Letter to a Lady

by Brett Rutherford

Translated and adapted from from Victor Hugo, l’Année Terrible, “January 1871”

From Paris, terrible and gay, and fighting on —

Good-day, Madame.

 We are one people, one world, one soul.
We give of ourselves to everyone,
      and no one thinks of himself alone.
We endure without sun, without support,
     and without fear.

 Things will be fine if we never sleep.
Schmitz sends out engraved bulletins
     on the enormous war,

like Aeschylus translated by Father Brumoy.[1]
I paid fifteen francs for four fresh eggs, not for me,
but for my little George and little Jeanne.
Paris eats donkeys and horses now,
     along with bears and rats.

Paris is so well besieged and surrounded,
     walled up, tied up, and guarded,
that her belly is Noah’s ark.
Into our flanks every beast, honest or ill-famed,
enters, and dog and cat, from mammoth
to pygmy, hippo to flea, everything enters,
and the mouse meets the elephant.
If we see a tree, we cut it down, we saw, we split;
the Champs-Elysées goes up the flues of Paris.
With frost on our windows, our fingers are numb.

Washhouses lack fuels to dry our laundry,
and we don’t change our shirts anymore.
In the evenings a great dark murmur
swells up on the street corners,
it’s the crowd; sometimes gruff voices threaten,
sometimes a song calms them, sometimes
a loud voice stirs all to bellicose shouts.

The Seine drags slowly on, with archipelagos
     of hesitant, heavy ice cubes,
and the gunboat runs, leaving behind a foaming rut.
We live on nothing, we live on everything,
     we are, in our mad way, content.

 On our napkinlessless tables, where hunger awaits us,
a potato plucked from its crypt is hailed as a queen,
and onions are with the gods as in Egypt.[2]
We lack coal, but then our bread is black.
No more gas; Paris sleeps under a large snuffer;
by six o'clock in the evening, we are plunged in darkness
Bomb-storms make monstrous noise above our heads.
I use a well-formed piece of shrapnel as an inkwell.
Murdered Paris does not deign to scream.

Townspeople stand on guard around the wall;
These fathers, husbands, brothers, get machine-gunned,
     keeping their caps rolled up in their pea coats,
Others wait to be called, no bed but the plank of their benches.
It’s one or the other, ramparts or down-below:
     Moltke cannonades us here,
      and Bismarck starves us everywhere.
Paris is a hero, Paris is a woman;
He knows how to be valiant and charming; her eyes shine,
smiling and pensive, in the great deep sky,
in the pigeon that lights on the rising balloon.

It’s quite something; the formidable has emerged,
     putting aside the frivolous.
I’m happy just to see that nothing collapses.
I tell everyone to love, to fight, to forget,
to have no enemy but the enemy; I cry out:
my name is not my name anymore,
     my name is Patrie!

As a woman, you can be very proud of ours:
while everything is tottering, they are simply sublime.
Theirs is the beauty of the ancient Romans,
who under their humble roofs, tended domestic life,
their fingers were not dainty, but black and hard
from the harsh wool they spun and wove;
their sleep was short, and they feigned calm,
with Hannibal outside the walls,
and their husbands standing on the hill-gate.

Such times have returned. The feline giantess,
Prussia, holds Paris, and, tigress, she bites
half to death this great beating heart of the world.
Well, in this Paris, under such inhuman embrace,
the man is only French, but the woman is Roman.
They accept everything, the women of Paris,
their hearths extinguished, their feet bruised by the ice,
holding nocturnal watch at the black threshold of butchery,
cold urns of snow and hurricane emptying upon them,
famine, horror, combat, seeing nothing but the company
of the great gone before them, and the great duty now;
and poet Juvénal, deep in the shadows of time,
     would recognize them as Roman.[3]

The bombardment makes our citadels rumble.
The dawn drum speaks, the bugle calls distantly.
Diana wakes up, in the fresh morning wind.
The great city, pale and still in shadow, takes form.
A vague fanfare wanders from street to street.
We fraternize, we dream of success;
we offer our hearts to hope, our brows to lightning.
The city chosen by glory and misfortune
sees one more terrible day and salutes it.

