athanassoglou-Kallmeyer,
"G?ricault's
Severed Heads
and Limbs: The
limard,
2.
Politics
and Esthetics
of the Scaffold,"
Art
Bulletin
(December
1992):
599-615.
..
..%,.
. ?-"?!'
: .?.. .'..-..:-.
..'., ..'-:::?::?::?':
. . :..-'..''.':.:'
.."::
:-I-I-?- -,,:......z.?.-"-',
,.'.S?,?:'.N".
-- ?.--.
?..1
.. ..
.
,.
.'
.". .. ..-.1
11III . . ..?:?.:..
. ....:.?
-,:'. ":,:..
.' .
;? -??
' '.','- ,.. .. .. ..-. . :?-:?,;,?::f:;.?..:,.,:?.?!.?:.?:.?.??.:,..??,?,,?-i.'.?:?-i?i???.?..?
.-?.""
,..:.............:.l.':.-.'-?:-:!:?:
I.I
?..- .I......, .:.?::.'.
,''?'
?I'"::?::'
... :I. .
..---:
.....
%?-I"I.,
'
. .,.I.-:
,:.
'?
..?1.
.. '?...'.'1.
,...
:::.::..:.-- ..-, ,
,- .....--."?"?
".. .....::.:.
; I':.;
-.......
?i-'
:..........
..:.,f
.-.-?
.
,??::??;?::?::?--??---'.-.
",'.%:?
,?. .".
..,!:
'...'..'
...'?---.-:-.:-:
.:: ,.;::,::;,.
:..
:::,:f:.
--I"I...1.1..--.,....:..4:
?:;::?'.:.,:..:
,
,:'
I-,?:,?:':%-'.......
'--"?-'?.?.
:,
:.::
....
...':'?
-:.':..-.?
?
.... ..?.
.. . .....?.
.........:...
..'. :..:-.--. ".::...........
?-?.'....
..
. . .
... ..?..
:
:.......,. . . . .
I ?... , .,- ..
1,
.... . ..1..':
..?'
?,
,';,?,I'
. ??;
..:.".
.! . ..::..... ?. :..?. .......
.?-'?-..........
::::?%;.'%?.
?':
... --'?;.
??
-,
?'-:"
.....
. .... ...". :.::::.
'
......
:.-?
.:..,
.: ::?..I.:,..:
I"....
..:?.
: -??-7
.,., ::
.
."
.1..::
.I.
......
:-.?.,
.::-.::.??::'.,
.:
.,... . . . . . . . . .. . . ..
' ":
.....
":.,..
;. :..:':
':?
,
: '.: ., .,:'.
.
.."..
..'
.'
:...
? .-??-:
...:.
.. .. .. )'::??:?::?:
: .?!?i!:?';
.:
.:. .
. ...'
...:'
.?::
. .:''..?.;':
'
-?
:-?'
.:?'
.-:?.:'."??
.
I-:
,. .::
':
I.. ....'..
1.
,.:".
?.:?
.1 . .'.-.....'
..
..
I..1,..'1.?-.......-?-:'
....
'.. :!
.1
.. : --.-'?"'?'."'?
...:..I?:
.
1.- .........??
........
'.?::
....-............ I........
....::??':-.'
?:?
:::..--!??.-"-'?
...-"?
::'.
:, :.;?
...- .I"'I 1;..... : ,"'.;
."
.
::....' .-.-'.
....'
.. ..
...?..'-.:'
......%
. . :..
::
'.:
.. .
.:
.:.-I..
...
-......., ..
-:.
"
,?
... !
.?..
. :....
...--..:...'
.....
..
..:II.
.
.?
-.1.:.
.?:
.
. -.:.:..:
?..'..
... .:..':......
.: .?"?:..
.-.'....
:',':,':
..
:
. :.::.;:
-%'.
::
.
..
. I-?.-.'
:
:. . "1,...
.- .
.
- ,.....
..
...
.
. . .... I. ..
. .... .....,:.....
:
LA-::?
.......
...
-:-.?.?.?f-:.'........
.:'.....
K,
.....::.
".,..-?.
.1
...
..:-. :.
.. -.--?. .....:...:.........
-::...'
.
.....
....::,:.'
..'
...
?:
.
-,
-??:
"..':....
:?.:..:
..
. .?-,
.
.
'I
-.:--.
....
.
.
'?.?....
.1 .. '..
.?I
..
.
. .. ....1
. . ....
. :.
....
.
.:.....I ,....
..?.
.....':.
..
:..-. :.
..
,.. .....
. I.:
. ..
:
.,.
.
.
. '\...
.:
:..
.I.
. ?::
. .. .....
. .
-
.
.........
..
Yale French Studies
12
i l . .iN ..9
@ .......
- .
. ..... .;. ..
|jt''''.''.
's.......
'..,
. . ..... i :d:
.......*
w~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~.
Figure 4. Ge'ricault.
hand. The
severed
tional victory
both
Thtes des supplicigs.
are anonymous,
amythical
enemy.
heads
against
vanished,
Stockholm,
leaving
decapitation
as
r.,....
t:
Nationalmuseum.
no longer representing
Perseus and the Gorgon
have
without
tri
fragmentation
a na
umph, death without agency. Still, thememory lingers; though hidden,

even if disguised.
It is as if an invisible Gorgon
had
remains,
in the end, claiming
the sword of Perseus.
for herself
triumphed
to weave multiple
threads be
Many
symbolic
episodes
conspired
tween the Revolution
and its legacy, threads that were as deadly and as
the myth
as Medusa's
that struck the

