When our high towers
are fallen, when serpents are climbing our stairs instead of us,
when the desert is at our table, then he shall return if he wishes,
with his crown of thorns, with his torn robe, his bleeding feet,
to be the king of our ruin.
are fallen, when serpents are climbing our stairs instead of us,
when the desert is at our table, then he shall return if he wishes,
with his crown of thorns, with his torn robe, his bleeding feet,
to be the king of our ruin.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v20 - Phi to Qui
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A. T. QUILLER-COUCH
vehicle overtook them,-a four-wheeled dog-cart carrying a com-
mercial traveler, who pulled up and offered them a lift into the
town.
They declined.
Then, as soon as he passed out of sight, they turned, and be-
gan painfully to climb back towards the gate. Of the two, the
woman had shown the less emotion. But all the way her lips
were at work, and as she went she was praying a prayer. It
was the only one she used night and morning, and she had never
changed a word since she learned it as a chit of a child. Down
to her seventieth year she had never found it absurd to beseech
God to make her "a good girl"; nor did she find it so as the
Workhouse gate opened, and she began a new life.
## p. 11961 (#595) ##########################################
11961
—
EDGAR QUINET
(1803-1876)
BY HENRY BÉRENGER
B
DGAR QUINET belongs to that generation of great romantic.
French writers who were at the same time men of thought
and men of action, poets and philosophers, historians and
critics, who were in a word models of the complete man, such as
modern democracies too rarely succeed in creating. The life of Edgar
Quinet was as full as his work is varied; but both are stamped with
remarkable unity, both are the double and
indissoluble expansion of a true and reso-
lute genius, who was never inconsistent in
any hour of his existence or in any line of
his writings. Quinet is not only a great
writer, he is a national character; and the
new generations of France recognize, and
will recognize for a long time to come, in
him as in Lamartine, as in Victor Hugo, as
in Michelet, an ancestor to whom they owe
what is best in themselves.
EDGAR QUINET
He was born at the beginning of the
nineteenth century, February 17th, 1803, on
the southeast frontier of France, at Bourg
in the Department of Ain. He seems to
have had all his life the strong health and perfect equilibrium of
body and mind which characterizes the races of the Jura and of
Mâcon, and which was equally manifested by Victor Hugo, born at
Besançon, and by Lamartine, born at Mâcon. He was descendant
of an old bourgeois and parliamentary family. His father, Jérôme
Quinet, who was war commissioner under both the Republic and the
Empire, was also a scholar to whom we owe an important work on
meteorology. His mother was a Protestant, with a mind both reso-
lute and liberal, steadfast and sprightly, imbued with the ideas of
the eighteenth century without having lost the religious gravity
of her origin. Edgar Quinet evidently owes much to both his father
and mother; but she who directed his early education seems to have
exercised a profound moral and intellectual influence over him. He
## p. 11962 (#596) ##########################################
11962
EDGAR QUINET
had from the start a healthy, well-endowed nature, uniting the obsti-
nate tenacity of the combatant to an ideal sensibility of the solitary
and the poet. Both frank and sagacious, ardent and acute, there were
united within him talents apparently the most opposed; and it was
this which gave his genius a character at the same time so practical
and so mystical, so occupied with reality while soaring toward the
ideal.
After earnest studies, irregular enough, at the schools of Charolles
and Bourg, then at the lycée of Lyon (1811 to 1817), and after a
very fruitful stay in the paternal home at Certines, among majestic
and attractive natural scenes, he started for England and Germany.
It was there he discovered Herder, toward whom he was drawn in
his first youthful musings upon the philosophy of history. His trans-
lation in 1825 of Herder's chief work made a great sensation, and
rendered him famous. In 1827 he returned to that Germany of which
he loved the dreamy and philosophic genius; there he connected
himself with the greatest minds of the time, scholars or poets,-
Niebuhr, Uhland, Creuzer. In 1829 he left for Greece, from which
he brought back his work upon 'La Grèce Moderne,' and above all,
profounder views upon the historical evolution of humanity.
The Revolution of 1830, first revival of the democratic spirit in
France, thrust Quinet into action. He was a democrat by nature as
well as by origin, but he dreamed of a democracy highly intellectual.
His activity from 1830 to 1833 was enormous. He published numer-
ous and remarkable political pamphlets; in philosophy and Romance
literature he was the precursor of Fauriel and Paris; finally, after a
trip to Italy, he published his noble and celebrated poem, 'Ahas-
vérus,' a work written in prose by a lyric genius of the first order,-
a kind of pilgrimage of the human species across the ages, which
made a great stir among the choice scholars of all Europe. He
married in Germany, and returning to Paris, for six years he dis-
tinguished himself as one of the most brilliant controversialists of
the French press; and collected his principal articles under the name
of 'Allemagne et Italie. ' Although he had shown himself almost
hostile to the government of King Louis Philippe, and had already
proclaimed his republican faith, it was due not less to his character
than to his celebrity that he was appointed professor of literature
in the Faculty of Letters of Lyons, in 1839. He exercised so potent
an influence over intellectual youth that M. Villemain, then minister,
had him appointed professor of the Collège de France in 1841. It
was then that, together with his friends Michelet and Mickiewicz,
he began that eloquent apostolate to the students of Paris, from
which resulted two important works: 'Les Révolutions d'Italie' and
'Les Jésuites. ' The character of his instruction was so liberal, so
## p. 11963 (#597) ##########################################
EDGAR QUINET
11963
secularizing, and so republican, that in 1846 the government resolved
to put an end to it.
From 1847 Quinet entered active politics. He was one of the pro-
moters and one of the founders of the Republic of 1848. Represent-
ative of the people in the Constituent Assembly and the Legislative
Assembly, colonel of the National Guard in the days of June, he con-
ducted himself like a wise and clear-sighted citizen. He foretold the
Coup d'État of 1851, and vainly attempted to oppose the growing
Cæsarism. He was exiled by Bonaparte after the Coup d'État, and
remained, like Victor Hugo, nineteen years in exile, conscientiously
protesting against the violation of law. This period of exile-first
at Brussels (1852-1858), where he was married again, this time to the
daughter of the poet Assaki; then at Veylaux in Switzerland (1858-
1870) was extremely fruitful for the thinker and the poet.
It was
then that he published Marnix de Saint-Aldegonde' (1856); 'L'His-
toire de Mes Idées' (1858); 'Merlin l'Enchanteur' (1860); and above
all, the admirable Révolution Française (1865), which is perhaps
the finest book ever written upon the subject, even when compared
with the works of Thiers, Michelet, and Taine.
―――
After the fall of the Empire, and the disasters of 1870, Edgar
Quinet returned to France. Elected deputy from Paris by two hun-
dred thousand votes, he took a seat with Victor Hugo on the extreme
left of the Chamber, and continued to vote against all the laws of
clerical and monarchical reaction, and in favor of all the seculariz-
ing and democratic laws. Before his death in 1876 he was able to
foresee the certain realization of his ideas by the generation whose
parliamentary guides were Jules Ferry and Léon Gambetta. In 1874
he had published 'L'Esprit Nouveau,' in which are solemnly affirmed
the principal articles of his social, moral, and intellectual creed.
Edgar Quinet as man and as author appears one of the most
complete minds of France. By his poetic intuitions he created and
rediscovered mysterious legends, in which are incarnated the spirit
of the race; by his critical investigations he analyzed and revived
the noblest epochs of modern Europe; by his constructive power of
thought, he synthesized the evolutionary philosophy of the new hu-
manity; finally, by his enthusiasm and political tenacity, he offered
the noble sight of a citizen superior to the ephemeral passions of
party. He lacked only a little more sobriety of style, and a little
more precision of thought, to be a genius of the first order.
Such as
he is, he deserves to remain - what he wished to be and what he was
to the youth of his time: the initiator of the new France and of the
new humanity.
Henry Bérengen
## p. 11964 (#598) ##########################################
11964
EDGAR QUINET
NAPLES AND VESUVIUS
From (Italy)
W"
HEN I reached Naples, Vesuvius was in full eruption. Dur-
ing the day the lava rolled its black streams on the side
of the Annunziata and Pompeii. Toward evening the
torrents changed into a burning belt tying and untying itself
in the darkness. I impatiently awaited the morrow, in order to
climb to the edge of the crater in the middle of the night.
At eight in the evening I started from the little town of
Torre del Greco. After an hour's walk I arrived at the hermit-
age. The night was very black. I lighted my torch; the her-
mit wished me a pleasant journey; I went on my way with my
guide, and soon reached the foot of the cone.
At that distance I was too near the volcano to see it; but I
heard over my head explosions which the echoes magnified for-
midably, and a rain of stones rolling in the darkness. From
this tempest issued a great sigh, like that of a giant who is
stoned. The wind put out my torch. I finished my ascent in
total darkness. But just as I reached the summit, an infernal
light illumined the sky. Behold the spectacle which I had then
before me.
The earth trembled; it was warm to the touch. Through its
fissures shone the fiery veins of a hidden furnace. In the midst
of the great crater to which I had come, a new cone was form-
ing which seemed all in flames. From the mouth of this gulf
was exhaled a vast and long-sustained breath. This sigh, and a
profound and regular respiration like that of a forge, rose from
the bosom of the oppressed mountain. A terrible detonation fol-
lowed them. Flaming stones were cast in groups beyond our
vision, and rattled down noisily on the edges of the cone. For an
instant the steep sides and the interior of the abyss were lighted
as in broad day.
