Irony as armor: Yale’s Maurice Samuels explores literary survival in the ‘gray zone’ of tyranny

When a democracy slides into authoritarianism, what should an author do? Flee into exile, retreat into silence or play a dangerous double game with the new regime?

On Tuesday, the French-Speaking Worlds: Then and Now research group, sponsored by the Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages (DLCL) and the France-Stanford Center, hosted Maurice Samuels, Betty Jane Anlyan Professor of French at Yale University. In his talk, “After the Coup: Literature in an Age of Tyranny,” Samuels used 19th-century France as a mirror for the modern-day erosion of democratic norms, exploring questions of the role of the author during tyranny.

Samuels framed his research both as a literary archaeology as well as a response to the current political climate.

Samuels began his project in 2022, “when memories of the January 6th storming of the American Capitol were still fresh,” he said at the talk. “Since then, our country’s descent into something resembling authoritarianism… has made these questions relevant in a way that I didn’t quite foresee.”

Samuels described the historical context for his talk. In December 1851, Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, the elected President of the French Second Republic, staged a coup d’état to remain in power, eventually crowning himself Emperor Napoleon III. He dismantled the free press, arrested dissidents and established what scholars call an “authoritarian democracy,” a precursor to modern illiberal regimes.

During his talk, Samuels outlined the three paths available to writers of the era. First, Victor Hugo was voluntarily exiled to British-controlled Jersey and Guernsey, from where he could bombard the emperor with polemics. Second, Gustave Flaubert chose to retreat internally, burrowing into his work “like a mole,” in his own words. And then there was Charles Baudelaire, the poet of “Les Fleurs du mal.” Baudelaire, Samuels argued, occupied the “gray zone,” a space of semi-resistance and complicity that defines the experience of living under tyranny.

Challenging the romantic image of Baudelaire as a staunch revolutionary, Samuels presented evidence from the Archives Nationales showing the poet repeatedly petitioning the government for money. Baudelaire lived in a state of “double consciousness,” Samuels said, soliciting funds from a regime he privately loathed while masking his true politics behind layers of irony.

Samuels analyzed Baudelaire’s prose poem “Assommons les pauvres!” (“Let’s Beat Up the Poor!”). In the poem, a speaker beats a beggar senselessly to teach him equality; the beggar fights back, and the two end up embracing.

Samuels was asked if Baudelaire could be considered “patient zero” for the modern use of irony as a shield against political fatigue, a “protective coloration” for those who feel powerless.

“Irony is a very useful tool in an authoritarian regime because… the definition of irony is you say one thing and mean something else. So you can [be ironic]… as long as you signal enough to the reader. They can interpret what you say differently, but there’s nothing ostensibly that will fall afoul of the censor.”

Samuels also validated reading the poem as a wake-up call to passive citizenry. 

“You can look at the beggar as the French people… and what is it going to take to get them going?” Samuels said. “That’s in a sense a more straightforward reading of it… trying to arouse indignation.”

The talk sparked debate, transforming the Q&A into a discussion on the economics of art and power.

Margaret Cohen, the Andrew B. Hammond Professor of French Language, Literature, and Civilization, noted the eerie resonance of Samuels’ description of life under the Empire.

“I found this talk so resonant with our contemporary moment,” Cohen said at the talk. “You have such lines in there… the ‘outer conformity, inner dissent, visible only to us and even maybe not.'”

The conversation shifted to the mechanics of the coup itself. Dan Edelstein, the William H. Bonsall Professor of French, picked up on a line from Baudelaire’s poem about theories that make people happy “in twenty-four hours.” While some critics view this as a satire of utopian philosophy, Edelstein suggested a darker realism.

“Reading it through your lens, the ‘vingt-quatre heures’… [is actually] the speed of a coup,” Edelstein said.

Andrei Pesic, an assistant professor of French and Italian specializing in the history of cultural production, pressed Samuels on how government handouts warped the literary marketplace.

“There’s the market for selling newspapers, articles, books, poems,” Pesic said. “And then there’s the selling of yourself to the regime by asking for a subsidy.”

Students also joined in this discussion of French literature. Samuels was asked if Baudelaire was sincere to the exiled Hugo, asking if the poet was truly siding with the resistance or merely performing a literary role. Samuels admitted the ambiguity, noting that while Baudelaire publicly honored Hugo, his private letters were filled with jealousy and “really nasty things,” Samuels said.

Samuels left the audience with a sobering thought. While we often look to heroes like Hugo for inspiration, most of us are more like Baudelaire: messy, compromised and trying to survive.

“In many ways, it is [Baudelaire] who represents the most typical subject of tyranny,” Samuels said. “Forced to rely on a regime he scorned… and to dream of one day enacting revenge against all those who beat him down.”

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