To Those Who Dream of Monarchy

by Brett Rutherford

Translated and adapted from Victor Hugo, l’Annee Terrible, “February 1871”

I am in a republic, and for a king I have myself.
Know that this supreme right is not put to the vote;
Listen carefully, gentlemen, and be certain that France
will not be conjured away like some everyday business.
We, children of Paris, cousins of the Greeks of Athens,
     we know how to mock and strike.
We have in our veins not the blood of fellahs
(those millennial serfs along the banks of the Nile)
nor the blood of slaves, but good Gallic and French blood.
We have the soldiers of the first Napoleon for fathers
     and the Franks for ancestors.
Remember this: we are the masters.
Liberty never spoke to us in vain.
Remember also that our hands, having broken kings,
     can break thighs.

Good, just go ahead. Appoint yourselves prefects,
     ambassadors, ministers,
and say a polite merçi to one another.
O rascals, gorge yourselves. Have no other concern,
in these royal homes which you make your lairs,
than to harden your hearts and round your bellies;
fill yourself with pride, vanity, money. Good.
Come on. We will show an indulgent contempt,
we will turn away and let you do it;
man cannot hasten the hour that God postpones.
So be it. But do not let your puppet-play infringe
     upon the rights of the entire people.

The law at the bedrock of hearts, free, indomitable,
and haughty, still lives, watches your every step, judges you,
challenges you, and awaits you. I affirm and I assure you
that were you so bold to touch, even for a moment
      just try and see what happen!
Kings, thieves! you have pockets big enough
to put within them all the gold of the country,
the offerings of the poor, the whole state’s budget,
the sack of all our millions,
but to put our rights and our honor
in that dark hole of greed and avarice,
     never!

You will never shut away the great Republic there.
On one side a whole people; and on the other a clique!
What is your divine right compared to human right?
We vote today, we will vote tomorrow.
The sovereign is us; we want, all together,
to reign as we please, to choose whomever we please,
to appoint whomever suits us on our ticket.
Beware who puts their claw upon the ballot boxes!
Beware of those who seek to falsify the vote!
We would make them dance such a gavotte,
with instruments we’d make just for that purpose,
that they would still be pale a decade later!

 

 

 

Before the Conclusion of the Treaty

France has fallen to the Prussians. Victor Hugo is elected as a main representative of Paris to the provisional government at Bordeaux, where he will briefly head the party of the Left, which is vastly outnumbered by royalists, and Bonapartist collaborators. Hugo writes this poem while waiting to hear the outcome of the peace treaty, in which the representatives have no say.

by Brett Rutherford

Translated from Victor Hugo, l’Annee Terrible, “February 1871”

If we ended this war as Prussia wanted,
France would be like a glass on a cabaret table
to be emptied, and then smashed against the wall.
Our proud country is disappearing.
O mourning! That now we must despise,
     he whom we once admired.

Dark tomorrow! fear as the rule;
All the dregs are drunk in turn;
and the vulture comes after the eagle,
and the ravenous sea-eagle[1]
supplants the vulture;
Two provinces quartered;
Strasbourg strung on the cross,
Metz cast into the dungeon;
the day of Sedan, and the melees,
     marking France with a hot iron;

everywhere, in every captive soul,
the abject taste for base happiness
replaces pride; we grow the rank mold
of tentacled dishonor;
our ancient splendor fades.
Our great battles ended in disgrace;
the thunderstruck homeland
is not accustomed to bowed heads;
to the enemy hulked in our citadels,
the shadow of Attila in our towers.
The hovering swallows hesitate and say:
     France is no longer there!

Having had her mouth full of Bazaine,[2]
Renown with her broken flight
soils her old grey-green bugle
     with an unhealthy slime;

If we fight this, it is against a brother;
we no longer know your name, Bayard![3]
Are those who turned and fled
now to become respectable assassins?
Over the silent fronts a harsh night rises.
No dying spirit dares to fly away.
The sky marks our shame
     by refusing to show its stars.
Dark cold! we see, with funeral folds,
closing between the peoples
a depth of darkness such that
     we can no longer love one another;

In the mutual abhorrence of France and Prussia,
that whole herd of men hates us
and our eclipse is their dawn,
and our grave is their wish.
A shipwreck! Goodbye to great works!

Everyone has been deceived,
and all facts are seen as deceptions.
We say to our own flags: Cowards!
We spit on our cannons and say they are afraid.
Pride gone, hope gone, our history
already wrapped in a heavy shroud.
No, God, let not France fall
into the abyss of this peace!

 —Bordeaux, February 14, 1871.