Indeed, we shall be cold! True, we shall be hungry!
What is this but night? And what will the end be?
A dawn! We are suffering, but with certainty.
Prussia is the dungeon and Paris is Latude.[4]
Courage! the old days will repeat themselves.
Paris will drive out the Prussians within a month.
Then we plan, my two sons and I, to live
out in the country, with you,
     who say you are willing to follow us,
Madame, and we will come in March to ask you,
that is, if we are not killed in February.

 

Praestabat castas humilis fortunas Latinas,
Casulae, somnique breves, et vellere tusco
Vexatae duraeque manus, et proximus urbis
Annibal, et stantes Collina in turre mariti.
                                                         —Juvenal

---

[1] Father Brumoy. Pierre Brumoy (1688-1742), a Jesuit scholar and editor who published Le Théâtre des Grecs (1730), with abridged versions of seven Greek dramas, some no more than summaries.

[2] Onions were used in many Egyptian rituals, including the Opening of the Mouth in the awakening of the dead in the afterlife.

[3] Roman poet Juvenal praised the virtues of Roman women under duress and some of Hugo’s praise is paraphrased from Juvenal’s Satire VI, 287.

[4] Latude. Jean Henri Latude (1725-1805), a French writer who repeatedly escaped from imprisonment in the Bastille.

 

The Jumbo Sandwich

by Brett Rutherford

On Kingview Road in Scottdale,
weeks passed sometimes
in which the only meat
was something called Jumbo Bologna.
The sign lied, since it
was pronounced BALONEY
and no one knew what was in it.

“Eyeballs and guts,” my friends said.
“’Possums and groundhogs maybe.”

Though I was proud to own
my Tom Corbett, Space Cadet lunchpail,
I never let anyone see
that Monday it was Jumbo on Wonder Bread,
and Tuesday, and Wednesday, too.
On the Thursday the credit ran out
at the corner store, and I went forth
with green peppers and margarine
on Wonder Bread. Two bites were all
I could manage before the bitter taste
compelled me to throw the rest away.

On Kingview Road in Scottdale,
dinners comprised
fried Jumbo Bologna on Wonder Bread.
Some nights it was just bread
with gravy poured over it,
gravy from bacon grease.

Pointless to sneak at night
to peek in the icebox: beer, milk,
and eggs and bacon, the wrapped
remnants of bologna for tomorrow’s lunch.

Payday was little better. With luck,
my father would toss
a pack of hot dogs on the table
announcing, “Here’s dinner.”
He gambled every penny
and lost it all.

The meatless meal
of canned peas mushed up
in mashed potatoes —
with luck a smattering of gravy
added — my mother,
who had waitressed once,
called it “schmung.”

Since Father required
his breakfast before
the trek to the glass factory,
eggs, bacon, and Wonder Bread
were always there:
that can be said,
although a doctor looked
at my pencil-thin arms and asked,
“Don’t you ever feed this child?”

Strange it seemed, that others
knew how to eat, no matter
their poverty. Grandparents
decades on welfare had a garden
and when we went there,
we feasted on corn,
and fat tomatoes
green onions and radishes.

Sometimes I visited
a schoolmate’s home.
Italian immigrants,
just scraping by.
Smell the kitchen:
they ate like gods.

On Kingview Road in Scottdale,
the smell of myrtle
must linger still,
(the one fine spice
that made bologna palatable.)

So once a month,
in memory of poverty,
which after all,
is never far away,
I eat a Jumbo sandwich,
scented and sweet
with the poor peoples’
frankincense.

 

 

 

The First of January

 by Brett Rutherford

Translated from Victor Hugo, l'Annee Terrible, "January 1871"

As you grow up, you will later be told
how your grandfather adored you;
that he did his best on earth,
with little joy and hounded by envy,
that when you were little, he was old,
that he had no gruff words or morose looks,
and that he left you in the rose season;
that he died, that he was a merciful man;
that, in the famous winter of the great bombardment,
he crossed that tragic Paris full of swords,
to bring you all those toys and dolls
and puppets, making a thousand comic gestures;
and thinking of him you will grow pensive
     beneath the trees’ dark shade remembering.