Lava was issuing from the ground by openings distant from
the crater. It rolled crackling from four mouths. Soon after-
ward the mountain uttered another giant sigh. Glancing toward
the sea at the moment of the explosion, I saw distinctly little
boats at anchor.
The mountain trembled still more; but the waves were not
affected, and nothing seemed to me more beautiful than the sleep
## p. 11965 (#599) ##########################################
EDGAR QUINET
11965
of the sea, smiling under the unchained volcano. The Bay of
Naples resembled thus Ariosto's Angelica under the jaws and
outstretched wings of the Chimera.
I sat down upon the trembling ground; nature was seized
with a vertigo to which I abandoned myself with delight. The
intervals in quick succession of noise and silence, of light and
darkness, the calm of the night, the calm not less great of the
sea, this mountain shaken by starts,—all these contrary effects
were strengthened the one by the other. Without seeking why,
I found in this spectacle a host of images applicable to the moral
state in which I then was, and which had strongly prevailed
since my departure from Rome. I passed the night on the sum-
mit. When day appeared, I was able to enjoy at my leisure the
view of the famous gulf which lay at my feet. In the distance,
the island of Capri, which is shaped like an ancient galley, closed
the entrance to the sea. The sun rose from the other side of
Pompeii; it hovered some time over the tombs like a funeral
torch. This was the signal for a multitude of little barks to
leave shore and hoist sail. I heard at that moment the noise
of the awakening towns and villages. The vines interlaced in
the poplars, like gigantic thyrsi, began to shiver under the sea
breeze; an instant later the light sparkled on the ruffled waves;
a golden vapor like the dust of stars rose from the horizon; the
air became charged with perfumes. All nature seemed intoxi-
cated as in a pagan festival; and as long as the volcano con-
tinued agitated, this Christian Campania resembled the Sibyl
hesitating on her stand.
In Naples, the city of passions, I observe that the most con-
siderable monuments of art are the tombs. Moreover, these tombs
nearly all belong to the epoch of Spanish domination. The dead,
upright on their mausoleums, torch or dagger in hand, are sus-
tained by a singular pride: they seem still to rule over the living,
who pass lightly with furtive step over the soil below them.
The towers of Anjou, bathed by the sea, hold also this captive
earth. The palace of Jeanne la Folle, abandoned to the waves
which are every day seizing upon it, the beautiful arch of Ara-
gon, are other witnesses of the conquest. All the nations have
left the traces of their rule here in a particular architecture.
Only the Neapolitans are absent from the monuments of Naples.
This mimic people warms itself in the sun. It alone of all
Italy has never belonged to itself. Without a past, it has no
## p. 11966 (#600) ##########################################
11966
EDGAR QUINET
regrets; without a near future, it has no desire.
It cries, it ges-
ticulates, it spreads its nets, it runs, it declaims, it muses, it men-
aces,—and all that at once. Polichinel is its hero.
Yet when a soul chances to awaken from the bosom of this
mendicant sybarism, it is exalted in spiritualism or armed with
boundless energy. Pythagoras and his school, St. Thomas Aqui-
nas, Vico, Spagnoletto, Salvator Rosa, were strange lazzaroni.
Toward the middle of the day, sailors from Chia, from Sicily,
from Malta, seat themselves in a circle on the pier; a sail shades
the audience, which impatiently awaits the improvisator. At last
he appears; he is dressed in sailor's fustian; in his hand he
carries a switch instead of the laurel branch of his ancestors.
The eyes of the lazzaroni devour his lips in anticipation of the
story he is going to narrate. Sometimes he sings in a hoarse
voice a recitative with a plaintive modulation, which mingles with
the sighing of the vessels in port; sometimes he descends to
spoken prose, according to the nature and the more or less lyric
circumstances of his narration. He recounts the deeds of the
knight Rinaldo, or those of an unfortunate brigand of Calabria.
The noble public doubles its attention; the climax is at hand:
but behold, the bells sound the Ave: the singer stops short; he
makes the sign of the cross with a prayer in the name of the
virtuous assembly. Beside him the same Olympian sun which
grazes Virgil's tomb, gilds with a last ray the brow of Polichinel
sleeping at the corner of his theatre. The sail goes down, the
crowd disperses on all sides; one day more has passed over the
empire of Masaniello.
Meanwhile the young monk of Camaldules, on the mountain,
hears at his feet the murmurs rising from the shore. A thou-
sand images of pagan voluptuousness surround him with a circle
of damnation. He goes into his cell and prays; and the breeze
bears to him the sighs of Chia and Villa-Reale. He opens his
holy breviary, and the demon resuscitated from Greece writes
upon it playfully, with the end of his claw, litanies of love.
Over him bend magic skies; enchantments fasten to his scapu-
lary; from his chalice he quaffs long draughts of the philtre of
inexorable regrets. He is fortunate if old age chills his heart
prematurely. Only death can deliver him from these cruel de-
lights.
Ah! above all, let him incase himself in triple haircloth when
his eyes meet Posilipo, Capri, and white Nisida: for it is there
## p. 11967 (#601) ##########################################
EDGAR QUINET
11967
that memories are forgotten, and vows falsified; heroic projects,
fruitful sorrows, are forgotten under those skies which rain love.
A voluptuousness more dangerous than befits human lips escapes
continually from the mountains, the lakes, the quivering stars.
Impalpable sirens languish under the sleeping waves; he only
who has escaped their embraces can count on his thick armor.
When the Romans grew corrupt, they became disgusted with
the grandeur and severity of Rome. They sought a nature in-
toxicated as they were, monstrous as they were. If they had
been able to tear Rome from its sad and serious foundations
they would have done so. The mixture of voluptuousness and
terror they were seeking in the time of Tiberius, of Nero, of
Caligula, was found on the promontories of Capri and Miseno.
There they came to establish their feasts, and to enjoy in peace,
in that pagan nature, the last days of paganism.
The villas of Cæsar on the Gulf of Baie were close beside
Lake Avernus and Lake Acherus, the Elysian Fields, the en-
trance to the infernal regions, -as though they wished to redouble
the insolence of their festivity by this opposition. This great
revel of Roman society a few steps from Acheron was the ban-
quet of the ancient Don Juan at the commander's. Little lakes,
adjoining the infernal regions, shone in the depths of extinct
craters as in cups of lava; on their margins climbed faded gar-
lands of eglantine, poor blossoms which survived the orgy of the
empire.
Christianity, which everywhere in Italy has seized upon pagan
ruins to replace them with its chapels or hermitages, has aban-
doned these, as though despairing of stifling the reviving volup-
tuousness. I ascended Cape Miseno; the infernal trumpets which
from this direction troubled Nero's sleep, no longer sounded;
the beach was silent; the empty gulf stretched its gaunt arms
out in the shadows. It was late. The sea was phosphorescent,
the stars were shining. I swam part of the way from Miseno to
Pozzuoli in the midst of ringing bells. The pale light of the
moon mingled with the electric light of the waves; they alone
still guarded the souvenir of imperial pleasures.
Translated for A Library of the World's Best Literature by Jane
Grosvenor Cooke
## p. 11968 (#602) ##########################################
11968
EDGAR QUINET
HORUS OF STARS-
CHOR
A NIGHT IN THE ORIENT
From Ahasvérus ›
The griffin and the ibis have led the tribes through the
valleys to the land of their inheritance. And us too,- a
guide has led us across the mountains and valleys of the firma-
ment, on the cloud where we must sleep to-night.
The Moon-
The patriarch of Chaldea, sitting before his tent, watches his
flocks feeding about him on the slope of the mountain. Feed
too my flocks of bounding stars, around my silver tent which I
have planted on a spring cloud.
A Star-
Every tribe is sleeping in its marble city; every star in its
silver robe. My rays hang scattered from the pillars of Per-
sepolis. Nineveh has battlemented towers where they stoop to
the windows. But I like better the walls of Babylon; upon her
roofs they noiselessly gather and grow drowsy like snowflakes on
the summit of mountains.
Another Star
Perhaps, my sisters, we are taking the same journey as the
tribes of men. Astray like them, I would like to converse with
them. Gladly I would send them dreams with my golden beams.
I would give my words to the wind; the wind would carry them
to the desert flower, the flower to the river, the river would
repeat them on its way through the cities.
All-
Yes, that is what we must do.
A Flower of the Syrian Desert-
My head bows under the light of the stars; my chalice swells
with dew as a heart is filled with a secret which it longs to
repeat. In the night my blossom blushed with spots the color
of blood, like the robe of a Levite upon the day of sacrifice; the
murmur of the stars descended into my chalice and mingled
with my perfume. I carry a secret in my chalice; I have the
secret of the universe, which escaped it in dream during the
night, and no voice with which to repeat it. Ah! tell me where
## p. 11969 (#603) ##########################################
EDGAR QUINET
11969
is the nearest city. Is it Jerusalem or is it Babylon ? Let the
passers-by come gather the mystery which burdens my crown.
and inclines my head.
The Euphrates-
Flower of the desert, bend thy head a little lower over my
bed, that I may hear thy murmur better; always bounding from
wave to wave, I will carry it to the walls of Babylon: tell me
thy secret; I will deposit it on the silvery waves at the foot of
the towers of the Chaldeans.
