Louis R. Gottschalk
Ed. Dall'Oglio
pp. 284
Who was Marat?
Perhaps someone will have heard of it, perhaps associated with the French Revolution. Others, I imagine, will never have heard of it.
I honestly have to say that I heard him mentioned but, just as honestly, I had no idea what he had done.
Jean Paul Marat was born in Boudry, Switzerland, on May 24, 1743. His father is of Sardinian origin, his name is Mara and it seems he fled from an abbey where he was probably a monk and doctor. The mother is Luisa Cabrol and she was from Geneva. Gian Paolo Mara, alias Jean Paul Marat, was the first of six children.
Around the 1765 Marat travels to England. For some years he has left his family where he seems to have received a good education.
He studied medicine in Bordeaux and then in Paris.
In 1775 he received the title of doctor of medicine Honorary at the Scottish University of Saint-Andrews. Marat deals with science, medicine and philosophy, thinking that when he is criticized it is because the world is angry with him. He is convinced of a conspiracy against him.
Whatever happens, in Newcastle Marat receives honorary citizenship for services rendered during an epidemic. As a doctor he had to be smart.
Around the 1780 Marat returns to France and in the following years he practices medicine in Paris.
He publishes some studies on research in the field of electricity in medicine, on light and colors, but always without great success.
To get to know the real Marat, you have to wait a few more years. In fact, his main commitment to politics and journalism can be found since 1789. Marat is in favor of the monarchy even if he thinks that the people should only respect the right laws.
Marat launches into his political journalist activity, without saving time and resources.
Often he is given responsibility for the uprisings of the people. In his newspaper "L'Ami du peuple", that is the friend of the people as he came to be called, he incited a revolt against the abuses or corruption of the king's ministers. Later he will also challenge the organs of the revolution, always keeping his eyes open to everything and everyone, fearing that the king could undo the results achieved with secret maneuvers.
Perhaps it was too critical in attributing to Marat so many responsibilities, but surely his figure of Jacobin grew ever more important until his death due to a woman, Carlotta Corday, Girondina, who stabs him 13 July 1793, making a martyr of the Revolution.
Marat, a monarchist, has recently supported the Republic, even if his opinion on the people is certainly not flattering: he thinks that the people should be led and he is a natural guide.
"Know that my credit to the people does not derive from my ideas, but from my audacity, from the impetuous impulses of my soul, from my cries of anger, of desperation and fury against the villains that hinder the action of the revolution. I am the wrath of the people, and it is therefore that it hears me and has faith in me. The cries of alarm and fury that you exchange for vain words are the most natural and the most sincere expression of the passions that devour my soul".
Indeed, what he says is still valid and, if in his case it is difficult to question his intentions in favor of the French people, in many other cases it is simply one of the ways in which it is possible to lead the people: "yelling and cursing at something or someone ", a technique still widely used today.
An interesting biography that allowed me to learn more about one of the main architects of the French Revolution, Gian Paolo Mara, aka Jean Paul Marat.
Alessandro Rugolo
