Clark presents the unrest at street level through eyewitness accounts, and he weaves this material into an impressive transcontinental tableau ... Brims with poetry, novels, memoirs and paintings, and Clark is drawn to color, sound and dress ... Clark acknowledges the spectral presence of the French Revolution for the actors involved in this drama, but, in making comparisons, he is more interested in musing on the present.
While Clark’s book is full of incident, his heart isn’t really in the narrative. The first really dramatic moment, the uprising in Paris, isn’t described until he is almost 300 pages in. But although his book is a daunting prospect for the casual reader, it’s a marvel of research and analysis.
The society brought to life in Revolutionary Spring thrills with unexpected energy. Clark speaks the language of liberal moderation, of political radicalism, of religion and of patriotism in ways that capture something of the glamour that infused them at the time ... This is narrative history in the grand style, and Clark does not neglect the great set pieces. If you want the February revolution, the fall of Metternich, the Five Days of Milan, you will find them vividly rendered here in a prose that interlaces deep learning with deliberate anachronism.
Magnificent ... Clark does a remarkable job weaving together the myriad strands that make up the narrative, allowing us to see the events in granular detail and with synoptic, Europe-wide vision ... Perhaps the most important thread running through Revolutionary Spring is the fraught relationship, and often open conflict, between liberals and radicals.
In telling this highly complex story, Clark displays his trademark erudition. As befits a historian of Germany, he describes the Berlin and Vienna revolutions in granular detail ... However, Clark’s approach does have one drawback. His core aim is to put the people themselves at its centre; he eloquently describes the dreadful conditions in which great swaths of them lived, and the huge variety of grievances and ideals that drove them to rise up. This approach certainly gives the book momentum. But in emphasising movement over resistance, Clark neglects context.
This book...offers something refreshingly original — it’s fascinating, suspenseful, revelatory, alive. Familiar characters are given vibrancy and previously unknown players emerge from the shadows. Thousands of quickened hearts meld into one revolution, a being of mercurial mood. Clark’s prose is beautiful but also crystal clear; he clarifies as he adorns.
Authoritative ... Revolutionary Spring rescues that crucial moment when possibility was cracked open; Clark also looks unflinchingly at the methods used to weld that crack shut ... It’s difficult not to be roused by Clark’s stylish narrative of this intoxicating opening phase.