The Defeat at Sedan, Part 1

 

 by Brett Rutherford

     Translated and adapted from Victor Hugo, l’Année Terrible.

PART I

“Toulon[1] was no big deal — Sedan is everything!”

O, the man of tragic airs —
how did he think it would end?

     (As logic dictates!)
His own crime’s captive, he yielded up
     to fate, blindfolded,
to dark outcomes that played him like dice.
Look at him now, the stranded,
     deluded dreamer,
object of unfathomable blame!

Who looks on high, formidable,
too distant to see, yet always there,
the one who never looks away at crime,
has seized upon him. God pushed
this arrant tapeworm, this specter
on two legs, to where he is today,
this gutter-shadow where History shudders.

This depth of shame was saved for him alone,
To the dry well’s bottom, sinister,
he is cast, abandoned.  The Judge of all
surpassed all expectations of his fall.

To think that he dared to dream at all.
Such jumbled thoughts he had. “I reign,
yet all despise me. How is this so?
Must I make them fear me, too?”

“It is my turn to rule the world.
Earth, I am my uncle’s equal, am I not?
Why do none tremble when my name is said?
Lacking an Austerlitz, I have my Brumaire.

“For Uncle, both Machiavelli and Homer served.
I’ll settle for Machiavelli, for scheming alone
must substitute for Achaean valor.
I have my triumphs. Galifet I have,
Morny was mine — oh, well! —
     Rouher and Devienne remain.
So much to do remains! I’ll have Madrid,
and Lisbon and Vienna, all in good time.
My hand extends across the map to Dresden,
Munich and Naples I’ll swallow up.

“At sea I will humiliate the Union Jack,
and ancient Albion will kneel to me.
What use to steal unless one seizes
everything? Take all, or vegetate!
They will call me ‘the Great.’
I will have as valets the mitered Pope
and the turbaned Pasha, the Tsar
bowed down beneath his bearskin and sable.
I have sent men to fire upon
the rabble at Boulevard Montmartre.
Why should I blink at invading Berlin?
I am perfectly capable of defeating Prussia.
Besieging Berlin is no more difficult for me
    than taking an ice at Tortoni’s café.
Presiding over La Banque de France,
its conversations and coffee
is just as much work as ruling Mainz.
I’ll topple St. Petersburg and Istanbul:
what’s left of them will resemble
a junk-heap of broken porcelain dogs.

 “Pius and the gentleman king[2]
     are at a stand-off
Two he-goats in a meadow,
England and Ireland butt heads
and make a great commotion.
From Spain to Cuba it’s one great cloud
of war and rebellion.
Austrian Joseph who pretends to be Caesar,
and Wilhelm on his throne, a pathetic Attila,
     pull out each other’s
          nearly non-existent hair.

“I’ll put a stop to them,
and I, not past my prime
no matter what they say, I,
the former clown, shall stand
above all scepters, the arbiter.
Like everything else I have done,
I shall do it suddenly.
There shall be no discussions,
debates or plebiscites.
All Powerful, Most High,
above all classes, titles and stations,
that is the place for me.

“From false Napoleon I pass
to a truer Charlemagne. Is that
too much to ask? My vision!
What will it take to make it happen?

“Money, of course. If Magne will please
to advance the funds to LeBoeuf,
much can be accomplished by stealth.
Like Haroun in midnight Baghdad
     escorted by his grand vizier,
I shall be everywhere all at once, unseen,
and seeing everything. The empty streets
shall be full of my eyes and ears.
Then suddenly I shall strike.
The Rubicon is far behind me:
my toe-tip waits to test the Rhine.

“The Prefect of Police[3] will throw flowers
upon me from his balcony to celebrate.
Magnan[4] is dead; master of coups,
he cannot help me now.
Frossard[5] is out there fighting.
And Saint-Arnaud,[6] ruthless,
reliable, has disappeared.

“I am left with Bazaine, my general.
He’s good enough, I think.
Bismarck is such a buffoon, anyway,
twisting this way and that like an acrobat.
I am just as good at sleight-of-hand,
and I will catch him sleeping, no doubt.

“Chance is my ally. Look how he
has served me thus far, throne and all.
I have made him my right-hand-man
and Fraud is my consort.

