June 23, 2009

languille

i’ve always skirted the edge of obsession with marie antoinette, the way that the people of her time misunderstood her, the myths that people believe about her now.  i’ve never watched any films about her but the antonia fraser biography is a bible.  as a consequence of my profound obsession, i’m equally interested in the elements of the device that killed her and all of the other unfortunates (and those who deserved it) of the revolution.  i think that france abolished the death penalty in 1980, and until that point the only methods of execution were guillotine or firing squad.

somewhere along the line, i read an account by a doctor named beaurieux who in 1905 planned with a condemned man named languille to attempt to have an element of contact with him past the point that his head would be chopped.  some of beaurieux’s words about the experiment:



"Immediately after the decapitation, the condemned man's eyelids and
lips contracted for 5 or 6 seconds. I waited a few seconds and the
contractions ceased, the face relaxed, the eyelids closed halfway over
the eyeballs so that only the whites of the eyes were visible, exactly
like dying of newly deceased people.

At that moment I shouted "Languille" in a loud voice, and I saw that
his eyes opened slowly without twitching, the movements were distinct
and clear, the look was not dull and empty, the eyes which were fully
alive were indisputably looking at me. After a few seconds, the
eyelids closed again, slowly and steadily.

I addressed him again. Once more, the eyelids were raised slowly,
without contractions, and two undoubtedly alive eyes looked at me
attentively with an expression even more piercing than the first time.
Then the eyes shut once again. I made a third attempt. No reaction.
The whole episode lasted between 25 and 30 seconds."