Sometimes It Is a Duty to Fertilize Horror, Poem by Victor Hugo

Poem by Victor Hugo Themes Art, WorkPeriod 19th century

Sometimes it is a duty to fertilize horror.
A somber fire ought to illuminate an emperor.
I wrote Les Châtiments. I had to write that book.
I, whom all whiteness and all grace enrapture,
Approached hatred with regret.
I felt that when honor was emigrating,
One had to place above crime, in a serene shadow,
The fierce resplendence of punishment,
And I made that book blaze in the heavens.
To hate is hard for me. But what! When a seditious man
Interrupts the glorious tasks of progress,
Kills a people, and becomes the infamous God of cowards,
A glimmer must light up in the firmament.
So I put rays into an unmerciful book;
I lifted the immense and sad veil from evil;
I violated the night to make it a star.

Victor Hugo

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

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