Victor HUGO (1802-1885)
(Collection: Contemplations)

Léopoldine HUGO
1824-1843

To the one who stayed in France

I

Sit up, lift your eyes, disturb
This frozen sheet that makes folds on your angel’s forehead,
Open your hands, and take this book: it’s yours.

This book where my soul lives, hope, mourning, dream, fear,
This book which contains the specter of my life,
My anguish, my dawn, alas! crying followed,
The shadow and its hurricane, the rose and its pistil,
This azure, sad, stormy book, where does it come from?
Where does the pale flash that tears the mist come from?
For four years, I have lived in a whirlwind of foam;
This book sprang from it. God dictated, I wrote;
Because I am straw in the wind. Goes ! said the spirit. I go.
And, when I had finished these pages, when this book
Began to throb, to breathe, to live,
A church in the fields, green with ivy,
Whose tower strikes the hour in my nothingness, said to me:
Your song is finished; give it to me, poet.
“I am asking for it,” said the worried forest;
And the soft flowery meadow said to me: – Give it to me.
The sea, seeing him quiver, said to me: – Why
Do not throw it at me, since it is a sail!
“This hymn belongs to me,” said the star.
“Give it to us, thoughtfully,” cried the great winds.
And the birds said to me: – Won’t you go to the living
Offer this book, hatched so far from their quarrels?
Let us take it to our nests on our wings! –
But the wind will not have my book, O deep skies!
Nor the wild sea, given over to black typhoons,
Opening and closing its waves, bitter pitfalls;
Nor the green forest filled with the noise of beehives;
Nor the church where time turns its compass;
The meadow will not have it, the star will not have it,
The bird will not have it, whether it is an eagle or a dove,
The nests won’t have it; I give it to the grave.

II

Once when September in tears returned,
I was leaving, I was leaving everything that knows me,
I was escaping; Paris was fading; nothing nobody !
I was going, I was just a shivering shadow,
I fled, alone, without seeing, without thinking, without speaking,
Knowing that I would go where I had to go;
Alas! I could not even have said: I am suffering!
And, as if under the pull of an abyss,
That the road was beautiful, rainy, cold, bad,
I didn’t know, I was walking in front of me, I was coming.
O memories! O horrible form of the hills!
And, while mother and sister, orphans,
Cried in the house, I was looking for the black lieu
With the mournful greed of despair;
Then I went to the sad field next to the church;
Bare head, with slow steps, the hair in the wind,
With my eye to the heavens, I drew near; overwhelming sustains;
The trees whispered: It’s the father who is coming!
The brambles parted their withered branches;
I walked through the humble leaning crosses,
Saying I do not know what sweet and funereal words;
And I knelt in the middle of the branches
On the stone that we see white in the greenery.
Why did you sleep so hard
That you didn’t hear when I called you?

And the fishermen passed by dragging their nets,
And said: What then is this man who dreams?
And the day, and the evening, and the shadow that lengthens,
And Venus, which for me once sparkled,
Everything was gone that I was still there.
I was there, begging the one who answers us;
I loved, I let fall on this pit,
Alas! where I had seen my skies vanish,
All my heart drop by drop in silent tears;
I was stripping sage and clematis;
I remembered her when she was little,
When she brought me lilies and jasmines,
Or when she took my quill in her hands,
Cheerful, and laughing at having ink on his pink fingers;
I breathed the flowers on this blossoming ash,
I fixed my gaze on those cold green lawns,
And at times, oh God, I saw, through
The stone of the tomb, like a soul glow!

Yes, long ago, when this hour of mourning that calls out for me
Ringed in the sad sky and in my bleeding heart,
Nothing was holding me back, and I was going; now,
Alas! … – O river! oh wood! valleys where I was the guest,
She knows, doesn’t she? that it’s not my fault
If, for these four years, poor heart without torch,
I did not go to pray at his tomb!

III

So this dark path that I was walking, this marble
That I gazed at, pale, leaning against a tree,
This tomb on which my feet could walk,
The night, which I saw slowly approaching,
These yews, this twilight with this cemetery,
These sobs, which at least fell on this stone,
O my God, it was all happiness!

