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Nature

The saviour and the executioner-gardener

sauveur; bourreau; jardinier

The saving political figure is imagined as eventually making the executioner a gardener who cuts only cabbage and lettuce heads.

From the book

The Gods Are Athirst

Anatole France · Diotimos Editions · 2026

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Meaning

Related words and phrases.

The saving political figure is imagined as eventually making the executioner a gardener who cuts only cabbage and lettuce heads. The verbal link between human heads and vegetable heads gives the promised peace a concrete image. But this imagined transformation is conditional on Gamelin’s prior extermination of enemies. It belongs entirely to his silent address to Robespierre, not to a programme the leader states in the observed encounter.

Places to read

  1. Chapter XXVI, paragraph 6Frenchfaire du bourreau un jardinier: make the executioner a gardener. Gamelin projects the future transformation of punitive work.
  2. Chapter XXVI, paragraph 6Frenchles têtes des choux et des laitues: the heads of cabbages and lettuces. The imagined harmless cutting depends on a prior condition of extermination.