“I may seem timid in person, but I conquer.
I may be infamous, but how I shine! Onward!
He who has Paris in his hands can win anything.
I’d might as well win the lottery, too!
Everything smiles at me, so why settle? Take it all!
Luck is fickle, I know, but this is my universe.
What I want, comes. What I like, lands in my lap.
This tiny, black, starry globe, lost in the cosmos,
     fits under my goblet.
I have stolen away France; let’s make off with Europe.

“December is my cloak. To the eye,
I am no more than a shadow.
Even if eagles have fled my service,
     I have plenty of falcons.
No matter. The shade and quiet
     are to our advantage. Attack!”

But what he did,
     was done in the light of day.
All known in London, in Rome,
and in Vienna. Everyone saw
what a disaster was happening,
all open-eyed except this man.

And Berlin smiled,
    and like the patient snake,
observed him silently.
Each move he made already drawn
     in their smoke-filled war-rooms.

His furtive motions fooled no one.
He blundered on, and small details
like time, and place, and number
eluded him. He trusted the cloud
in which he groped about. He had no plan.

This suicide took our proud soldiers,
the army of France whom Fame preceded,
troops without cannons, breadless
and leaderless. Where were the generals?

He led his heroes to the bottom of the abyss.
Calmly, he walked about, pretending to brave
the German fire. The trap he fell into,
all followed in shame and surrender.

Did he hear the grave’s voice asking,
“What is your destination, Emperor?”
All he could do was shrug and say, “Who knows?”

---

[1] Toulon. Site of Napoleon I’s first great military victory in 1793.

[2] Victor Emanuele II was known as “Il Re Galantuomo” (the gentleman king).

[3] Prefect of Police. The notorious Joseph Marie Piétri (1820-1902).

[4] Magnan. Bernard Pierre Magnan (1791-1865). Commander of the army in Paris who helped Napoleon III in his 1851 coup.

[5] Frossard. Charles Auguste Frossard (1807-1875) helped Napoleon III plan for war with Germany, and chose to serve at the front in key battles of the Franco-Prussian War.

[6] Jacques Leroy de Saint-Arnaud (1798-1854), another 1851 coup plotter, successor to Magnan as minister of war, was a perpetrator of genocidal massacres in Algeria. He died on shipboard on the way to the Crimean War.

English Nudity in 1846 Paris

by Victor Hugo
 

TABLEAUX VIVANTS.

In the year 1846 there was a spectacle that caused a furore in Paris. It was that afforded by women attired only in pink tights and a gauze skirt executing poses that were called tableaux vivants, with a few men to complete the groups. This show was given at the Porte Saint Martin and at the Cirque. I had the curiosity one night to go and see the women behind the scenes. I went to the Porte Saint Martin, where, I may add in parentheses, they were going to revive my drama, Lucrêce Borgia. Villemot, the stage manager, who was of poor appearance but intelligent, said: "I will take you into the gynecium."

A score of men were there — authors, actors, firemen, lamp lighters, scene shifters — who came, went, worked or looked on, and in the midst of them seven or eight women, practically nude, walked about with an air of the most naïve tranquillity. The pink tights that covered them from the feet to the neck were so thin and transparent that one could see not only the toes, the navel, and the breasts, but also the veins and the color of the least mark on the skin on all parts of their bodies. Towards the abdomen, however, the tights became thicker and only the form was distinguishable. The men who assisted them were similarly arranged. All these people were English.

At intervals of five minutes the curtain parted and they executed a tableau. For this they were posed in immobile attitudes upon a large wooden disc which revolved upon a pivot. It was worked by a child of fourteen who reclined on a mattress beneath it. Men and women were dressed up in chiffons of gauze or merino that were very ugly at a distance and very ignoble de prês. They were pink statues. When the disc had revolved once and shown the statues on every side to the public crowded in the darkened theater, the curtain closed again, another tableau was arranged, and the performance recommenced a moment later.