Say, what have you been doing all this time? – Lord,
What did she do ? – Do you see life in your homes?
What shadow clock did you count the hours on?
Did you noiselessly sometimes push the other asleep?
And are you, waiting for me, half awake?
Are you, pale, leaning against the dark window
From infinity, seeking in the shadows to recognize
A passerby, through the dark coffin badly joined,
Attentive, listening if you didn’t hear
Someone walking towards you in dark eternity?
And did you go back to bed like a sinking mast,
By saying: What is it? my father is not coming!
Have you both spoken to me in a whisper?

How many times I have chosen, all wet with dew,
Lilies in my garden, lilies in my mind!
How many times have I picked hawthorn in bloom!
How many times have I looked for the tower of Harfleur over there,
Murmuring: I am leaving tomorrow! and, stupid,
I calculated the wind and the fast sail,
Then my hand opened sad, and I said: Everything is fleeing!
And the bouquet fell, sinister, in the night!
Oh ! how many times, feeling that she had to wait for me,
I took what was most tender in my heart
To charge someone who would pass by!

Lazarus opened his eyes when Jesus called him;
When I talk to him, alas! why is she closing them?
Where would be the evil then when the deadly shadow
Love would violate the dark secret twice,
And when, what a god did, a father would?

IV

Let this book, at least, obscure message, come,
Murmur, to this silence, and, flood, to this shore!
Let him fall there, sob, sigh, tear of love!
May he enter this sepulcher where once entered
The kiss, the youth, and the dawn, and the dew,
And the adored laughter of the new bride,
And joy, and my heart, which did not come out!
May it be the cry of hope that never lied,
The song of mourning, the voice of pale weeping farewell,
The dream of which we feel the wing brushing against us!
Let her say: Someone is there; I hear noise!
May it be like the step of my soul in its night!

This book, revolving legion and without number
White birds in the dawn and black birds in the shadows,
This flight of memories fleeing on the horizon,
This swarm that I unleash on the threshold of my prison,
I entrust it to you, air, breaths, cloud, space!
That this wild ocean which speaks to me in a low voice,
Him be lenient, save and let it pass!
And let the wind take care not to disperse it,
And until the cold cellar faithfully brings
This mysterious gift from the absent to the dead!

O God! since in fact, in these somber pages,
In those stanzas that I gathered in the depths of your skies,
In these songs whispered like an epithalamus
While you were turning the pages of my soul,
Since I have recorded my days in this book,
My ailments, my mourning, my cries in deaf problems,
My loves, my jobs, my life hour by hour;
Since you don’t want me to die yet,
And yet I must go talk to him;
Since I feel the wind of infinity blowing
On this book filled with storm and mystery;
Since I have poured out all your shadows there, earth,
Humanity, pain, of which I am the passer-by;
Because of my mind, of my heart, of my blood,
I made the acrid perfume of these funeral verses,
Go away, book, to the azure, through the darkness!
Flee into the mist where everything slowly is led!
Yes, let him fly to the pit, to the grave, to the night,
Like a tree leaf or like a human soul!
Let him roll into the abyss where all that the voice names goes!
May he fall deep into the haggard sepulcher,
Beside her, oh death! and that there, the gaze,
Near the sleeping angel, luminous and sublime,
The blossoming way, dark flower of the abyss!

V

O sweet beginnings of azure that deceived me,
O happiness! I have atoned for you severely!
I have the right today to be, when night falls,
One of those who are heard from the grave,
And who do, speaking to the pale and lonely dead,
Slowly stir the black folds of the shrouds,
And whose words, harsh or tender, move the stones,
The grains in the furrows, the shadows in the beers,
The wave and the cloud, and becomes a voice
Of nature, as well as the noise of the woods.
For there you have it, isn’t it, tombs? many years,
May I walk among the unfortunate crosses,
Haired among the yews and the cypresses,
Soul on the edge of the night, and approaching me very close,
And as I go, bent over the austere coffin,
Questioning the lead, the nails, the earthworm
Who for me comes out of the eyes of the skull,
The skeleton that laughs, the skeleton that bites,
Hands with gnarled fingers, skulls, dust,
And the knee bones that know prayers!

