788 Book Reviews

Walker does not say what historicism means to him, but his careful scholarship and elaborate recreation of the various environments of these plays suggest that not only is a New Historicist account of them impossible, but, correspondingly, that New Historicism depends on a comparatively exact date- a temporal ‘anchor’-as its first condition of possibility.

Walker closes this study by adapting a passage from Hamlet that points to a representative instance of his subject matter: ‘the play’s the thing/Wherein [to]. . . catch the conscience of the King’. Although Walker does not press the case, Hamlet’s specially commissioned drama-designed as it is to instruct, admonish, and even accuse members of an aristocratic audience-can be seen as a nostalgic memory of the often overtly didactic plays which preceded the commercialisation of theatre in sixteenth-century England and dominated the Henrician court.

University of Chicago Douglas Bruster

Eug&ne Varlin, Chronique d’un Espoir Assassin&, Michel Cordillot (Paris: Les Editions Ouvritres, IPPI), 263 pp., 125FF.

Eugene Varlin (1839-1871) was a self-educated bookbinder who became a central figure in the re-emergence of the Parisian working-class movement during the 1860s. He participated in the renaissance of the co-operative movement and was arguably the most effective propagandist for the fledgling First International Workingmen’s Association (AIT), organised in Paris in December 1864. He is most famous for his leadership roles during the siege of Paris by the Prussians in 1870- 1871 and during the tragic revolt known as the Paris Commune. It was probably because of this prominence that he was ruthlessly executed without trial by Versaillais troops on 28 May 1871, the last day of the semaine sanglan te.

Michel Cordillot has written a book that carefully traces Varlin’s tragic personal history, but such is his attention to the broader context, that what in effect is provided is a study of the organisational and ideological history of the Parisian working class between 1864 and 187 1. He demonstrates his mastery of the secondary literature and supplements it with new information gleaned from the archives in Paris, Lyon and Amsterdam.

In the pages devoted to the history of the AIT, Cordillot writes of the importance between 1867 and 1869 of La Commission Ouvrikre, an assembly of elected deputies from the corps de mCtier of Paris. This commission provided a forum for the young Varlin, who opposed the moderate stance of the early mutualist leaders of the AIT with his collectivist vision emphasising the need for both political and social emancipation and for the elimination of absolute private property. Cordillot convincingly argues that the Imperial government of Louis-Napoleon inadvertently assisted collectivists like Varlin when it prosecuted the moderate mutualist directors of the Parisian branch of the AIT in early 1868, leaving collectivists like Varlin and Benoit Malon largely unopposed to propagate their own more radical views, at least until they too were prosecuted and sent to Sainte Pelagic later in the same year.

Cordillot also suggests that government prosecution reinforced the ALT’s prestige among workers, because it eliminated the residual suspicions that surrounded the AIT in

Book Reviews

the years following the 1864 London meeting of British and French working-class representatives, suspicions related to the fact that the Imperial Government had helped defray the expenses of the French representatives. The 1868 prosecutions clearly laid such suspicions to rest, and Cordillot points out that following the second pro&s against the leadership of the AIT-that is, against the likes of Varlin and Malon-a large number of workers who previously had remained aloof from the AIT asked to join. This transformed the AIT from a ‘circle of social study’ to a ‘federation of workers’ societies’ (p. 131).

Cordillot also analyses Varlin’s ideological stance, placing his collectivism between mutalists and anarchists, on the one side, and Marxists, on the other. This accurately characterises the federalist collectivism that Varlin and his compatriots were supporting in their struggles with opposing groups within the International, a collectivism that called for common ownership of the means of production but insisted that workers’ syndicats or geographically defined entities like neighbourhoods and towns, and not the state, should administer the means of production. Varlin was, in Cordillot’s words, ‘neither Marxist nor Bakuninist’ (p. 149).

Cordillot makes another interesting point-though less convincing to this reviewer- that there was a strong ‘neo-Fourierist current’ in the early AIT that had a marked influence on Varlin. This claim is based on the connection between the short-lived 1865 journal Le Tribune ouvi&re with the Fourierist library located in the rue des Saintes-P&es (pp. 62-66), and on an ideological convergence on questions concerning women and education (pp. 74-75, 84). By the late 186Os, however, it is difficult to claim a clear-cut intellectual provenance for most ideas, especially given the mix of co-operative, syndical, and socialist ideals that informed the thought of militants. Fourier’s ideas should not be ignored, certainly, but then neither should their influence be exaggerated.

The final chapters of the book tell the more familiar story of Varlin’s activities during

the France-Prussian War, the siege, and the Paris Commune, and they recount Varlin’s frenetic activity and his tragic execution. In sum, this is an excellent book for anyone interested in Varlin, in the ideological and organisational history of Parisian workers during the 186Os, or in the early years of the First International in France.

North Carolina State University K. Steven Vincent

Theater, Theory, Speculation. Walter Benjamin and the Scenes of Modernity, Rainer Nlgele (Baltimore, London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), xvii+ 232 pp., $37.50.

Walter Benjamin is an enigmatic figure in modern German literature studies, uneasily straddling the disciplines of aesthetics and literary criticism. After a delayed initial reception, the result of political upheavals during the 1930s and his persecution as a Jew, some individual essays became known in the early 1950s but it was not until 1974 that a complete edition of published and unpublished works was produced, enabling his achievement to become more widely appreciated and in a more authoritative format (Gesammelte Schrzyten, ed. by Rolf Tiedemann and Hermann Schweppenhluser, Frankfurt am Main). Despite the small output of writings, he has for some time enjoyed a cult following for reasons which are not always easy to elucidate (to date there is no adequate biography), but which may have something to do with such things as his