gaze. The story of the disaster
men
to tell it, and of Gericault's
of the
who
survived
ship Medusa,
is one
in the Louvre Museum)
of it (now slowly disintegrating
painting
terrifying
such episode.3
3.
For a discussion
of G?ricault's
use of the "bitume
see Germain
of the canvas,
the degradation
Bazin,
et catalogue
raisonn?
documents
(Paris: Wildenstein
for
that is responsible
?tude
G?ricault,
critique,
VI, 43-45.
Institute),
de Jud?e"
Th?odore
MARIE-HELENE
HUET
13
THE NARRATIVE
The ill-fated voyage of theMedusa is well-known, and has been re
counted with striking regularity by historians, critics, and novelists. I
will briefly review the facts. In June 1816, four ships left France bound
forSenegal, on amission to reinstate authority over territorial outposts
first established by the French, briefly occupied by British troops, then
returned to their first colonizers as part of the 1815 treaty that, among
other things, restored the monarchy in France. The ship's passengers
strongly reflected post-Revolutionary society, with its conflicting po
litical loyalties and ever-widening social divisions. Among the passen
gers were eight cartographers, described as "explorers," who had been
sent out tomap the Cape Verde peninsula. There were also some 160
soldiers on board,many ofwhom had dubious pasts. The soldiers chose
their own officers, and formed a group solidly apart from the sailors,
who deeply mistrusted them. First on board, and "maitre apresDieu"
("master after God"), was the ship's captain, Hugues Duroy de Chau
mareys, who had served honorably in the King's Navy before the Rev
olution, distinguishing himself in battle at sea off America in 1780.
Chaumareys had joined theArmy of the Princes in 1790 to fight against
the revolution in France. The Restoration gave him back his career, as
well as the command of theMedusa.
At 3:15 on the afternoon of July 2, theMedusa ran aground in shal
lowwaters near theBank ofArguin, off the coast ofAfrica. Chaumareys
had opted for a route dangerously close to the shore, parting company
with the expedition's other ships, the Loire, the Echo, and the Argus.
The Medusa carried only six lifeboats, which were promptly filled by
most of the ship's officers, the captain, the territorial governor and all
their families. They set off toward the coast (where they would even
tually be rescued), leaving another 148men, one woman, and a 12-year
old child to fend for themselves on a hastily-built raft. The larger
lifeboats were supposed to tow the raft, but the ropeswere cut, and the
raft set adrift with little food orwater-and none of the navigational
tools needed to steer toward land. [Figure 5]
During the next 13 days storms, mutiny, thirst, and hunger deci
mated the raft'spassengers, who sat inwater up to theirwaists. Twenty
of them died the first night, drowning or being crushed between the
raft's boards, to which they had been tied. Fever, fighting, and riots
erupted into amurderous rage during the following nights: what Nor
bert Elias calls a breakdown of civilization, a systematic undoing of so
14
Yale French
Figure.5..he.Lifebots.and
Privatecollecton.
ted
Studies
th Raf
Levn the.
edus,.Lthogaph
Phoo: Fran Ward...
. .... ... ... ..

restraint.4
cial
When the Medusa's
companion
ship Argusspot-~~~~~~~~~~~~~.......
finally
raft, only 15 survivors~~~~~.............
were
left on.. board...
0
An.officer.of.theAr
the
kill a large number of their comrades..

manflesh for
others
.
had been swept into the~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
sea,
had
died
ofhunger,
mad.
or
had
gone
ThoseIsavedhadeaten
hu-~~~~~~~~~~
several days, andwhen I found them, the ropes that served~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
asstays
were
covered
meat
with
pieces
of
the
they had hungtoup
..........
dry."5~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Of the 15 delirious survivors, fivewould die a few days later in a Saint-........
Ongue ofThe riebaft'ssurvivorsRaf surgeongnaeMedua

HenithSgavinyhwot
4.
lization
Sigmund
is built
the non-satisfaction
Civilization
and
Freud
up upon
notes
that
"it is impossible
of instinct,
a renunciation
to overlook
how much
the extent
to which
it presupposes
of powerful
civi
precisely
or other means?)
instincts/'
(by suppression,
repression
trans. James Strachey
its Discontents,
1961
(New York: W. W. Norton,
49.
in Philippe Masson,
L'affaire
accounts
based
1989), 84. Other
et le proc?s
Le naufrage
(Paris:
are Jean-Yves
research
Blot, La
Bor
(Paris: Arthaud,
1982) and Georges
5. Quoted
de laM?duse,
Tallandier,
M?duse,
Chronique
Le naufrage
donove,
on archival
d'un naufrage
de la M?duse
ordinaire
(Paris: Laffont,
1973).
),
MARIE-HELENE
HUET
15
an account of theMedusa's fateful trip during his return voyage to

France. He showed it to the captain of the Echo, who asked for a copy,
which he then turned over to theMinistry of Naval Affairs. Savigny's
account was soon leaked to the press, and on September 8, 1816, the
Journal des debats published the first official report that theMedusa
had been lost alongwith 135 people. Five days later, the newspaper pub
lished Savigny's horrifying tale of his 13 days on the raft.
Publication of the two articles set off a political storm. Members of
the opposition, alongwith the liberal press, were quick to point out that
theMedusa's captain was an aristocrat who had spent the Revolution
ary years inEngland, had not sailed for20 years, and had only been given
command of theMedusa (overmore experienced and better-qualified
officers) because of his status as emigre. Moreover, Chaumareys, vio
lating the first rule of a ship's commander, had abandoned his ship be
fore all her passengers had left.Within a year, in 1817, survivor Savigny
joinedwith Alexandre Correard, one of the cartographers who had been
on the raft, to publish a full account of the voyage toAfrica: thewreck,
their ordeal at sea, and their days of despair in Saint-Louis, where they
had received little care or sympathy from their French compatriots.
The first edition of this work rapidly sold out. Public indignation
grew as readers learned of the chaos that had followed the shipwreck,
and of the treason of the officers who, to save themselves, had cut the
ropes securing the raft to the lifeboats. The public was fascinated by the
horrible acts of cannibalism that had ultimately saved the last fewmen
on the raft. Correard's and Savigny's book was soon translated, and
talked about all across Europe. Pirated copies were hastily printed, if
one can judge by the one in the library of theWarburg Institute: an
abridged text on cheap paper,with a fake publisher's name and address,
but a beautiful illustration.6 [Figure 6]
In September 1818 the Edinburgh Review published an extensive
piece comparing two narratives of recent shipwrecks, that of theBritish
ship Alceste off the coast of Korea, and that of theMedusa. To the au
thor of the article, the two narratives formed a solid basis for assessing
the behavior of the two nations in comparably trying circumstances:
"Never was there a contrast so striking, as in the conduct of the English
version
and Savigny's
of Corr?ard's
and undated
account,
copy is an abridged
La M?duse,
Con
is entitled,
de la fr?gate
Tableau
de l'horrible
naufrage
fran?aise
et de
tenant un d?tail
exact de tous les malheurs
la perte de ce Navire,
qui suivirent
6. The
and
toutes
gens
les sc?nes
de l'Equipage
d?chirantes
qui
eurent
lieu
sur le Radeau,
o? s'?taient
r?fugi?s
(Paris: Tiger).
150 des
Yale French Studies
16
Figure 6. Naufrage de la fre'gate fran~aise laMgduse: De cent cinquante

d6laiss9s, quinze seulement furent sauv6s; mais ne purent survivre.
Anonymous
engraving. Courtesy of theWarburg Institute, London.
and French
On
the one side, all is great, and calm, and dignified.

