5 January 2020

Today I am thinking about Charlotte Corday. She’s mentioned briefly in The Fan-Maker’s Inquisition that I’ve been reading today, so I looked her up, to add her to my list of beheaded ladies whose heads I might dream through. I’m thinking of her being just 24 years old, and killing a man with a single strike, unpracticed, I’m thinking of a kitchen knife hidden in her bodice, I’m thinking of her copy of Parallel Lives, I’m thinking of her requesting her portrait be taken just before she was to be executed, I’m thinking of her standing in the cart on the way to her death with the rain falling upon her, I’m thinking of the cheek of her just-decapitated head being slapped, I’m thinking of her corpse being checked for virginity, I’m thinking of the name Angel of Assassination, I’m thinking of the notion that her skull was kept by the Bonaparte family. Now I want to read the Camus essay Reflections on the Guillotine, but my library doesn’t seem to have it - I’ll look elsewhere.