Written on the First Page of a Book by Joseph de Maistre, Poem by Victor Hugo

Monster cathedral! Built
Against right and duty!
Inclined plane. The sacristy,
Slippery, becomes the slaughterhouse.

Here the candles, there the torches.
In this temple, built for two ends,
Are juxtaposed the two porches
Of light and of night.

False light and real night.
The shadow of Rome on Paris.
An eagle having at the tip of its wing
The claws of a bat.

A dreadful logic
Invents, O people without avengers,
A strange Reims with a double table
Where your two devourers are seated.

The two dark beings that gnaw at you,
The magnificent and the hideous,
Drink your blood together, and dream,
With their priest beside them.

Double chapel, and double apostle.
Bonald in one, haughty zero,
Crowns the prince, and, in the other,
De Maistre consecrates the executioner.

Horror is mingled with the empire.
On the throne has been spread out
A coagulated purple
That has flowed from the scaffold.

One man reigns, one man mows down;
So be it. I always believed we would see
The sword wed, by the left hand,
To the guillotine blade.

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-written-on-the-first-page-of-a-book-by-joseph-de-maistre-victor-hugo/