rises over page, event towers above event, in horror
The panic terror of the French crew, as soon as the
sailors. On
the other,
page
and depravity....
ship was stranded,
was
the more
striking,
as contrasted
with
their pre
their re
to every prudent warning;

with
levity and disregard
and refusing to listen to the voice which
jecting every precaution,
was inevitable....
All legitimate
them that destruction
discipline
ceding
lost."
Still
from the devastating

reeling, perhaps,
leonic wars, the author added for good measure:
years
told
was
of the Napo
The pusillanimity
of the French exposed them to unheard-of calami
and
excited
among them the most demoniacal
ties,
feelings. It caused
of the wretches who had embarked upon the
the death of nine-tenths
raft.... The resources of the two frigates, immediately after they were
the
that governed
stranded, were much
alike; but the sentiments
Frenchmen deprived them of the
while theminds of the English were
and bent upon the means of saving
which act attractively among other
advantages of their united efforts;

wholly directed to the general good,
one and all....
The very impulses
men, and make their hearts expand
MARIE-HELENE
HUET
17
with kindness and benevolence, are repulsive to [the nature of the

French]. In the day of sympathy,affection is changed tohatred, andpity
is converted to envy.They prefer theirown destruction to the safety of
their fellow-sufferers, and crush to atoms, under their own feet, the
plankwhich divides them frometernity.7
The wreck of theMedusa became both a political cause celebre and
a best-seller, and was reenacted, with many special effects, on stages
from Paris toDublin. A later account, published in the years following
the Second Republic, describes the wreck as one of the legends that
shaped the political consciousness of post-Revolutionary France; the
author writes that the story "had an immense impact; it broke all
hearts, and everyone wept over the unfortunate victims of this un
precedented catastrophe; public opinion turned furiously against M.
De Chaumareys, responsible for this horrifying tragedy; it demanded
satisfaction."
The trial of Chaumareys was also described, in strongly political
terms, as a clash between the legacy of the Revolution and the re
emergence of the Old Regime. "OnMarch 3rd, 1817, eight months af
ter the frigateMedusa was cravenly abandoned, M. LeVicomte Hugues
Duroys de Chaumareys was brought before amilitary court, an ap
pearance he contemptuously considered as a simple formality. 'The
revolutionaries,' he said, 'caused it all; almost all the officers placed un
der my command were jacobins, terrorists, bonapartists; they con
spired against me, and I could not but fail."' "Fortunately," the author
concludes, "the vicomte Hughes Duroys de Chaumareys was unani
mously found guilty of causing the frigate laMeduse to go aground, and
amajority of five votes out of eight condemned him to be struck from
the roll of Officers, never to serve again.... The wreck of the frigate la
Meduse is among the recent events that created the greatest uproar in
theworld."8
A year or so later, Gericault set out to paint the large canvas he
would exhibit at the Salon of 1819 in the category ofHistory Painting,
and he, too, became unusually engrossed in the tale of disaster. Art his
torians have discussed at length Gericault's long preparation for the
painting, his meeting with the two survivor-authors, Correard and Sav
igny (who also served asmodels), and his request that theMedusa's car
The
7. The Edinburgh Review30
(September 1818), 399-405.
8. Le naufrage
in L?gendes
publication
de
is not
la M?duse
dated
but was
probably
populaires
printed
23
in the
(Paris: Martinon),
1850s.
90-92.
18
Yale French Studies
penter build him aminiature replica of the raft. Gericault made a se

ries of preliminary sketches for The Raft, showing theMedusa going
aground, the passengers boarding the boats, the firstmutiny on the raft,
and scenes of cannibalism, tomention just a few. These sketches are
usually seen as evidence of Gericault's exploration of the various dra
matic possibilities of the story, and expressions of his hesitation over
which specific scene to choose for his painting for the Salon. But they
also form a kind of ghost narrative, as if the painter needed to immerse
himself in all the chapters of the story before he could convincingly
show, in depicting its culmination, the tragic unfolding of the events
that led to the disaster. Gericault's absorption with the tragedywas re
flected not only in his careful reconstitution, in graphic terms, of the
Medusa's wreck, but also in the way he transformed his own life dur
ing the work: he thought of shaving his head, and for several months
abandoned all social interactions, seeing only the friends and models
who came to his studio.
The process by which Gericault conceived The Raft has been ex
haustively documented, but there ismore to be said about questions
that lie in themargins of the disaster's two main narratives: the writ
ten account by the twoMedusa survivors, and the images that Geri
cault created, in canvases and sketches, to preserve thememory of the
wreck. How do these tales and representations tell the story of the di
saster that struck theMedusa? How do myth, history, and mimesis
conspire to produce a narrative that immediately appealed to, and hor
rified, the nineteenth-century public?
THE NATURE OF DISASTER
Etymologically speaking, "disaster" comes from "dis-astrato": dis
owned by the stars, abandoned by the cosmos. The word describes sit
uations inwhich the heavens seem to betray people who were born un
der an unlucky star, orwho lived under a fateful conjunction of planets.
From Antiquity, the stars have held the key to the present and the fu
ture of humanity, guiding ships and instilling fear each time a new ce
lestial object, such as a comet, appeared.When Nostradamus wrote the
history of centuries to come, he read themovement of the stars in the
heavens, and the history he foretold was one of upheavals, wars, and ca
tastrophes. To this day, astrologers believe that one of the most evil
stars in the sky isAlgol-Medusa's
head in the constellation Perseus.
However, the word "disaster" has not always designated a cata
MARIE-HELENE
HUET
19
strophic event. Initially itwas not a noun, but a past participle. Inother
words, there was no disaster per se, only the experience of disaster
one was "disastered." In commenting on the regular appearance of
Medusa in scenes of chaos and despair, JeanClair spoke of negative cos
mology; his words are a particularly apt description of disasters. In di
saster, the very space humans occupy in relation to the stars is desta
bilized; they are uprooted from their place in the cosmos and cast adrift.
This uprooting can also be seen as the very negation of narrative, inas
to some extent
much as narrative aims to relate a recognizable-and
as
of
predictable-sequence
events, just cosmology retraces, in scien
tific ormythological terms, the formation of the universe. In a narra
tive account, even those events that are new or unheard-of follow a rec
ognizable, discursive pattern that deploys a form of order. This order,
in turn, provides an underlying signification that ties together the var
ious actions it describes, explaining or justifying the unfolding of oth
erwise incomprehensible events. But, by definition, a disaster is the
very negation of such an order, and thus cannot be rendered as a narra
tivewithout losing its own specificity.
There is no way to relate the tremendous, random violence of a
storm, or of the Lisbon earthquake that,while it inspired themost pes
simistic pages of Enlightenment philosophy, brought forth only the
most conventional poetry from Voltaire's pen. To describe a disaster
can only be to register a negation-the
loss of a protective star, or of a
benevolent God-and such a negation cannot be inserted in a dialecti
calmove thatwould bring any form of closure and thus betray the very
nature of the disaster. A disaster defies both causality and sublimation,
allowing for no redemption.
From this point of view, certainly, Correard and Savigny's Naufrage
de la fregate LaMeduse faisant partie de l'exp6dition du Senegal en
1816 tells the story of a tragedy,but not that of a disaster. The survivors'
story elicits terror and pity, but remains recognizable as the temporary,
if fatal, disruption of a well-established order caused either by the
French national character (as the Edinburgh Review would have it),
flawed maps (as theMedusa's captain would have it), or Restoration
politics that favored birth over merit (as the French liberal opposition
of the daywould have it).The wreck of theMedusa played out once as
tragedy, andmany times over as farce on the stages of Europe, provid
ing audiences the pleasurable thrill of experiencing a raging storm and
its fateful consequences from the safety of box seats in a theater. In
some presentations, the actors would freeze as ifpetrified, reproducing,
20
Yale French Studies
to general applause, the scene depicted on Gericault's canvas. In an

