by Brett Rutherford
Adapted from Victor Hugo, l’Année Terrible, “July 1871”
I
THE WISE VOICE
If everything political
is of the moment only,
and all expedient,
what should you do? Not this,
assuredly: deny, repudiate,
and blame the other,
when actions are made
regardless of principles.
O Man, beware! In vain
and useless effort you dissipate
your energies and acquire no honor.
I am the one who guides
when honest men get lost
in the forest of their words
and deeds. What do I call myself,
and how do I fare say this?
My name need only sound
as a whisper in your ear
to stop you in your tracks,
for I am called Reason.
Cato defied me, and learned
the cost of doing so. O, Poet,
in seeking the best
of the moment opportune,
you lose the Good. The thing
you wish for slips away.
Striving for Everything,
your contrary deeds
amount to Nothing.
Let pass away the things
that need to pass away.
Your inclination always goes
toward the fallen — such
is the heart you were given! —
this means, alas,
that you gain no victory.
Too much you have been led by heart,
too little by common sense.
The truth that seems self-evident,
too closely held, takes on
the air of self-deception.
Ideals are rarified things, yet dreams
inspired by them seem real,
of just within reach.
One gains the far-off look
of the dreamer impractical
precisely from over-thought.
How far should one plunge? How deep
the dream until it bottoms out
in the achievable?
The wise man dreads the epithet, “Unjust!”
and treads too shy of firmness.
Fearing the sting of too much justice
(which always seems to punish
someone, somewhere),
he seeks a middle way.
Can the truth of the matter
be entirely true, the false
as black as night, or gray?
The law’s letter, and its intent,
is only the ore
to be refined.
The law is gold, but one
must learn how to extract it.
Sometimes the wise man does the opposite
of what one supposed he would do,
and that is the greatest art.
You never get to the point;
I get to point a little late,
and a late arrival at the just and true
beats never getting there at all.
In short,
you ask that men evolve to god-like status;
I bring the divine will down to earth.
That is the difference between us.
You brave the chaos, expecting order.
Fearing the waste, I gather things together.
The bootstraps you trust fall short
of lifting you from the sink-hole
of your own making.
And what is man, anyway?
An imbecile being who suffers!
Do you imagine you can make him over,
and maybe multiply his senses
by a factor of three? Will that
help?
Give me each human specimen
and nature made it — take any
living passerby, the same.
To hell with the one who preaches and bellows
and tries to make them something
else.
The small ones are as blind from such lightning
as they were blind before from the dark.
The best they can do is to muddle through.
A little revelation is enough for them.
It’s fine and good to make a speech,
and even to mean every word of it,
about not liking war, about the need
to topple every scaffold. On paper,
that sounds superb … but then,
we turn around and do the opposite.
My dear, the shop walls lean against those
of the busy temple behind them:
chase out the money-changers
from the place as Jesus did,
and share his fault: a little too much
of a god for his own good, or yours.
I would need reliable guarantors to say
whether or not the Prussians got
their five billions to the
penny.
In everything, the wise man moderates.
Calm in my own place, I blame the infinite
which has gotten too big for its britches —
it is bigger than it once was, you know,
from overuse by poets and scientists —
Creation now has to take in
so many millions and billions of
things.
Just so, good minds, in their amplitude
have many criticisms to make.
I needn’t say that excess is this era’s fault.
The sun is always “superb,” is it not?
And must every day of spring be “sweet”?
Too many sunbeams! Too many roses!
Not a dull day or pale bloom in the lot!
That is the drawback of enthusiasm.
And — God forbid! even the Deity is prone
to bloated exaggeration.
In imitating Him, one falls
into a petrifying perfection.
Great danger there! Better to imitate
some lesser model, I’d day. Besides,
God does not always give the best example.
Why be so touchy and on-edge? I ask.
Jesus was off-base for not considering
the reasonable offer of Beelzebub.
Not that he should have accepted,
but just compare, if you will,
how rude God is
when the Devil is honest.
Jesus need only have said,
“We shall see, my friend,”
and let it rest at that.
Wise men keep pride in its place,
like a watch in its proper pocket.
The ant plods along without a drum
to thunder his doings,
and somehow a quiet routine
gets everything done.
Humans are just humans,
women and men alike,
not bad, not good.
“As white as snow.” Full stop.
“As black as coal.” Neither.
White within black, mixed, striped,
skeptical and full of doubts.
Each mediocrity is a politician.
We sought grandeur, but ought
we not prefer proportion?
To act like Aristides or like Phocion,
hurtling about with swords,
ready to sacrifice self and others,
to be heroic, epic, and beautiful —
what a rotten business that is!
Show a wise man the shattered state
of the ruined Parthenon,
and he’ll prefer obscurity
in the warm hut of a beaver.
I might have dealings with a Rothschild:
it’s actually possible. An Adamastor,[1]
immense and menacing on a long sea journey,
is yesterday’s Titan, an episode. Today’s
profound monster is a millionaire.
The statesman does not ask for much.
He says he venerates the universal vote,
but keeps one hand on a ballet-box.
He banishes slavery, but keeps
servile and dependent helpers
wherever it is convenient.
Breaking one chain, he keeps
its inner threat intact.
Men, taken one by one, are small.
Their consciences are easily dwarfed
by fears and apprehensions.
