The Revolutionary Café

By Nora Griffin

            The Paris café through the centuries has played a powerful role in the social, political and cultural development of France.  From the era of the anciene regime marked by the absolute rule of Louis XIV, to the radical stirring of the workers during the Revolutionary period the café has served as a catalyst for change in society.   The term "café" is often broadly applied to any drinking institution that also serves as a social gathering place.  There is however no one definition of what a typical café constituted because the institution’s social and cultural purpose was always in a state of flux.  

Prior to 1830 there were many different types of cafés frequented by a wide range of clientele representing either the Parisian nobility or the Parisian worker.  Until the Revolutionary period in the 1780’s and 1790’s there was no middle ground between the elite café and the working class café.  The café as a political institution dates back to the 17^th century.  During the reign of the Sun King there was a marked distinction between the working-class tavern and the upper class café,  known also as a coffeehouse.  The nobility of Paris would engage in frank and often times critical discussions of the politics of Louis XIV.  On the other hand the tavern fostered an environment that was basically immune from the politics of the age.  The act of policing cafés came into fashion under Louis XIV.  The king was anxious over the prospect of his nobleman exchanging information and engaging in political discussion.  A police report taken at the time clearly articulates the differences between the taverns and cafés.  “In cabarets they sing of love and war, while in cafés politics is discussed by malcontents who speak wrongly of affairs of state.”   

The coffee houses of the 1680’s were elegant institutions that would later serve as the aesthetic models for the less elitist cafés a century later.  The political consciousness of the upper-class cafés was implanted into the more populist environment of the Palais Royale café district.    In the 1780’s the re-construction of the Palais-Royal,  a commercial as well as residentially area,  mirrored the rise of the bourgeoisie in Paris.   The primary purpose of the Palais Royale according to its designer the duc d’Orleans was to be the a center for fashionable society to meet.  The duke also wished to make a sizeable profit off the businesses and shops located in the arcades.  The enclosed arcades of the Palais-Royale were also seen as a perfect site for clubs and cafés by entrepreneurs.  The new breed of café dwellers rejected the stiff etiquette of the Old Regime cafés in favor of a more relaxed approach.  In the society of the clubs and cafés an individual’s heredity or social standing was no longer important or necessary to insure their acceptance into the institution.  The fusion of popular and elite culture in the cafés was what made French society modern.  Intellectuals, writers, lawyers, and ideologues all intent on changing the balance of power in society, gathered for political discussion and debate.  The combination of the working-class drinking establishment and the intellectually minded café had tremendous power over the conception and outcome of the French Revolution. 

The cafés of the Revolutionary period for the first time saw a distinction between the a respectable literary society and a “bohemian” literary society.  In the 1750’s the café Procope and other Left Bank establishments inspired and became home to the   philosophes Diderot, Voltaire, and  Rousseau.   It was in café Procope that Diderot developed the concept for the Encyclopedia .   The café itself contained little ornamentation and was darkly lit.*   By the 1790’s the clientele of café Procope and her  fellow literay cafés was made up of political journalists and writers referred to contemptuously by high socity as “grub street” intellectuals.  The most important and colorful writer-agitator  to explode onto the café scene was journalist Jean-Paul Marat.

Marat was one of many “grub street” writers who concieved of the idea of distibuting newspapers in cafés to give a voice to the un-happy masses of Paris.  Marat’s journal  L’Ami du Peuple (The Friend of the People) was first published on Septeber 12^th, 1789 and kept being published until his death in 1793.  As the title of the paper suggests Marat was a man that truly believed in the power of the people and the progress of the Revolution.   

The character of Marat has become the prototype for the romantic revolutionary.  He reveled in living a squalid life of self-imposed poverty.  When he had to live underground in the Paris sewers Marat stayed put in the company of rats long after the danger of his arrest had passed.  At one point in his life Marat had been trained doctor in England also specialising in sciences languages.  Although he claimed to have faith in the people,  Marat didn’t believe that the masses could govern themsleves without some form of dictatorship. A firm believer in violence to aid the Revolution  Marat wrote “I believe in the cutting off of heads…in order to ensure public tranquility.”   When his life was endangered by  counter revolutionary groups Marat began to distrust his former friends and allies.  His contempt for the distorted reality of what the Revoltion had become is

* There are contrasting accounts of the atmosphere of café Procope. It is also believed that the café had elegant marble topped tables.  

 evident when he wrote “O Parisians, you frivolous,  feeble, and cowardly folk…you have a rage for liberty as though it were a new fashion in clothes…”

            Marat and his fellow rabble rousers are credited with helping to develop a new language of the café.  At the time it was popular to adopt the tone of the plain-speaking worker when writing pamphlets and papers.  The verbal violence of Marat’s journalism is assimilated from much of the bawdy, aggressive vocabulary of the Parisian workers.  The repition of certain vulgar insults (brigand, coquin, and assassin ) used by journaists helped to express deep politcal statements in terms that could be understood by the un-educated.   The combination of written and oral café culture fueled by the poilitcal and social movements of the time has endured through the centuries.

One of the of the abilities of the café was that it allowed its clientele to see themselves in a broad social context.  The café was able to reconcile the individual and the collective of society from which he came from.   The working classes were able to discover their power as individuals and as a unified whole in the newly democratised Revolutionary cafés.  The Paris elite by the 1780’s were no longer a seperatist community, but fully incorporated into the intellectual bourgeoise of the Palais-Royale cafés.   After theFrench Revolution the café failed to re-gain the political importance that it had once held.  What did remain of the café’s revolutionary legacy was its ability to inspire and provide a alternate society to writers trying to make sense of the world they live in.