opera written by the brothers Cogniard and staged at the Renaissance
Theater in Paris in 1839, thewreck provided a dramatic backdrop for a
touching love story with a happy ending.9 Correard and Savigny's ac
count, and even Gericault's more macabre preparations for his paint
ing, far from dwelling on a cosmic negativity so enormous that it eludes
all representation, seem, if anything, to be obsessed with exhaustive re
counting. No detail is allowed to escape the authors' (or the artist's)
memory or retelling, which carefully distinguishes between the indi
vidual days and nights of agony, the smallest events, the biggest bat
tles, and the briefest moments of hope and despair.
Unlike Maurice Blanchot's fragments, those "furtive groupings that
fictively open and close the absence of totality" in their apprehension
of disaster, 10Correard and Savigny's testimony is entirely directed to
ward their tale's tragic ending, and thus toward its own justification.
The aimless drift evoked by Blanchot finds no echo in the aimlessness
of the raft,where themiraculous intervention ofGod restores order just
when all was thought to be lost. Recalling one of their last, exhausting
days on the raft,Correard and Savigny write: "Mr.Correard felt that he
must die in the course of the day; yet he had a presentiment that we
should be saved; he said that so extraordinary a series of events was
not destined to be buried in oblivion: that Providence would preserve
some of us at least, to recount tomankind the heartbreaking picture of
our unhappy adventures. Through how many terrible trials have we
passed! Where are themen who can say that they have been more un
fortunate than we have? The manner inwhich we were saved is truly
miraculous: the finger of heaven is conspicuous in this event. '' l
Here thewriters present the ultimate, if not altogether obvious, re
ordering of the disastered state of the raft. Even as they describe the
miracle that saved the raft, the survivors borrow an image of success
fulwriting, the conspicuous finger that traces the outline of a shadow,
what Enlightenment philosophers considered the origin of writing.
9. MM.
by MM.
vol.
Devoir
en Quatre
de la M?duse,
Actes,
fr?res, Le naufrage
Op?ra
Coignard
au XIXe
in La France dramatique
and Flotow,
si?cle
(Paris: Tresse,
music
1841
13, 2-14.
10. Maurice
),
trans. Ann
Smock
and
The Writing
Blanchot,
of the Disaster,
(Lincoln
of Nebraska
Press,
1986), 58.
to Senegal
in
11. J.-B. Henry
and Alexandre
of a Voyage
Savigny
Corr?ard, Narrative
an Account
1816, Undertaken
by Order
of the French Government,
Comprising
of the
London:
University
on
Occurrences
the Suffering
and the Various
of the Medusa,
of the Crew
Shipwreck
at St. Louis,
and at the Camp
Board
the Raft, in the Desert
ofDaccar
(London,
ofZaara,
VT: The Marlboro
modified.
Press,
1818; and Marlboro,
1986), 71, translation
MARIE-HELENE
HUET
21
There is, from the beginning, a form of overdetermination in the

Medusa narrative. Taken as the very opposite of the "dis-aster," over
determination charts a course for the story, redressing the negative
cosmology that presides over the events to be recounted. Every detail
contributes to a retrieved, soon-to-be fully-restored, meaning. Every
coincidence ispointed out, thus belying its randomness. Describing the
moment when theMedusa first struck the Bank of Arguin, the narra
torswrite: "This event spread themost profound consternation. If there
were any men who remained sufficiently collected tomake observa
tions, theymust have been struck with the extraordinary changes im
pressed on every countenance; some persons were unrecognizable.
Here one might see features become shrunk and hideous; there a coun
tenance which had assumed a yellow and even greenish hue, some men
seemed thunderstruck" (Narrative of a Voyage, 15).The French edition
of 1818 added: "others, fixed in their places, with no strength tomove,
stood petrified; itwas as if the terribleGorgon whose name we bore had
passed before them."'12 In these lines the narrators stand at once inside
and outside the text, strangely dissociated from it, as both witnesses
and participants ("It seems as if the terrible Gorgon whose name we
bore had passed before them. ")
Later in the narrative, Correard and Savigny call attention to the
names of the ships that formed the expedition, not because the names
served as an obscure prophecy, but in order to heighten the drama of
their tale. In invoking the names they add an extra layer of irony, telling
us that one of the raft passengers exclaimed, "If that brig is sent to look
for us, let us pray toGod that shemay have the eyes of Argus" (Narra
tive of a Voyage, 66).
In his Pharsalia, Lucan made an association between Medusa and
Argus when he wrote that even before he slayed Medusa, Perseus's
scythe "was already stained with the blood ofHundred-eyed Argus."'13
From the pens of Correard and Savigny flow coincidences that testify
to the strong bonds between mythology and history. To put it another
way, their tale illustrates history's attempt to reach the general truth
that Aristotle saw as tragedy's superiority over the retelling of actual
events. Coincidences create links across time; they work paradigmat
12. Alexandre
Corr?ard,}.
de l'exp?dition
partie
faisant
qui ont eu lieu sur le Radeau,
car (Paris: Eymery,
Delaunay,
13. Lucan,
ber and Nancy}.
Pharsalia,
Vickers
B. Henri
Le Naufrage
de la fr?gate La M?duse,
Savigny,
en 1816; Relation
contenant
les ?v?nements
S?n?gal
et au camp de Dac
? Saint-Louis,
dans le d?sert de Sahara,
du
Ladvocat,
1818), 46.
trans. Robert Graves,
in The Medusa
(New York and London:
Routledge,
ed. Marjorie
Reader,
42.
2003),
Gar
22
Yale French Studies
ically, highlighting similitudes. Thus one is led to point out a coinci

