Thoughts and Prayers Are Not Enough

by Brett Rutherford

     Translated from Victor Hugo, l'Annee Terrible, "November 1870."

VII

I don’t know if I will seem strange to those
who think that in the face of troubled and unlucky fate,
faced with Sedan, faced with the flaming sword,
you must burn a candle in Sainte-Geneviève,
or who assure us we will get the truest help
if only we gilded Notre-Dame d’Auray.
Some think to stop the shell, the thundering lead,
the fatal grapeshot, with a Breton oration.[1]
I must appear wild and very ill-mannered
to those hushed in corners who whisper Hail Marys
and who hold up a novena against a cannon
while the blood flows freely from our veins;

but I say it’s time to act and think
to rise en masse, against the abyss, against the danger
which, when its circle tightens around us,
which, to its merit, being hideous, sincerity itself,
frankly wild and dark, offers its gift to you,
France: a sublime opportunity to die.
I affirm that the monstrous camp of the barbarians,
like bears having broken the bars of their cage,
approaches, so that the people are moved with horror.
We are no longer in the time of “Let us pray.”
“Oremus” means nothing to the hordes out there.
Paris is their target,
and what we must utter is a terrible cry!

To arms, citizens! Peasants, your pitch-forks!
Throw aside your psalter for the dying.
General, let’s make a hasty breakthrough!
Your throats are not yet so hoarse
from singing Hallelujahs
that you cannot add a Marseillaise.
Old Kléber’s horse is not worn out just yet.
Some wines may put you in a surrendering mood,
but I know another for immense audacity,
and Danton leaves us enough at the bottom of the glass
to give Prussia a chase to the border,
and to make the old world’s hair stand on end
at the reception we give to unwelcome kings!

Even if we succumb, such death is great.
When the chief of the city is too much a Christian,
When I think we tremble, when I see that we are holding back —
What do you expect? I am not happy.
This leader turns a too-moist eye towards his priest;
I see him as a brave soldier and a timid general;
like old Entellus[2] combined with d’Aubigné,[3]
I shudder, I shudder indignant.
We are in Paris, humanity’s volcano, the furnace of souls,
nearly two million men, children, women,
not one intends to give in, not one; and we want
ready anger instead of tiresome speeches.

I would go and tell it tomorrow at the town hall
If I did not sense a civil war coming,
O overwhelmed homeland, and if I did not fear
to add this awful rope to your wrists,
and to see you dragged around the burning wall,
in the mud and blood, behind an infamous chariot,
first by your conquerors, and then by your sons!

These proud Parisians brave all challenges;
accepting cold and hunger, nothing can tame them,
finding nothing but shame to bear.
The brown loaves gone, we eat black bread.
So be it, but to let themselves be led like sheep,
it’s not their mood, and they all want us to go out,
and we ourselves want to burst out of our gates,
and, if it must be, with brows raised towards the east,
to thrust us free into the grave, crying
We are one! by attesting to the future, to hope,
and dawn; and this is how France is dying!

This is why I declare at this extremity
that man has an unlimited heart to do well,
that we must copy Sparta, and our ancestor Rome,
and that a people is limited by its cowardice alone.
I shun this bad example as one would a plague;
at this time we need better than the old warriors
who often lingered too long in the chapels.
I hear you, France, calling to us;
The so-called courage that sings at the lectern
     is illegitimate;
it is fitting to risk everything, and it is already late!
This is my opinion, before the fierce trumpets,
before the hurricanes swell their black mouths,
before the fierce North attacks the South,
     we need someone bold;
When it comes to driving out the Vandals,
to repel the flow of the feudal bands,
to save Europe by delivering Paris,
and to put an end to those who surprised us,
with so much terror, with so much misery,
we need a sword now, not a rosary.

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[1] Breton. This poem criticizes Jules Trochu, the Brittany-born general, governor of Paris and President of the provisional government.

[2] Entellus, a Trojan hero in Virgil’s Aeneid.

[3] Théodore-Agrippa d’Aubigné (1552-1630), soldier poet of changing allegiances who fought in the French Wars of Religion, condemned and exiled in 1620.