{"id":4169,"date":"2014-04-01T09:25:27","date_gmt":"2014-04-01T13:25:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/?p=4169"},"modified":"2014-04-01T09:25:27","modified_gmt":"2014-04-01T13:25:27","slug":"pacifist-rats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/2014\/04\/01\/pacifist-rats\/","title":{"rendered":"Pacifist rats"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Julio Mario Santo Domingo collection<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

By the controversial nature of its subject areas, the Santo Domingo Collection naturally includes a wealth of banned, censored, or otherwise suppressed literature. Ronge-maille vainqueur<\/em>, a text by the French novelist Lucien Descaves and illustrated by Lucien LeForge, is one example. This edition, published in 1920, includes a facsimile of a manuscript note from Descaves explaining that while the manuscript was produced in 1917, its publication was \u201cforbidden by the censors\u201d for the subsequent three years.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

That Ronge-maille vainqueur <\/em>would be more controversial in 1917 than in 1920 is easily explained: the text is a satirical denunciation of war, written in the form of a series of observations made by a common rat, in order to teach mankind what he knows. The rat celebrates the bounty of corpses that feeds his brethren during wartime: \u201cYears when the harvest is red are, for us, years of abundance\u201d and \u201cFor our little war cry, we\u2019ll use their own. We\u2019ve always had the last word\u201d are among his maxims. As for war\u2019s toll: \u201cWhen a shell falls on a shelter and crushes it, no mention is ever made of the rats trapped under the rubble. Yet these are victims too, and the more innocent.\u201d Using this rat\u2019s perspective, illustrated by LeForge\u2019s bold ink drawings, Descaves condemns war and particularly its profiteers. This wasn\u2019t Descaves\u2019s first word on the subject: the author drew from his own military service to write his anti-military novel, Sous-offs<\/em>, in 1889. He and his publisher, Librarie Stock, were prosecuted for offending the army, and Descaves was ultimately stripped of his military rank.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Lucien Descaves. Ronge-maille vainqueur<\/em>.Paris: Librairie Ollendorff, [1920]. PQ2218.D442r 1920<\/a><\/p>\n

Thanks to rare book ca<\/em>taloger Ryan Wheeler for contributing this post.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Julio Mario Santo Domingo collection. By the controversial nature of its subject areas, the Santo Domingo Collection naturally includes a wealth of banned, censored, or otherwise suppressed literature. Ronge-maille vainqueur, a text by the French novelist Lucien Descaves and illustrated by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1761,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5TUly-15f","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1761"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4169"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4169\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4188,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4169\/revisions\/4188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}