Prado (aka Count Linska de Castillon)
L'homme le plus intéressant du monde
"Crime is glorified, because it is one of the fine arts,
because it can be the work only of exceptional natures,
because it reveals the monstrousness of the strong and
powerful, because villainy is yet another mode of
privilege." - MF
I.
I mentioned in a recent post how the artist Paul Gauguin was fascinated by the trial of the Spanish-born thief and murderer known as Prado, and how he (and 200 other famous faces) witnessed the execution of the latter on 28 December, 1888; an event which - along with Van Gogh's self-mutilation a few days earlier - inspired his brutal ceramic self-portrait in the form of a jughead [1].
But what I didn't discuss was why it is so many artists and intellectuals have a fascination with crime and seem to feel a sense of affinity with violent criminals. So I thought I'd do that here, with particular reference to the Prado case, which Nietzsche mentions in his brief correspondence with the prolific Swedish writer August Strindberg, shortly before his collapse in the first week of January 1889.
II.
Whilst it is known that Prado was (i) born in Spain; (ii) brought up in the large coastal city of Gijón; (iii) had already travelled the world before turning sixteen; and (iv) twice married, history doesn't record his real name - and he chose never to reveal it.
Ending up in France, Prado lived by his wits; which is to say by stealing and poncing off the girls who thought he loved them.
In January 1886, he cut the throat of one of these girls - Marie Aguetant - who was believed to support herself (and him) by working as a prostitute. After being eventually caught and put on trial, Prado was sentenced to to death by guillotine at La Roquette Prison, Paris [2].
For some reason, his story captured the imagination of press and public alike, including members of the cultural elite, who regarded him as an intrepid adventurer. He was even said by some to be the most interesting man in the world.
III.
As mentioned, even Nietzsche, writing to Strindberg in late 1888, praises Prado and claims that he wrote Ecce Homo in the manner of the latter. It is, he says, in his nature to love such individuals and, as a philosopher, he prides himself on the fact that he has become familiar "with more evil and more questionable worlds of thought
than any one else" [3].
Strindberg is clearly a little taken aback by this and is not convinced that there's anything to admire or imitate in those who live outside the law:
"It appears to me that in your liberality of spirit, you have to
some degree flattered the criminal types. If you regard the hundreds
of photographs which illustrate Lombroso's types of criminal, you will
be convinced that the felon is a low sort of animal, a degenerate, a
weakling who does not possess the necessary faculties to enable him to
evade the more powerful laws which oppose themselves to his will and
power. Just observe how stupidly moral most of these brutes really
appear!" [4]
Nietzsche replies to this in a letter written in Turin, dated 7 December:
"There is no doubt that the hereditary criminal is decadent, even
feeble-minded. But the history of criminal families, for which a vast
amount of material has been collected by Galton in his Hereditary
Genius, always leads us back to some individual who happened to be
too strong for some particular stratum of society. The last great
trial of the criminal Prado gives us a classical example. Prado was
superior to his judges and his lawyers in self-control, spirit and audacity." [5]
This attraction felt by artists and philosophers for criminals is discussed in an excellent essay by Lisa Downing, who examines Michel Foucault's fascination with those who have a penchant for murder; an event of prime interest where, the latter argues, history and crime intersect ...
IV.
Alonside the homosexual and the pervert, the figure of the criminal appears in Foucault's
work as one of the quintessential modern subjects produced by the various discourses of the medical and legal professions.
Whilst he seems to have sympathy (and affection) for anyone deemed abnormal, it's the murderer whom he finds particularly attractive, thereby following in a Romantic tradition that associated art and rebellion with evil, and imagined that the writing of literature was itself an act of criminal transgression.
Foucault is an original thinker, but it's difficult to imagine his work in this area without referring back to that of Sade, Nietzsche, and Bataille, all of whom were intrigued by the relationship between words and deeds, the socio-linguistic construction of criminality, and the manner in which truly sovereign individuals might express their sovereignty.
Foucault isn't concerned with the motivations of a murderer, but, rather, "the historical, epistemic conditions - the
cultural preoccupations, fantasies, fears, norms, and power struggles for
authority - that conditioned the production of the crimes and shape our
understanding" [6].
Which is fair enough.
However, whilst commenting on the aesthetic rewriting of crime which occurred in the 18th and 19th centuries:
"Foucault at times seems to
fall prey to the very fascination he describes. The terms in which he discusses
the act of murder are often ambiguous and ambivalent: they occupy a place
somewhere between describing an attitude and embodying it." [7]
As evidence of this, Downing quotes a passage from I, Pierre Rivière ... [8]:
'Murder is the supreme event. […] Murder prowls the confines of
the law, on one side or the other, above or below it; it frequents
power, sometimes against and sometimes with it. The narrative of
murder settles into this dangerous area; it provides the
communication between interdict and subjection, anonymity and
heroism; through it infamy attains immortality.' [9]
As Downing rightly asks, wtf is Foucault doing here: is he "mimicking the popular hyperbolic fantasy of the act of murder
as rebellious gesture of social contestation, committed by the 'outsider'", or is he (unwittingly or otherwise) "glorifying it, reveling in it?" [10].
For Downing, Foucault has the hots for Rivière with his beautiful reddish-brown eyes, and this erotic-aesthetic aspect of his writing on criminals strikes a discordant note to say the least. That said, it should also be noted, of course, that "the pleasure Foucault finds in Pierre Rivière’s
confession" [11] is first and foremost of a textual nature.
Downing concludes that what Foucault's (slightly kinky) fascination with criminality suggests most compellingly "is the
extent to which, just as none of us can step outside of power, so none of us
are entirely separate from the tastes and seductions of our own cultural
moment" [12] - even if we are philosophers ...
Notes
[1] See the post entitled 'A Tale of Two Toby Jugs' (19 April 2024): click here.
[2] On the morning of his execution, Prado showed no emotion and even laughed at the priest who had come to comfort him for being more nervous than he was. He also requested that the priest didn't waste his breath speaking of God, or walk beside him to the scaffold. All of which is, if true, extremely admirable.
[3] Nietzsche writing to August Strindberg, quoted by Herman Scheffauer in 'A Correspondence between Nietzsche and Strindberg', The North American Review, Vol. 198, No. 693 (August 1913), pp. 197-205. This essay can be read on JSTOR: click here.
[4] Letter from August Strindberg to Friedrich Nietzsche, quoted by Herman Scheffauer in the essay cited above.
[5] Letter from Nietzsche to Strindberg, quoted by Herman Scheffauer, op. cit.
[6] Lisa Downing, 'Foucault and true crime', in Lisa Downing (ed.), After Foucault: Culture, Theory and Criticism in
the 21st Century (Cambridge University Press, 2018), pp. 185-200. I am quoting from the online version of this essay: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316492864.014
[7] Ibid.
[8]
I, Pierre Riviére, having slaughtered my mother, my sister, and my brother: A Case of Parricide in the 19th Century, is a study by Michel Foucault, trans, Frank Jellinek (University of Nebraska Press, 1982).
[9] Lisa Downing, quoting Foucault from I, Pierre Riviére ... in 'Foucault and true crime' (op. cit.)
[10-12] Lisa Downing, 'Foucault and true crime' ...