Dwellers of Babylon upon their roofs-
See how the Euphrates sparkles under the willows this even-
ing, like the blade of a poniard fallen from the table of a feast.
Its murmurs could not be gentler were it rolling over sacred
vessels of gold and silver in the depths of its bed.
A Slave-
Or if a whole nation hanging on its banks had let their tears
fall in one by one.
A King-
Or if an empire with the tiaras of its priests, with the robe
of its kings, with its glittering gods, had been swallowed up for
a thousand years on its gravel bed, like a flower of the waters.
Chorus of Priests-
The light of the night illumines the inscriptions of Semiramis
engraved on the rock of the mountain of Assur. Every word
shines from here like a sword of fire, which writes on the stone
the speech of the firmament. How the lyre answers the lyre, as
the voices of the stars, as their mute wills, gleam among us
with the voices of nations and echoes which endure a century.
The Orient has stretched about it its peoples and empires, as the
night has its robe embroidered with stars for the gods to attire
themselves in by day. But as yet the universe is only just
dawning, and He who has rewarmed it with his breath holds it
like a young dove in his hand. While the steps of the God of
Gods are visible on the grass of Eden and Cashmere, let us note
his traces on the heights of the mountains. Neither the sun nor
the hearts of men have yet drunk his breath at this hour. As
the Arab rises in the night to lick the dew of the desert before
noonday, thus we rise in the first days of the universe to draw
XX--749
## p. 11970 (#604) ##########################################
11970
EDGAR QUINET
from our
urns the thought of Eternity before its spring has
dried. Drop by drop it falls from the stars, and from the vault
of heaven, and from every leaf of the palm-tree; let us intoxi-
cate ourselves with its liquor as with a resinous wine. O you
nations of India, of Chaldea, of Egypt, in turn, take and drink
the cup of eternity, which he has left filled in quitting his ban-
quet. Let all the new-born peoples lift to their lips, without
delay, the vessel in which the Infinite ferments to the brim.
After us, our sphinxes; after them, our idols of granite and
bronze. If the universe wavers to our eyes,- if it separates
into a thousand different gods, birds with the heads of men, ser-
pents with the bodies of women, crowned unicorns,-let it be
as in our feasts when the heart is gorged with Idumean wines,
and as each guest seems to see the golden vessels totter, clatter
together, and break on the porphyry table. Let us hasten from
India even to Araxe: who knows if the time is not coming when
the universe after centuries will be like a flower withered and
scorched at night by an Arabian sun, and if men's lips will not
press in vain the cup where we drink, and which then will have
no longer its perfume or eternal beverage?
Translated for A Library of the World's Best Literature by Jane
Grosvenor Cooke
THE
THE WANDERING JEW
HE BROTHERS OF AHASUERUS-
From Ahasvérus
Ahasuerus, come, enter the house. Latch the door. Are
you not afraid of the wind which is blowing, and of the
noise in the city?
The Brothers—
Ahasuerus —
Go in, little brothers; go to sleep on your mats.
stay on my bench, and watch the crowd pass.
There it is! Let us escape!
I wish to
The Crowd [following Christ, who is carrying the cross]-
Salutation to the king, to the fine king of Judea! Lead him
to the summit of Calvary, that he may see farther-see all his
―
## p. 11971 (#605) ##########################################
EDGAR QUINET
11971
empire. Has the king of Babylon, or Egypt, or Persia, ever
mounted a throne so elevated? The precincts of the city are
not good enough for him at present.
When our high towers
are fallen, when serpents are climbing our stairs instead of us,
when the desert is at our table, then he shall return if he wishes,
with his crown of thorns, with his torn robe, his bleeding feet,
to be the king of our ruin.
Ahasuerus-
They are coming. I can hear their steps. My heart beats in
my breast.
The Crowd-
Have they restored to Barabbas his sword, his cloak, his horse,
and his quiver full of arrows? Give him in his purse ten demers
of shining silver. Dress him in red as a messenger; he shall go
through the town to tell the robbers, the weavers, the slaves who
turn the mills, "Do you know the news? Your king is await-
ing you on the platform of his tower of Golgotha. "
Ahasuerus-
The voices of these people intoxicate me like a leathern bot-
tle of the wine of Carmel. Their wrath is surely just.
▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
――――――――
The Crowd-
Pilate, wise Pilate, hast thou taken thy golden ewer? Again,
again, see that spot thou hast not removed. Rome washes her
hands, that innocent virgin, who has held only the spindle in
her mother's chamber, does not wish to wear a bloody ring on
her finger; but we without delay will follow the steps of our
King's son. Truly, is he not greater than David? See, he weeps,
and he has neither sword nor sling; his cup-bearers are two rob-
bers. If he wishes to punish us, let him command: perhaps this
time he will not send us as far as the willows of Babylon. Must
we return, with hands tied behind our backs, to the desert, to
Egypt? Let us start; for a long time we have known the way
-and a short path to return.
Ahasuerus
They come - they are there- they pass-they recede; their
cries fill the street: if this man was indeed a soothsayer, the
wind which blows from the desert would overturn the terraces
with the towers. He is an impostor: death to him!
――
## p. 11972 (#606) ##########################################
11972
EDGAR QUINET
The Crowd-
If he is a Chaldean, magician, he has as servants-in the
desert, under the remains of cities-marble unicorns, winged
lions, whose manes have been trimmed by spirits with scissors
of gold; he has as messengers, sphinxes which repose from their
courses at the doors of temples in blocks of rock. Let him tell
his griffins to come and escort him; - but the wings of his grif-
fins are too heavy, the sleep of his sphinxes is too profound.
Before his enchanted troop of unicorns and winged lions leap
about him, before the stone hawks and ibises descend from their
obelisks to defend him, behold the vultures of Judea who to-
morrow shall take the crown from his head to carry it to their
nest in the woods. Oh no, do not pause at thy nest, my vulture
of Carmel! mount higher than the roc, higher than the cloud,
higher than the star; mount to Jehovah! "Knowest thou what
I bear in my beak? O Jehovah! in truth, it is not a bit of
Joppa wool, it is not a twig of heather, it is the crown of
thorns of Judea, which I took at Calvary from the head of thy
son of Nazareth. "
Christ-
Ahasuerus-
As he advances, his halo shines more brightly than that of an
elect prophet: that is one of his enchantments.
-
It is thou, Ahasuerus?
Ahasuerus-
—
I do not know you.
Ahasuerus-
Christ-
I am thirsty: give me a little water from thy spring.
-
My well is empty.
Christ-
Take thy cup: thou shalt find it full.
Ahasuerus-
It is broken.
-
―
Christ
Help me to carry my cross by this hard way.
## p. 11973 (#607) ##########################################
EDGAR QUINET
11973
Ahasuerus
I am not your cross-bearer: call a griffin from the
-
Christ-
Ahasuerus-
My bench is full: there is no place for any one.
Christ-
Let me sit down on thy bench, at the door of thy house.
And on thy sill?
-
Ahasuerus-
It is empty, and the door is bolted.
Christ-
Touch it with thy finger, and thou shalt enter to get a stool.
Ahasuerus
-
Go your way.
Christ-
sert.
Christ-
If thou desired, thy bench should become a golden stool at
the door of my father's house.
―
Ahasuerus-
Go, blaspheme where you will. Already you are making my
vine and fig-tree to wither. Do not lean on the railing of my
steps: it would crumble at hearing you speak.
You wish to
enchant me.
I wished to save thee.
Ahasuerus-
Soothsayer, depart from my shadow. Your way is before you.
Go, go!
Christ-
Why didst thou say it, Ahasuerus? It is thou who shalt con-
tinue to go until the last judgment, during more than a thou-
sand years.
Go take thy sandals, and thy garments for travel:
everywhere thou passest, they shall call thee "The Wandering
Jew. " Thou shalt not find a place to sit down, or a mountain
spring to quench thy thirst. In my stead thou shalt bear the
## p. 11974 (#608) ##########################################
I 1974
EDGAR QUINET
burden which I leave on the cross. For thy thirst, thou shalt
drink what I leave in my chalice. Others shall take my tunic,
thou shalt inherit my eternal sorrow. Hyssop shall sprout from
thy traveler's staff, absinth shall come in thy leather bottle,
despair shall press thy loins in thy leather belt. Thou shalt be
the man who never dies. Thy age shall be mine. To see thee
pass, the eagles will perch on the edge of their eyries; the
little birds will half hide themselves under the crests of the
rocks; the star will stoop from its cloud to hear thy tears fall-
ing drop by drop in the abyss. I am going to Golgotha: thou
shalt walk from ruin to ruin, from kingdom to kingdom, without
ever reaching thy Calvary. Thou shalt break thy staircase under
thy feet, and be no longer able to descend. The gate of the
city shall say to thee, "Go farther, my bench is occupied;" and
the stream where thou wishest to sit shall say, "Go farther, go
farther, to the sea: my bank is full of brambles. " And the sea
too—"Farther, farther: are you not the eternal traveler who goes
from nation to nation, from century to century, drinking his
tears from his cup, who never sleeps day or night either on
silk or on stone, and who cannot return on the path by which
he came? " The griffins will sit down, the sphinxes will sleep.
Thou shalt have neither seat nor sleep. Thou shalt ask for me
from temple to temple without ever meeting me. Thou shalt
cry "Where is he? " until the dead show you the way to the
last judgment. When thou beholdest me again, my eyes will be
flaming, my finger will issue from under my robe to summon
thee to the valley of Jehoshaphat.
