No Reprisals

by Brett Rutherford

 

Adapted from Victor Hugo, l’Annee Terrible, “April 1871”

 

Some words which I believe
     are as straight as arrows:
Reason, Progress, Honor and Loyalty,
     Duties and Rights.
One does not reach the truth
     by round-about.
Be fair and just, and thus
     one serves the republic;
what one owes her is equity for all.
No anger need be on display:
no one is just if he is not gentle, too.
Our Revolution is a sovereign;
the people, prodigious fighters,
     drag the past,
pushing it foot by foot to the abyss.
So it must be. But here in the shade
     that shelters me I honor
     no other majesty than you,
          my Conscience.

 

This is my faith. My candor comes
     from life’s experience.
Even if I have been made
     to strike you down,
     I will not break you.

If I draw a circle to declare my right,
     the compass that draws the circle
     is made of others’ rights,
so that between my enemies and me
     the same rules apply.
If I see them imprisoned,
     I do not feel free.
If I had done to them
     what they have done to me,
I would wear out my knees
     imploring pardon.

 

I will never say, “Citizens,
the principles we stood for
no long apply to our conduct;
we need only pretend
to honor righteousness
while doing the opposite;
although me know better,
we must do what is expedient.”

I will not pick the brains
for the impure thoughts of Jesuits
who say it is sometimes fine
to disregard the facts —
I know the price one pays
for such dissimulations.

 

I will never say, “This traitor deserves
as much by his acts
    as by his own perversity,
that I should strike him down.”

 

If I do this, his crime, like leprosy,
communicates to me, and I,
becoming the same man as him,
transmute his past crime
into my virtue of today.

No! What I was yesterday,
     not judge, not
     summary executioner,
     let me still be that man tomorrow.

 

I could not hold a crime in my hand,
like a spent shell, or an unexploded bomb,
and say to myself, “This crime
was their projectile, an infamy to them.
But now I find it useful. I hurl it back;
having been struck, I strike.
     I say again, “No!”
Who, having been touched
     by even a whiff of prophecy,
could become a sophist?

 

If there is triumph at the end of this,
how can it not also be defeat?

I intend to be the same person,
     and having lived a lot,
I see the victor and vanquished bound
     to me by common faith.
I have no need for God to warn me,
so why should you. Just as two suns
float not in the bloodied sky, neither
are there two Justices, one for us,
and the other to me meted out.
Look at the fallen foes, freedom,
to them, is just the same as for us.
The same light shines clear upon us all.

 

Extinguishing the rights of others,
we extinguish our own stars.

I want, if I cannot do any good
after so many disasters, at least to do no harm.

Let kings act as chimeras,
    doing what they will
       and without explanation;
the people have always the Ideal.

 

What is this I hear now? “Banish this one!”
“Throw that one into the Bastille!”
Never! How can you now declare
that prisons and gates and bars and jailers,
or the doom of dark exile,
having been bad for us,
are suitable for them?

 

Who would take upon himself the crime
of driving someone away from his homeland?
A remnant of my own hurricane
     makes my hair shiver.
Can you understand from where I speak?
Formerly outcast, I will not break the bounds
of what is just and honest. I paid
with twenty years of exile for this right
to oppose the vengeful furies
     with a solitary refusal.
I close my soul to blind anger.
When I think of the dungeons sinister,
the bolts and chains, offered as punishment
to even my enemy, I love him instead.
I would give asylum even to one
     who sought to banish me
         and forbid my books,
which fortitude alone
     is a gift of my own suffering.

 

How can I serve you, my people,
     in this fatal century?

The spirit of Freedom does not stir or blink
as I am smashed to bits before her.

Well, then, I am willing to renounce everything,
my native soil, my childhood home, my nest,
the graves of those I loved, and who loved me,
this blue sky of France where doves fly,
Paris itself, sublime field where I harvested,
the homeland, the paternal roof —
     all happiness, even that! —

 

But I intend to remain pure,
without stain, even if powerless.

I will not surrender the sovereign right
of innocence.

If I were Jesus Christ,
     would I not rescue Judas?
If revenge is at the table,
     I will not dine.
Who punishes much, indulges much,
and I would come to pity each tortured Cain.
No, I do not oppress! I will never kill!