Review of "Maestro"

This afternoon I viewed the film, Maestro, a biographical film about the personal life of composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein. It is a powerful and convincing impersonation of a man whose appearance, speech, and mannerisms are already known to millions. It is a daring thing to do.

What most everyone has always known is that Bernstein was a gay man in a generation where that mere fact, on top of being Jewish, would have meant no conducting career with a top-tier orchestra. So like many in his generation, he hid behind a marriage. That he loved his wife Felicja is undoubted, and they had three children. The film depicts the kind of marriage that existed then, when a wife endured and overlooked her husband's boyfriends as long as he was "discreet."

 

It is a torture to see this, and I have seldom seen this caged unhappiness so well portrayed. Bernstein's giant talent and giant ego made it all the more difficult. He is the greatest American-born conductor of the 20th century.

 

I did not enjoy seeing Bernstein drunk and snorting cocaine, and I assume this is all true since it is an honest, and authorized, biographical depiction. But these are further demonstrations of emotional repression. Despite his triumphs, this is not a happy man.

Those who love Bernstein the musician may not care a jot about his personal life. I think it matters that people should know, especially in this time when some want to drive gay people underground again, what that dishonesty costs.

 

The only lengthy musical excerpt showing Bernstein conducting is the finale of Mahler's Second Symphony, and this is the high point of the film. For those coming to the film knowing nothing about Bernstein, this recreation of his conducting style with the most wildly stirring finale in all Western music, shows what he meant to musicians and to his listeners. He did indeed set people on fire.

 

That said, do not expect this to be a film with long musical intervals. It's an emotional and packed life history. You have to bring your own memories of Bernstein's recordings to it.

 

 

Who Is the Ultimate Victor?

by Brett Rutherford

     Adapted and translated from Victor Hugo, l'Annee Terrible, "December 1870."

Attention, Teutons! We have a thing or two
it seems we need to teach you. Sit up!
No, you will not “take” Alsace and Lorraine,
and it is we who will “take” Germany. Listen:
Cross our border, enter our cities,
a glance at our books will show you
     the spirits who still walk among us.
Breathe the deep air which intoxicates our thinkers.
Unknowingly you will surrender your sword to progress.
Drink from our Frankish cup, adopt our regrets,
our mourning, our fruitful evils, our wishes, our hopes.
Before too many days you will cry our tears;
     you shall envy our sufferings;
you will begin to yearn for our great wind, the Revolution.
This is understanding, oh Germans! what the halcyon knows,
that some waves celebrate when a fierce storm comes,
and we get straight to the point of the storm,
by letting it break our masts and our tackle.
Kings give people to the fields for fertilizer
and this mass murder is called a victory.
They hurl into history an Austerlitz or Rosbach,
and say: “It’s over now.” — Just let time pass.
What has just ended, O kings, is a beginning.
Yes, people have died, but people
     keep right on getting born.
Invincible dawn shines right on through
     the armor and the crowns of kings.
That dawn is Justice and Freedom, too.

The conqueror feels conquered. Tamed tamer,
he is surprised; in his shame-clouded heart
a mysterious construction rises;
an idiot gladiator acquires the spirit of his prey;
he becomes a beast himself. His own ideal
bares teeth and smiles at him. His hand is stayed:
what he adores he can no longer kill.

The glacier melts before the ray that gilds it.
One day, as Linus sang, he moved the stones
He stood upon. The mountain’s Titan,
awake from silent granite’s slumber,
shouted: “Move no more, icy and heavy rock!”
The rock replied: “Do you think I am deaf?”
Thus the immobile mass listens and dreams;
     and thus from a song it is moved,
when black branches come to loosen the knot,
when the sap enters and flows through new branches,
a tree that the shadow filled and that, now, wings will fill.
Man goes about with rocks in his head, prejudices,
vice, error, rotten false dogmas of selfish cast;
but let a voice pass before him a high idea,
then all these stones line up to form
     a new thing, temple within his soul.