dence and, at the same time, to justify one's motivation for taking that
critical step. JeanClair, in noting that Petronius's description of "Dis
cord" can be perfectly applied to a 1797 engraving of the Republic as
Medusa, writes, "Such a connection is anything but gratuitous. Me
dusa, as I said, reappears every time the normal order of things is over
thrown, and chaos threatens" (Me'duse, 126).A "coincidence" is an ap
parently unexplainable similarity, richwith the promise that itmight
offer a key, or yield ameaning, that was previously overlooked.
Ifcoincidences work paradigmatically, details strengthen theweave
of the narrative, working syntagmatically to reinforce the shape of
things yet to come. The description of the breaking up of theMedusa
offers a particularly eloquent example of Correard and Savigny's
overdetermined account of the shipwreck:
At night the sky became cloudy, thewinds came from the sea, andblew
violently.
The sea ran high, and the frigate began to heel with more
more violence....
and
She bulged in themiddle of thenight, the keel broke
in two, the helm was unship'd, and held to the stern only by the chains,
which caused it to do dreadful damage; ... the floor of the captain's
cabinwas lifted andwater enteredwith frightening force. (Narrativeof

a Voyage, 19; translationmodified)
In these lines the very part of the ship that governs her, that gives
helm-becomes
the source of the ship's ultimate
her direction-the
destruction. The battering sounds powerfully echo the errors the cap
tain himself made when he laid out the routes the frigatewould follow.
Chaumareys loses his footing as the flooring is lifted and broken apart
by the waves. The chain of order is broken, and itwill not be restored.
Another episode in theMedusa story-probably
the one that at
tracted themost attention-describes
the day the raft's surviving pas
sengers realized they would have to eat human flesh:
An extreme resourcewas necessary topreserveourwretched existence.
We
tremble with
horror at being obliged to mention

that which we
feel our pen drop from our hand; a deathlike chill per
vades all our limbs; our hair stands erect on our heads!-Reader,
we be
use of!We
made
seech you, do not feel indignation towardsmen who arealready tooun

fortunate;but have compassion on them.... Those whom death had
spared in the disastrous night which we have just described, fell upon
the dead bodies with which
the raft was covered, and cut off pieces,
some instantly devoured. (Narrative of a Voyage, 52-53)
which
MARIE-HELENE
HUET
23
The authors may invite us, briefly, to think of them asMedusa-like,

with their hair standing on end from the horror of the images they de
scribe, but they never let the pen fall from their hands. From this point
on, though, their text seems contaminated by the cannibalism they de
scribe. Those who abstained, at first, from eating human flesh-i.e., the
narrators-are eventually "consumed (devores) by hunger and thirst"
until they, too, share in the forbiddenmeal. Now the narrative becomes
oddly casual. On themorning of their fourth day on the raft, theywrite,
The sun rose on our disaster, and shewed us ten or twelve of our com
panions extended lifeless on the raft.This sight affectedus themore as
it announced to us that our bodies, deprived of existence, would soon
be stretched
on the same place. We
gave their bodies
to the sea for a
grave, reservingonly one, destined to feed thosewho, the day before,

had claspedhis tremblinghand, vowing him an eternal friendship.The
daywas fine; ourminds, longing formore agreeable sensations,were
harmonized by the soothing aspect of nature, and admitted a ray of
hope. (Narrative
of a Voyage,
54)
But there was worse yet to come: the moment when the injured
were thrown overboard so that the last rations ofwine would be saved
for those who might still live a little longer.
Interestingly, this admission is presented as the repetition of an ear
lier, and now vanished, confession. It is known that the passengers' last
hours on the raftwere marked by an unbearable disappointment: they
had spotted the ship Argus, but then she disappeared from the horizon.
It is at this point that the firstwriting of thewreck-the
one the reader
will never see-took place: "We then proposed to inscribe upon a board
an account of our adventures, towrite all our names at the bottom of
the narrative, and to fasten it to the upper part of themast, in the hope
that itwould reach the government and our families" (Narrative of a
Voyage, 68).With the group's sins now acknowledged by all, the con
fession was properly witnessed and signed (as itwere), and fastened to
the raft'smast to form the shape of a cross: the simultaneous symbol
of suffering, forgiveness, and redemption. Correard and Savigny's even
tualwritten account-the one we are reading-is but the duplication
of a shorter, presumably more desperate, account, composed after all
hope had been abandoned. As if to strengthen this perception, thewrit
ers conclude their work with a list of the names of all those who pre
sumably signed the first account, the confession aboard the raft.
24
Yale French Studies