Alas! I searched everything. I wanted to see the bottom.
Why does the evil in us with the good merge,
I wanted to know. I said: What are we to believe?
I have dug the light, and the dawn, and the glory,
The joyful child, the virgin and her chaste fear,
And love, and life, and soul, – gravedigger.

What have I learned? I thoughtfully grasped everything without taking anything;
I saw a lot at night and made a lot of ash.
Who are we ? What does this word mean: Always?
I have buried everything, dreams, hopes, loves,
In the pit I dug in my chest.
Who has science? where is the doctrine?
Oh ! why am I not yet the dreamer of old,
That strayed in the grass, and the meadows, and the woods,
Who walked smiling, in the evening, when the sky is shining,
Holding her daughter’s small white hand,
And who, joyful, letting the firmament shine,
Letting the child speak, slowly felt
Fill with this azure and this innocence!

Between God who blazes and the angel who incenses him,
I lived, I fought, without fear, without remorse.
Then my door suddenly opened to death,
This sudden and terrible visit from the shadows.
You pass by leaving the void and the rubble,
O specter! you grab my angel and knock.
A tomb was therefore the goal of all my steps.

VI

I cannot resume today in the plain
My old path which descends towards the Seine;
I can no longer go where I was going; I can not,
Like the washer sitting by the well,
Than lean against the wall of the eternal abyss;
Paris is eclipsed to me by the enormous Solime;
The high Notre-Dame now, which shines to me,
It is the shadow having two towers, silence and night,
And letting light pierce its fatal veils;
And I see on my forehead a pantheon of stars;
If I call Rouen, Villequier, Caudebec,
All the shadows cry out to me: Horeb, Cédron, Balbeck!
And, if I go, stop at the first mile,
And said to me: Turn to the blue immensity!
And said to me: The roads where you walked are closed.
Lean over the nights, the winds, the waves!
What are you thinking about? what are you doing, lonely
Do you think you still have the earth under your feet?
Where are you going like this and automatically?
O dreamer! lean on the being and the element!
Listen to the rumor of souls on the air!
Contemplate, if you need ashes, the worlds;
At least look for the immense dust, if you want
Mix dust with your dark hair,
And look, outside of your own martyrdom,
The great nothingness, if it is nothingness that attracts you!
Be all in these suns where you will ascend!
Leave your vile corner of the earth there. Stretch out your arms
O outlaw of the azure, towards the homelands!
See your withered aurora blooming again;
Become the big fixed eye open on the big whole.
Lean on the enigma where the being dissolves,
On everything that is born, lives, walks, dies, succumbs,
On all mankind and on the whole grave!

But my heart still bleeds and on the same side.
It is in vain that the heavens, the nights, the eternity,
Want to distract a soul and calm an atom.
All the glare of the dome lights
Does he take a tear away from me? Ah! the extent is fine
Talk to me, show me the universal tomb,
The serene evenings, the dreamy woods, the friendly moon;
I listen, and I return to the sleeping sweet.

VII

Flowers ! Oh ! if I had flowers! if I could
Go sow lilies on these two cold bedside tables!
If I could cover my pale angel with flowers!
The flowers are gold, azure, emerald, opal!
The coffin in the middle of the flowers wants to lie down;
Flowers love death, and God makes them touch
By their root to bones, by their perfume to souls!
Since I cannot, in the places we loved,
Since God won’t let us come back,
Since it makes us let go of what we thought we held,
Since the cold fate, in my deep jail,
On the first door seals a second,
And, on the sad father and on the sleeping child,
Close exile after closing death,
Since it’s impossible now that I throw
Even a bit of heather in its silent pit,
It’s the least that she has my soul, isn’t it?
O black wind whose footsteps I hear on my ceiling!
Storm, winter, which beat my window with your hail!
Seas, nights! and I put her in this book for her!