---

[1] Sea-eagle. Believed to be the eagle in German heraldry

[2] Bazaine. François Achille Bazaine (1811-1888), commander-in-chief of the Army of the Rhine under Napoleon III. His defeats, and suspicious political maneuverings before his disastrous surrender, led to a rancorous treason trial.

[3] Bayard. Pierre Terrail, seigneur de Bayard (c. 1476 – 1524). A legendary warrior known as “the knight without fear and beyond reproach.”

 

The Day They Surrendered Paris

by Brett Rutherford

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

Thus the greatest nations topple and fall!
Your work was used, O people, for this abortion.
What? Was it for this we stood watch all night
till dawn broke on the high bastions?
Was this why we were brave, haughty, invincible,
no more than a target for Prussia’s arrow?
Is it for this our heroes bled, and our martyrs died?
For this we fought more than the defenders of Tyre,
of Sagunto, Byzantium and Corinth?
Is this why we suffered the five-month embrace
of those furtive, black Teutons, having in their eyes
the sinister stupor of the wolf-infested woods?

Is it for this we struggled, and excavated mines,
made broken bridges whole, braved plague and famine,
made ditches and planted stakes, built forts anew?
Did France not see how we filled with the sheaf of the dead
this tomb, this Paris, this dark barn of battles?
Why, day after day did we live under machine-gun fire?

Deep skies! after so many trials, after so many efforts
to take hold of great Paris, where we were bloody, crushed,
and yet content with the august hope, panting
with the immense expectation
that if we were going to be conquered,
we would rush headlong towards the cannons of brass,
gnaw our own walls to get at them
     like the horse its brake.

When increase of pain only made us more virtuous,
when little children, bombarded in the streets,
laughingly picked up spent shells and bullets,
when not one has weakened among the citizens,
when we were there, three hundred thousand strong,
and ready to issue forth — despite all this
a war-council of august men has surrendered this city!

O people, from all your devotion and fury and pride,
and from your courage, too, they made
submission and cowardice. Yet glory will come,
and history will pass with a cold frisson
at what was done on this shameful day.

Paris, 27 January 1871.

 

 

The Untrusted Allegory

 

by Brett Rutherford

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

XII

But, once again I ask, just who delivered
this Paris, part Sparta and part Rome,
to this miserable man? To whom
did we turn to be guided thus? Who, then,
made such a mélange of terrible destinies?

When the dire need was to escape the gulf,
and to emerge from the chaos that looms
as well as the chaos we already endure,
to dissipate the night, to rise above
the deep clouds perceived in the abyss,
to pour out the dawn from infinite obscurity,
then we no longer place our trust in the Four,
those Geniuses we call Audacity, Humanity,
Will, and Freedom, whose chariot of clarity
they pull across the heavens, and whom
we always assumed to be at hand to guide us.

O France! Instead we take as guide, auxiliary
some new unfortunate, obscurely led,
someone assuredly faithful, but very slow —
having the night behind him, that much said! —
whose prime instinct would be not moving
at all, and who, feeling the space around him
with an unsure hand, holds out a bowl,
not with a plan of tactics, but for the alms of chance!

It is time to put the black shadow to flight
and open this proud door, Victory.
Is this a case of mistaken identity?

This humble little passenger seems scarcely able
to steer the chariot, let along to guard and guide us.
Is she able to plunge on through the azure sky
and to escape the shocks, dodge the furies,
endure the jeers, swat off the slingshots,
not falling dizzy in winds, and through the clouds,
able to avoid the pitfall, the cliff, the reef,
Can this one, gloomy and winded,
oblivious as a mole, donkey-practical,
ever complete this enormous, hovering team?

What is this? In the hour that France is in danger,
we ask these for proud spirits to act as horses,
pulling the huge war chariot and its rider,
against the waves and winds that break all sails,
monsters whose manes are mixed with the stars,
and who follow, breathless the North Wind’s
violent and clotted storm-clouds. We say:

This show of force, whether real
or allegorical, is not enough. The need
for reinforcements is upon us. See
the immense precipice before your chariot!
See the shadow that must be crossed?
We are mad — we doubt you.
Before the black nadir and the blood-ruddy zenith
we send forth the daring horses of the sun
with a seeing-eye dog before them!

Note: This poem is another attempt to shake up Trochu, the leader of the Paris defense. The surrender of Paris was imminent, so placing a timid character in the chariot of Victory, and suggesting he needed not only supernatural help, but also a seeing-eye dog, is a stern rebuke. The artist who illustrated the poem missed the satirical point and placed a formidable Victory in the chariot.