MEDUSA'S
SISTERS
In the beginning of the The Book to Come, Blanchot, recalling the en

counter ofUlysses and the Sirens, writes: "Were the sirens, as tradition
has taught us, only the false voices that must not be listened to, the
trickery of seduction that only disloyal and deceitful beings could re
sist? There has always been a rather ignoble effort among men to dis
credit the Sirens by flatly accusing them of lying: liarswhen they sang,
deceivers when they sighed, fictive when they were touched; in every
respect non-existent, with a childish nonexistence that the good sense
of Ulysses was enough to exterminate. It is true, Ulysses conquered
them, but inwhat way? Ulysses, with his stubbornness and prudence,
his treachery,which ledhim to enjoy the entertainment of Sirens, with
out risks and without accepting the consequences; his was cowardly,
moderate, and calm enjoyment, as befits aGreek of the decadent era
who will never deserve to be the hero of the Iliad. 114Still, Blanchot ar
gues, "After the Sirens had been conquered by the power of the tech
nique that always tries to play safely with unreal (inspired) powers,
Ulysses was still not done with them. They reached him where he did
not want to fall and ... they engaged him andmany others, in this for
tunate, unfortunate navigation, which is that of a tale, the song that is
not immediate, but narrated, hence made apparently inoffensive: ode
becomes episode" (TheBook to Come, 5).
It isworth keeping inmind that in some versions of themyths, the
Sirens andMedusa had the same father, and that they all shared the abil
ity to fly. The unbearable cruelty, the forbidden feast, aremade bear
able and forgivable by anarrative so tightly woven as tomake the reader
deaf to the Sirens' song, and towhat Blanchot called "a suspicion of the
inhumanity of every human song" (TheBook to Come, 3).And such is
the safety of narrative (or,more precisely, of the confession): it dispels
the inhuman, instead praising the good common sense that allowed
both Ulysses and theMedusa raft's passengers to survive so that their
stories could be told, hope could be preserved, and God could ulti
mately place the pen into the hands of Correard and Savigny.
But the same defaut that created both the inhuman quality of the
Sirens' song and its seductiveness haunts theMedusa narrative, not in
the cohesion of its telling or its tightly argued justification, but in the
14. Maurice
ford University
Blanchot,
Press,
The
2003),
Book
to Come,
trans.
Charlotte
Mandel
(Stanford:
4.
Stan
MARIE-HELENE
HUET
25
gaps that periodically interrupt the account and the odd supplements
that were tacked onto the story. The most interesting of the addenda,
frommy point of view, does not even appear in the table of contents,
and is not signed. It is an Appendix to the text, misleadingly entitled
Notes de M***. Sur le naufrage de laMeduse, et sur les productions et
le sol des Establissemens d'Afrique. In fact, theAppendix is a series of
footnotes written by one of the lifeboat passengers, commenting si
multaneously on the story of the raft (which, again, constitutes the af
tertext to the confession we will never read: the one left behind on the
raft).One of these footnotes refers to the storm that drowned many of
the raft's passengers on the first night, and bears the title On the sud
den Gale experienced by the Raft. The anonymous author writes:
strong gale was the same North West wind which in this season,
as has been said before, blows every day with great violence after sun
set; but which that day began sooner, and continued till 4 o'clock the
This
next morning,
when it was succeeded by a calm. The two boats which

resisted it,were several times on the point of being wrecked. The whole
time that this gale lasted, the sea was covered with
a remarkable
quan
tity of galeres orphysalides (physalispelasgica)which, arrangedfor the

lines, and in two or three rows, cut through the
at an angle, and seemed at the same time to pre
sent their crests or sails to the winds, in an oblique manner, so as to be
less exposed to its impulse. It is probable that these creatures have the
faculty of sailing two or three abreast, and of lining themselves in a reg
most
part, in straight
of the waves
direction
ular or symmetrical order; but had the wind surprised them, so arranged
on the surface of the sea and before they had time to sink and shelter
themselves at the bottom, or did the sea, agitated on these shores to a
greater than usual depth, make them afraid, in this situation of being
it be, the order of their march; their
thrown upon the coast? However
disposition, in respect to the forcewhich impelled them, andwhich

they strove to resist; the apparent
stiffness
of the sail, seemed
at once
admirableand surprising. (Narrativeof a Voyage, 179)

The physalides, arranged in rows like an army marching into bat
tle, form a strange spectacle, adding a puzzling quality to the descrip
tion of the violent storm that almost sank the lifeboats. An armada bet
ter able to resist the towering seas than any boats steered bymen, they
float undisturbed on the crest of thewaves in amagnificent display of
order andmastery over the elements. The author's description of their
geometric formation is also notable: two or three deep, they cut a re
unlike the blade of a guil
peating, oblique angle across thewaves-not
26
Yale French Studies
lotine. The writer marvels again and again at the phenomenon, theway
it coincides with the fatal storm, its strangemanifestation of an order
that transcends the chaotic elements of nature. He marvels, too, that
men on the verge of being drowned by the high waves are drawn, in spite
of themselves, to this uncanny display of a natural wonder.
The anonymous footnote to Correard's and Savigny's narrative be
comes even more intriguing when one considers that the physalides
are better known under another name. In 1758, Linnaeus, struck by the
creature's snake-like "hair," gave it the name medusa. It is the name
commonly used in French to describe jellyfish, the medusae that
stunned Roland Barthes one day atMalo-les-Bains. 15The name ismore
rarely used in English, but still appears in all dictionaries. With this in
mind, we can read the footnote in a different light, as an example of
what Leo Bersani terms "the seductive powers of language itself, the
ways inwhich it turns away from the objects it designates. "16The foot
note's anonymous writer (who is identified, interestingly, only by the
initial M***) simultaneously points to, and dissimulates, the vertigi
nous proliferation ofmythological signifiers that have transformed the
narrative from its beginning. In this case, the uncanny appearance of
the medusae blends history and mythology. The oblique line traced
over and over by thewaves across themedusae's rigid sails does not de
capitate; on the contrary, it underlines their power. And M***'s com
ments, by their placement at the end of the book, constitute the after
text of an aftertext, and an afterthought, reflecting both on the events
of the book and on the narrative itself. The notes add their own, partly
hidden, intertextual reference to a tragedy we can know only as con
fession, and, like all confessions, as a text in search of redemption. One
could speculate further on the process of naming: naming ships, nam
ing plants and animals, even Linnaeus's own seeming fascination with
mythology in general, andMedusa in particular. Itwas a fascination so
compelling that Linneaus gave the name medusae to both an animal
and a plant, each time because of the specimen's eerily floating "hair."
GERICAULT'S
RAFT
In discussing The Raft of theMedusa [Figure 71,art historians generally

consider not only themultiple sketches and studies that accompanied
15. Roland
trans.
Barthes,
131-132.
Reader,
16. Leo Bersani,
The Culture
Press,
1990), 167.
Richard
Howard,
of Redemption
excerpt
(Cambridge,
published
Mass.:
in The Medusa
Harvard
University
MARIE-HELENE
HUET
27
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
.............
..._I.I
Figure 7. Gericault.
Le Radeau
de laMeduse
the painting
of the large canvas,
the fragmented
bodies Ge'ricault
Paris, Musee
du Louvre
representing
but. the series of works
had taken from the nearby hospital.
be best described,
of works
that
Raft might
then, as a collection
both precede and follow the actual painting of the large canvas that was
at the Salon. All these works bear the stamp of Ge'ricault's
presented
detailed preparations,
and carry the mark of his obsession
with
death
The
and
endured
of the main
suffering, which
long after his completion
From the startling Fragments
anatomiques
[Figure 8], to the var
ious TUtes de supplicie's and the many
studies of various episodes of the
work.
a range of works
raft odyssey, Ge6ricault produced
that can be seen-not
amyth-as
on a theme, enriching
unlike
variations
and sometimes
each other.
contradicting
Art historians
have
never
forgotten
work,
as if such
the virtuosity
the Medusa
with
which
survivors.
Ge'ri
noted
he had painted
the wind-swept
hair of one of
care
had always
taken the utmost
Ge'ricault
it in curling papers
his hair, putting
notes at the end of his lengthy discussion
with
that presided over