Take this book; and say to yourself: this comes from the living
That we left behind, dreaming.
Take. And, although from afar, recognize my voice, soul!
Oh ! your ashes are the bed of my remains of flame;
Your grave is my hope, my charity, my faith;
Your shroud still floats between life and me.
Take this book, and bring out a divine psalm!
May he become a ghost between your vague hands!
May it turn white, like the fading dawn,
As my angel’s eye reads it,
And he faints, and floats, and disappears,
Like a dark hearth caressed by a wandering breath,
Like a light that we see pass in the evening,
Like a whirlwind of fire from the censer,
And that, under your dazzling and dark gaze,
Each page goes away in stars in the shadows!

VIII

Oh ! whatever we do and whatever we say,
Let our soul soar in the wind of visions,
Either she clings to the native clay,
We always come to your fatal cave,
Gethsemane! let a vague light shine!
O rock of the strange and funereal sweat!
Cave where the spirit fights fate! opening
On the deep frights of dark nature!
Den from which the lion comes out dreamily, seeing
Someone more sinister and more frightening,
Pain, enter, pale, bitter, disheveled!
O fall! asylum! O threshold of the troubled valley
From where we see our fleeting and short years,
Our own footsteps marked in the mire of days,
The scale where evil weighs and rises, specter
ladle,
The harsh quivering of the fierce palm,
The black degrees pulling down the white degrees,
And the shivers on the foreheads of frightened angels!

Always we come to this loneliness,
And, there, we are silent, feeling the fullness!

Peace in the shade! Sleep! sleep! sleep! sleep!
Beings, confused groups slowly transformed!
Sleep, fields! sleep, flowers! sleep, graves!
Roofs, walls, thresholds of houses, stones of the catacombs,
Leaves at the bottom of woods, feathers at the bottom of nests,
Sleep! sleep, blades of grass, and sleep, endless!
Calm down, forest, oak, maple, ash, yeuse!
Silence on the great religious horror,
On the ocean that struggles and eats away at its bit,
And on the unfathomable appeasement of the dead!
Peace in the mute and dreaded darkness,
Peace to fearful doubt, to the immense atheist shadow,
To you, nature, circle and center, soul and environment,
Swarming of everything, solitude of God!
O generations with hazy breaths,
Rest ! not blacks who walk in the plains!
Sleep, you who are bleeding; sleep, you who cry!
Aches, pains, pains, close your sacred eyes!
Everything is religion and nothing is a sham.
That over every existence and every creature,
Living on human breath or animal breath,
Standing at the threshold of good, crumbling on the brink of evil,
Tender or fierce, foul or splendid, humble or great,
The vast peace of heaven on all sides descends!
May the sleeping hells dream of paradise!
Doze off, waves, seas, winds, souls, while
That seated on the mountain in the presence of the Being,
Precipice where we see pell-mell appear
The creations, the star and the man, the axles
Of those chariots of sun that we call the heavens,
The globes, ruddy fruits of the divine branches,
Silver comets in a black field sown,
White tears from the night’s death sheet,
The chaos, the winters, these dismal troubles,
Pale, drunk with ignorance, dazzled by darkness,
Seeing in infinity being written algebras,
The beholder, sad and bruised, but serene,
Measure the problem on the brazen walls,
Seek to distinguish the dawn through the wonders,
Leans, quivering, at the well of great dizziness,
Follows the eye of passing whiteness, alcyons,
And look, thoughtfully, staring with rays,
Of light, of gleams, vaguely inflamed,
The monstrous abyss full of enormous smoke.

Guernsey, November 2, 1855, Day of the Dead.
(Victor Hugo.)

Alphonse de LAMARTINE (1790-1869)

Julia LAMARTINE
1822-1832

Gethsemane
or the death of Julia

I was from the breast a man of sorrows;
My heart, instead of blood, rolls only tears;
or rather of these tears God has taken away my charms,
He petrified the tears in my heart.
Bitterness is my honey, sadness is my joy;
A brotherly instinct binds me to every coffin;
No path stops me, unless I can see it
           Some ruin or some mourning!

