Showing posts with label Victor Hugo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Victor Hugo. Show all posts

Sunday, January 10, 2016

Cherry time

Extracts from the newspaper Le Rappel, 7 September 1870,
quoting words spoken to the crowd by Victor Hugo.


I've tried to translate Hugo's powerful words:

Saving Paris is more than saving France.
It's saving the world.
Paris is the actual centre of humanity.
Paris is the sacred city.
Those who attack Paris are carrying out
a mass assault upon the entire human race.
Paris is the capital of civilization.
It is neither a kingdom nor an empire.
It symbolizes the entire human race, past and future.
And do you know why Paris is the city of Civilization ?
Because it's the city of Revolution.


Citizens, Paris will triumph,
because she symbolizes the idea of Humanity
and represents the instincts of the People.

Here is a version of a celebrated song,
Le Temps des cerises, written in 1866
by Jean-Baptiste Clément. This popular song has
always been associated in French history and culture
with the Commune de Paris in 1871.