Man! Eternal The walls of Thebes erected
by stones that walked to the songs of Amphion!
Ah! deliver yourself then, we challenge you,
Germans, from Pascal, from Danton, or from Voltaire!
Teutons, free yourself from the frightening mystery
from ever-ongoing Progress,
from new things only vaguely mastered,
from reality unmasking wild ignorance,
and of the day that reduces every soul
     to what it once thought was slavery!

Superb slavery! obedience to law
by which error collapses and reason grows!
Deliver yourself from the mountains
     that only offer you their summits to climb.
Deliver yourself from the dark underwing
     of the unknown and the sublime,
things you cannot see and that you already possess.
Deliver yourself from the wind that we blow on you!
Deliver yourself from the unknown world that is beginning,
Duty, and spring and space immense!
Deliver yourself from water, earth, air,
from our Cornelius, yes, and from your Schiller,
from your lungs wanting to breathe, from the pupils
that show you the eternal lights up there,
from the truth, true at all times, in all places,
from today, from tomorrow... —
     You may even deliver yourself from God!
Ah! you are in France, Germans! be careful!
Ah! Such barbarity! You reckless and haggard crowd,
you come running with swords! ah! your camps,
like the fiery silt vomited by volcanoes,
roll to Paris out of your crater!
Ah! you come to our home to take some land from us!
So be it. We in our turn shall take all of your heart.

Tomorrow,
tomorrow, the French goal being the human goal,
you run toward us. Yes, you, great black nation,
you will come to riot, to struggle, to glory,
to the testing, to the great shocks, to the sublime misfortunes,
to revolutions, like the bee to flowers!

Alas! you are killing those
     through whose whole being you shall one day live.
No matter the fanfare swelling its brass voices,
these wars, these furious clashes, these blockades!
You seem to be our victors,
     I say you are our vanquished.
As the ocean filters at the bottom of a coral reef,
through every pore of you
     our ardent philosophy comes in.
Before too many days have passed,
      you will curse the things we curse;
and you will not be able to leave, Teutons,
without having stocked up on hatred here
against Peter and Caesar, chain and chariot
because our looks of mourning, anger and fear,
pass over the common people and strike the king!

You who for so long, as low as peat,
     held poor, kept blind
moaning at random like a bull bellowing,
you will draw from us the haughty will
to exist, and to see clear-browed;
and what you carry forth in your war-pack
will have nothing of the low or vulgar about it.
Yours will be the bitter ardor to do like us,
and to become all equal and to become all free.
Germans, this will be your well-thought purpose
to strike down this pile of thrones pell-mell,
to stretch out a hand to the nations,
mastered by law alone, your leaders
     serving only what duty compels.

So let the universe know, if it looks down and asks,
that Germany is strong and that France is great;
that the candid German is finally triumphant,
a people who have outgrown their infancy!
Your blue-eyed hordes will start following us
with the novel and superb joy of living,
and the deep contentment of no longer having
anvils to forge superfluous swords.
The most poignant lesson that we encounter on earth:
to be for reason comes out of having been against it;
we serve the law with all the more virtue
once we repent of having resisted it.
Germany, flooded with so many murders,
will be the august prisoner of the Idea;
for we are all the more captive
     the more we were once victorious and cruel;
she will not be able to give back her heart to the night.
The German cannot escape from his own soul
whose light and flame we will have changed,
and he will recognize himself as French, shuddering
to kiss our feet, he who once drank our blood!

No, you will not take Lorraine and Alsace,
and, I tell you again, Germans, whatever we do,
it is you who will be taken by France. How ?
As iron filings to the magnet fly,
as night titanic is seduced by dawn,
as with its mountainsides, where sonorous echoes sleep,
its caves, its burrowed nesting hole, its boary thickets
and its sublime night-horror and its familiar wolves,
and all its shapeless foliage made ominous,
the gloomy wood is lit by one clear spark.