If I see green fields that a pure sky maintains,
Sweet valleys opening to embrace the sea,
I pass, and I say to myself with a bitter laugh:
Place for happiness, alas! And not mine!
My mind only echoes where you can hear a moan;
Everywhere we cry my soul has its homeland:
A land of ashes and kneaded tears
           Is the bed where I love to sleep.

Ask yourself why? I could not say:
From this bitter abyss I stirred the waves,
My mouth to speak would have nothing but sobs.
But tear this heart if you want to read it!
Death in every fiber has plunged the knife;
Its beats are only slow agonies,
It is only full of dead like moans;
           My whole soul is a tomb!

Now, when I was at the shores where Christ wanted to be born,
I did not ask for the sanctified places
Where the poor threw palms under his feet,
Where the verb in his voice was recognized,
Where Hosanna ran in her triumphant footsteps,
Where her hand, watered by the tears of holy women,
Wiping the sweat and the flames from his forehead,
           Caressed the little children:

Lead me, father, to the place where people cry,
To this funeral garden where the man of salvation,
Abandoned by father and men, wanted
Sweat the blood and the water you sweat before you die!
Leave me alone, come on; I want to feel it too
What he holds of pain in an infinite hour:
Man of despair, my worship is agony;
           My altar is here!

It is, at the powdery foot of the olive garden,
Under the shadow of the ramparts from which Sion collapsed,
A place where the sun shuts off all rays,
Where the Kidron dried up filters between its two banks:
Jehoshaphat in a sepulcher digs his hills there;
Instead of grass, the earth sprouts ruins,
And of the old trunks mined the trailing roots
           Split the stones of the tombs.

There, between two rocks opens the dark cave
Where the man of sorrows came to savor death,
When, three times awakening the friendship that falls asleep,
He said to his friends: “Watch; The hour is dreadful! ”
The lip, quivering, still thinks it is quenching
On the bloody pavement the drops of the chalice,
And the sweaty sweat of the fatal sacrifice
           Sue still on the sides of the rock.

With my forehead in both hands, I sat down on the stone,
Thinking of what that divine forehead had thought,
And passing through me, from their source to their end,
These tears whose course has deepened my career.
I took up my burdens and lifted them;
I counted my pains, death to death, life to life;
Then in a dream finally my soul was delighted.
           What a dream, great god, I dreamed!

I had left not far, under the maternal wing,
My daughter, my child, my concern, my treasure.
His forehead every summer was still fulfilling;
But her soul was of the age when heaven calls them back:
His image of the eye could not fade,
Everywhere in his radius his trail was followed,
And, without turning around to envy me,
           No father saw her pass.

It was the only debris from my long storm,
The only fruit of so many flowers, the only vestige of love,
A tear at the start, a kiss at the return,
For my wandering homes an eternal feast;
It was on my window a ray of sunlight,
A chirping bird that drank from my mouth,
A harmonious breath at night near my bed,
           A caress when I wake up!

It was more: from my mother, alas! It was the image;
Her gaze through her eyes seemed to come back to me,
Through her my past was reborn as a future,
My happiness had only changed its face;
Her voice was the echo of ten years of happiness,
His step in the house filled the air with charms,
Her look in my eyes brought tears to my eyes,
           His smile lit up my heart.

His brow was nuanced at my slightest thought,
Still her beautiful blue eye reflected mine;
I saw my worries dye and wet his,
As in clear water a shadow is traced,
But everything that rose from her heart was sweet,
And her lip never had a severe crease
That by joining her two hands in her mother’s hands,
           To pray to God on his knees!

I dreamed that in these places I had brought her,
And that I held her beautiful on my knee,
One of my arms supporting his feet, the other his neck;
My head on his forehead tenderly tilted.
This forehead, falling on the paternal arm,
Shaken the brown air from her silky tresses;
Her white teeth shone under her laughing lips,
           That their eternal laughter opened.

To dart her heart at me and to draw my soul,
Always towards me, always his eyes were raised,
And in the soft ray my eyes covered her,
God alone can measure what he shone with flame.
My lips did not know where to fall in love;
She called them like a child playing,
And floated them from his mouth to his cheek,
           What she was stealing from the kiss!