The statesman takes their measure.
He takes away the will by which
they could surpass themselves.
He finds ways to keep them dazzled,
but without thunder and whirling about.
Within their narrow plane he seems
the one who does wonders on their behalf
Mediocrity, my friend, is its own reward,
nothing is ugly there, and nothing beautiful,
no one feels high or low compared to another,
“warm” and “cool” bland out the idea
of hot and cold. Day follows day, there,
with plenty of holidays’ distractions.
The Sublime is a region uninhabitable:
who wants to live on Mont Blanc’s summit?
A kind of pretzel the wise man becomes,
in pretending to be mediocre, yet with
a flex of will and muscle he can unbend himself.
Hugo, look here — they threw stones at you
in Brussels. Amid bell-clamors, the editors
of holier-than-thou journals rattle on, while
newspapers obliged to the late Emperor
say things about you that are read with horror,
that you get telegrams from abroad,
that bad wine is served up at your
table,
that the restrains of Lent taint your repast,
and that someone of significance
will no longer dine there,
and on and on with sinister gossip.
Hugo, you brought this on yourself.
The nut-case Mr. Veuillot[2]
calls you out;
your crimes are so numerous, his memory
confuses them: add drunkenness and theft,
any number of offenses with your kepi on,
and avarice, of course, ill-gotten gains!
You live under the clamor of denunciation.
This is your fault. Why are you not reasonable?
Stop standing up to evil. Be proper.
A good thing it is to stand up to evil,
but to be alone is not a good thing.
You, a bearded man, an old man,
a grandfather even,
are not meant to just keep on going
while your century recedes.
A white-haired and solitary fighter
looks ridiculous,
the valiant who live long enough
to be prudent, grow into stillness.
Young Nestor behaved like Ajax;
Ajax, had he lived,
would have become a Nestor.[3]
Do what is proper for your age
and teach the people your wisdom.
Truth lacking style’s garment
seems naked savagery.
Success cannot be bullied,
the mellow, aged voice inspires.
Without the lesson you can impart
the Right is on the side of every tyrant,
and everything that glitters is gold.
To the weather-vane cult,
the errant wind is god.
Feel free to dump on Bonaparte,
he fell, and he deserves it.
Do not blame Reason if what seems Fate
is suddenly turned topsy-turvy.
I am not leaving the scene, so go, succeed!
We are all, in an oblique way, agreed,
that the purpose of a Republic
is to get rid of enemies
(whoever they happen to be)
with cannon-fire and half-measures;
if neither order nor a proper monarch
appear on the horizon, why be surprised?
You did not choose anyone!
It’s all quite absurd. If you’re so indignant,
you might be right. Yet all, from young to old,
the worst and the best, the great and the small,
regard just as you do the same evidence.
Each fact or deed contains a kernel of good,
which we must ferret out. Is this not so?
When Torquemada runs the show, we warm
our bottoms from the heat of the stake.
Politics is the art of taking from filth,
and gall, pride posing as modesty,
the baseness of the idle rich,
the insolence of the mis-shapen,
the overlooked errors, the crimes,
the venom of treachery and betrayal,
the universal soup made up
of yes and no and white and black,
spiced with Rome and Geneva’s
paper’d hypocrisies,
into a beverage that’s just about right
for the honest man to swallow.
Down here we have little use for principles.
Up there, they shine. That’s nice for the birds.
If someone like Morus wants to study them,
let’s offer a salute. They twinkle on,
as real and as distant as the flaming
stars.
Lucky for us the clouds roll in
to cover and obscure such certainties.
They are up there, we are down here.
The Absolute is just a nuisance, you
see.
Remember, I came to talk to you
about the Expedient (see how
I can confound with capital letters,
as well as any metaphysician!)
Turgot[4]
and the liberals were wrong.
Long live the reformer Terray![5]
I seek the real,
you, poet, seek only the true.
We live by the real,
but the true breaks us.
Real things fear the abstract true.
Recognize your mistake.
Duty is the use of the facts on the ground.
You misread it.
Instead of the relative, you jump to the absolute.
You are that madman who,
wanting to see clearly
in the depth of a cellar,
or rummage in some pile of ashes,
or who, needing a lantern
for a search in the woods,
thrusts his hand up
into the inky sky
to use a star as a candle,
That’s who you are.
[1]
Adamastor. From The Lusiad, a Titan assigned to The Cape of Good Hope,
encountered by Vasco da Gama.
[2]
Louis Veuillot (11 October 1813 – 7 March 1883) was a French journalist
and author who helped to popularize ultramontanism (a
philosophy favoring Papal supremacy). His papist newspaper was titled l’Univers.
[3]
Nestor is the oldest character in Homer’s Iliad. Ajax, the young hero,
is the strongest of the Greeks, but goes mad and commits suicide right after
the end of the Trojan War.
[4]
Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, 10 May 1727 – 18 March 1781), commonly known
as Turgot, was a French economist and statesman. Sometimes considered
a physiocrat, he
is today best remembered as an early advocate for economic liberalism. (See Wikipedis Article)
[5]
Abbot Joseph Marie Terray (1715 – 18 February 1778) was a Controller-General of Finances during
the reign of Louis XV, an agent of fiscal reform. (See Wikipedia article)
No comments:
Post a Comment