Ruins of Empire
Les Ruines, ou méditations sur
les révolutions des empires (1791) by Constantin
François Chasseboeuf, comte de Volney (1757-1820) is one of the geniunely
radical documents produced in the early years of the French Revolution, a
work that severely critiques all the reigning ideologies of the world --
whether political or theological -- and proposes their abolition. That
the Creature should get his principal education into the institutions of
modern culture from such a profoundly antiestablishment work must have a
significant influence on his own subsequent distaste for human culture.
But there is an ironic side to it as well, for Volney's attempt to create
the blueprint for the new revolutionary man here falls on the ears of a
uniquely revolutionary and wholly dispossessed individual. The first
English translation of Les Ruines, published as The Ruins, or a
Survey of the Revolutions of Empires (London: Joseph Johnson, 1792)
was done by Godwin's close friend
James Marshall. Volney himself thought the translation too tame and in 1802 oversaw a new English
version published in Paris, which was
reprinted frequently and became the standard conduit for his ideas
throughout the English-speaking world. Among those strongly effected by
it was Percy Bysshe Shelley, whose
Queen Mab shows considerable
debt to its ideas.