And I said to God, in this heart that she intoxicates:
” My God ! As long as those eyes shine around me
I will have only songs and graces for you:
In this flowering life it is enough to relive.
Go give her my share of your sweetest gifts
Leaf her days of hope under my feet,
Prepare her diaper, open it in advance
           The chained arms of a husband! ”

And, while intoxicating me with joy and prayer,
My eyes and my heart did not notice
That this forehead grew heavier on my arm,
That his feet froze my hands like stone.
“Julia! Julia! How come you turn pale?
Why this wet forehead, this changing color?
Talk to me, smile at me! No such games, my angel!
           Open those eyes where I read! ”

But the blue of death surrounded her pink lip,
The smile had barely begun to die,
His shortened breath was getting harder,
Like the beating of a landing wing.
With my ear to his heart, I awaited his impulses;
And when the last breath had taken his soul,
My heart died in me like a fruit that the woman
           Door dead and cold in its flanks!

And on my stiff arms carrying more than my life,
Like a man walking after the death blow,
I stood up, I walked to the altar,
And I laid the child on the warm stone,
And my lip to his closed eyes came to stick;
And that already marble forehead was still warm,
Like the place in the nest where the bird of dawn
           Just took off!

And so I felt, in an eternal hour,
Pass seas of anguish and centuries of horror,
And pain filled the place where my heart was;
And I say to my god, “My God, I had only her!
All my loves were drowned in this love;
She had replaced those whom death cut off;
It was the only fruit left on the branch
           After the winds of a bad day.

It was the only link in my broken chain,
The only pure and blue corner in my whole horizon;
So that his name would sound sweeter in the house,
We baptized it with a melodious name.
It was my universe, my movement, my noise,
The voice that enchanted me in all my homes,
The charm or the concern of my eyes, of my hours;
           My morning, my evening and my night;

The mirror where my heart loved itself in its image,
The purest of my days on this stopped front,
A permanent ray of my happiness,
All your gifts gathered, lord, on one face;
Sweet burden that her mother hung around my neck,
Eyes where my eyes shone, soul to my heart delighted,
Voice where my voice vibrated, life where my life lived,
           Living sky watching me.

Well ! Take, satiate, implacable justice,
Of agony and death this immortal need;
I myself stretch it out on your funeral altar.
If I have emptied it all, finally break my chalice!
My daughter, my child, my breath! Here it is !
Here it is ! I only cut these two braids
She chained me yesterday in her caresses,
           And I only kept that! ”

A sob choked me, I awoke. Stone
Oozed blood sweat under my body;
My cold hand froze my forehead as it passed;
Horror had frozen two tears under my eyelid.
I run away: the eagle in the nest is less quick to run.
Stifled sobs were coming out of my home
Love alone suspended its last hour for me:
           She was waiting for me to die!

Now everything is dead in my arid house,
Two eyes still weeping are still in front of me;
I go without knowing where, I wait without knowing what;
My arms open to nothing, and close empty.
All my days and nights are the same color;
The prayer within me with hope is dead.
But it is God who crushes you, oh my soul! be strong,
           Kiss her hand in pain!

(Lamartine’s phone.)

Emile RIPERT (1882-1947)

Mireille RIPERT
1914-1930

In his fifteen years
was Mireille

“When she was little she wanted to wait for me
In the evening, if I came home a little late, to open up,
And so I heard his light step descend
The black staircase and then towards the door run;
… / …
Now here she is in another house,
Where never sleeping, we are always expected,
Where day and night are only the same hour….
Ah! when I finish the race of my days,
One last time, oh my little dead girl,
Will you come in the night to open the door for me again? ”

As soon as I entrusted it to the earth,
As soon as from the body of the useless child,
The Spirit broke free, then, triumphant,
Sank into the heart of the mystery,
In spite of myself, under his written dictation
These worms through which a dark light passes
From another world, where his face is
The Spirit that now moves my mind …

(Emile Ripert)