With mighty pictures by the Great of Old
Ne'er did I long to deck my cell, intending
That visitors should gape and peer, commending
In Connoisseurship's jargon quaint and cold.
One picture only would I aye behold
On these still walls, 'mid these my toils unending;
One, and but one: From mists of cloudy gold
The Virgin Mother, o'er her Babe-God bending--
_Her_ eyes with grandeur, _His_ with reason bright--
Should calm look down, in glory and in light,
While Sion's palm beside should point to heaven.
And God hath granted this fond prayer of mine:
Thou, my Madonna, thou to me wert given,
Divinest form of beauty most divine!
* * * * *
The last production which we shall present in our present bundle of
samples, selected from Pushkin's lyrics, is the irregular ode entitled
_Andre Chenier_. This composition is founded upon one of the most
well-known and tragic episodes of the first French Revolution: the
execution of the young and gifted poet whose name forms the title of the
lines. The story of Chenier's imprisonment and untimely death, as well
as the various allusions to the beautiful verses addressed by him to his
fellow-prisoner, La Jeune Captive, to his calm bearing on the scaffold,
and to the memorable exclamation which was made in the last accents ever
uttered by his lips; all these things are, doubtless, sufficiently
familiar to our readers; or, if not, a single reference, either to any
of the thousand books describing that most bloody and yet powerfully
attractive period of French history--nay, the simple turning to the
article _Chenier_, in any biographical dictionary, will be amply
sufficient to recall to the memory the principal facts of the sad story
which Pushkin has made the subject of his noble elegy. It will be
therefore unnecessary for us to detail the life and death of the hero of
the poem, and we shall only throw together, in these short preliminary
remarks, the few quotations and notes appended by the Russian poet to
his work. These will not be found of any very formidable extent; and as
the poem itself is not of a considerable length, we trust that the
various passages, which these quotations are adduced to illustrate, will
be sufficiently perceptible, without our submitting to the necessity of
appending them in the form of marginal annotations or foot-notes, a
necessity which would force us to load the text with those unsightly
appendages to books in general, and to poetry in particular--the
asterisks and daggers of marginal reference.
The supposed soliloquy of the martyred poet, which forms the principal
portion of Pushkin's elegiac ode, is little else than an amplification,
or pathetic and dignified paraphrase, of the exquisite composition
actually written by Chenier on the eve of his execution; a composition
become classical in the French literature:--
"Comme un dernier rayon, comme un dernier zephyr
Anime le soir d'un beau jour,
Au pied de l'echafaud j'essaie encore ma lyre."
Of the few persons to whom allusion is made in the verses, _Abel_,
_Fanny_, and the _Captive Maid_, all that it is necessary to know is,
that the first was one of his friends, the companion of his early
happiness, and the fellow-labourer of his early studies--"Abel, doux
confidant de mes jeunes mysteres;" the second, one of his mistresses;
and the third, a young lady, Mlle. de Coigny, who was for some time his
fellow-prisoner, and the person to whom the poet addressed the touching
verses which we have mentioned above. Mlle. de Coigny was the "Jeune
Captive."
In justification of the very emphatic tone in which Pushkin has recorded
the noble generosity and self-sacrifice which conducted Chenier to the
revolutionary scaffold, it will be sufficient to quote the words of De
la Touche, and to refer the reader to Chenier's Iambics, which drew down
upon his head, and with good cause, the hatred and suspicion of
Robespierre and his subordinate demons:--"Chenier avait merite la haine
des factieux. Il avait celebre Charlotte Corday, fletri Collot
d'Herbois, attaque Robespierre. On sait que le Roi avait demande a
l'Assemblee par une lettre pleine de calme et de dignite, le droit
d'appeler au peuple du jugement qui le condamnait. Cette lettre, signee
dans la nuit du 17 au 18 Janvier, est d'Andre Chenier."--H. DE LA
TOUCHE.
The unfortunate poet was executed on the 8th of Thermidor; _i.e._ the
day before the fall of Robespierre. The fatal tumbril which bore Chenier
to the guillotine, conveyed also to the same scaffold the poet Roucher,
his friend:--"Ils parlerent de la poesie a leurs derniers moments; pour
eux, apres l'amitie, c'etait la plus belle chose de la terre. Racine fut
l'objet de leur entretien et de leur derriere admiration. Ils voulurent
reciter ses vers; ils choisirent la premiere scene d'Andromaque."--H. DE
LA TOUCHE.
At the place of execution, Chenier struck his forehead with his hand,
and exclaimed--"Pourtant j'avais quelque chose la!"