(at times apprehen
and have frequently

pointed out
the attention
facts only corrupt
biographical
art deserves)
that he shaved off his curls, that observers
Ge'ricault's
sively,
cault's
the Medusa
every night. But, as Jean Clair

of the elaborate hairdos
that
28
Yale French
Figure 8. Gericault.
Studies
Fragments
anatomiques.
Montpellier,
Mus6e
Fabre.
the
is accidental:
the Revolution,
and accompanied
"Nothing
or cathartic"
either protective
(Me'
gesture has significance,
his study of
Schneider
organizes
150). In a similar vein, Michel
preceded
smallest
duse,
In Un re've -depierre: Le
of Medusa.
Raft around the myth
that the Raft
he argues convincingly
de la Me'duse,
Ge'ricault,
seem
as salvation
not be viewed
from a religious perspective,
Ge'ricault's
radeau
should
"If one
of the Argus on the horizon.
by the appearance
ingly promised
"he is neither Christ
looks at the dead son's body," Schneider writes,
of the Savior's
taken down from the Cross
(there exist representations
or the Rosso
for example),
fiorentino,
from his grave, released from the earth.
on being dead, who will sink forever, and
body by Pontormo
decomposed
nor is he the Son of God wrested
He
is a corpse who will
never
keep
be buried."'17
G?ricault
Un r?ve de pierre: Le radeau
de la M?duse,
17. Michel
Schneider,
comments:
Eitner's
"The Raft
Lorenz
echoes
Gallimard,
1991), 22. Schneider
statement
Its drama has no heroes
free of official
is a personal
Medusa
ideology.
(Paris:
of the
and no
MARIE-HELENE
HUET
29
Schneider goes on to say:

The name of the Medusa,
given
to the frigate that ran aground, desig
nated themythical figurewhom Perseus defeated by the ruse ofmak

ing himself invisible; the ship's bowspritwas adornedwith Medusa's
head. But this name also conjures up a sea creature with
a hundred
ten
tacles. One does not know whether what paralyzed Gericault with fear
was the thought of cadavers petrified by the cold, or the thousand
rivulets that death painted on the bodies of the drowned.... The raft
does representa scene of horror, and, likeGorgo, shows us something
thatwords cannot express: theunspeakable,un-relatable,unthinkable
journeyof the shipwreckedvictims (29).
In Schneider's view, Gericault was submitting himself to ameta
phorical encounter with themonster. Concerning the painter's sacri
fice of his curls, Schneider writes: "They say he did it to avoid having
to go out, to avoid women and distractions. But it was simpler than
that: he wanted to become one of the shipwrecked, to put himself in
the grip of terror.The Raft is one of those pictures that fuses one's eyes
to the rest of one's body, rendering it passive andmute. Medusa is to
Perseus what the Sphynx is toOedipus: destiny encountered, themon
ster that lives inside oneself. Each heromust kill his monster, but while
Oedipus speaks to the horrible Sphinx (solving the riddle she gives him,
whose ultimate meaning is:what is a life?What is time, which raises
beings up and then bends them backwards back down toward Earth?),
not aword is exchanged between Perseus and the terrible Gorgo" (35).
For Schneider, coincidences that bear themark ofmythological con
tamination give pause. "Itwas probably a coincidence-but
let's admit
itwas abeautiful one-that the two ships, the shipwrecked and her sav
ior, bore the names of mythological creatures both endowed with a
murderous gaze:Medusa, death striking through the eyes, and Argus,
countless glances (panoptes) that outlive blindness just the way rot
grows and survives even after the organism's death" (39).But what as
pect of theMedusa myth, we might ask, invites the horror of putrefac
tion?Another coincidence emerges, one not previously mentioned by
art critics, but no less troubling thanMedusa's regular reappearance in
times of political unrest.
Gericault's biographers have noted that although he executed his
message.
evidence;
No
no
God,
faith,
Raft of theMedusa
over
saint, or monarch
presides
no victory
the
justifies
suffering
the disaster;
of the men
no
common
on the Raft/'
cause
is in
G?ricault's
(London:Phaidon, 1972), 51.
30
Yale French Studies
studies of severed limbs during the period when he was preparing the
Raft, the figures he portrayed on the raftwere all drawn from livemod
els. But Gericault kept in his studio the body parts the hospital had
given him, so that he could "observe and record their gradual decay. "'18
The awful stench of the cadavers drove away his friends, though it did
not seem to trouble the painter. In this Gericault seems to have repro
duced a similar episode in the life of Leonardo da Vinci, as recorded by
Vasari. When asked by Piero daVinci to paint a buckler,
Leonardo
one who
started to think what he could paint on it so as to terrify any

saw it and produce
the same effect as the head of Medusa.
To
dowhat he wanted Leonardo carried into a room of his own, which no

one ever entered except himself, a number of green and other kinds of
lizards,crickets, serpents,butterflies, locusts, bats, andvarious strange
creaturesof this nature; fromall these he took and assembled different
parts to create a fearsomeand horriblemonster which emitted a poiso
nous breath and turned the air to fire.... Leonardo took so long over
the work
that the stench
of the dead animals
in his room became
un
bearable,although he himself failed to notice because of his great love