Two of these women were very pretty. One resembled Mme. Rey, who played the Queen in Ruy Blas in 1840; it was this one who represented Venus. She was admirably shaped. Another was more than pretty: she was handsome and superb. Nothing more magnificent could be seen than her black, sad eyes, her disdainful mouth, her smile at once bewitching and haughty. She was called Maria, I believe. In a tableau which represented "A Slave Market," she displayed the imperial despair and the stoical dejection of a nude queen offered for sale to the first bidder. Her tights, which were torn at the hip, disclosed her firm white flesh. They were, however only poor girls of London. All had dirty finger nails.

When they returned to the green room they laughed as freely with the scene shifters as with the authors, and talked broken French while they adjusted all kinds of frightful rags upon their charming visages. Their smile was the calm smile of perfect innocence or of complete corruption.

— From The Memoirs of Victor Hugo.

The Burial

 by Brett Rutherford

     Adapted from Paul Verlaine, “l’Enterrement,” c. 1865

Boy, there’s nothing quite like a burial
      for a jolly good time —
the little ditty which
     the dull gravedigger
whistles beneath his breath,
the way his pick-axe shines —
the way the trilling distant bell
     cuts through the air —
the hastily-mumbled prayer
from the dainty young priest
in his bone-white surplice.

The choirboy’s flute-like treble
has not a hint of girlish grief,
     a pure flute ascending,
and when, so soft and snug,
     the coffin slides down
into its perfectly-leveled hole,
and clods of earth are hurled
     with finality, to conceal
by bits the polished wood,
     the burnished brass,
with sod as soft as eiderdown,

why then, the whole affair charms me,
as we, for that lucky devil’s sake
dress up in that somber garb we keep
at the closet’s rear, against the day,
and the undertakers,
     who, never out of work,
plump out their jackets’ seams,
red-nosed in any weather
     from port and sherry.

In the final act,
     we stamp impatiently,
left foot, right foot, and left again,
the spun-out eulogies, clipped short
with sobs or sighs, or spun to spider
web ephemerality by distant relatives.

Nearest the grave, the spectacle
I most enjoy, is worthy of art:
hearts swollen to burst, brows topped
with self-important foreheads, tears dabbed
with significant handkerchiefs,
oh, look at them: the heirs!

 

 

 

Lazy Bones

by Brett Rutherford

Sweating at the gymnasium

and hoisting weights

all for a certain line

of muscles --- why?

 

I bide my time,

have better things

to fill my days.

I sweat at the piano,

lift words until they swell

with power.

 

Sweat on, poor fool.

Your head is empty.

When all is said and done,

and you and I recline

in coffins side-by-side,

no one will know which

of them is you, which me.

 

Every skeleton is blessed,

you see, with perfect abs.

 

 

A Vision, by Edwin Emerson

by Edwin Emerson

 Last night within the confines of my room,
     Half-lit to shield my over-tired eyes,
I saw distinctly, to my great surprise,
The outlines of an ancient, lonely tomb;
Moss-covered, framed by weeds — so apt to assume
     Rank shapes — which hid in part its proper size,
     While adding to its venerable guise;
And pall-like clouds intensified the gloom.
Alert, I scanned what name and date were there:
     And saw mine own, carved on the crumbling stone;
          The date read just five hundred years ago.
I woke, and thought — This vision would declare
     What shall be in the future, when, alone,
          The owl speaks wisdom, and the night winds blow.

From Edwin Emerson. Poems. 1901. Denver, CO: The Carson-Harper Company.

Prelude to The Terrible Year

      

By Brett Rutherford

     Adapted from Victor Hugo

With ink enough, and paper a-plenty,
I set out to recount this terrible year,
but here as I lean and squint,
     writing arm poised and ready,
legs tensed at my writing table,
     I hesitate.
Must one continue on this way?
     Shall I go on?
O France! O grief! I want to flee! —
To go a billion billion miles in space, and turn
only to see one star (my own!) go fading out? —
     Ah, no, not that!
A mournful specter rises, no Muse, but Shame.
Under her tutelage I write;
the gray ink of gloomy anguish flows;
pen-strokes scar the pages down and up;
words curl up cursed, like little scourges.

No matter! Take heart! We must go on!
A voice behind me utters: “Persist,
for history does not write itself!”

This century has been indicted.
Brought to the bar, it stands defiantly.
Here with my book, sworn in, I stand.
Tremble, O Crime: I am the witness!