เหตุผลว่า
ทำไมเขียนเรื่องการปฏิวัติฝรั่งเศส
How to read about
the French revolution in this Thai blog
Some years ago,
a couple of readers had asked me to tell the story of the French revolution. I considered
their asking a challenge, and I accepted it because writing this topic at that time
was a test of social skill. I had friends (and foes) on both sides of political
spectrum at that moment.
However, I never
thought then, and I don’t think now, that the readers and I perceive the story
of the French revolution in the same perspective. Needless to say but say it
anyway, I’m not impartial in looking at the French revolution because during
all of my existential years I’ve learned to have my worldview. Let me
illustrate the point: to me Louis XVI is Mr.Hakka 1er, and
Marie-Antoinette is Madame la Grande Mademoiselle, as a Hakka woman, with
a character of the insipid red wine, she fits well the role of la
Austrichienne, a foreign woman parachuted to high power politics in France,
a country and culture she doesn’t belong. In parallel comparison, both of my
protagonists, she and her brother cannot even speak Thai properly. Both of them
were then, and are now, too weird and unaccomodatable for us whose power of
assimilation and empathy is self-evident and legendary. They were then, and are
now, up to our necks.