Jeanne Asleep (II)

Poem by Victor Hugo Themes ChildhoodPeriod 19th century

She sleeps; her beautiful eyes will reopen tomorrow;
And my finger, which she holds in the shadow, fills her hand;
As for me, I read, taking care that nothing wakes her,
Pious newspapers; all insult me; one advises
Sending to Charenton whoever reads my verses;
The next consigns my perverse works to the stake;
The next, whose eyelids are moistened by a tear,
Invites passersby to throw stones at me;
My writings are a gloomy and venomous heap
Where all the black dragons of evil twist their coils;
The next believes in hell and declares me its apostle;
One calls me Antichrist, another Satan, and another
Would be afraid to find me in the evening at the corner of a wood;
One offers me hemlock and the other says to me: Drink!
I demolished the Louvre and killed the hostages;
I set the people dreaming of who knows what divisions;
Paris in flames sends its redness to my brow;
I am an incendiary, a murderer, a cutthroat,
A miser, and I would have been less dark and less sinister
If the emperor had wanted to make me a minister;
I am the public poisoner, the killer;
Thus come in crowds around me to shout
All these voices hurling insult, without end, without truce;
Meanwhile the child sleeps, and, as if her dream
Were saying to me: — Be calm, O father, and be merciful! —
I feel her hand pressing mine gently.

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-jeanne-endormie-ii-victor-hugo/