A Roman Soldier-
Did you hear? While he spoke my sword groaned in its
scabbard; my lance sweated blood; my horse wept. I have car-
ried my sword and my lance long enough.
As I listened, my
heart was consumed in my bosom.
little ones, that I may hide in my
The Crowd-
Open the door, my wife and
Calabrian hut.
—
Why climb farther to Calvary? What if he were perchance a
God in an unknown country, or yet a Son whom the Eternal in
his old age has forgotten? Let us go hide in our courts before
he can recognize us. Put out the lamps on our tables. Did you
see the hand of steel which wrote on the house of Ahasuerus,-
The Wandering Jew? Let not this name remain on the stone!
## p. 11975 (#609) ##########################################
EDGAR QUINET
11975
Let him who bears it be the scapegoat of Judea. When he
passes, Babylon, Thebes, and the surrounding country shall
gather a stone from their ruins to hurl at him. But for us,
without ever quitting again our homes and our vines, we will fill
our bottles for the Passover, with our wine of Carmel.
Translated for A Library of the World's Best Literature,' by Jane
Grosvenor Cooke
THE STRUGGLE AGAINST ENVIRONMENT
From The Story of My Thoughts'
MY
Y PEACE was especially troubled when I listened to the inner
voice which called me to letters; for I distrusted this
voice, I regarded it as a tempting demon wishing to de-
ceive me.
Or if I yielded to it, I felt my powerlessness almost
at once. I saw myself alone, with no guide, no model, whom I
wished to follow. Everything hindered. I began in several ways
at the same time, and could not tell upon which to decide.
My age, my weakness, my ignorance, my isolation, counted
for much in this grievous perplexity. The situation of France
also had something to do with it. To understand the exhaustion
of a poor mind like mine at this first awakening, one must figure
to oneself that none of the traces which have been stamped upon
the moral world by our generation were then visible.
This gen-
eration which was to renew so many ideas, so many opinions,
and the language itself, had as yet produced nothing.
Not one of the new ideas, of the new forms, had as yet
brilliantly burst forth. None of the new names which we have
been accustomed to pronounce for forty years had then emerged
from obscurity. Those who were to make them illustrious cer-
tainly were distrustful of themselves. Every year I spent several
weeks with friends at Ouilly, on the other side of the valley
of Saint-Point. Who knew that on the opposite side of the hill
there was a great poet named Lamartine, hidden under those
trees whose shadow reached even to where I was? Did he him-
self know it then?
Whichever way I looked, I found a great void on the horizon.
I felt this void in poetry, in history, in philosophy, in everything.
I suffered from it, because I was incapable of filling it, and I
did not know that others were suffering from the same ill. Each
## p. 11976 (#610) ##########################################
11976
EDGAR QUINET
in his own obscurity was working to fill the voids of which I
was at least conscious.
In my first fever I attempted all the ways at once. Upon
each I met the same aridity, the same sterility, through all the
moral world, without any work to indicate what direction to fol-
low, or any man to say authoritatively, "This is the way. "
I was then sadly distressed at my own impotence, and I may
say at the impotence of my time; since I did not see a guide in
whom I could trust, or even a companion upon the way which
I both trembled and burned to enter. I had a presentiment of
an almost entire renewal of the things of the mind. And as I
saw no one working at it, I believed myself alone. This solitude.
was crushing me just at the moment when so many imperishable
works were being silently prepared and secretly brooded over.
Although this suffering often became despair, there was noth-
ing in it resembling spleen, weariness of life, all that brought on
the wave of passions toward the end of the last century. It seems
to me that it was in many ways the opposite of weariness and
satiety. It was rather a blind impatience to live, a feverish ex-
pectation, a premature ambition for the future, a kind of intoxi-
cation of renascent thought, a frenzied thirst of the soul after
the desert of the Empire. All that, joined to a consuming desire
to produce, to create, to do something, in the midst of a world.
still empty.
Those whom I questioned later upon those years told me they
experienced something similar.
Each one thought himself alone as I did; each one was
musing as in a desert island. The renascent force of the century
was stirring them all at once, and they were experiencing the
pains of moral growth, piercing to the very bones. How many
plaints were then exhaled! How many sincere tears were shed!
Nature too laments when about to bring forth.
The generation of which I am speaking did not understand
itself as yet; that was why it was groaning: but it was about to
do its work. At least the seeds were sown; they were beginning
to sprout. France resembled the earth in the first days of March
after a long winter. Not a leaf, not a flower. Nothing more
than short grass piercing the last snows. The birds have not
yet returned; all is silent, but all is in expectation of the new
season; the good grain germinates silently in the furrow. The
laborer has a sure presentiment that the corn is coming up.
## p. 11977 (#611) ##########################################
EDGAR QUINET
11977
I too in my isolation felt-towards the autumn of 1820, in
the midst of the forest of Seillon, on the borders of the ponds, in
the company of teal and heron-that profound moral vegetating
process which, obscurely, silently, was tormenting French brains
from one frontier to the other. And this vegetating process, still
hidden, intoxicated me with a mysterious irresistible breath.
I was ignorant of all the names which were about to arise, I
loved them in advance. I had a morbid desire to anticipate these
minds that I was summoning; I experienced all the impatience
of a bird at the moment of migration. Not that I wished to
depart for a foreign land. I desired to emigrate toward that new
moral world—toward those half-seen ideas which escaped me as
I approached them. I rushed forward, I fell back almost at once;
I had not wings for so great a flight.
I rose again, however; and the idea which we were all then
forming of France furnished me with a great resource against
this first oppression. France, after her two downfalls, her two
invasions, distressed, pierced to the heart, all bleeding, appeared
to us so beautiful, so noble, so proud, in her calamities! Her
disgraces did not count: they rendered her a hundred times
more touching in our eyes. There was not then in the whole
world a single man who did not believe her made for truth, for
liberty, for all that honors human-kind. With what filial tender-
ness we looked at and counted her wounds! Who did not wish
to cure them at the price of his life? Who did not wish to
carry her as homage his work, his book, his sketch, his mite of
ideas; or in default of these, a part of his heart?
France was to be reborn,-I could not doubt it. And what
prevented us from aiding this renascence? Why should not I
too bring to it my grain of sand? Scarcely had this thought
appeared to me than I felt myself transformed. What strength
to endure everything! What a spur! At those moments I be-
lieved myself to be, and I was in truth, capable of something.
I beheld as though it were accomplished what I so fervently
desired.
I applied myself again to the work. But alas! At once two
minds which I found within me embarrassed me, and prevented
me from advancing: that of the eighteenth century which de-
sired to go on living, with which I had been reared, nourished;
and that of the nineteenth, which claimed its birth. Which
should I obey? which heed? There were indeed two spirits
## p. 11978 (#612) ##########################################
11978
EDGAR QUINET
who took for their battle-ground the soul of every man of that
time.
I did not want to renounce either the one or the other;
and I was too new, too unarmed as yet, to attempt to conciliate
them. What then did I do? I yielded now to one, now to the
other, at the risk of dissipating myself. This violent combat,
which I was incapable of determining, was another cause of
anguish and profound grief; it was like the torture of Brune-
hault.
To direct us in this conflict of the two centuries which were
enveloping us at the same time, we had two figures only, those
of Châteaubriand and Madame de Staël. But with them the
combat, far from ceasing, recommenced. For they differed from
each other as much as can be imagined: the one Catholic, the
other Protestant; the one turned toward the Middle Ages, the
other toward the uncertain regions of the future. In seeing
them so opposed in ideas, in sentiments, even in hopes, one felt
more astray, more deserted than ever. The choice between such
diverse ways, far from being decided by their example, became
practically impossible.
By another contradiction, the language of Châteaubriand was
emancipated while his thought did not seem to be. His colors
dazzled without enlightening me, and his ideas repelled me. I
followed them only with distrust, and scarcely admitted them to
my mind. On the contrary, the genius of Madame de Staël was
free while her expression seemed enchained. In the confused
clearness of her oracles I said to myself, "This is the side for
me to advance. Here is the century of life; here are all my
expectations. " I expected the sunrise; but I saw nothing but a
vague twilight, never penetrated by the full light of the new day.
From these two figures, if I gazed upon what were then called
the masses, I had uncertainty on one side and complete night on
the other. On the latter was no apparent desire, no enthusiasm
for other ideas than those they believed themselves to possess:
on the contrary, doubt, sneers, mockery, at the least effort to
leave the beaten paths; the old names opposed to the new like
an invincible barrier; no expectation, no presentiment of some-
thing unknown; the language impoverished by silence, weakened,
become so timid that all thought frightened it.
If a literary philosophical revolution was in preparation, evi-
dently it was to be accomplished not by the will of the greatest
## p. 11979 (#613) ##########################################
EDGAR QUINET
11979
number, but by the ardor, the daring of a few solitary spirits who
would undertake at their own risk and peril to reawaken the
drowsy crowd. But who would dare begin? I sought far off, I
listened, I cried inwardly with anguish, "Is there no one, then? "
The astonishment, the incredulity of others, the anxiety of my
mother, were my only answer. These sentiments won me in my
turn.
Who? I? Write? What madness! Had I well considered?
Even if I could, dare I? Did I know even what an author was?
