Flux and Reflux

by Brett Rutherford

Freely adapted from Victor Hugo, l’Année Terrible, “July 1871”

Note: The Battle of Forbach in August 1870, which defeated Napoleon III, hastened the consolidation of the German states and led to the coronation of German emperor William I in January 1871. On 10 May 1871, the Treaty of Frankfurt was signed, establishing the new frontiers between Germany and France. In this treaty, 1,694 French towns and cities in Alsace and Lorraine passed into German control. Hugo’s poem reflects on the bitter irony of one emperor’s defeat leading to another tyrant, and how the victor can now sit back and watch the French murder one another in civil war. Hugo also sees that the implementation of martial law and mass executions serve an immoral proposition that the best way forward for the nation is to get rid of “the lower element” rather than address systemic poverty. Hugo’s lines seem obscure in places without the specific context of the events of early 1871, so I have added some lines for clarity, and I have also embellished a little more than usual in this rather polemical poem, where “Kill the Poor” seems an undercurrent.

 

II

One Emperor down. Is it all over, then?

Alas for us all, another pops up.
One is knocked down in France;
      in Germany, they prop another up.
Forged on the anvil of Teutonic victory
     (their triumph at Forbach),
a giant smithy hovers there,
as Germany forges
     from the shards of a despot
          a brand-new tyrant.

 

Kaiser Wilhelm! Emperor of all
     the German States —
must it be? then there is no escape
from these badged and beribboned
     Emperors! Our traitor Caesar
is chased away by another who adds
     an imperial title to his crown.

 

I care little, if one comes in
     all puffed up with his triumph,
so long as the other one is gone,

if this is the year of Wilhelm
so long as it is not a year of Bonaparte,

if the hideous night owl goes hooting off
to be replaced by an ominous eagle.

 

But no! What was I thinking?
The grief! The shame!
Was this supposed to be
the end of troubles? They start all over.

Just when our patching-up commences,
the storm resumes with all its fury.
The news that reaches me is monstrous.
Is one snake worse than another?

Once you have faced a dragon,
     can another make
     an even grander entrance?

 

How tragic and Greek,
these two European brothers.
Which, I wonder, is Thysetes,
and which is Atreus?

One hides his face

     amid plum-puddings;[1]
the German smirks,
applauding our feast
of mutual cannibalism.
The invasion ends,
and we act out upon our stage
cruel acts of puppetry
from which the world recoils.

 

O House of Bonaparte,
    this is your wake!

Even the goddess of Victory
averts her eyes at such behavior.
A nation of such shame
     ought not to have
personified virtues on its soil.

 

Instead of solving enigmas
we crush them underfoot.

You whose “wisdom”
is everyone else’s idiocy,
what future are you devising?

As you go forward hatefully,
what reciprocity awaits
when the end of your own road
is another line of bayonets?

You see Utopia
     while uttering “Martial Law”?

If, in their hunger and poverty,
     the lowest of the low
seem like a wolf-pack intent
    on biting the hand that brings them bread,
unlettered and untaught,
     proud in their fierce innocence,

if in their filth, their laughter
     comes off as a sinister mockery,
if their crushed spirits appear
     to be the very dread of night,
          a dark heart devouring all,

and you recoil at their pain,
     at the sight of their pale families
         extended in legions to the end
               of every dark city lane,
and if your only answer,
     confronted with dilemmas
         a millennium in the making,
is “Kill them all!” — is your excuse
that some of them once killed
     a few of us — that eye for eye,
and blow for blow, is just a natural
remedy that anyone can understand,

then where does it end? Does murder
at last eliminate murder
when there is no one left to kill?

Then only? Just whom does death appease?

 

Do the speeches you make
still mention august ideals,
illuminated dawns,
extoling happiness,
     and life in bloom,
an Eden of forthright facts
and generous edicts,

while your eyes are closed,
your hand on the shoulder
of the one who guides you —

Medusa, sword in her hand,
breast bare for all to see
     (the future! the future!)

her eyes aflame
    with paralyzing fire!

 

When, at the end
     of so many of your acts,
the cemetery is the final scene,
and when the bone-yard is not big enough,
some bottomless well will do:
just hurl the victims down,
     into a jumble of heaped skeletons,
do not concern yourself
     with what goes on in those dark cavities,
this sowing of earth that seeds
     another generation of death,
are you not troubled a little?
    Does the earth not shift at night
beneath your bed of luxury?

Presented with the slums’ street-map
is your answer, “Build more cemeteries?”

 

The poor man is in rags; the rich one
complains he must make do
with last year’s tattered overcoat.

Nothing is whole for anyone,
and the infamous shadow
casts its pall everywhere.

Hearts without love, souls
    without a glimmer of blue sky
         to brighten them; alas!

everywhere tumult and anger,
     dungeons and the threat of hell,
all in a darkness so intense
     that an ever-greater dark
          seems over and behind it.

The mind, under this cloud
     that muffles everything
          to a stunned silence,
senses that something incubates,
     and bides its time, enormous —
what is it? A mystery!

Something is being constructed.

Awakening, we shall find it.

