The Centuries Belong to the People

Poem by Victor Hugo Collection The Terrible YearThemes PoliticsPeriod 19th centuryArthur's analysis ↓

The centuries belong to the people; they have the moment,
They make use of it. O strange struggle! Fury!
Each with great noise cuts a branch from the tree.
Here, shards of bronze, there, shards of marble;
The Roman column as well as the French arch
Fall. What would be said of you if you had
Your lion of Saint Mark fly away, O Venice!
History is gashed and glory agonizes.
Whatever one may think of yesterday’s France,
Of that rough army and that proud people,
And of what this century, at its third lustrum,
Had dreamed, attempted, willed, it was illustrious.
Why the erasure? what has been created elsewhere
For the disinherited and for the workers?
Has the penal colony been closed? Has the school been opened?
Marengo, Lodi, Wagram, Arcole are being destroyed; Has the universal right at least been founded?
Does the poor man have shelter, fire, bread, salt?
Has the workshop, has the cottage been placed
Under an immense law of life and light?
Has war been dishonored by renouncing
The mad and sinister shedding of blood?
Has the code been remade in the image of the just?
Has the altar of august clemency been built?
Has the temple been built where clarity
Condenses into reason and becomes liberty?
Has the child been endowed and the woman delivered?
Has there been planted in man, in the deepest part of the soul,
The tree of the true, growing as error decreases?
Is progress, always too cramped, offered
Some widening of horizon and road?
No; ruins; nothing. So be it. As for me, I doubt
That one is quits for saying to the murmuring people:
What is done is small, but what is broken is great.

Victor Hugo

Translation generated by Poésies 123 with assistance from the deepseek-chat artificial-intelligence model.

Text published on Poésies 123: https://www.poesies123.com/en/poem-the-centuries-belong-to-the-people-victor-hugo/

Arthur

Interpretation

Arthur's analysis

Taken from the collection The Terrible Year, in which Hugo shares his feelings and opinions about 1870, a year of turmoil for France, this poem allows the author to draw up a balance sheet of the France he sees. If one word were to sum up this assessment, bitterness would seem to be the right one.

Implicitly calling the desires of men of the past, of what they had “dreamed, attempted, willed”, a failure, Hugo sees only disappointments:
The penal colony is still open; France, rather than seeking to re-educate its criminals, prefers to ship them off as far away as possible.
School is still not compulsory and de facto excludes part of the citizens from its teachings.
Finally, the Law, expression of the general will, does not protect the weakest or the workers. Thus, children work and women are subject to their husbands, their “lord and master” according to the Civil Code, which has still not been drafted “in the image of the just”. The Law serves only to ratify inequalities.

Victor Hugo's bitterness is still evident when one understands that he sees no improvement coming. No matter the revolutions, the changes of regime, too little has changed (“what is done is small”). He even concludes with a warning: the people are murmuring. Only the people are capable of bringing about change; they alone are masters of the centuries.

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