Bancroft

by Brett Rutherford

Adapted from Victor Hugo, l'Annee Terrible, "November 1870"

IV

BANCROFT

How does this trifle affect the greatness of France?
His tragic disdain extends almost as far as ignorance.
The existence of France does not depend
     upon the kind words of strangers,
     whether they lives in palaces, or garrets.
She exists, and need not be aware of “what they say,”
     “they” being shoeless wretches turned foreign Ministers.
You have no problem siding up to some sinister majesty;
you buzz in vain about its millennium, if not eternity.
You insult a whole nation. Who, then, shall feel the sting?
She will not see, either in mourning or celebration,
the kind of dark and shabby shadow that you are.
Try then to be somebody: Tiberius, Genghis Khan:
be the man of scourges, the voice of a volcano!
We will see if you are up to the task.
Let people despise you. Give them some cause to hate you,
and we will see. Otherwise, go away. A dwarf
can add a venom’d tongue to its tininess
yet it is still a dwarf, and what does one atom matter?
Who needs the vile affront that falls from this man?
Why give an audience to a nullity that passes and goes away?
Without shaking the huge head, basically
From the desert where we see the ferocious lynx prowling,
The trash-eating jaeger bird
      can light upon a colossus
immobile forever under the starry sky,
screech a familiar squawk, then fly away.

NOTES:

George Bancroft (1800-1891) was not an insignificant character. As U.S. Minister to Prussia since 1867, he wielded considerable influence back home in the United States, where he had founded the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis. He began his literary life as a Romantic poet, publishing a volume of poetry in 1823 after his Grand Tour of Switzerland, Italy, and Rome. His long poem on the ruins of Rome is a worthy specimen of that sub-genre. Bancroft’s ten-volume History of the United States, finally completed in 1874, was regarded as the definitive history of the young republic. Admitted to Harvard at age 13, he graduated there, and at the age of 20 received a doctorate in Germany at Göttingen. He published translations of the poems of Goethe and Schiller.

Bismarck considered Bancroft an “intimate friend.” Bancroft admired Prussia as a staunch defender of Protestantism, and he saw the evolving German federation as a parallel to the formation of United States (Werengerode). As early as 1868, the French were already aware of the American Minister’s pro-Prussian bias, terming it a case of “eccentricities and vanities” (Blumenthal 226). In an 1869 letter, Bancroft displays the extent through which he viewed all French affairs through a Protestant lens: “You are right in saying France is given to extremes. When the Protestants were driven out, France was maimed, and left to the struggle of extremes” (Howe 228).

Bancroft confidently predicted that Napoleon III would fail to prevent German confederation (Blumenthal 233). Bancroft appeared to have been instrumental in keeping the United States aloof from France in the lead-up to the Franco-Prussian War, and congratulatory to Prussia at its end. Historians disagree on just how much influence Bancroft had on attitudes that were already baked into international politics, but at the time he certainly seemed an influencer (235-236).

Bismarck sent Bancroft a telegram honoring the jubilee of his doctorate from Göttingen, and this letter was Bancroft’s personal reply. The letter was shared, translated into English, published in London, and then translated into French, possibly with context and intent not stated. This would appear to be the text which prompted Hugo’s poem:

To Count Bismarck.
Berlin, September 30, 1870.

“I was equally surprised and delighted that while you are tasked with the work of renovating Europe, you yet found time to send me lately a friendly congratulation on my being spared so long. It is indeed a great happiness to survive till these times, when three or four men who loved nothing so much as peace and after long and hard service were only seeking to close their career in tranquility, win during a war of defense more military glory than the wildest imagination conceived of, and in three months bid fair to bring the German hope of a thousand years to its fulfillment. So I gratefully accept the good will, conceded to my old age; for old age, which is always nearest eternity, is, this year, mightiest on earth; this German war being conducted to its close by the aged. You, to be sure, are young; but Roon must be classed among the venerable; Moltke is within twenty-three days as old as I am; and your king in years and youthfulness excels us all. May I not be proud of my contemporaries?

“Retain for me your regard in the little time that remains to me” (Howe 228).

 

 

 

November One

by Brett Rutherford

November One:
A killing frost has blanched the trees.
Those in the field who shrugged
at the sun, now shiver when it falls.
Squint at its bright imposture,
uncover in rain your gloved hand:
warmth will not come again.

November One:
The Druid New Year rolls in.
This one is marked
     The Year of Not Having.
Diapered and impotent,
the oligarch sees wealth
slide out from beneath
     his tiny fingers.
Frauds everywhere collapse
as pyramids fall and virtual cash
burns up in pixels of illusion.
Fear not: one buys a judge
for the price of a cheap cigar.

November One:
the holes down which
     the snakes descend
into their warm hell
are hungry mouths. Blood
is their only sustenance.
Each empty bird-nest
     is a crown of thorns
for an aching elm tree.

November One:
The dictionary churns
as fingers paw pages
for alternate words
to explain away
their border incursions.

