La Jeune Captive
d'André Chénier
In prison, Chénier opens his heart to the sufferings of others. His most famous ode, La Jeune Captive, celebrates a young woman who actually was not as pure as he imagined and whose life was spared. The historical person matters less here than the sentiment.
In his last Iambes, the modern reader is struck by an existential note that anticipates by some 150 years Jean-Paul Sartre's mort sans sépulture. The horror of mass butchery pervades Iambe VII:
Quand au mouton bêlant la sombre boucherie
Ouvre ses cavernes de mort,
Pâtres, cheins et moutons, toute la bergerie
Ne s'informe plus son sort...
(When the somber slaughterhouse lets the bleating sheep
Into its dark and deadly gate,
Shepherds, dogs, and sheep, all of them keep
Their thoughts on any but their fate...)
And Iambe VIII:
...Quelle sera la proie
Que la hache appelle aujourd'hui?
Chacun frissonne, écoute; et chacun avec joie
Voit que ce n'est pas encor lui:
Ce sera toi demain, insensible imbécile.
(...Who will be the prey
On whom the ax will fall today?
Everybody shivers, listens, and is relieved to see
That the one called out is not yet he.
It will be you tomorrow, unfeeling fool.)
Chénier's last Iambe [IX] sums up his themes: a tenderness toward life, the defense of virtue, justice, and truth, the poet's role as witness of his times and of history, and a last shout of defiance.
Comme un dernier rayon, comme un dernier zéphyre
Animent la fin d'un beau jour,
Au pied de l'échaufaud j'essaye encor ma lyre.
Peut-être est-ce bientôt mon tour.
. . . . .
Ma vie importe à la vertu.
Car l'honnête homme enfin, victime de l'outrage,
Dans les cachots, près du cercueil,
Relève plus altier son front et son langage.
(Like a last ray of light, like a last summer breeze
Color the end of a beautiful day,
At the foot of the gallows once more my lyre I seize.
Perhaps I'll soon be on my way.
. . . . .
My life is Virtue's concern.
A decent man, whom outrage has fed,
In prison, awaiting his turn,
Lifts higher his speech and higher his head.)
Addressing Justice and Truth, he cries out:
Sauvez-moi. Conservez un bras
Qui lance votre foudre, un amant qui vous venge.
. . . . .
O ma plume! fiel, bile, horreur, Dieu de ma vie!
Par vous seuls je respire encor:
. . . . .
Nul ne resterait donc pour attendrir l'histoire
Sur tant de justes massacrés?
Pour consoler leurs fils, leurs veuves, leur mémoire,
Pour que des brigands abhorrés
Frémissent aux portraits noirs de leur ressemblance,
Pour descendre jusqu'aux enfers
Nouer le triple fouet, le fouet de la vengeance
Déjà levé sur ces pervers?
Pour cracher sur leurs noms, pour chanter leur supplice?
Allons, étouffe tes clameurs;
Souffre, ô coeur gros de haine, affamé de justice.
Toi, Vertu, pleure si je meurs.
(Save me. Preserve an arm
To hurl your thunderbolts, a lover to avenge you.
. . . . .
Oh my pen! poison, gall, horror, God of my life,
Through you alone I carry on my strife.
. . . . .
No one would remain and move history to record
About so many just people massacred?
To console their memory, their widows, their sons,
So that abhorrent highway brigands
Will tremble at their black portraits in paint?
To descend into hell, like a saint,
To tie the trifold whip, by vengeance praised,
Already on those perverts raised?
To spit on their names, to see their sentence carved?
Come now, stifle your cry;
Suffer, heart full of hate, for justice starved.
And you, Virtue, weep if I die.)
André Chénier did not write a fictional account of his sufferings nor did he sublimate them poetically. Drawn into the whirl of a mad world, he had not time to gain the necessary distance that fiction requires. And so he cast anathema at injustice, atrocity, and horror. His militant poetry does not always possess the high art that pervades his lyric poems, but his genius was such that his cries of anger, of frustration, and of vengeance created a new poetry in France, one that inspired Victor Hugo's Les Châtiments and the defiant chants of the poets of the Resistance during the Second World War.
It has been said that, in its upheavals, Spain kicked its own brains out. The French Revolution went it one better: it cut off the head of its greatest poet and left an indelible stain on a record that already had been far from clean.