by Brett Rutherford
Adapted from Victor Hugo, l'Annee Terrible, May 1871 - Paris in Flames, Part 3
Some problems
are golden fruits
that may be full of ash.
The substance of one is Everything;
the substance of the other is
Nothing.
Seeking too hard for good,
we can find evil as well.
Paris knows this, choosing
what ought to survive.
Law, like a wine, goes best
in moderation.
A good taste going down
can lead to excess,
from the mere awakening
of one’s appetite.
Paris can restore the calm.
Even in combat one can hold love
as the standard.
Paris admits agape with open
arms,
the higher love outweighing
the orgies of Saturnalia.
Paris confronts the Sphinx
and its infernal enigma,
with just one whispered word
that disconcerts the monster.
When the Sphinx calls for Chaos,
Paris says “Freedom!”
Not in desert but on the Seine
are the great ideas hatched,
this bright and resounding center
where every future finds its dawn.
Tomorrows convene here in sanctity.
Vast human footsteps converge
from every direction
on Paris, city, spirit, clarion.
Speeches and tomes, epics and mockery,
philosophy and law, all welcome here,
the home where all the prodigies
come to collide and merge
at our universal crossroad.
Even the most oppressed of earth,
from the black man of Darfur
to the pariah of India,
feel a tremor if your pavement moves.
Growing, the human spirit moults
in the nest of Paris; the egg
that the old eagle of Gaul
deposited here has hatched as France,
eyes opening to new sight, new laws,
a whole new language,
offering for all
his daring change of plumage.
Do you protest, “There are other
cities?”
Are there are any great ones
not tributary to Paris?
Whatever your mages, doctors, warriors;
however wise and great your leaders,
whatever your splendor shining out
from the depths of the shadows;
even if you seem a beacon studded with stars,
whatever your palaces, towers,
and propylaea,
your lights and rumors, your swarms
of coming and going populace,
the human race still gravitates
to Paris like filings around
an irresistible magnet. Paris,
the abolisher of servile morals.
The universe would be an orphan.
Not one of you cities can replace
Paris if it is ever lost.
No, no, not even you, London,
nor you, Berlin,
nor you, Vienna,
nor you, Madrid,
nor you, Byzantium,
lacking the power of joy,
and the force of goodness.
You will always have Paris in thought,
charming to some and feared by others.
You will always yearn for the love that comes
like a sudden lightning upon you,
to be the Ocean to which all streams
and rivers wend,
to be the Sun around which the planets
in their orbits rise and fall.
For the human idea of the city
is to be large and cheerful, bright-eyed
and full of laughter, a place
whose spirit bears a halo’d brow,
heroic and jealous, a city holding all
not like a mistress, but as a solemn wife.
To say that this august work
of a millennium and a millennium more,
Time’s slow construction, industrious
of a hero city, a prophet city no less —
to say, O eternal Heavens, that this work
of twenty profound and pensive centuries,
heart where we warm ourselves,
this place that Time and Destiny
put at the center of Europe —
To say that one hour was all it took
to undo accumulated glory
of all who strove and lived
here!
Dark year. An Epic unfolded
in three hideous books.
Who has ever seen such things?
Attila invaded us. Cain struck us down
Now Herostratus.
O wretched, abject, blind, ungrateful torch!
Look! Scattered to all the winds
this city unlike any other!
This place which gave all its heart
to fill the living, in flames!
This place which gave legs to those
who only crawled before,
and gave the wings of thought
to those who never thought before!
Just as a
shepherd with one foot
might push into the fire a branch
he tore from a nearby fir, now
you would set all of Paris ablaze!
All of it? Even the wheat granary?
What? The library? The Library,
the place where dawn itself is born,
the vault of the unfathomable
alphabet of the Ideal, where dreams
loiter, where an eternal reader,
Progress, makes a bright door
at the end of every black tunnel,
the barn of thought
where the spirit of man has placed
his sheafs for future gleaning?
Who put you up to this?
Did you escape from some home
where demented men are put away?
It is one or the other. Two faces down
here
on earth regard each other. Day and Night.
Powerful Love arms-length from bitter Hate.
Two principles, good and evil, slap
one another’s faces in mortal
challenge.
Two cities, which are two mysteries,
reflect in our stunned eyes this flash
of competing lightning-fire.
Rome is Arimane, and Paris is Ormus.
Rome is the
high altar
where the old dogmas smoke
in waves of purple foam
over the Paris rooftops
in full eruption of all truths,
justice,
throwing out angry rays, freedom,
law, these great virgin lights.
Opposite Rome where the candles flicker,
The Paris of revolutions is the volcano.
On one side the Hôtel-de-Ville,
on the other, the Vatican.
One benefits if we suppress the other.
Rome hates Reason, of which Paris is the apostle.
O unhappy men! see where you are being led!
In front of the sacristy
you extinguish your own Etna!
All that would remain is this candle-glow,
febrile and vile.
The Vatican prospers
when City Hall bows down and
perishes.
Grief! madness! immolate the soul
to the black shroud, the word to the gag,
the star to the candle-snuffer,
the truth that saves, to the lie that strikes,
and the Paris of the people to the Rome
of the Pope!
Can you lead
us all astray,
and just like that, and one by one,
chop all our heads off?
Can you imagine this high city
which was the speech,
the eyes and ears,
the life and the soul of nations, vanished!
Can you imagine the people without it?
It’s just the same as being guillotined.
Paris, without a lamp,
Paris, without a song.
This was our theater and our sanctuary;
Paris stood on the globe like a sculptor
forming and shaping the future man
with sparking mallet-blows;
watching her work
one always assumed
she would go on that way, forever.
So what horrible thing has happened?
Where is the shining sculptress now?
Can you imagine her stopping suddenly?
I look around, confounded:
what is this section of broken wall
that stands amid unruly brambles?
At the Pantheon, a column is reduced
to fragments of scattered bronze.
This marsh where swarming
crows swirl up,
is where the Bastille once loomed.
Another wild corner where everything is silent,
and where nothing shines,
look down and
see outlined
what had been Notre-Dame cathedral.
The slug defiles the stones,
the worms defile with their bites
the august bones of the hovels;
not a roof remained of all these houses
which once shone back the seasons
of human progress;
not one of these towers,
shattered their silhouettes now
that once were superb and perfect;
bridges and quays collapsed;
ponds overgrown,
a river diverted into many channels,
shapeless and shoreless,
vanishing into the shadows
of a new forest without a name;
not fountains plashing but
the vague sound of the water
that a sad wind carries away.
Desolation! All this will happen
if we let Paris die!
Tell me, who threw this firebrand?
Who, daring with the day to kill the future,
attempted this crime? Whose dream
was this, to abolish the star city,
soul of our earth, center in which
we breathed, but now we choke?
The People, no, this is not you,
and you did not do this thing.
No, you poor lost souls,
you are not guilty.
The poisonous
swarm of impalpable causes,
the old facts which, forgotten,
have become invisible,
have disturbed your soul,
and their wings have beaten your
forehead;
their dark shadowed made you dash about
as wayward as a drunk;
gadflies pursued you with their bitter stings;
a red glow floated before your eyes,
and you raged like a furious bull.
Notes:
Herostratus is history’s most famous arsonist. In the 4th century BCE, this otherwise unknown person set fire to one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus. His name is synonymous for anyone who commits a crime only for the sake of notoriety, something Colin Wilson dubbed “crimes of self-esteem.”
Ahriman is the Zoroastrian evil spirit.
Ormus, or Ahura Mazda, is the Zoroastrian god of creation and wisdom.
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