ever gives its drowsy, sickly sons
the courage to lift their eyes for once.
You can tell
what endless trouble worried her,
she who so unhappily said farewell
when you rose to paradise again!
She is so reduced today
that next to what you see she was a queen.
Such misery assails her
you won’t believe it, seeing her.
I’ll ignore her other enemies and hardships;
but not the newest and most cruel,
because of which your country feared
her final evening had arrived.
You were lucky fate did not condemn you
to live among these horrors;
you didn’t see Italian wives
in barbarian soldiers’ arms;
you didn’t see the angry enemy
lay waste to our cities and our fields,
or divine works of Italian genius
carted across the Alps to abject slavery,
or the highway blocked by groaning wagons,
the sharp looks and the insolent commands;
you didn’t hear the insults
and the abused word “freedom”
they mocked us with
amidst chains and whipping.
Who doesn’t grieve? What have we not suffered?
What did those felons leave untouched —
what temple, altar, crime?
How did we come to these corrupted times?
Bitter fate, why give us life,
or else why not an earlier death,
when you see our country
enslaved by profane foreigners,
her virtue cut to ribbons
by their biting steel?
No help or comfort: we weren’t given
any way of lessening
the relentless pain that tore at her.
Alas, you didn’t take our blood or life,
beloved country,
and I haven’t died for your cruel fate.
So rage and pity overwhelm the heart,
for many of us also fought and fell,
but not for dying Italy:
for her tyrants.
Father (that is, if you don’t disdain us),
you’re no longer what you were on earth.
Brave Italians who deserved another death
fell on the lonely Russian steppe,
and the freezing weather
pitilessly attacked both men and beasts.
Squad after squad they fell,
half naked, mangled, bloodied,
and the ice became a bed for their poor bodies.
And as they breathed their painful last
they recalled the mother they had longed for,
saying: Not clouds and wind, but iron
should have killed us, and for you, our country.
Here, so far away from you,
while time smiles most benevolently on us,
unknown to all the world, we die
for those who are murdering you.
The northern wasteland hears them cry,
and the whispering woods were witness too.
So their moment came,
and wild beasts
tore up their deserted corpses
on that enormous, horrid sea of snow.
And the stragglers and malingerers
will always be remembered
with the noble and the strong. Beloved spirits,
though your agony will never end,
be at peace, and let it comfort you
that you will have no comfort
now or in any future time.
Rest on the breast
of your unmeasured pain,
O true sons of her whose final ruin
only yours resembles.
Your country doesn’t grieve for you
but for him
who made you fight against her;
so she weeps as bitterly as ever
and her tears are mixed with yours.
If only pity for her whose glory
excelled all others’ came alive
in those who love her and can save her,
exhausted and lethargic as she is,
from such abyssal darkness! Glorious spirit,
tell me: Has your love for your Italy died?
Has the fire that gave you life gone cold?
Will the myrtle that assuaged our sadness for so long
never turn green again?
Have all our crowns been scattered on the ground?
Will she never rise again
to resemble you in any way?
Did we die for all eternity?
Will our shame never end?
I, while I’m alive, shall keep exhorting,
turn back to your ancestors, corrupted sons.
Look at these ruins,
these pages, canvases, these stones and temples.
Think what earth you walk on. And if the light
of these examples fails to inspire you,
what are you waiting for? Arise and go.
Such low behaviour is unworthy
of this nurse and teacher of great spirits.
If she is the home of cowards,
better she be a widow and alone.
Translated from Italian by Jonathan Galassi
ADAM MICKIEWICZ
While my corpse is here, sitting among you
While my corpse is here, sitting among you,
while it looks you in the eye, and even speaks,
my soul is far, so very far away —
it wanders and it weeps, oh, how it weeps.
I have a country, homeland of my thoughts,
where my heart has innumerable kin:
a land more fair than what I see before me,
a family more dear than anything.
There, amidst work and worry and amusements,
I run away to rest beneath the pines,
to lie about in lush and fragrant grasses,
to chase the sparrows and the butterflies.
I see her there — in white, descending from the porch,
flying towards us from the meadows green,
bathing in grain as in the deepest waters,
shining from mountains like the light of dawn.
Translated from Polish by Boris Dralyuk
PIERRE FALCON
General Dickson’s Song
Red River’s just had news
all citizens draw near;
an army general’s
recruiting soldiers here.
Enlistments he does seek
of many Bois-Brûlés,
and now as soldiers brave
he’s led a group away.
These silver epaulettes,
to you I would present,
dear Mr. Cuthbert Grant,
chief of the regiment.
For I’m a general
and Dickson is my name;
in the land of Mexico,
a crown I go to claim.
When you reach Mexico,
right in the chiefest town,
generals and cannoneers
will greet you with a crown.
My officers, farewell,
you’ve all deserted me;
unhappy Dickson’s tale
will soon be history.
