Even though some of these aspirations might today have been met by Social Security, we should not lose sight of the fact that these proposals were very daring, almost fantastic, in the context of the mid-nineteenth century, as can be seen from the criticisms and the reservations of the workers themselves to Flora’s ideas, which they regarded as most unrealistic. But she was convinced that there were no obstacles that will-power, energy and action could not overcome, because she was both — and this was an unusual mixture — a romantic dreamer, capable of being caught up in fantasies completely disconnected from reality, and a formidable activist, with a contagious power of persuasion and a passion that led her to confront every difficulty. From the time that she conceived of the Workers’ Union in 1843, until her death, some two years later, Flora Tristán was a real volcanic spirit, incessantly active and versatile: instead of artists and writers, her flat in the Rue du Bac was now full of workers and leaders of friendly societies and unions, and when she went out, it was to appear in workshops or to publish in proletarian publications, attending interminable meetings and sometimes getting caught up in heated discussions with those that objected to her ideas. It could not have been easy for a woman, with little experience of this work and unfamiliar with the political climate, to cope with these proletarian venues, which were not used to the involvement of women in activities which had until then been the domain of the men. And yet she threw herself into the task. For even though she saw that among the workers there were also many bourgeois prejudices and discriminatory attitudes towards women (which were also shared on occasion by the women workers themselves, some of whom insulted her, thinking that she was looking to seduce their husbands), she was not intimidated and she did not soften her message or her approach, that mystic, redemptive energy that fuelled her Union crusade.
That was why, in April 1844, she began her propaganda tour around the central and southern regions of France, which was to be just the beginning of a journey throughout other parts of the country and then through the whole of Europe. Weakened by illness and with a bullet lodged in her chest, she had to deal with innumerable obstacles on her journey, including the hostility of the authorities that searched her hotel room, confiscated her belongings and banned her meetings. She held out for a mere eight months, until her death in Bordeaux, on 14 November 1844. But in the course of her journey, she became ever more impressive and her actions became increasingly moving as she took her social message not just to the workers but also to the leading members of the establishment — bishops, businessmen, newspaper owners — convinced that her ideas for social justice would also win over the exploiters. Her tragic death, at forty-one years of age, brought to an end a richly varied life, admirable in its dedication — albeit marked by the nineteenth-century dream of utopia — which represents an important stage in the struggle for women’s rights and for a society free of all forms of discrimination, exploitation and injustice.
There is no better introduction to the life and work of this extraordinary woman than Flora Tristán. La Paria et son rêve, a very thorough edition of her correspondence edited by Stéphane Michaud, Professor of Comparative Literature at the Sorbonne, President of the Society of Romantic and Nineteenth-Century Studies and the author of a recent important book on Lou Andreas-Salomé, which combines erudition with a clear and elegant style. Professor Michaud is probably the leading expert on the life and work of Flora Tristán, having tracked it for many years with the obstinacy of a bloodhound and the tenderness of a lover. Her studies on Tristán and the symposia she has organised on her intellectual and political achievements have been decisive in rescuing Flora Tristán from the unjustified critical neglect she had suffered, despite isolated work like the admirable book Jules Puech wrote on her in 1925.
This new edition of her correspondence, expanded and enriched by notes and commentaries, contains new letters alongside the ones we already know, and also many letters from her correspondents, as well as mapping the social and political context of Flora’s life. The volume as a whole offers an excellent overview of her times: the hopes, polemics and personal disputes that were bound up in the first attempts in France to organise workers politically, the distance that often existed between reality and the ambitious messianic plans of the utopians, and the psychology of the main character herself, who is extremely frank in her letters and in the comments that she wrote in the margins of the correspondence that she received.
There are still major gaps in her biography, but these letters offer an absorbing portrait of her life following her return to France from Peru, especially the final two years. The letters are disarmingly fresh and sincere — luckily she did not write for posterity — revealing all her contradictions and weaknesses. She was a realist and a dreamer, generous and irascible, naïve and pugnacious, truculent and romantic, bold and never discouraged.
This book is the best homage that Flora Tristán could be offered in this the second centenary of her birth.
Marbella, July 2002
Also by Mario Vargas Llosa
The Cubs and Other Stories
The Time of the Hero
The Green House
Captain Pantoja and the Special Service
Conversation in the Cathedral
Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter
The War of the End of the World
The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta
The Perpetual Orgy