October 1870, Part 2

 

by Brett Rutherford

Adapted and translated from Victor Hugo, l'Annee Terrible, "October 1870."

Part 2

AS DANTE AND AESCHYLUS LOOK ON

And so the kinds of days
     of which the tragedies tell, have returned!
It seems, from omens indecipherable,
Another hegira begins for the nations.

Pale Dante Alighieri of immortal fame,
     and you, Aeschylus, playwright
     and brother of the warlike Cynegirus,
two severe witnesses, equal in love of justice,
leaning, one on Florence and the other on Argos,
you who authored, shades on whom stern eagles rest,
these dreaded books where one feels something
of what rumbles and glows behind the horizon,
you two whom the human race reads
     even now with a shudder and a backward glance,
dreamers who can say in your tombs: we are
Gods because we make men tremble!
Dante, Aeschylus, listen and look.

These kings today.
beneath their broad crowns have shriveled foreheads.
You would disdain them. They lack the stature
of those whom your formidable verses torture,
unworthy of the Argive chief’s outrage
      nor from the Pisan baron’s contempt;
but they are monstrous nonetheless, you must admit.

Though sprung from the first kings,
     they have a vulgar appearance,
but they command the legions of war.
They push the seven Saxon peoples on Paris.[1]
Hideous and helmeted, gaudy with gilding,
     tattooed all over with coats of arms,
each of them must feed on murder.
Each of these kings takes as his emblem
some species of forest beast,
     upon his shiny visor,
the chimera of a harsh and gloomy
     herald bird, splayed out with wing and claw,
or the waving mane of some impudent dragon.

And the great chief displays on his high banner,
a stain like two reflections off a polished tomb
in the form of a strange eagle,
      white at night and black during the day.

With them, with great noise, and in all forms,
Krupps, bombards, cannons, huge machine guns,
they drag beneath this wall that they call “enemy”
a war machine all cast from ancient bronze.
O Bronze alloy, this mute and sleeping slave,
who, suddenly screams with his muzzle off,
takes on from fire and powder a terrible zeal
and starts, unbridled, to destroy a city,
and goes on without respite,
     and with the horrible joy
          of resounding brass.
As if to add insult to these fallen towers,
some of the same Bronze will be employed
     later, to make infamous statues;
as if the alloy of Vulcan wished to say:
     People, contemplate in me
     the very monster
     you have used to make a king.

The whole earth trembles,
     and the seven leaders unite in hatred.

They are there, threatening Paris. They punish the city.
And for what ? For being France and in so being,
     to be the universe,
for shining above the half-open chasms,
     a giant arm holding a fist-full
of sunbeams, with which Europe is forever bathed;
They punish Paris for being freedom;
they punish Paris for merely being the city it is,
where Danton scolds, and Molière shines,
     and Voltaire laughs;
They punish Paris for being the soul of the earth,
for being more alive with each passing year,
a thing they cannot bear: the great deep torch
     that no foul wind can extinguish,
the idea on fire piercing this cloud, the numbered
crescent of progress clear in the depths of the dark sky;
they punish Paris for denouncing error,
the warning harbinger and the enlightener,
for showing beneath their terrible glory
      a vast and empty cemetery.

Paris, alone, abolishing the scaffold,
     the throne, the border,
the boundary, the fight, the obstacle, the ditch;
Paris the future pointing,
     when they are only the past.

And it is not their fault; they are the dark forces.
They follow Gothic glories in the night,
Cain, Nimrod, Rhamsés, Cyrus, Genghis, Timur.
They fight against law, and light, and love.
They would like to be gigantic,
      but are only misshapen.
Earth, these creatures do not seek your happiness.
you innocents who want to fall asleep
in the arms of sacred peace, and in the marriage
of Divine clarity with the human spirit.
No, they condemn brother to devour brother,
people to massacre the people, and their misery
it is to be omnipotent and that all their instincts
lit up for hell, tarnish the sight of heaven above.

Hideous kings! We will see, of course, before their souls
renounce slaughter, the sword, and infamous murder,
to the sound of bugles, and the neighing war horse.
In the after-morn of universal massacre,
the bird no longer knows the way to its nest,
the tiger loves the swan, and the forgetful bee
abandons its wild hive for the black hollow
     of a corpse’s eye-socket.

 

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[1] Seven Saxon peoples. The various German principalities united under Prussian rule.