Had I ever beheld one with my eyes? To follow the trail of
ideas which existed nowhere in the air, to make one's life and
occupation of them, to embark one's destiny on this plank,- was
it not the vainest, most senseless of enterprises, perhaps even the
most culpable, to judge by the dismay of all my friends?
I awoke with a start as from a beautiful dream. All those
vivid lights of our generation which had appeared to me sud-
denly went out.
11960
A. T. QUILLER-COUCH
vehicle overtook them,-a four-wheeled dog-cart carrying a com-
mercial traveler, who pulled up and offered them a lift into the
town.
They declined.
Then, as soon as he passed out of sight, they turned, and be-
gan painfully to climb back towards the gate. Of the two, the
woman had shown the less emotion. But all the way her lips
were at work, and as she went she was praying a prayer. It
was the only one she used night and morning, and she had never
changed a word since she learned it as a chit of a child. Down
to her seventieth year she had never found it absurd to beseech
God to make her "a good girl"; nor did she find it so as the
Workhouse gate opened, and she began a new life.
## p. 11961 (#595) ##########################################
11961
—
EDGAR QUINET
(1803-1876)
BY HENRY BÉRENGER
B
DGAR QUINET belongs to that generation of great romantic.
French writers who were at the same time men of thought
and men of action, poets and philosophers, historians and
critics, who were in a word models of the complete man, such as
modern democracies too rarely succeed in creating. The life of Edgar
Quinet was as full as his work is varied; but both are stamped with
remarkable unity, both are the double and
indissoluble expansion of a true and reso-
lute genius, who was never inconsistent in
any hour of his existence or in any line of
his writings. Quinet is not only a great
writer, he is a national character; and the
new generations of France recognize, and
will recognize for a long time to come, in
him as in Lamartine, as in Victor Hugo, as
in Michelet, an ancestor to whom they owe
what is best in themselves.
EDGAR QUINET
He was born at the beginning of the
nineteenth century, February 17th, 1803, on
the southeast frontier of France, at Bourg
in the Department of Ain. He seems to
have had all his life the strong health and perfect equilibrium of
body and mind which characterizes the races of the Jura and of
Mâcon, and which was equally manifested by Victor Hugo, born at
Besançon, and by Lamartine, born at Mâcon. He was descendant
of an old bourgeois and parliamentary family. His father, Jérôme
Quinet, who was war commissioner under both the Republic and the
Empire, was also a scholar to whom we owe an important work on
meteorology. His mother was a Protestant, with a mind both reso-
lute and liberal, steadfast and sprightly, imbued with the ideas of
the eighteenth century without having lost the religious gravity
of her origin. Edgar Quinet evidently owes much to both his father
and mother; but she who directed his early education seems to have
exercised a profound moral and intellectual influence over him. He
## p. 11962 (#596) ##########################################
11962
EDGAR QUINET
had from the start a healthy, well-endowed nature, uniting the obsti-
nate tenacity of the combatant to an ideal sensibility of the solitary
and the poet. Both frank and sagacious, ardent and acute, there were
united within him talents apparently the most opposed; and it was
this which gave his genius a character at the same time so practical
and so mystical, so occupied with reality while soaring toward the
ideal.
After earnest studies, irregular enough, at the schools of Charolles
and Bourg, then at the lycée of Lyon (1811 to 1817), and after a
very fruitful stay in the paternal home at Certines, among majestic
and attractive natural scenes, he started for England and Germany.
It was there he discovered Herder, toward whom he was drawn in
his first youthful musings upon the philosophy of history. His trans-
lation in 1825 of Herder's chief work made a great sensation, and
rendered him famous. In 1827 he returned to that Germany of which
he loved the dreamy and philosophic genius; there he connected
himself with the greatest minds of the time, scholars or poets,-
Niebuhr, Uhland, Creuzer. In 1829 he left for Greece, from which
he brought back his work upon 'La Grèce Moderne,' and above all,
profounder views upon the historical evolution of humanity.
The Revolution of 1830, first revival of the democratic spirit in
France, thrust Quinet into action. He was a democrat by nature as
well as by origin, but he dreamed of a democracy highly intellectual.
His activity from 1830 to 1833 was enormous. He published numer-
ous and remarkable political pamphlets; in philosophy and Romance
literature he was the precursor of Fauriel and Paris; finally, after a
trip to Italy, he published his noble and celebrated poem, 'Ahas-
vérus,' a work written in prose by a lyric genius of the first order,-
a kind of pilgrimage of the human species across the ages, which
made a great stir among the choice scholars of all Europe. He
married in Germany, and returning to Paris, for six years he dis-
tinguished himself as one of the most brilliant controversialists of
the French press; and collected his principal articles under the name
of 'Allemagne et Italie. ' Although he had shown himself almost
hostile to the government of King Louis Philippe, and had already
proclaimed his republican faith, it was due not less to his character
than to his celebrity that he was appointed professor of literature
in the Faculty of Letters of Lyons, in 1839. He exercised so potent
an influence over intellectual youth that M. Villemain, then minister,
had him appointed professor of the Collège de France in 1841. It
was then that, together with his friends Michelet and Mickiewicz,
he began that eloquent apostolate to the students of Paris, from
which resulted two important works: 'Les Révolutions d'Italie' and
'Les Jésuites. ' The character of his instruction was so liberal, so
## p. 11963 (#597) ##########################################
EDGAR QUINET
11963
secularizing, and so republican, that in 1846 the government resolved
to put an end to it.
From 1847 Quinet entered active politics. He was one of the pro-
moters and one of the founders of the Republic of 1848. Represent-
ative of the people in the Constituent Assembly and the Legislative
Assembly, colonel of the National Guard in the days of June, he con-
ducted himself like a wise and clear-sighted citizen. He foretold the
Coup d'État of 1851, and vainly attempted to oppose the growing
Cæsarism. He was exiled by Bonaparte after the Coup d'État, and
remained, like Victor Hugo, nineteen years in exile, conscientiously
protesting against the violation of law. This period of exile-first
at Brussels (1852-1858), where he was married again, this time to the
daughter of the poet Assaki; then at Veylaux in Switzerland (1858-
1870) was extremely fruitful for the thinker and the poet.
It was
then that he published Marnix de Saint-Aldegonde' (1856); 'L'His-
toire de Mes Idées' (1858); 'Merlin l'Enchanteur' (1860); and above
all, the admirable Révolution Française (1865), which is perhaps
the finest book ever written upon the subject, even when compared
with the works of Thiers, Michelet, and Taine.
―――
After the fall of the Empire, and the disasters of 1870, Edgar
Quinet returned to France. Elected deputy from Paris by two hun-
dred thousand votes, he took a seat with Victor Hugo on the extreme
left of the Chamber, and continued to vote against all the laws of
clerical and monarchical reaction, and in favor of all the seculariz-
ing and democratic laws. Before his death in 1876 he was able to
foresee the certain realization of his ideas by the generation whose
parliamentary guides were Jules Ferry and Léon Gambetta. In 1874
he had published 'L'Esprit Nouveau,' in which are solemnly affirmed
the principal articles of his social, moral, and intellectual creed.
Edgar Quinet as man and as author appears one of the most
complete minds of France. By his poetic intuitions he created and
rediscovered mysterious legends, in which are incarnated the spirit
of the race; by his critical investigations he analyzed and revived
the noblest epochs of modern Europe; by his constructive power of
thought, he synthesized the evolutionary philosophy of the new hu-
manity; finally, by his enthusiasm and political tenacity, he offered
the noble sight of a citizen superior to the ephemeral passions of
party. He lacked only a little more sobriety of style, and a little
more precision of thought, to be a genius of the first order.
Such as
he is, he deserves to remain - what he wished to be and what he was
to the youth of his time: the initiator of the new France and of the
new humanity.
Henry Bérengen
## p. 11964 (#598) ##########################################
11964
EDGAR QUINET
NAPLES AND VESUVIUS
From (Italy)
W"
HEN I reached Naples, Vesuvius was in full eruption. Dur-
ing the day the lava rolled its black streams on the side
of the Annunziata and Pompeii. Toward evening the
torrents changed into a burning belt tying and untying itself
in the darkness. I impatiently awaited the morrow, in order to
climb to the edge of the crater in the middle of the night.
At eight in the evening I started from the little town of
Torre del Greco. After an hour's walk I arrived at the hermit-
age. The night was very black. I lighted my torch; the her-
mit wished me a pleasant journey; I went on my way with my
guide, and soon reached the foot of the cone.
At that distance I was too near the volcano to see it; but I
heard over my head explosions which the echoes magnified for-
midably, and a rain of stones rolling in the darkness. From
this tempest issued a great sigh, like that of a giant who is
stoned. The wind put out my torch. I finished my ascent in
total darkness. But just as I reached the summit, an infernal
light illumined the sky. Behold the spectacle which I had then
before me.
The earth trembled; it was warm to the touch. Through its
fissures shone the fiery veins of a hidden furnace. In the midst
of the great crater to which I had come, a new cone was form-
ing which seemed all in flames. From the mouth of this gulf
was exhaled a vast and long-sustained breath. This sigh, and a
profound and regular respiration like that of a forge, rose from
the bosom of the oppressed mountain. A terrible detonation fol-
lowed them. Flaming stones were cast in groups beyond our
vision, and rattled down noisily on the edges of the cone. For an
instant the steep sides and the interior of the abyss were lighted
as in broad day.
