Poetry as the Original Internet

Emily Parker, in The New Republic, reviews Robert Danton’s Poetry and the Police, which takes account of how poems spread “virally” through eighteenth century Paris. The book apparently begins with the police’s failed attempt to arrest the author of a poem which referred to Louis XV as a “monster.” Though the original author was not found,

The police deployed a legion of spies to get to the bottom of the matter. They interrogated a medical student who had recited the poem, and he identified the individual who gave the poem to him. A string of arrests followed, ultimately filling the cells of the Bastille with fourteen individuals accused of taking part in unauthorized poetry recitals. (The incident is thus known as “The Affair of the Fourteen”.) The poem was apparently passed along by a relatively young group of students, clerks, and priests.

Instead of drooling over the obvious differences between eighteenth-century Paris and today’s world (or indulging in the notion that “poems used to have such a social effect,” or some other weird retroactive fantasy), Parker highlights the similarity between the poems’ travels and the way that information is distributed today:

This book can be read in two ways. Historians will likely delight in the details and the diagrams provided by Darnton, who tips his hat to the impressive record-keeping of the French police. But others will be more interested in larger questions about how communications networks spread ideas and information. As the Internet continues to pose challenges to authoritarian regimes around the world, and opportunities to dissidents, Darnton’s lively and erudite historical monograph offers valuable insights for our own time.