October 1870, Part 1

Students enlisting to man the Paris fortifications, October 1870.

 

by Brett Rutherford

     Adapted and translated from Victor Hugo, l'Annee Terrible

Part 1

Exiled, I became the ocean’s old prowler,
the sort of specter who haunts the edge
of a maelstrom or a bitter abyss.
I had, amid the winter, in wind
and frost and storm, in foam and shadow,
issued a book whose black hurricane
blown at the orders of the banished
turned each page the moment I wrote it.
They took my nation from me.
I had nothing in me but imperishable honor.

But then I came home.
     I saw again the formidable city.
Faced with her hunger,
     I put my book in her mouth
and I said to this fierce and haughty
     and ardent populace,
to this indignant people,
     fearless, unyoked, unruled;
I said this to Paris, like the defiant
     thief to the eagle[1]:
Eat my heart, and your wings will widen.

When Christ expired, when the great god Pan
     passed into death,
John and Luke in Judea, and far off,
     in India, a wise man
who studied atoms, good, and evil,[2]
registered an obscure anxiety.

Yet when Olympus fell, the earth quaked
from Ophir to Canaan,
     and from Assur to Sheba
as a foundation, breaking,
     topples all columns.
The whole earth trembled when Babylon fell.

The same holy terror infects all today,
and underneath us, the fulcrum bends.
All tremble as a vile hand grips Paris.
Kill this City, and the Universe dies.
This is about more than one people:
the kings would nail
     the whole mournful bloody world
          to a cross.
And so it begins: the frightful torment
     of the human race.

So, bring it on. Greater than Troy or Tyre,
     greater than Numantia,
Paris besieged must set an example.
Tyrants send bandits our way: confront them.
It’s the Huns all over again,
     the way it was told by Fredegar.[3]
Let the machines of war roll towards us.
We, together, stand our ground,
     accepting the labor, alone, betrayed,
in order to save the country.
To fall without fear is still a victory,
to join the immense waking dream of history
in which all who seek the true, the great,
     the beautiful,
place before their lips a silencing finger
     as they pass your tomb.
Each of the great dead brings honor to his people —
Cato would be too much
     if he was greater than Rome.
Rome rose to equal the example of one;
     Rome learned by imitation.
As Rome had to fight in its time and place,
     so, too, must Paris.
Our labors become the sheafs and sprays
     that decorate our gravestones.
Fight on, oh my Paris, watch out! Oh, superb ones,
striding with unstained shields
     yet riddled with arrows,
with the illustrious fury of those
     who will not be defeated.

 

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[1] Thief … eagle. An allusion to the story of Prometheus, who stole the secret of fire from the gods and gave science to the humans, and was punished to be chained to a rock, where his innards were devoured eternally by an eagle.

[2] A wise man. Hugo says only “d’Inde Epicure.” This obscure allusion comes from the Vedas and Indian philosophy. Charvaka, an apocryphal philosopher, anticipated many of the materialist ideas of Greek philosopher Epicurus. Both figures were condemned, ridiculed, and were subject to attempted erasure from history.

[3] Fredegar. The Chronicle of Fredegar, a 7^th-century Frankish history, a key source for French medieval history.