November One:
Arms are the man.
Only the rifle speaks.
One bullet, one vote.
“Pogrom” rejoins
the world’s list
of “Things to Do.”

To All the Princes, November 1870

 

by Brett Rutherford

Adapted/translated from Victor Hugo, l'Annee Terrible, "November 1870, III"

Teutonic kings, what poor facsimiles you are
    of the fathers before you.
They rushed out of their great lairs,
sword in hand, striving to earn for themselves
the valor of single arms, not of a mass of fighters.

You wage war differently.
Soundlessly you slip into the shadows,
     with mere chance as an accomplice,
entering another nation slowly,
a bit like a thief, almost like a banished lover,
with lowered voice, the sneak-thief’s bowing gait,
     your lamp upon your footsteps only,
just so you make himself invisible
     deep in the forest with wolf and bear.
Then suddenly, shouting Vivat! Hurrah! Haro!
a million swords slide out from their sheaths
as you rush, and strike, and thrust, and cut
upon your neighbor, who, in this battle,
has Nothing for an army and Zero as a general.

Your ancestors, upon whom Luther used
     Ein feste Burg as cradle song
would never have agreed to conquer this way,
because the conquering thirst was less strong in them
than warrior modesty, and all had in their hearts
the desire to be great, more than the lust
     to be victorious.

You, princes, you sow, from Sedan to Versailles,
in your dark paths through the bushes,
all kinds of shady and unusual exploits
that would have brought shame in the time of the knights
who knew the fierce magnanimity of the sword.

Kings, your war is not worthy of an epic
when perpetrated by spies and traitors,
and Victory puts on a cockade for theft,
     a plume for fraud!

William is emperor, Bismarck his parade-leader;
Charlemagne to his right seats the con-man Robert-Macaire[1];
We deliver the France of Austerlitz
to the likes of mercenary Mamelukes,[2]
or Pandour guards,[3] or Ivan the Terrible’s Strélitzes,
to any passing men with lances
or roughneck soldiers.
They make it their emolument, their booty and their prey.
Where once a great army was,
     there is just an enormous robber-band.

Drunk, they go to the dark abyss that awaits them.
So the bear, in the water on the floating icebergd
does not feel the ice floe melt and collapse beneath him.
So be it, princes. Wallow on conquered France,
hold Alsace at bay, and bleed Lorraine.
From Metz that was sold to you,
     from quivering Strasbourg
whose tragic halo you will not extinguish,
you will have what one receives
     from a raped woman,
shamed nakedness, a bed of crime,
     and hatred forever.
The bodies you possess
     shall be soiled, cold,
          and sinister forever after,
when they are taken by force in vile embraces.
That’s what you get from virgins and cities.

Harvest the living like a field of ripe wheat,
surround Paris, throw flames at this great wall,
kill at Châteaudun,[4] kill at Gravelotte.[5]
O kings, despair the sobbing mother,
scream from your shadows the frightening cry:
     Exterminate! Exterminate!
Unfurl your unruly flags,
     and roll through the mud your cannons;
There is something missing in your triumphant noise.
The portal of sunbeams in the heavens remains closed,
And on the mourning earth
     the laurels droop and have no scent,
their inner sap poisoned with all this flow of blood.

Up there in the distance,
     The Muses of History
          assemble the names of the great,
     the haughty group of lasting renown.
They are faceless, immobile, indignant.
Wings closed, they turn their backs,
silent, refusing to acknowledge your triumph.
We poets distinguish, at the bottom of this black firmament,
the mournful lowering of their dark trumpets,
as they shake their heads, and turn, and depart.
To think that not one glorious name
     comes out of this rubble!
O glory, what does anyone call a hero, now?
No! not from these haughty, bloody, subtle foot-stompers,
No! not from these invaders that so much rage animates
that not one of them rises from “anonymous.”
And this hideous affront weighs down on us,
to be so great, and by so little, conquered!

November 1870

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[1] Robert-Macaire. A stock character in drama, a cheat and con artist.

[2] Mamluk. Enslaved mercenaries of the Ottoman Empire.

[3] Pandours. Security guards in the Balkans.

[4] Châteaudun. Site of a French defeat on 18 October 1870. The battle included hand-to-hand and house-to-house fighting. The Germans massacred noncombatants, including women.

[5] Gravelotte, in Lorraine, site of the largest battle in the Franco-Prussian War, in which 42,000 soldiers died.

 

Paris Slandered in Berlin

by Brett Rutherford

     Adapted from Victor Hugo, l'Annee Terrible, "November 1870, II"

The sinister night is scandalized by dawn,
and the sight of one Athenian
     seems an affront to Vandals.    

Paris, at the same time as one swindles you,
another would like to ambush you
     while calling it a polite arrest;

The pedant helps the ruffian soldier;
     they pull a fast one,
     dishonoring the heroic city

raining down insults with the shells
of their bombardment.
Here the thug kills with knife and sword,
and there the rhetorician with pen and press
utters his lies multiplied by an Academy.[1]

Paris is denounced in the name of morals,
     in the name of their cult,
to ease the way to slit your throat —
     that is why they insult you.
Slander progresses to assassination.