I thank you one and all,
men of the company,
for you have brought me back
to Fort Mackenzie.
I know I owe you thanks,
your money goes to pay
the service of two guides,
two hardy Bois-Brûlés.
Who is the district bard,
that this song composed?
If you wait for the end,
his name will be disclosed.
At table we will sit,
one day, to sing and drink;
to sing the whole song through,
and
let the glasses clink!
Now, friends, let’s have a toast,
let us salute the song!
Sung by our prairie bard,
the poet, Pierre Falcon.
Translated from French by Robert L. Walters
GEORGE W. CABLE
from Café des Exilés
That which in 1835 — I think he said thirty-five — was a reality in the Rue Burgundy — I think he said Burgundy — is now but a reminiscence. Yet so vividly was its story told me, that at this moment the old Café des Exilés appears before my eye, floating in the clouds of revery, and I doubt not I see it just as it was in the old times.
An antiquated story-and-a-half Creole cottage sitting right down on the banquette, as do the Choctaw squaws who sell bay and sassafras and life-everlasting, with a high, close board-fence shutting out of view the diminutive garden on the southern side. An ancient willow droops over the roof of round tiles, and partly hides the discolored stucco, which keeps dropping off into the garden as though the old café was stripping for the plunge into oblivion — disrobing for its execution. I see, well up in the angle of the broad side gable, shaded by its rude awning of clapboards, as the eyes of an old dame are shaded by her wrinkled hand, the window of Pauline. Oh for the image of the maiden, were it but for one moment, leaning out of the casement to hang her mocking-bird and looking down into the garden, — where, above the barrier of old boards, I see the top of the fig-tree, the pale green clump of bananas, the tall palmetto with its jagged crown, Pauline’s own two orange-trees holding up their bands towards the window, heavy with the promises of autumn; the broad, crimson mass of the many-stemmed oleander, and the crisp boughs of the pomegranate loaded with freckled apples, and with here and there a lingering scarlet blossom.
The Café des Exilés, to use a figure, flowered, bore fruit, and dropped it long ago — or rather Time and Fate, like some uncursed Adam and Eve, came side by side and cut away its clusters, as we sever the golden burden of the banana from its stem; then, like a banana which has borne its fruit, it was razed to the ground and made way for a newer, brighter growth. I believe it would set every tooth on edge should I go by there now, — now that I have heard the story, — and see the old site covered by the “Shoo-fly Coffee-house”. Pleasanter far to close my eyes and call to view the unpretentious portals of the old café, with her children — for such those exiles seem to me — dragging their rocking-chairs out, and sitting in their wonted group under the long, out-reaching eaves which shaded the banquette of the Rue Burgundy.
It was in 1835 that the Café des Exilés was, as one might say, in full blossom. Old M. D’Hemecourt, father of Pauline and host of the café, himself a refugee from San Domingo, was the cause — at least the human cause — of its opening. As its white-curtained, glazed doors expanded, emitting a little puff of his own cigarette smoke, it was like the bursting of catalpa blossoms, and the exiles came like bees, pushing into the tiny room to sip its rich variety of tropical sirups, its lemonades, its orangeades, its orgeats, its barley-waters, and its outlandish wines, while they talked of dear home — that is to say, of Barbadoes, of Martinique, of San Domingo, and of Cuba.
There were Pedro and Benigno, and Fernandez and Francisco, and Benito. Benito was a tall, swarthy man, with immense gray moustachios, and hair as harsh as tropical grass and gray as ashes. When he could spare his cigarette from his lips, he would tell you in a cavernous voice, and with a wrinkled smile that he was “a-t-thorty-seveng”.
There was Martinez of San Domingo, yellow as a canary, always sitting with one leg curled under him and holding the back of his head in his knitted fingers against the back of his rocking-chair. Father, mother, brother, sisters, all, had been massacred in the struggle of ’21 and ’22; he alone was left to tell the tale, and told it often, with that strange, infantile insensibility to the solemnity of his bereavement so peculiar to Latin people.
But, besides these, and many who need no mention, there were two in particular, around whom all the story of the Café des Exilés, of old M. D’Hemecourt and of Pauline, turns as on a double centre. First, Manuel Mazaro, whose small, restless eyes were as black and bright as those of a mouse, whose light talk became his dark girlish face, and whose redundant locks curled so prettily and so wonderfully black under the fine white brim of his jaunty Panama. He had the hands of a woman, save that the nails were stained with the smoke of cigarettes. He could play the guitar delightfully, and wore his knife down behind his coat-collar.
The second was “Major” Galahad Shaughnessy. I imagine I can see him, in his white duck, brass-buttoned roundabout, with his sabreless belt peeping out beneath, all his boyishness in his sea-blue eyes, leaning lightly against the door-post of the Café des Exilés as a child leans against his mother, running his fingers over a basketful of fragrant limes, and watching his chance to strike some solemn Creole under the fifth rib with a good old Irish joke.