of painting.'9
In both cases, the dismembering seems to be an integral part of an
encounter with Medusa, who, like allmonsters, is herself a composite
of body parts. The apotropaic quality ofMedusa's severed head spreads
to the decaying limbs scattered around the painter's lair as objects of
repulsion, as stark reminders of the Gorgon's deadly power, but also as
indispensable elements that-when combined on the canvas-van
quish the deadly gaze. As Hal Foster puts it, describing Rubens's de
piction of Medusa, "The art of painting triumphs over the force of
chaos."20 Eugene Delacroix also admired Gericault's representation of
the severed limbs, which he unhesitatingly connected with Medusa:
"This fragment is truly sublime: it proves more than ever that there
never was an odious serpent ormonster, etc. This is the best argument
in favor of the Beautiful, as it should be understood" (Delacroix's em
phasis).21
Schneider's study itself underlines the metamorphic qualities of
Gericault's painting. "Can it not be said, in the end, thatwith its ship
36. See also Sylvain
18. Eitner, G?ricault's
Laveissi?re
and R?gis
Raft of the Medusa,
des Mus?es
G?r?cault
Michel,
Nationaux,
(Paris: R?union
1991), 280.
in The Medusa
19. Giorgio
da Vinci,
60-61.
Reader,
Vasari,
Life of Leonardo
20. Hal Foster,
and the Real," RES 44 (2003): 161.
"Medusa
21.
Eug?ne
Delacroix,
Journal
(Paris: Pion,
1996),
644.
HUET
MARIE-HELENE
31
wrecked bodies lying on a heap of boards and barrels like hair on a de

capitated head, the painter dedicated to the gloomy sky, as a propitiary
gift or offering, the terror that petrified life?" (35). Schneider's focus
restlessly shifts from the severed head, to the petrified victims, toGeri
cault's transformation. Medusa had two offspring, the giant Chrysaor
and the horse Pegasus, both ofwhom had grown out of her severed head.
When
he cut off Medusa's
staring head, Gericault-a
great
lover of
horses-was like a shipwreckvictim waiting on a coral reeffor the steed

thatwould takehim away, thereby setting his arrested life inmotion.
He fell into a deep depression, tried tokill himself,wanted to stoppaint
ing.... In any case, he had run out of big subjects, exploits of heroes
confrontingmonsters.... He went on painting torn limbswith lacer
atedmuscles andbrutally severed tendons,decapitatedheads on blood
stained sheets, he painted the facesof the insane,andhorses' headswith
terrifiedeyes.... With the exception of a few portraits, inGericault's
work
... only the horses and the madmen
actually
look out at the spec
tator. (39)
In L'oeil et 1'esprit,Maurice Merleau-Ponty writes: "Shall we say
that there is a gaze fromwithin, a third eye that sees pictures and even
mental images, just as one speaks of a third ear that filters messages
from the outside through the noise they create within us?What for? ...
This is not the question: precocious or delayed, spontaneous or shaped
by museums, sight learns only by seeing, learns only from itself. The
eye sees the world, and all that the world lacks, tomake a picture."22
Before he challenged Medusa, Perseus stole the one eye her sisters
shared among themselves, telling them he could only return it if they
showed him theway to the Gorgon. Thus did Perseus briefly possess a
it is true, the better to find his way, but as bargaining
third eye-not,
tool, to force the Gorgon's sisters to show him where Medusa slept.
The eye performed no visual feat, but his possession of it testified to
Perseus's shrewdness, the same shrewdness that saved Odysseus when
he encountered the Sirens. Perseus's trickmade theMedusa story pos
sible, allowing it to be recounted, as we have seen, not merely as an
episode but as a reverberating echo, layeredwith distorted sounds and
generating amultiplicity of reawakenings. It is an echo unfaithful to,
yet intimately connected with, themyth that bestowed upon itsmon
ster's name an endless legacy of violence, and the beauty of the ser
pents.
22. Maurice
Merleau-Ponty,
L'
il et l'esprit
(Paris: Folio Gallimard,
1964),
24-25.

Huet 2007 - Faces of Disaster

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Huet 2007 - Faces of Disaster

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

The Face of Disaster

Author(s): Marie-Hlne Huet

The Face ofDisaster

It is said thatwhen Danton mounted the scaffold in the Spring of 1793,

ed. Edelstein and Lerner, ? 2007 by Yale University.

Figure 1. Villeneuve, Qu'un sang impur abreuve nos sillons. Engraving.

Carnava.l.et. Photo: F.....

era orubqe anoy

Yale French Studies

1. Jean Clair, M?duse,

Yale French Studies

Thtes des supplicigs.

umph, death without agency. Still, thememory lingers; though hidden,

that struck the

use of the "bitume

Phoo: Fran Ward...

. .... ... ... ..

kill a large number of their comrades..

Of the 15 delirious survivors, fivewould die a few days later in a Saint-........

Ongue ofThe riebaft'ssurvivorsRaf surgeongnaeMedua

an account of theMedusa's fateful trip during his return voyage to

Yale French Studies

Figure 6. Naufrage de la fre'gate fran~aise laMgduse: De cent cinquante

the one side, all is great, and calm, and dignified.

to every prudent warning;

from the devastating

advantages of their united efforts;

with kindness and benevolence, are repulsive to [the nature of the

7. The Edinburgh Review30

(September 1818), 399-405.

Yale French Studies

penter build him aminiature replica of the raft. Gericault made a se

Yale French Studies

to general applause, the scene depicted on Gericault's canvas. In an

There is, from the beginning, a form of overdetermination in the

Yale French Studies

ically, highlighting similitudes. Thus one is led to point out a coinci

She bulged in themiddle of thenight, the keel broke

cabinwas lifted andwater enteredwith frightening force. (Narrativeof

horror at being obliged to mention

seech you, do not feel indignation towardsmen who arealready tooun

The authors may invite us, briefly, to think of them asMedusa-like,

on the same place. We

gave their bodies

to the sea for a

grave, reservingonly one, destined to feed thosewho, the day before,

Yale French Studies

In the beginning of the The Book to Come, Blanchot, recalling the en

when it was succeeded by a calm. The two boats which

tity of galeres orphysalides (physalispelasgica)which, arrangedfor the

disposition, in respect to the forcewhich impelled them, andwhich

of the sail, seemed

admirableand surprising. (Narrativeof a Voyage, 179)

Yale French Studies

In discussing The Raft of theMedusa [Figure 71,art historians generally

that presided over

and have frequently

every night. But, as Jean Clair

is a corpse who will

Schneider goes on to say:

to the frigate that ran aground, desig

nated themythical figurewhom Perseus defeated by the ruse ofmak

(London:Phaidon, 1972), 51.

Yale French Studies