Lava was issuing from the ground by openings distant from
the crater. It rolled crackling from four mouths. Soon after-
ward the mountain uttered another giant sigh. Glancing toward
the sea at the moment of the explosion, I saw distinctly little
boats at anchor.
The mountain trembled still more; but the waves were not
affected, and nothing seemed to me more beautiful than the sleep
## p. 11965 (#599) ##########################################
EDGAR QUINET
11965
of the sea, smiling under the unchained volcano. The Bay of
Naples resembled thus Ariosto's Angelica under the jaws and
outstretched wings of the Chimera.
I sat down upon the trembling ground; nature was seized
with a vertigo to which I abandoned myself with delight. The
intervals in quick succession of noise and silence, of light and
darkness, the calm of the night, the calm not less great of the
sea, this mountain shaken by starts,—all these contrary effects
were strengthened the one by the other. Without seeking why,
I found in this spectacle a host of images applicable to the moral
state in which I then was, and which had strongly prevailed
since my departure from Rome. I passed the night on the sum-
mit. When day appeared, I was able to enjoy at my leisure the
view of the famous gulf which lay at my feet. In the distance,
the island of Capri, which is shaped like an ancient galley, closed
the entrance to the sea. The sun rose from the other side of
Pompeii; it hovered some time over the tombs like a funeral
torch. This was the signal for a multitude of little barks to
leave shore and hoist sail. I heard at that moment the noise
of the awakening towns and villages. The vines interlaced in
the poplars, like gigantic thyrsi, began to shiver under the sea
breeze; an instant later the light sparkled on the ruffled waves;
a golden vapor like the dust of stars rose from the horizon; the
air became charged with perfumes. All nature seemed intoxi-
cated as in a pagan festival; and as long as the volcano con-
tinued agitated, this Christian Campania resembled the Sibyl
hesitating on her stand.
In Naples, the city of passions, I observe that the most con-
siderable monuments of art are the tombs. Moreover, these tombs
nearly all belong to the epoch of Spanish domination. The dead,
upright on their mausoleums, torch or dagger in hand, are sus-
tained by a singular pride: they seem still to rule over the living,
who pass lightly with furtive step over the soil below them.
The towers of Anjou, bathed by the sea, hold also this captive
earth. The palace of Jeanne la Folle, abandoned to the waves
which are every day seizing upon it, the beautiful arch of Ara-
gon, are other witnesses of the conquest. All the nations have
left the traces of their rule here in a particular architecture.
Only the Neapolitans are absent from the monuments of Naples.
This mimic people warms itself in the sun. It alone of all
Italy has never belonged to itself. Without a past, it has no
## p. 11966 (#600) ##########################################
11966
EDGAR QUINET
regrets; without a near future, it has no desire.
It cries, it ges-
ticulates, it spreads its nets, it runs, it declaims, it muses, it men-
aces,—and all that at once. Polichinel is its hero.
Yet when a soul chances to awaken from the bosom of this
mendicant sybarism, it is exalted in spiritualism or armed with
boundless energy. Pythagoras and his school, St. Thomas Aqui-
nas, Vico, Spagnoletto, Salvator Rosa, were strange lazzaroni.
Toward the middle of the day, sailors from Chia, from Sicily,
from Malta, seat themselves in a circle on the pier; a sail shades
the audience, which impatiently awaits the improvisator. At last
he appears; he is dressed in sailor's fustian; in his hand he
carries a switch instead of the laurel branch of his ancestors.
The eyes of the lazzaroni devour his lips in anticipation of the
story he is going to narrate. Sometimes he sings in a hoarse
voice a recitative with a plaintive modulation, which mingles with
the sighing of the vessels in port; sometimes he descends to
spoken prose, according to the nature and the more or less lyric
circumstances of his narration. He recounts the deeds of the
knight Rinaldo, or those of an unfortunate brigand of Calabria.
The noble public doubles its attention; the climax is at hand:
but behold, the bells sound the Ave: the singer stops short; he
makes the sign of the cross with a prayer in the name of the
virtuous assembly. Beside him the same Olympian sun which
grazes Virgil's tomb, gilds with a last ray the brow of Polichinel
sleeping at the corner of his theatre. The sail goes down, the
crowd disperses on all sides; one day more has passed over the
empire of Masaniello.
Meanwhile the young monk of Camaldules, on the mountain,
hears at his feet the murmurs rising from the shore. A thou-
sand images of pagan voluptuousness surround him with a circle
of damnation. He goes into his cell and prays; and the breeze
bears to him the sighs of Chia and Villa-Reale. He opens his
holy breviary, and the demon resuscitated from Greece writes
upon it playfully, with the end of his claw, litanies of love.
Over him bend magic skies; enchantments fasten to his scapu-
lary; from his chalice he quaffs long draughts of the philtre of
inexorable regrets. He is fortunate if old age chills his heart
prematurely. Only death can deliver him from these cruel de-
lights.
Ah! above all, let him incase himself in triple haircloth when
his eyes meet Posilipo, Capri, and white Nisida: for it is there
## p. 11967 (#601) ##########################################
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11967
that memories are forgotten, and vows falsified; heroic projects,
fruitful sorrows, are forgotten under those skies which rain love.
A voluptuousness more dangerous than befits human lips escapes
continually from the mountains, the lakes, the quivering stars.
Impalpable sirens languish under the sleeping waves; he only
who has escaped their embraces can count on his thick armor.
When the Romans grew corrupt, they became disgusted with
the grandeur and severity of Rome. They sought a nature in-
toxicated as they were, monstrous as they were. If they had
been able to tear Rome from its sad and serious foundations
they would have done so. The mixture of voluptuousness and
terror they were seeking in the time of Tiberius, of Nero, of
Caligula, was found on the promontories of Capri and Miseno.
There they came to establish their feasts, and to enjoy in peace,
in that pagan nature, the last days of paganism.
The villas of Cæsar on the Gulf of Baie were close beside
Lake Avernus and Lake Acherus, the Elysian Fields, the en-
trance to the infernal regions, -as though they wished to redouble
the insolence of their festivity by this opposition. This great
revel of Roman society a few steps from Acheron was the ban-
quet of the ancient Don Juan at the commander's. Little lakes,
adjoining the infernal regions, shone in the depths of extinct
craters as in cups of lava; on their margins climbed faded gar-
lands of eglantine, poor blossoms which survived the orgy of the
empire.
Christianity, which everywhere in Italy has seized upon pagan
ruins to replace them with its chapels or hermitages, has aban-
doned these, as though despairing of stifling the reviving volup-
tuousness. I ascended Cape Miseno; the infernal trumpets which
from this direction troubled Nero's sleep, no longer sounded;
the beach was silent; the empty gulf stretched its gaunt arms
out in the shadows. It was late. The sea was phosphorescent,
the stars were shining. I swam part of the way from Miseno to
Pozzuoli in the midst of ringing bells. The pale light of the
moon mingled with the electric light of the waves; they alone
still guarded the souvenir of imperial pleasures.
Translated for A Library of the World's Best Literature by Jane
Grosvenor Cooke
## p. 11968 (#602) ##########################################
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EDGAR QUINET
HORUS OF STARS-
CHOR
A NIGHT IN THE ORIENT
From Ahasvérus ›
The griffin and the ibis have led the tribes through the
valleys to the land of their inheritance. And us too,- a
guide has led us across the mountains and valleys of the firma-
ment, on the cloud where we must sleep to-night.
The Moon-
The patriarch of Chaldea, sitting before his tent, watches his
flocks feeding about him on the slope of the mountain. Feed
too my flocks of bounding stars, around my silver tent which I
have planted on a spring cloud.
A Star-
Every tribe is sleeping in its marble city; every star in its
silver robe. My rays hang scattered from the pillars of Per-
sepolis. Nineveh has battlemented towers where they stoop to
the windows. But I like better the walls of Babylon; upon her
roofs they noiselessly gather and grow drowsy like snowflakes on
the summit of mountains.
Another Star
Perhaps, my sisters, we are taking the same journey as the
tribes of men. Astray like them, I would like to converse with
them. Gladly I would send them dreams with my golden beams.
I would give my words to the wind; the wind would carry them
to the desert flower, the flower to the river, the river would
repeat them on its way through the cities.
All-
Yes, that is what we must do.
A Flower of the Syrian Desert-
My head bows under the light of the stars; my chalice swells
with dew as a heart is filled with a secret which it longs to
repeat. In the night my blossom blushed with spots the color
of blood, like the robe of a Levite upon the day of sacrifice; the
murmur of the stars descended into my chalice and mingled
with my perfume. I carry a secret in my chalice; I have the
secret of the universe, which escaped it in dream during the
night, and no voice with which to repeat it. Ah! tell me where
## p. 11969 (#603) ##########################################
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11969
is the nearest city. Is it Jerusalem or is it Babylon ? Let the
passers-by come gather the mystery which burdens my crown.
and inclines my head.
The Euphrates-
Flower of the desert, bend thy head a little lower over my
bed, that I may hear thy murmur better; always bounding from
wave to wave, I will carry it to the walls of Babylon: tell me
thy secret; I will deposit it on the silvery waves at the foot of
the towers of the Chaldeans.
Dwellers of Babylon upon their roofs-
See how the Euphrates sparkles under the willows this even-
ing, like the blade of a poniard fallen from the table of a feast.
Its murmurs could not be gentler were it rolling over sacred
vessels of gold and silver in the depths of its bed.
