The Vat, Poem by Auguste Barbier

Poem by Auguste Barbier Collection Lambes et PoèmesPeriod 19th century

There is, there is on earth an infernal vat,
Its name is Paris; it is a vast hot-house,
A pit of stone with immense contours
Enclosed by yellow, muddy water in triple rings.
It is a smoking volcano, always panting,
Stirring in long waves the matter of humankind;
A precipice open to corruption,
Where the mire descends from every nation,
And which from time to time, full of a filthy sludge,
Lifting its boils, overflows upon the world.

There, in this muddy hole, the timid sun
Rarely comes to rest a white and rosy foot;
There, the buzzings night and day in the mist
Rise over the city like a vast foam;
There, no one sleeps, there, always the brain
Works, and, like a bow, draws tight its rough cord.
One in three lives there, one dies there of debauchery;
Never, with oiled brow, does death mow you down there,
For the holy monuments remain in this place
Only to say: Once there existed a God.

There, so many altars standing have rolled from their bases,
So many stars have paled without completing their phases,
So many nascent cults have fallen without ripening,
So many great virtues came there to rot,
So many murderous chariots have carved their ruts,
So many shameful powers have reddened the dust,
Of revolutions with dark and powerful flight
Have burst one after another their clouds of blood,
That man, not knowing where to anchor his life,
Gives himself furiously to the sole love of gold.

Misery! After a thousand years of upheavals,
Of countless shocks and vain wanderings,
Of abolished cults and superb thrones
In the lost sands and lying in the grass,
Time, that old runner, that pitiless old man,
Who goes over all the earth crushing beneath his foot
The immense cities overflowing with vices,
Time, who swept away Rome and its filth,
Finds still, after two thousand years of journey,
An abyss as black as the Roman vat.

Always the same din, always the same delirium,
Same crowd of hands sharing the empire;
Always the same flock of pale senators,
Same floods of intriguers and vile corrupters,
Same derision of the priest and the oracles,
Same appetite for games, same thirst for spectacles;
Always the same shamelessness, same brazen luxury,
In high and low the same immorality,
Same excesses, same enormous crimes,
Minus the air of Italy and the beauty of forms.

The race of Paris is the pale street urchin
With a stunted body, a complexion yellow as an old penny;
It is that screaming child one sees at every hour
Lazy and loafing, and far from his home
Beating the skinny dogs, or along the great walls
Scrawling while whistling a thousand impure sketches;
This child does not believe, he spits on his mother,
The name of heaven for him is only a bitter farce;
It is libertinage in short;
On a fifteen-year-old brow it is hardened vice.

And yet he is brave, he faces the thunderbolt,
Like an old grenadier he eats gunpowder,
He throws himself at the cannon crying: Liberty!
Under bullet and sword he falls with beauty.
But let Riot also pass before his door,
Suddenly the instinct of evil seizes him and carries him off,
There he is swelling the bands of scoundrels,
Molesting the peace of trembling citizens,
And howling, and his brow smeared with dust,
Ready to throw at God blasphemy and stone.

O race of Paris, race with depraved heart,
Race ardent to move iron or paving stone!
Sea, whose great voice makes all crown-bearers
Tremble on their thrones like feverish men!
Bold wave that for three days goes beating the heavens,
And then falls back, flat and silent!
Race unique in this world! frightful assemblage
Of the impulses of the young man and the crimes of age;
Race that plays with evil and death,
The whole world admires you and does not understand you!

Auguste Barbier

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-vat-auguste-barbier/