Its imperceptible onyx stone
will gain a chalky whiteness,
as the fatal black work
     reveals the skeleton inside.

 

What we encounter there
     is not the desired goal,
     some Gallic Utopia;
instead it is the thing
     we have always ignored,
          the obstacle itself.

Reefs show their heads
     one after the other,
because History has its Cape of Storms.

The clarity is on the other side.
One more thing must be surpassed!

These ebbs and flows,
     these new beginnings,
          these fights, may serve an end.

 

Above the immense hatred,
     there is a being who loves.
We are its object: have faith!

It is not without some goal supreme
that constantly, in this abyss
     where the sounders dream,
a prodigious wind blows from the depths,
and through the harsh night,
pushes and carries and returns again
to all the divine reef — whom?
We are not in or of some battered ship
that dashes on the rocks and perishes —
it is we, the whole of humanity,
we are the sea itself that hurls itself
on and ever forward. On!

 

---

[1] amid plum-puddings, i.e., Napoleon III in exile in England

The Two Voices, Part 2

by Brett Rutherford

Adapted from Victor Hugo, l'Annee Terrible, "July 1871"

THE HIGH VOICE

Do not listen. Remain a faithful soul.

A heart, no more than a sky, can be darkened.

I am conscience, a virgin; and this

is what the State calls Reason, a public harlot.

She confuses the true by the falsehood she explicates.

 

She is the bastard and shifty sister
     of common sense.

I admit that dim light has its supporters;

that it is found excellent and useful

to avoid a shock, to ward off a bullet,

to walk a straight way at a dark crossroad,

and to prepare oneself for small duties.

Inn-keepers make practicality
     their motto and shop-sign.

What goes for it is its simplicity,
     the way of the short-sighted,

the clever, the shrewd, the prudent,
     the discreet, those who can only
          and ever see things up close,

those who crouch down to examine webs
     with the tenacity of a spider —

but someone must be for the stars!

 

Someone is needed
     who will stand for fraternity,

honor and clemency, freedom and law,

and for truth, even if truth
     is in a place of dark resplendence!

The darker the night you are in,
     the more sublime the constellations!

They shine, eternal summer’s blooms;

but they need, in their serenity,

that the watching universe

     in need of guidance,
           bears witness to them;
they need to know that,

renewed on earth from age to age,

one man, reassuring his condemned brothers,

cries through the night: Oh stars, shine on!

 

Nothing would be more frightening than this:
that ray and shadow, virtue and crime
were one and the same in the abyss of night.
Nothing would accuse and cancel God more
than this lost clarity of distinction. If we
and all our thoughts and deeds, bled out
into the depths of the heavens
     without will or meaning.
Nothing would drive the universe more mad
that the uselessness of its own light.

Therefore justice is good.
     The star in whose name
          we seek it is good.
Just think: in twenty terrible countries,
among them Sudan, Darfur, and Gabon,
it was the unchallenged law
that humans were taken, bound, and dragged,
transported and sold by force, until
in the rising of a star, a Wilberforce[1]

dragged nations to the bench
     and shouted, “No!”
From whence come such men?
    

If random men be just,
     even at the cost of martyrdom,
the universe redeems itself.

To let justice come out of oneself,

     is the true radiance of man.

Wherever iniquity act is done,

wherever its ill gains accumulate to power,

a voice must speak.
It is necessary that in the night,
a light, like a comet, suddenly appears.

 

In heaven this god, the True,
     on earth its priests, the Just.
These are the two necessities.

The way the wind is blowing
     must be contradicted.

The flood of the inevitable
     must be resisted.

Thus rise and soar
     fairness and equality.
There is no other rule.

 

Who, then, takes the summit

of Mont Blanc as his home?
     The eagle.

 

---

[1] William Wilberforce (24 August 1759 – 29 July 1833), reformer whose anti-slavery crusades led to the abolition of slavery throughout the British Empire.

The Two Voices, Part 1

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)

The Innocents

by Brett Rutherford

Adapted from Victor Hugo, L’Année Terrible, “June 1871”

 

XVIII

But still, we have the children! Does Fate,
going about its implacable business, pause
to listen to the murmur of these blossoming souls?
When, cheerfully, the child runs forth,
does the worried prayer that follows him
speak to anyone at all? Does Destiny amend
its thoughts, when a sweet child whispers,
of the day’s delight that awaits her?

 

Oh! What a shadow! Both sing, two
fragile heads lean one upon the other,
where floats the glow of their made-up
celebrations. Their games
reflect a better paradise
than any a weary nurse can imagine.

 

At each awakening, a child
has a bright heart as new as morning.

Their innocence is primed for joy,
    their eyes intent for surprises,
and just as the bird who chirps on a branch,
or the star that seems new-hatched
     at one of the black horizons,
they do not worry themselves
     about what their elders might do,
for their business and their adventures
is all of great nature blossoming.

 

“Look what I found,” they delight in saying.
They ask nothing of any god but sunlight.
So long as some vermilion ray
     beams through diaphanous hands
     to warm up their little fingers,
they are content!
“And what does little Jeanne desire today?” I ask.

She need not answer; she points
to where the cedars arch up to frame
the bluest of blue in the heavens.