A Slave-
Or if a whole nation hanging on its banks had let their tears
fall in one by one.
A King-
Or if an empire with the tiaras of its priests, with the robe
of its kings, with its glittering gods, had been swallowed up for
a thousand years on its gravel bed, like a flower of the waters.
Chorus of Priests-
The light of the night illumines the inscriptions of Semiramis
engraved on the rock of the mountain of Assur. Every word
shines from here like a sword of fire, which writes on the stone
the speech of the firmament. How the lyre answers the lyre, as
the voices of the stars, as their mute wills, gleam among us
with the voices of nations and echoes which endure a century.
The Orient has stretched about it its peoples and empires, as the
night has its robe embroidered with stars for the gods to attire
themselves in by day. But as yet the universe is only just
dawning, and He who has rewarmed it with his breath holds it
like a young dove in his hand. While the steps of the God of
Gods are visible on the grass of Eden and Cashmere, let us note
his traces on the heights of the mountains. Neither the sun nor
the hearts of men have yet drunk his breath at this hour. As
the Arab rises in the night to lick the dew of the desert before
noonday, thus we rise in the first days of the universe to draw
XX--749
## p. 11970 (#604) ##########################################
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EDGAR QUINET
from our
urns the thought of Eternity before its spring has
dried. Drop by drop it falls from the stars, and from the vault
of heaven, and from every leaf of the palm-tree; let us intoxi-
cate ourselves with its liquor as with a resinous wine. O you
nations of India, of Chaldea, of Egypt, in turn, take and drink
the cup of eternity, which he has left filled in quitting his ban-
quet. Let all the new-born peoples lift to their lips, without
delay, the vessel in which the Infinite ferments to the brim.
After us, our sphinxes; after them, our idols of granite and
bronze. If the universe wavers to our eyes,- if it separates
into a thousand different gods, birds with the heads of men, ser-
pents with the bodies of women, crowned unicorns,-let it be
as in our feasts when the heart is gorged with Idumean wines,
and as each guest seems to see the golden vessels totter, clatter
together, and break on the porphyry table. Let us hasten from
India even to Araxe: who knows if the time is not coming when
the universe after centuries will be like a flower withered and
scorched at night by an Arabian sun, and if men's lips will not
press in vain the cup where we drink, and which then will have
no longer its perfume or eternal beverage?
Translated for A Library of the World's Best Literature by Jane
Grosvenor Cooke
THE
THE WANDERING JEW
HE BROTHERS OF AHASUERUS-
From Ahasvérus
Ahasuerus, come, enter the house. Latch the door. Are
you not afraid of the wind which is blowing, and of the
noise in the city?
The Brothers—
Ahasuerus —
Go in, little brothers; go to sleep on your mats.
stay on my bench, and watch the crowd pass.
There it is! Let us escape!
I wish to
The Crowd [following Christ, who is carrying the cross]-
Salutation to the king, to the fine king of Judea! Lead him
to the summit of Calvary, that he may see farther-see all his
―
## p. 11971 (#605) ##########################################
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11971
empire. Has the king of Babylon, or Egypt, or Persia, ever
mounted a throne so elevated? The precincts of the city are
not good enough for him at present.
When our high towers
are fallen, when serpents are climbing our stairs instead of us,
when the desert is at our table, then he shall return if he wishes,
with his crown of thorns, with his torn robe, his bleeding feet,
to be the king of our ruin.
Ahasuerus-
They are coming. I can hear their steps. My heart beats in
my breast.
The Crowd-
Have they restored to Barabbas his sword, his cloak, his horse,
and his quiver full of arrows? Give him in his purse ten demers
of shining silver. Dress him in red as a messenger; he shall go
through the town to tell the robbers, the weavers, the slaves who
turn the mills, "Do you know the news? Your king is await-
ing you on the platform of his tower of Golgotha. "
Ahasuerus-
The voices of these people intoxicate me like a leathern bot-
tle of the wine of Carmel. Their wrath is surely just.
▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
――――――――
The Crowd-
Pilate, wise Pilate, hast thou taken thy golden ewer? Again,
again, see that spot thou hast not removed. Rome washes her
hands, that innocent virgin, who has held only the spindle in
her mother's chamber, does not wish to wear a bloody ring on
her finger; but we without delay will follow the steps of our
King's son. Truly, is he not greater than David? See, he weeps,
and he has neither sword nor sling; his cup-bearers are two rob-
bers. If he wishes to punish us, let him command: perhaps this
time he will not send us as far as the willows of Babylon. Must
we return, with hands tied behind our backs, to the desert, to
Egypt? Let us start; for a long time we have known the way
-and a short path to return.
Ahasuerus
They come - they are there- they pass-they recede; their
cries fill the street: if this man was indeed a soothsayer, the
wind which blows from the desert would overturn the terraces
with the towers. He is an impostor: death to him!
――
## p. 11972 (#606) ##########################################
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EDGAR QUINET
The Crowd-
If he is a Chaldean, magician, he has as servants-in the
desert, under the remains of cities-marble unicorns, winged
lions, whose manes have been trimmed by spirits with scissors
of gold; he has as messengers, sphinxes which repose from their
courses at the doors of temples in blocks of rock. Let him tell
his griffins to come and escort him; - but the wings of his grif-
fins are too heavy, the sleep of his sphinxes is too profound.
Before his enchanted troop of unicorns and winged lions leap
about him, before the stone hawks and ibises descend from their
obelisks to defend him, behold the vultures of Judea who to-
morrow shall take the crown from his head to carry it to their
nest in the woods. Oh no, do not pause at thy nest, my vulture
of Carmel! mount higher than the roc, higher than the cloud,
higher than the star; mount to Jehovah! "Knowest thou what
I bear in my beak? O Jehovah! in truth, it is not a bit of
Joppa wool, it is not a twig of heather, it is the crown of
thorns of Judea, which I took at Calvary from the head of thy
son of Nazareth. "
Christ-
Ahasuerus-
As he advances, his halo shines more brightly than that of an
elect prophet: that is one of his enchantments.
-
It is thou, Ahasuerus?
Ahasuerus-
—
I do not know you.
Ahasuerus-
Christ-
I am thirsty: give me a little water from thy spring.
-
My well is empty.
Christ-
Take thy cup: thou shalt find it full.
Ahasuerus-
It is broken.
-
―
Christ
Help me to carry my cross by this hard way.
## p. 11973 (#607) ##########################################
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11973
Ahasuerus
I am not your cross-bearer: call a griffin from the
-
Christ-
Ahasuerus-
My bench is full: there is no place for any one.
Christ-
Let me sit down on thy bench, at the door of thy house.
And on thy sill?
-
Ahasuerus-
It is empty, and the door is bolted.
Christ-
Touch it with thy finger, and thou shalt enter to get a stool.
Ahasuerus
-
Go your way.
Christ-
sert.
Christ-
If thou desired, thy bench should become a golden stool at
the door of my father's house.
―
Ahasuerus-
Go, blaspheme where you will. Already you are making my
vine and fig-tree to wither. Do not lean on the railing of my
steps: it would crumble at hearing you speak.
You wish to
enchant me.
I wished to save thee.
Ahasuerus-
Soothsayer, depart from my shadow. Your way is before you.
Go, go!
Christ-
Why didst thou say it, Ahasuerus? It is thou who shalt con-
tinue to go until the last judgment, during more than a thou-
sand years.
Go take thy sandals, and thy garments for travel:
everywhere thou passest, they shall call thee "The Wandering
Jew. " Thou shalt not find a place to sit down, or a mountain
spring to quench thy thirst. In my stead thou shalt bear the
## p. 11974 (#608) ##########################################
I 1974
EDGAR QUINET
burden which I leave on the cross. For thy thirst, thou shalt
drink what I leave in my chalice. Others shall take my tunic,
thou shalt inherit my eternal sorrow. Hyssop shall sprout from
thy traveler's staff, absinth shall come in thy leather bottle,
despair shall press thy loins in thy leather belt. Thou shalt be
the man who never dies. Thy age shall be mine. To see thee
pass, the eagles will perch on the edge of their eyries; the
little birds will half hide themselves under the crests of the
rocks; the star will stoop from its cloud to hear thy tears fall-
ing drop by drop in the abyss. I am going to Golgotha: thou
shalt walk from ruin to ruin, from kingdom to kingdom, without
ever reaching thy Calvary. Thou shalt break thy staircase under
thy feet, and be no longer able to descend. The gate of the
city shall say to thee, "Go farther, my bench is occupied;" and
the stream where thou wishest to sit shall say, "Go farther, go
farther, to the sea: my bank is full of brambles. " And the sea
too—"Farther, farther: are you not the eternal traveler who goes
from nation to nation, from century to century, drinking his
tears from his cup, who never sleeps day or night either on
silk or on stone, and who cannot return on the path by which
he came? " The griffins will sit down, the sphinxes will sleep.
Thou shalt have neither seat nor sleep. Thou shalt ask for me
from temple to temple without ever meeting me. Thou shalt
cry "Where is he? " until the dead show you the way to the
last judgment. When thou beholdest me again, my eyes will be
flaming, my finger will issue from under my robe to summon
thee to the valley of Jehoshaphat.
A Roman Soldier-
Did you hear? While he spoke my sword groaned in its
scabbard; my lance sweated blood; my horse wept. I have car-
ried my sword and my lance long enough.