When our lightning has crossed your massifs;
when you have suffered, then savored, thoughtfully,
this air of France where the soul is all the more at ease
because she vaguely feels the Marseillaise
     is always floating somewhere there;
when you have given enough of your goods, your rights,
your honor, your children, to be devoured by kings;
when you see Caesar invade your provinces;
when you have weighed your princes in two ways,
when you say to yourself: these masters of humans
are heavy on our shoulder yet light
     if we place our own hand upon them;
when, after all this, you will see the scars
the battles have done to us and to you yourselves;

when your funereal depths are filled with coal,
wrapped in our flags, and shrouds, and souls,
when they have slowly dug mines into your darkness,
when they have brooded in you for the right time,
one day, suddenly, in front of the awful absolute scepter,
before kings, before ancient Sodoms,
before evil, before the yoke, you, forest of men,
you will have an enormous anger that will be set ablaze;
you will open yourself, abyss, to the hurricane of God.
Glory to the North! You shall be the Aurora Borealis
people, illuminating an ideal Europe!

You will shout: — What? Kings? What! An emperor?
How dazzling to see, Germany in fury!
Go, people! Oh vision! a sinister combustion
of all the black past, priest, altar, king, minister,
in the blaze of a new faith, life and reason,
casting a huge glow on the horizon!
Brothers, you will return our flame to us enlarged.
We are the torch, and you will be the fire.

 

 

 

 

Family, Anglo-Saxon Style

 

     by Brett Rutherford

They watch for one another's

death notices.

While you are laid out

in the funeral parlor,

they come to your house

to yank the paintings

from off the walls,

your Chinese vases wrapped

in the remembered quilt

grandmother mistakenly

left to the unworthy heir.

 

Estates contested, their wills

not mentioning one another,

they initiate suits

to the delight of lawyers.

 

A quick cremation cheats

the hovering, pregnant fly,

the patient, boring worm,

the ghoul who would dig

for that last ruby ring.

Family? Ha! They'd take

the casket handles and hinges

for a scrap-metal sale.

Pall-bearers? Forget it!

A grave? Go dig your own!

 

 

The Warning

by Brett Rutherford

He could be anyone, really,

a face in the crowd.
Jowled man, raggedy-beard,
ill-fitting overcoat, too long
in a basement from the look
of him, he surveys the crowd
at Sixth Street and Liberty.

Happy, the faces going

to the John Williams concert,

more so, the families off

to see the Nutcracker.

Shoppers stride over

to the Christmas village,

to skate beneath

a handsome, lit pine.

 

He waits for a bus where

brown faces outnumber him,

and at this he is furious.

He rambles loudly, not into phone

but into the general air,

talk radio host to everyone

and no one. "Just wait!" he booms,

"Till all the undesirables are gone.

All gone .... all gone ... it's coming.

Then there will be no one left

but us conservatives." I groan

and turn away,

 

but he is not to be avoided,

pushes his way into the 13 bus

I too am taking. Shoppers

get on, bags bulging with gifts

or groceries. "Know where you've been,"

he mutters, "and what you've been up to.

Bet you didn't pay for that."

 

He mumbles awhile about

the conservative curfew

that would clean things up:

no one downtown after 7 pm.

"Close all the theaters."

 

More black people get on.

More shopping bags.

"Target acquired!" he proclaims.

"Target acquired! Take this one out!"

No one pays heed.

No snipers obey his orders.

None of us have bullet holes.

 

I get off my bus,

head for the poetry reading.

The madman rolls on

with ever more alien

and suspect riders

accumulating, his blood

raised to boiling before

he reaches the place

he sleeps in, safe and white.

 

He could be anyone, really,

someone I went to college with,

maybe; for a moment I thought

that's what my brother

might look like now,

the brother I haven't seen

in half a century.

He could be anyone, really.

His list is long,

and he is getting ready.