The Face of the Beast Is Terrible, Poem by Victor Hugo

Poem by Victor Hugo Themes ChildhoodPeriod 19th century

The face of the beast is terrible; in it one feels
The Unknown, the eternal problem, dazzling
And dark, which man calls Nature;
One stands before formless shadow, adventure
And the yoke, slavery and rebellion,
When one sees the fearsome visage of the lion;
The stormy monster, raucous, unbridled, is not free,
O stupor! and what is this strange equilibrium
Composed of splendor and horror, the universe,
Where reigns a Jehovah of whom Satan is the reverse;
Where the stars, luminous and livid swarm,
Seem caught in a prison, and fleeing into the void,
And cast at random as dice are cast,
And always in chains and always escaped?
What is this dreadful and divine marvel
Where, in the Eden we see, it is hell we divine,
Where is eclipsed, O terror, vanished hopes,
The infinity of suns beneath the infinity of nights,
Where, in the brute, God disappears and fades?
When they have the monster face to face before them,
The magi, the vertiginous dreamers of the woods,
The pallid prophets to whom voices speak,
Feel something enormous in the beast, they know not what;
For them the bitter rictus of this obscure head,
Is the abyss, uneasy at being too much gazed upon,
Is the eternal secret that wishes to be kept
And does not let enter into its mysteries
The curiosity of pale solitaries;
And these men, to whom the shadow makes confessions,
Feel that here the sphinx grows angry, and their hair
Stands on end, and their blood in their veins freezes
Before the frowning of the prodigy.

Victor Hugo

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