Victor Hugo Speaks In Our Time

If you know nothing about Victor Hugo by all means learn of him.  Read his books and his poems.  He wrote “Les Miserables” and “The Hunchback of Notre Dame.”  A noted poet in his time, he wrote several  poems that speak to me in the present moment.  Perhaps they will speak to you.

Will the “better angels” in our land survive this moment in time? Hugo responds:

Be like that bird

Who, pausing in flight,

Feels the bough give way

Beneath her feet

And yet sings,

Knowing she hath wings.

Who is this character “without character” who has a royal appetite?  Hugo responds :

Possessed of royal appetite, and feeling rather thin,

A monkey one day dressed himself in a tiger’s skin

The tiger had been nasty; the monkey was atrocious,

Wearing on his back the right to be ferocious.

He set himself to gnashing teeth and let loose with this cry:

Conqueror of the jungle, the night’s dark king am I!

As a bandit of the forest, in the bushes he lurked

And snatched away and murdered and other horrors worked.

Laid waste the forest, slit the throats of those passing through,

And with the skin that covered him did all it used to do.

He lived within a cave, knee-deep in butchery,

And all who saw the skin believed the tiger was he.

He would cry out, would bring forth a truly terrible roar:

Behold within my cave the bones of victims before.

Before me all draw back and shudder, everyone doth flee,

All tremble—I am tiger!  Look!  and worship me!

The animals were all awe-struck and fled with great alarm,

A lion-tamer came and grabbed him with his arm,

And ripped off the tiger’s skin like a flimsy piece of tissue,

Laid bare this “conqueror” and said, “You’re just a monkey, you!

“Those who do not weep, do not see.” (Victor Hugo)