Foucault’s Pendulum: Revolution of One Kind or Another

Victor Hugo, a giant of the literary world, believed in the reason of man. Imbued with enlightenment fervor, he was a committed republican and opponent of the death penalty, ultimately believing that people can for themselves work towards the best version of society if given the chance. And while it isn’t certain whether Hugo’s view of history is teleological – the idea that history will ultimately, inevitably improve itself – or not, his belief in reason would suggest that it is. So it’s fitting that Hugo is buried in the Pantheon, a building that looks (and does) contain the bodies of many people that have shifted history in large ways. But even more fittingly – and certainly more subtly – is that Hugo is buried under Foucault’s Pendulum.

Foucault’s Pendulum lies in the middle of the main floor of the Pantheon, under the auspices of the expected romanesque statues and ceiling paintings. But the existence of the Pendulum inside the Pantheon surprised me. In the very center of the main floor of the Pantheon is a circular railing circumscribing a design painted onto the marble floor: a compass, surrounded by organic forms propagating outwards, encircled by a white stripe, then a black one, before a minimalist olive branch completes the circle. In the center – a raised glass dias inscribed with numbers. Most dramatically, a gold sphere swings back and forth, always on the verge of oscillation, attached to a string connected to the top of the pantheon, some 60 feet above.

When I first saw Foucault’s Pendulum, I stared at it for minutes without quite understanding what it was, or what it was doing in the Pantheon. The sign some meters away explained: in 1851, Leon Foucault set out to prove physically that the Earth rotates around itself, and gained approval from Napoleon III to set his demonstration in the Pantheon. The result is a science display fitting for an art exhibit. And while I don’t understand the exact science of how the pendulum relies solely on the Earth’s rotation to swing, I can understand some of its significance. That is, an object that spins with the Earth’s rotation has no choice but to spin. There is no possibility otherwise.

Likewise, history seems to have had no chance to happen otherwise, at least according to the opinions of many men buried in the Pantheon that believe fate was on their side. Ironically, history itself has largely proven that understanding of the world wrong, as many things predicted to happen haven’t, and what may have looked like a gradual sloping towards Utopia has regressed with the advent of Climate Change and the World Wars, among other devastating historical events. Regardless, I’m not currently interested in the debate over history as teleological or not, but rather the power that believing history will be on your side has.

But Victor Hugo’s tomb itself belies that sense of import, despite the Pantheon’s impressive appearance and selective entry requirements. His tomb lies in the crypt underground, and has the ominous, earthy feeling you’d expect of a crypt. Down a couple corridors lies a room with Victor Hugo and Alexander Dumas. In the same room lie two empty slots, bereft of any coffins. The room is nothing special. Many of the other coffins had flowers on them. Hugo’s did not.

But I did find this sense of history somewhere else: the Sorbonne, the historic site of the University of Paris. The building itself impresses the same sense the Pantheon does with its imposing archways, formal columns, and similarly Roman statues detailing the campus. It provides the sense of history in the making, that there –at this moment – is someone within those halls that might one day be buried within the Pantheon.

One group of students that believed that was the fictional Society of the Friends of the ABC in Les Miserables, a group that Hugo described as “A Group That Came Close to Becoming Historic.” The ABC society is described as a group of mostly student radicals who often met in the Cafe Musain, located near the Sorbonne and the Pantheon. Walking down the Rue St-Michel where this fictional Cafe was located and seeing as the ABC society did makes me understand how easily one could consider themselves as a historical figure in the making. I can imagine more clearly the discussions that might have happened in these cafes, arguments over the future of France over a cup of coffee. I’m certain that seeing the Pantheon and the Sorbonne and all the figures in chiseled stone statues changed the direction of these conversations; I can imagine an ambitious figure such as Enjolras asking another member of the ABC what it would take to have a statue built of them placed there, or discussing their desire to be buried in the Pantheon down the road. The fate of the ABC society was to start a barricade in the uprisings of 1832, where all of the major figures of the society died in the climax of Les Miserables. There’s a plaque in the Pantheon dedicated to the people who died in the revolutions of 1830 and 1848. Were the ABC society real, their names might have been displayed there. Enjolras might have gotten his wish.

Even when not bookpacking, I’m surrounded by the history of revolutionary Paris. The 1968 Paris protests began in-part at the metro station I use to go to class here everyday. In Les Gobelins metro station, high-schoolers assembled to begin the protests that eventually threatened fears of civil war or revolution. In a poetry book I was reading at a cafe, Jorie Graham described her experience in the student uprisings at the Sorbonne in ‘68. It’s hard not to be surrounded by revolutions in France, a fact as certain as the rotation of the Earth, or the oscillation of Foucault’s Pendulum, spinning and spinning, hanging from the long, long thread of history.