A Revolutionary Calendar

The French Republican Calendar, in use from1793 to 1805 and revived briefly during the Paris Commune of 1871, was an effort to secularise time and return symbolic power to the rural worker. The poet Fabre d’Églantine renamed the months after seasons, while each day, instead of being dedicated to a saint, was dedicated to a plant, animal, mineral or agricultural tool.These names are the starting point for the poems of A Revolutionary Calendar, in which the interplay of etymologies, translati...