Old D’Hemecourt drew him close to his bosom. The Spanish Creoles were, as the old man termed it, both cold and hot, but never warm. Major Shaughnessy was warm, and it was no uncommon thing to find those two apart from the others, talking in an undertone, and playing at confidantes like two schoolgirls. The kind old man was at this time drifting close up to his sixtieth year. There was much he could tell of San Domingo, whither he had been carried from Martinique in his childhood, whence he had become a refugee to Cuba, and thence to New Orleans in the flight of 1809.
It fell one day to Manuel Mazaro’s lot to discover, by sauntering within earshot, that to Galahad Shaughnessy only, of all the children of the Café des Exilés, the good host spoke long and confidentially concerning his daughter. The words, half heard and magnified like objects seem in a fog, meaning Manuel Mazaro knew not what, but made portentous by his suspicious nature, were but the old man’s recital of the grinding he had got between the millstones of his poverty and his pride, in trying so long to sustain, for little Pauline’s sake, that attitude before society which earns respect from a surface-viewing world. It was while he was telling this that Manuel Mazaro drew near; the old man paused in an embarrassed way; the Major, sitting sidewise in his chair, lifted his cheek from its resting-place on his elbow; and Mazaro, after standing an awkward moment, turned away with such an inward feeling as one may guess would arise in a heart full of Cuban blood, not unmixed with Indian.
As he moved off, M. D’Hemecourt resumed: that in a last extremity he had opened, partly from dire want, partly for very love to homeless souls, the Café des Exilés. He had hoped that, as strong drink and high words were to be alike unknown to it, it might not prejudice sensible people; but it had. He had no doubt they said among themselves, “She is an excellent and beautiful girl and deserving all respect”; and respect they accorded, but their respects they never came to pay.
“A café is a café,” said the old gentleman. “It is nod possib’ to ezcape him, aldough de Café des Exilés is differen from de rez.”
“It’s different from the Café des Réfugiés,” suggested the Irishman.
“Differen’ as possib’,” replied M. D’Hemecourt. He looked about upon the walls. The shelves were luscious with ranks of cooling sirups which he alone knew how to make. The expression of his face changed from sadness to a gentle pride, which spoke without words, saying — and let our story pause a moment to hear it say:
“If any poor exile, from any island where guavas or mangoes or plantains grow, wants a draught which will make him see his home among the cocoa-palms, behold the Café des Exilés ready to take the poor child up and give him the breast! And if gold or silver he has them not, why Heaven and Santa Maria, and Saint Christopher bless him! It makes no difference. Here is a rockingchair, here a cigarette, and here a light from the host’s own tinder. He will pay when he can.”
ROMAIN ROLLAND
from Jean-Christophe in Paris
Following on a sequence of apparently insignificant events, relations between France and Germany suddenly became strained: and, in
a few days, the usual neighbourly attitude of banal courtesy passed into the provocative mood which precedes war. There was nothing surprising in this, except to those who were living under the illusion that the world is governed by reason. But there were many such in France: and numbers of people were amazed from day to day to see the vehement Gallophobia of the German press becoming rampant with the usual quasi-unanimity. Certain of those newspapers which, in the two countries, arrogate to themselves a monopoly of patriotism, and speak in the nation’s name, and dictate to the State, sometimes with the secret complicity of the State, the policy it should follow, launched forth insulting ultimatums to France. There was a dispute between Germany and England; and Germany did not admit the right of France not to interfere: the insolent newspapers called upon her to declare for Germany, or else threatened to make her pay the chief expenses of the war: they presumed that they could wrest alliance from her fears, and already regarded her as a conquered and contented vassal, — to be frank, like Austria. It only showed the insane vanity of German Imperialism, drunk with victory, and the absolute incapacity of German statesmen to understand other races, so that they were always applying the simple common measure which was law for themselves: Force, the supreme reason. Naturally, such a brutal demand, made of an ancient nation, rich in its past ages of a glory and a supremacy in Europe, such as Germany had never known, had had exactly the opposite effect to that which Germany expected. It had provoked their slumbering pride; France was shaken from top to base; and even the most diffident of the French roared with anger.
The great mass of the German people had nothing at all to do with the provocation: they were shocked by it: the honest men of every country ask only to be allowed to live in peace: and the people of Germany are particularly peaceful, affectionate, anxious to be on good terms with everybody, and much more inclined to admire and emulate other nations than to go to war with them. But the honest men of a nation are not asked for their opinion: and they are not bold enough to give it. Those who are not virile enough to take public action are inevitably condemned to be its pawns. They are the magnificent and unthinking echo which casts back the snarling cries of the press and the defiance of their leaders, and swells them into the “Marseillaise”, or the “Wacht am Rhein”.
The Heart of a Stranger Page 12