As I listened, my
heart was consumed in my bosom.
little ones, that I may hide in my
The Crowd-
Open the door, my wife and
Calabrian hut.
—
Why climb farther to Calvary? What if he were perchance a
God in an unknown country, or yet a Son whom the Eternal in
his old age has forgotten? Let us go hide in our courts before
he can recognize us. Put out the lamps on our tables. Did you
see the hand of steel which wrote on the house of Ahasuerus,-
The Wandering Jew? Let not this name remain on the stone!
## p. 11975 (#609) ##########################################
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11975
Let him who bears it be the scapegoat of Judea. When he
passes, Babylon, Thebes, and the surrounding country shall
gather a stone from their ruins to hurl at him. But for us,
without ever quitting again our homes and our vines, we will fill
our bottles for the Passover, with our wine of Carmel.
Translated for A Library of the World's Best Literature,' by Jane
Grosvenor Cooke
THE STRUGGLE AGAINST ENVIRONMENT
From The Story of My Thoughts'
MY
Y PEACE was especially troubled when I listened to the inner
voice which called me to letters; for I distrusted this
voice, I regarded it as a tempting demon wishing to de-
ceive me.
Or if I yielded to it, I felt my powerlessness almost
at once. I saw myself alone, with no guide, no model, whom I
wished to follow. Everything hindered. I began in several ways
at the same time, and could not tell upon which to decide.
My age, my weakness, my ignorance, my isolation, counted
for much in this grievous perplexity. The situation of France
also had something to do with it. To understand the exhaustion
of a poor mind like mine at this first awakening, one must figure
to oneself that none of the traces which have been stamped upon
the moral world by our generation were then visible.
This gen-
eration which was to renew so many ideas, so many opinions,
and the language itself, had as yet produced nothing.
Not one of the new ideas, of the new forms, had as yet
brilliantly burst forth. None of the new names which we have
been accustomed to pronounce for forty years had then emerged
from obscurity. Those who were to make them illustrious cer-
tainly were distrustful of themselves. Every year I spent several
weeks with friends at Ouilly, on the other side of the valley
of Saint-Point. Who knew that on the opposite side of the hill
there was a great poet named Lamartine, hidden under those
trees whose shadow reached even to where I was? Did he him-
self know it then?
Whichever way I looked, I found a great void on the horizon.
I felt this void in poetry, in history, in philosophy, in everything.
I suffered from it, because I was incapable of filling it, and I
did not know that others were suffering from the same ill. Each
## p. 11976 (#610) ##########################################
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EDGAR QUINET
in his own obscurity was working to fill the voids of which I
was at least conscious.
In my first fever I attempted all the ways at once. Upon
each I met the same aridity, the same sterility, through all the
moral world, without any work to indicate what direction to fol-
low, or any man to say authoritatively, "This is the way. "
I was then sadly distressed at my own impotence, and I may
say at the impotence of my time; since I did not see a guide in
whom I could trust, or even a companion upon the way which
I both trembled and burned to enter. I had a presentiment of
an almost entire renewal of the things of the mind. And as I
saw no one working at it, I believed myself alone. This solitude.
was crushing me just at the moment when so many imperishable
works were being silently prepared and secretly brooded over.
Although this suffering often became despair, there was noth-
ing in it resembling spleen, weariness of life, all that brought on
the wave of passions toward the end of the last century. It seems
to me that it was in many ways the opposite of weariness and
satiety. It was rather a blind impatience to live, a feverish ex-
pectation, a premature ambition for the future, a kind of intoxi-
cation of renascent thought, a frenzied thirst of the soul after
the desert of the Empire. All that, joined to a consuming desire
to produce, to create, to do something, in the midst of a world.
still empty.
Those whom I questioned later upon those years told me they
experienced something similar.
Each one thought himself alone as I did; each one was
musing as in a desert island. The renascent force of the century
was stirring them all at once, and they were experiencing the
pains of moral growth, piercing to the very bones. How many
plaints were then exhaled! How many sincere tears were shed!
Nature too laments when about to bring forth.
The generation of which I am speaking did not understand
itself as yet; that was why it was groaning: but it was about to
do its work. At least the seeds were sown; they were beginning
to sprout. France resembled the earth in the first days of March
after a long winter. Not a leaf, not a flower. Nothing more
than short grass piercing the last snows. The birds have not
yet returned; all is silent, but all is in expectation of the new
season; the good grain germinates silently in the furrow. The
laborer has a sure presentiment that the corn is coming up.
## p. 11977 (#611) ##########################################
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11977
I too in my isolation felt-towards the autumn of 1820, in
the midst of the forest of Seillon, on the borders of the ponds, in
the company of teal and heron-that profound moral vegetating
process which, obscurely, silently, was tormenting French brains
from one frontier to the other. And this vegetating process, still
hidden, intoxicated me with a mysterious irresistible breath.
I was ignorant of all the names which were about to arise, I
loved them in advance. I had a morbid desire to anticipate these
minds that I was summoning; I experienced all the impatience
of a bird at the moment of migration. Not that I wished to
depart for a foreign land. I desired to emigrate toward that new
moral world—toward those half-seen ideas which escaped me as
I approached them. I rushed forward, I fell back almost at once;
I had not wings for so great a flight.
I rose again, however; and the idea which we were all then
forming of France furnished me with a great resource against
this first oppression. France, after her two downfalls, her two
invasions, distressed, pierced to the heart, all bleeding, appeared
to us so beautiful, so noble, so proud, in her calamities! Her
disgraces did not count: they rendered her a hundred times
more touching in our eyes. There was not then in the whole
world a single man who did not believe her made for truth, for
liberty, for all that honors human-kind. With what filial tender-
ness we looked at and counted her wounds! Who did not wish
to cure them at the price of his life? Who did not wish to
carry her as homage his work, his book, his sketch, his mite of
ideas; or in default of these, a part of his heart?
France was to be reborn,-I could not doubt it. And what
prevented us from aiding this renascence? Why should not I
too bring to it my grain of sand? Scarcely had this thought
appeared to me than I felt myself transformed. What strength
to endure everything! What a spur! At those moments I be-
lieved myself to be, and I was in truth, capable of something.
I beheld as though it were accomplished what I so fervently
desired.
I applied myself again to the work. But alas! At once two
minds which I found within me embarrassed me, and prevented
me from advancing: that of the eighteenth century which de-
sired to go on living, with which I had been reared, nourished;
and that of the nineteenth, which claimed its birth. Which
should I obey? which heed? There were indeed two spirits
## p. 11978 (#612) ##########################################
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EDGAR QUINET
who took for their battle-ground the soul of every man of that
time.
I did not want to renounce either the one or the other;
and I was too new, too unarmed as yet, to attempt to conciliate
them. What then did I do? I yielded now to one, now to the
other, at the risk of dissipating myself. This violent combat,
which I was incapable of determining, was another cause of
anguish and profound grief; it was like the torture of Brune-
hault.
To direct us in this conflict of the two centuries which were
enveloping us at the same time, we had two figures only, those
of Châteaubriand and Madame de Staël. But with them the
combat, far from ceasing, recommenced. For they differed from
each other as much as can be imagined: the one Catholic, the
other Protestant; the one turned toward the Middle Ages, the
other toward the uncertain regions of the future. In seeing
them so opposed in ideas, in sentiments, even in hopes, one felt
more astray, more deserted than ever. The choice between such
diverse ways, far from being decided by their example, became
practically impossible.
By another contradiction, the language of Châteaubriand was
emancipated while his thought did not seem to be. His colors
dazzled without enlightening me, and his ideas repelled me. I
followed them only with distrust, and scarcely admitted them to
my mind. On the contrary, the genius of Madame de Staël was
free while her expression seemed enchained. In the confused
clearness of her oracles I said to myself, "This is the side for
me to advance. Here is the century of life; here are all my
expectations. " I expected the sunrise; but I saw nothing but a
vague twilight, never penetrated by the full light of the new day.
From these two figures, if I gazed upon what were then called
the masses, I had uncertainty on one side and complete night on
the other. On the latter was no apparent desire, no enthusiasm
for other ideas than those they believed themselves to possess:
on the contrary, doubt, sneers, mockery, at the least effort to
leave the beaten paths; the old names opposed to the new like
an invincible barrier; no expectation, no presentiment of some-
thing unknown; the language impoverished by silence, weakened,
become so timid that all thought frightened it.
If a literary philosophical revolution was in preparation, evi-
dently it was to be accomplished not by the will of the greatest
## p. 11979 (#613) ##########################################
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11979
number, but by the ardor, the daring of a few solitary spirits who
would undertake at their own risk and peril to reawaken the
drowsy crowd. But who would dare begin? I sought far off, I
listened, I cried inwardly with anguish, "Is there no one, then? "
The astonishment, the incredulity of others, the anxiety of my
mother, were my only answer. These sentiments won me in my
turn.
Who? I? Write? What madness! Had I well considered?
Even if I could, dare I? Did I know even what an author was?
Had I ever beheld one with my eyes? To follow the trail of
ideas which existed nowhere in the air, to make one's life and
occupation of them, to embark one's destiny on this plank,- was
it not the vainest, most senseless of enterprises, perhaps even the
most culpable, to judge by the dismay of all my friends?
I awoke with a start as from a beautiful dream. All those
vivid lights of our generation which had appeared to me sud-
denly went out.
