We first encounter Georges Danton – one of the three main characters in Hilary Mantel’s 1992 novel A Place of Greater Safety – as a young boy, shortly after he has been gored by a bull. On the one hand this can be read as a straightforward act of characterization: Danton’s injurious childhood becomes formative for his revolutionary future. Yet, the description of Danton’s childhood injury is also crucial in relating the fictional character in Mantel’s novel to the historical character upon which he is based, not least because the only extant portrait of Danton shows a man with a heavily scarred face (Charpentier). The rooting of a fictional narrative within historical detail is a central concern for Mantel. Her fifth novel, like many of her other works, is a historical novel, this one set during the French Revolution. It traces the lives of three revolutionary protagonists – Georges Danton, Camille Desmoulins, and Maximilien Robespierre – from childhood to the execution of Danton and Desmoulins in 1794. A Place of Greater Safety is written in explicit relation to archival traces. As Mantel herself explains in a short author’s note that precedes the text, much of her historical research found its way into the finished novel in its entirety: “Where I can,” she writes, “I have used [the characters’] real words – from recorded speeches or preserved writings – and woven them into my own dialogue” (xi). Yet archives do not simply figure in the novel as the source-material for Mantel’s fiction. Indeed, midway through the novel, while attending the salon of Madame Roland, the scar by which Danton was first introduced starts to speak to the host: “Yes, take a good look, his face said; you have never in your safe little life seen a man like me” (425). Here, Danton’s scar not only carries a record of the historical past, but actively structures Madame Roland’s experience of the present. It is the manner in which the archive not only records but actively produces history that I will explore in this essay.

中文翻译：

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“文献证据”：希拉里·曼特尔（Hilary Mantel）的《更安全的地方》中的档案代理

我们第一次遇到小男孩乔治·丹顿（Georges Danton），这是希拉里·曼特尔（Hilary Mantel）1992年的小说《更安全的地方》中的三个主要角色之一。一方面，这可以理解为一种简单的刻画行为：丹顿充满伤害的童年时代成为他革命性未来的形成因素。然而，丹顿对童年时代的伤害的描述对于将曼特尔小说中的虚构人物与他所基于的历史人物联系起来也是至关重要的，这不仅是因为现存的唯一的丹顿肖像显示了一个脸上有严重伤痕的人（夏蓬蒂尔）。虚构叙事在历史细节中的扎根是曼特尔关注的中心问题。与其他许多作品一样，她的第五本小说是一部历史小说，是法国大革命期间创作的。它追溯了三个革命主角的生活-乔治·丹顿（Georges Danton），卡米尔·德斯穆兰（Camille Desmoulins）和马克西米利安·罗伯斯庇尔（Maximilien Robespierre）–从童年到1794年丹顿和德斯穆兰的处决。正如曼特尔本人在文字开头的简短作者注解中所解释的那样，她的许多历史研究都将其全文纳入了完成的小说中：“我在哪里，”她写道，“我用过[人物]的真实词语–从录制的演讲或保存的著作中–并将它们编入我自己的对话中”（xi）。然而，档案馆并不仅仅是将小说作为曼特尔小说的原始资料。确实，在小说中途，在参加罗兰夫人的沙龙时，丹顿第一次被引入的伤疤开始对主持人说话：“是的，好好看一下，他的脸说；您从未在安全的小生活中见过像我这样的人”（425）。在这里，丹顿的伤痕不仅记录了历史的过去，而且积极地构筑了罗兰夫人目前的经历。这是档案馆不仅记录而且积极地产生历史的方式，我将在本文中进行探讨。