Les suppliants parallèles

The Parallel Suppliants

Charles Peguy

SEVENTH CAHIER, CHRISTMAS CAHIER OF THE SEVENTH SERIES

The Suppliants — 1.

Petition of the workers to the tsar, in the cahier by Etienne Avenard — January 22, new style — fifth cahier of this seventh series:

Sire! We, the workers of the city of Saint Petersburg, our wives, our children and our old invalid parents, have come before you, Sire, to seek justice and protection. We have fallen into misery: we are oppressed, we are crushed by labor beyond our endurance, we are insulted; we are not recognized as human beings, we are treated as slaves who must patiently bear their bitter and sad lot and keep silent!

Already in Sophocles, Oedipus Rex, lines 14 and following:

THE PRIEST. Yes, (well then) O Oedipus, master of my country, you see us, of what age, prostrated at the foot of your altars: some not yet having the strength to fly a long stretch, others heavy with old age, and I, priest of Zeus, and these chosen from among the young men; and the rest of the people, garlanded, is seated in the public squares, and at the twin temple of Pallas, and on the prophetic ashes of the Ismenos.

Petition of the workers to the tsar, continuing:

And we have endured it. But we are pushed ever further into the abyss of misery, of lawlessness, of ignorance; despotism and arbitrary rule crush us and we suffocate. We are at the end of our strength, Sire! The limit of patience has been exceeded. We have arrived at that terrible moment when death is better than the prolongation of unbearable sufferings. And so we have abandoned our work and declared to our masters that we will not resume working until they have satisfied our demands.

Sophocles, continuing:

For the city, as you yourself see it there, now rolls in a violent swell, henceforth incapable of raising its head from the depths of this blood-red surge, withering in the buds of the fruits of the earth, withering in the grazing herds of cattle and in the barren birthings of women;

What we demand is little. We desire only that without which life is not life, but a prison and an infinite torture.

and (therein) the fire-bearing god, having launched himself, pursues, supreme plague enemy, the city, plague by which the Kadmean house empties itself; and black Hades grows rich with lamentations and cries.

Our first demand was that our masters examine together, with us, our needs; but even that was refused us, we were refused the right to speak of our needs, it being found that the law does not grant us this right.

Not reckoned equal to the gods, (then), judging you, neither I nor these children here before you, we are seated at the foot of your altars, but (judging you) the first of men both in the conjunctures of life and in commerce with divinities;

Our demand to reduce the number of working hours to eight hours a day was also found illegal; to establish the price of our labor together with us and with our consent; to examine our misunderstandings with the subaltern administration of our factories; to raise the wages of laborers and women to one ruble a day; to abolish overtime; to give us attentive medical care without insulting us; to arrange our workshops so that we can work in them and not find our death through the terrible drafts, the rains and the snows. According to our masters, everything was illegal: all our demands were a crime, and our desire to improve our situation — an insolence, insulting to our masters.

you who (at least), coming to the city of Kadmos, delivered us from the tribute of the harsh songstress, which we provided, and this knowing nothing more from us, nor having been taught, but it is by a divine assistance that one says and thinks that you raised up our life;

Sire! there are more than 300,000 of us here, and all are men only in appearance, in aspect; in reality, we are granted no human right, not even the right to think, to assemble, to examine our needs, to take measures to improve our situation. Whoever among us dares to raise his voice in defense of the interests of the working class is thrown into prison, sent into exile. With us, a good heart, a compassionate soul is punished as a crime. To have pity on an oppressed, tortured, rightless man — that is to commit a very grave crime.

and now, O head of Oedipus most powerful over all, we beseech you all, here turned toward you, to find us some strength of aid, whether having heard the voice of some god, or knowing from some man;

Sire! is this in conformity with the divine laws, by whose grace you reign? And can one live under such laws? Is it not better to die, better for all of us, the workers of all Russia? Let the capitalists and the functionaries alone live then, and let them rejoice. Here is what is before us, Sire, and this is what has assembled us near the walls of your palace. It is here that we seek our last salvation. Do not refuse protection to your people; bring it out of the tomb of arbitrary rule, of misery and ignorance; give it the possibility of disposing of its own fate; free it from the intolerable oppression of the functionaries; destroy the wall between you and your people — and let it govern the country with you. For you reign for the happiness of the people — and it is this very happiness that the functionaries snatch from our hands: it does not reach us; we receive only suffering and humiliation.

for I see even conjunctures live by experienced men, principally from counsels. And I see above all that I become inextricably entangled in my translation. Happy times of our studies, when in such translations we became no less entangled. How many times, in the fifth form, how many times, in the fourth, in the third, how many times, in rhetoric itself, how many times did we stumble thus, how many times did we run up against a text, against two lines of Greek, against two verses of Sophocles. But then there were two cases, and there were only two cases, very sharply characterized, two distinct cases, and even contrary, of inextricable entanglements: there were the times when one understood the word-for-word perfectly and did not understand the French, and conversely there were the cases where one understood the French perfectly, but did not understand the word-for-word. No living man was duped by these innocent formulas; no one was deceived by these customary displacements; no one, neither our good masters, nor our affectionate and cordial master M. Simore, nor our severe master M. Doret, who was perhaps spelled Dore, nor our lamented master M. Paul Glachant; no one, nor above all our good comrades, who spoke the same indulgent-conventional language — the same customary, common language, of all ancient languages the one we had learned fastest, and the one we spoke, familiarly, conveniently, the best: Sir, I understand the French well, but I cannot do the word-for-word. — Sir, I understand the word-for-word well, but I cannot do the French. Amant alterna Camenae, it was the alternating song of the old grammar classes and the old humanities classes in secondary education, and this song, much older but less shapeless than the famous “crude songs of the Arval Brothers,” was sweet and good like a returning strophe, this mutual refrain functioned like a complicity.

Everyone understood perfectly what that meant: that one could no longer see anything, that one could no longer see clearly, that one was absolutely lost, as in a forest, that one no longer understood absolutely anything at all. Since then I went to the old Ecole Normale, and returned to the hands of the noble old man, the former M. Tournier, I learned that one gives a quite different name, a bizarre name, to the passages one does not understand, when one wishes precisely to signify that one does not understand them: one then calls them interpolated passages. And it is only a matter of finding readings. And when one does not find readings, one makes conjectures. One calls readings the conjectures that are in the manuscripts, and conjectures the readings that are not in the manuscripts.

It is at such passages that translators become wise, vague, supreme, and that the glories most consecrated today were originally cautious. Leconte de Lisle, Sophocles, II, Oidipous-Roi: “for I know that wise counsels bring about happy events.” He understands his French, that one, but I should dearly like to know how he does his word-for-word. But try asking Leconte de Lisle for his word-for-word. — Sir, our old masters would say to us when our French became too superior, sir, show me your word-for-word; sir, do the word-for-word. But just try telling Leconte de Lisle to do his word-for-word.