Walter Benjamin - Radio Benjamin

The arrests happened so quickly that people used to say it was fortunate to be arrested during the day, for at night one was hardly given time to dress. So quickly that we know of a servant who, when his master disappeared into one of these cabs, unsuspectingly jumped in after him and had to spend the next two years in the Bastille for the sole reason that his release would have been a nuisance. The warrant for the arrests were so-called sealed letters— lettres de cachet in French — which bore no marks except the name of the person to be arrested. The prisoner was often not informed of the reason for the arrest until weeks later, sometimes months, sometimes never. When I tell you that some cronies of the king obtained letters of arrest of this kind on which the name of the detainee was not filled in, so that they could add one at their discretion, you will guess that abuse became the rule. How things were generally done in the Bastille can best be learned from the story of the man in the iron mask, which I’ll read to you now.

Thursday, September 18, 1698, at three o’clock in the afternoon, M. de Saint-Mars, governor of the Bastille, arrived here for the first time from Sainte-Marguerite Island (home to another large prison). In his sedan he brought with him a prisoner whose name was kept secret and who was always masked. He was initially placed in the Bazinière tower — all the towers of the Bastille have special names; at nine o’clock, once it was dark, I was ordered to take him to the third room of one of the other towers, which I had carefully furnished with all conceivable necessities. 1

That is all we have in writing to attest to the man in the iron mask until the news of his death, which we find entered in the diary of the same lieutenant five years later, on Monday, November 19, 1703: “The unknown prisoner, always veiled in a black velvet mask, whom the governor brought with him on coming from Sainte-Marguerite Island, felt a bit unwell yesterday after Mass and then died today, at around ten o’clock at night, without ever having been seriously ill …” 2He was buried the very next day; the lieutenant dutifully recorded in his diary that the interment cost forty francs. It is also known that the body was buried without its head, which, upon being cut off, was chopped into several pieces, ensuring that it was fully unrecognizable, and then buried in a number of different locations. In sum, the king and the governor of the Bastille feared that, even after his death, the identity of the man in the iron mask might still be discovered. They went so far as to order that every last thing he might have used be burned: underwear, clothes, mattresses, bedding, et cetera; the walls of his room were to be carefully scraped and whitewashed. Precautions included even loosening and removing all the stones in the walls one after the other, lest he had hidden a note somewhere or left some other sign by which he could be identified. His mask was not made of iron, though that is how he got his name, but of black velvet reinforced with fish bones. It was fastened at the back of his head with a sealed lock and constructed such that it was impossible for him to remove; indeed, no one could free him without the key to the lock. However, he could eat with it on with relative ease — the order was to kill him immediately were he ever to make his identity known. He was given everything he requested.

Judging by the respect he was shown, as well as by his fondness for fine linens, his expensive clothes, his skill at playing the zither, and many other indications, it was clear he was a nobleman. His table was always supplied with the most exquisite dishes; the governor only seldom ventured to sit in his presence. An old doctor in the Bastille, who occasionally would see and examine this remarkable man, later stated that he never saw his face. The man in the iron mask was very attractive physically, displayed good comportment, and captivated everyone with the mere sound of his voice. For all his apparent humility and subjection, however, it is believed that he was able to send a message to the outside world. The story goes that one day he threw out the window a wooden plate on which he had carved the name Macmouth. This tale has played a large role in the many attempts to discover the truth behind this mysterious man. Since the beginning, researchers have agreed that this prisoner of the state could only have been a scion of one of the noblest houses, indeed, in all probability a royal house. At the time, King James II ruled England and a son of Charles II rose up against him as anti-king. This anti-king was the duke of Monmouth. He was defeated and apparently executed on July 15, 1685. Almost at once, however, rumors arose that the executed man was an officer of the duke of Monmouth, who saved his master’s life by being executed in his place. The actual duke escaped to France, where he was arrested by Louis XIV. The man in the iron mask was alleged to have been this duke. I wanted to tell you this, but you should know that a great many explanations, hardly less plausible than this one, have emerged over the centuries. To this day, none of the many historians researching the case has found any conclusive evidence.

I told you how everyone released from this prison had to sign an oath never to speak a single word of what he had seen and heard in there. If today not all regulations are as strict as they’re made to seem, this was even more true back then, for we know a lot about the Bastille. And from whom should we have learned it, but from the prisoners themselves? The guards certainly had no interest in relating for posterity all the cruelty and harassment of which they were guilty. Of the many aristocratic or educated people who had been incarcerated in the Bastille, a good number published memoirs much later, or at least recollections of their years in the prison. But not in France, of course. Manuscripts in those days had to be smuggled to a foreign country, usually Holland, or if they were printed in France, the place of publication was given as Holland, usually The Hague. I will now read you a page from one of these memoirs, written by Constantin de Renneville, who was jailed in the Bastille under Louis XIV. The passage shows just how diverse the means of communications actually were among the prisoners, among whom all interactions were forbidden.

I was always eager to converse with someone. Man is born to be social; and this natural urge was sharpened even more by the solitude in which I lived. While the prisoners below me never answered me, those above finally did so by way of signals; but it was impossible, or at least very dangerous, to bore a hole in the ceiling through which to pass a note. It was very white and smooth; the slightest nick would easily have been noticed by the guard. After much contemplation, however, I found a way of communicating my thoughts to those above. It was admittedly slow and demanded much attention, but as such it occupied us longer and shielded us from the boredom of our insomnia. I contrived an alphabet in my head, which I performed by striking the wall with a stick and the chair. For A I tapped once, for B twice, C three times, and so on. A short pause indicated the transition from one letter to the next, a longer one the end of a word. After much repetition, those above me grasped it, and I was happily surprised when, in the same manner, they asked me who I was, why I was there, and so forth. When I was later privileged to be given a cellmate, I gave up this tiresome way of communicating. For five years I heard nothing more of it, and I was more than a little surprised when I later heard other prisoners speaking in the same manner with great fluency. My invention had been perfected; it came to be called “the art of speaking with the cane.” By necessity, others invented even stranger systems. There was an officer who was not acknowledged as the nobleman he truly was. In an attempt to validate his claim, he falsified a document that had been lost. Now he sat in the Bastille and to converse with his fellow prisoners, he took a piece of coal and drew very large, single words on the table in his room. He then dragged this table to the window and tipped it on end so that the table top appeared in the opening of the window. The words were written so large that one could discern them from the distant windows of opposing towers, and other prisoners answered him in like fashion. — For a while, one of the governors kept a dog, which often ran around the courtyard of the Bastille. The prisoners passed the time by teaching the dog to fetch; they would throw a wad of paper into the courtyard and the dog would pick it up and bring it back. When they had finally trained him to the point that he would drop the ball of paper in front of specific cells, they began to write messages on the paper before crumpling it up and throwing it. Messages were thus conveyed from one prisoner to the next by the retrieving dog. One day, however, the governor caught on and had the windows barred so narrowly that no one could throw anything out of them. 3