O city, whose people
     are as expansive as any senate,
fight, draw the sword, O city of light
who founded the workshop,
     who defended the cottage —
turn eyes and ears away,
    oh proud chief town of men all equal,
from this awful pile of bigots who howl around you,
black redeemers of altar and throne, hypocrites
who always prohibit clarity,
who stand watch around all gods
     against the reproach of free spirits,
and whose slanders we hear in history,
     at Rome, at Thebes,
     Delphi, Memphis, and Mycenae,
like the distant barking of obscene dogs.

 

---

[1] In January 1871, Emil Du Bois Reymond (1818-1896), noted physiology professor and cultural critic, later secretary of the Berlin Academy of Sciences, delivered a speech denouncing Paris and its manners and morals. He later regretted and apologized for his divisive opinions.

Atop the Walls of Paris, At Nightfall

by Brett Rutherford
 

Adapted/translated from Victor Hugo, l'Annee Terrible
 

West sky was pale, the East pitch-black
as if some bone-house arm reached up
to raise a catafalque
against the colonnades of night,
and on the firmament two shrouds unfolded.
Sunset closed in like a prison.
The dismal plaint of a solitary bird
shrilled out from frostbitten branches
and received no answer.
With downcast eyes I walked some more,
and when I turned my view
to the horizon again
the sinking sun’s face
was no more than a bloodied scimitar.
It was the vestige
of some great duel
that pitted god and monster, equals,
and one might think
the terrifying sky-blade,
lay red upon the ground,
the battle spent, or respite
between colossal wars.

(November 1870).

October 1870, Part 3

AS AN EMBATTLED STAR

     translated and adapted by Brett Rutherford

     from Victor Hugo, l'Annee Terrible, "October 1870"

III.

Seven. The number of evil. The number to which God counts,
as in a vile dungeon, all deadly human faults.
Seven princes. Württemberg and Mecklenburg,
     Nassau and Saxony,
     Baden, Bavaria and Prussia,
          all in a terrible network.

They pitch their sepulchral tents by night.
The circles of hell are there in dreary spirals.
Paris has the seven knots of darkness over it.
Count them: hate, winter, war,
     mourning, and plague, and famine,
          and even boredom joins the fray.

Paris before its wall has seven leaders like Thebes.
Unbelievable spectacle! A lone star is besieged by Erebus.[1]
The whole night sky assaults the light. A shout
of distress the star emits — and nothingness laughs.
Blindness attacks the day; a dismal envy
attacks the august altar-vase of life,
the great central hearth, the one star
     on whom all other stars depend.
All watching eyes spread through infinity
are surprised. What is this? What?
     The one star’s clarity is veiled!

A long thrill of horror runs from orb to orb.

God, save your handiwork,
     you who with a moving breath
put into shade Leviathan
     to where he twists his poisonous arms!
But no, it’s done. The infamous battle begins.
Like the lighthouse that once guarded
     the port of Scée,
a blaze bursts from the star, alerting
the sky that hell rises and night descends.
The abyss is like a huge wall of smoke
where some fierce army swarms,
a monstrous cloud, brass shining through.
Infernal noises indescribable and underground sounds
mingle, and, howling in the depths of Gehenna,
the thunders sound like beasts on a chain.

A shapeless tide where typhoons roar
arrives, grows and rolls with deep cries,
and this chaos is determined to kill this sphere.
He strikes with the flame, she with the light.
The abyss has lightning and the star has rays.
darkness, flood, mist, hurricane, whirlwind,
fall on the star, again, again, again, again,
seeking to pour itself all into this well of dawn,
an assault of cosmic violation.

Who will win? Fear — hope! Shudders!
The splendid roundness of the star, at times,
under horrible swellings of darkness, fades,
and, as a face vaguely trembles and floats,
more and more sinister and pale, it disappears.

Has someone warranted the arrest of a star?
Who has such power? Who then has the right to take
     from the universe
this sacred glow and this deep soul?
Hell seems like a terrible mouth that bites,
a maw so large that sometimes we see nothing.
So, is it dead?

Suddenly a single ray cuts through a gap,
a mane on fire, shaken by winds,
appears… There it is!
The star! The star! Living, loving,
it condemns the Night to dazzlement,
and, suddenly reappearing in its original beauty,
covers it with an immense foam of light.

So, is Chaos defeated? No. The darkness
redoubles, and the reflux of the invading abyss
comes back, and it seems as if God is discouraged.
Again, in the horror, in the night, in the storm,
we seek for the star. Where is it then? What an ambush!
And nothing continues, and everything is in suspense;
All of Creation bears witness to a criminal act,
And the universe gazes with amazement into the Abyss
Which, tirelessly, at the bottom of the vermilion firmament,
Devours light, casting a vomit of shadow on the day.

 

 

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[1] Erebus. In Greek myth, the primordial god of darkness.