Alphinse Brot, 'The Young Girl' (1829)

The Young Girl
–by Alphonse Brot

She is far from the soil where Ivandor rests,
A mob of suitors presses around her;
She weeps, she flees from their drunken disorder,
For her heart is possessed absolutely by death!
     
She sings tunes from her lovely land derived,
Those sung long past by a hero favoured in her choice;
Oh, you can scarcely guess, you dazzled by her voice!…
The devouring regrets that lay waste to her life;

If, near her, Ivandor for moments seemed to thrive,
Too soon for his beloved island he was killed:    
His island weeps upon his war-like ashes still,
His Emma far from him shall not for long survive.

Raise a modest mausoleum for the maid,
Near winding woods, which both the lovers knew so well,
So that at last toward evening tender vows might knell
To come beguile at times her desolated shade!

            –Translated by Olchar E. Lindsann

Alphonse Brot, 'The Minstrel'

The Minstrel
by Alphonse Brot

The young minstrel of the war party;
In the ranks of death he hurls himself fearlessly;
The paternal sabre arms his vengeful arm,
His harp is hung at his haughty shoulder.

“Noble land of songs, called the bellicose bard,
When for you the Universe is indifferent,
A sword shall shine at least for your defense,
A lute with soft chords shall bless your laurel!”

The Minstrel was captured; on the foreign riverbank
He kept his pride; the lyre of Tara,
Beneath his scornful fingers, never breathed,
For he casts off his cord to the light breeze.

You wither my fetters, my harmonious lute,
Who so often sang of love and courage;
Your chords were born for generous hearts,
They never not resound in slavery.

      -Translated by Olchar E. Lindsann

1842 Article on the "Hugophiles"

A recent addition to the Revenant Archive, about the Romanticist-Classicist debates swirling about Hugo and his supporters – I posted this on the Archive site a few weeks ago, but I've just scanned the interior so that the entire article is available (in French) and the interior image, and expanded the catalogue description accordingly as below. I can provide a larger-res image for any potential translator.

Le Charivari (The Hullabaloo). March 7, Year 11, No. 66 (Monday, March 7, 1842) Paris. Paperback Quarto, 4 pp.

Despite its early association with Romanticism and continued publication of Romanticist cartoonists, the satirical journal Charivari had established a position outside the Romanticist-Classicist debate by the 1840s, and was in a position to skewer both sides. By 1842, Classicism was experiencing a resurgence as Romanticism, now infiltrating every aspect of French culture, was beginning to split into several divergent subcultures and cultural tendencies, many adherents to which felt little connection with the movement in its current, mainstream form. While young people in the Romanticist orbit did not remember the movement in its underground, revolutionary stage but simply as the backdrop of further innovation, young Classicists were now able to see themselves as rebels against Romanticist hegemony. 

 

In 1842, a renewed Classicist campaign was launched, ultimately aiming to bring down the impending premier in 1843 of Hugo's new Romanticist play The Burgraves. This issue of Charivari contains a quirky relic of this critical campaign, which resulted in a Classicist riot at the premier, and the end of organised Romanticism in France. It addresses the critical debate swirling around Victor Hugo's Romantic travel guide of The Rhine, between the "Hugophiles" (Romanticists) and "Hugophobes" (Classicists), though generally sympathetic to Hugo. At issue is an argument about a side-comment there in which Hugo suggests the orthography Asculum for a (possibly apocryphal) Roman town briefly mentioned in Horace, OEquotuticum, which Hugo argues cannot be scanned within a French alexandrine line of verse. The Classicist press, it seems, was outraged, asserting that one must retain the Latin at all costs; as more publications joined the fray, this spiraled into a heated battle about poetic scansion. The article pokes fun at both sides in the debate, but unequivocally blames the Classicists for stirring it up, hearkening back to, "the beautiful evening on which the two enemy camps [the Romantics and Classicists] had at it not only with the mouth, but even with hair in the stalls of the Théâtre-Français, over the first performance of Hernani."

 
The featured cartoon in this issue caricatures a group of dandies (or "lions" in Parisian slang) at the opera, peering about the audience with opera-glasses from their private box. It is labelled "The Lions' Pit" (a double-pun, since the cheapest seats, below them, were known as "the pit"). One dandy exclaims, "Naught shall have talent, save us and our friends," to which his companion/s respond in English: "Yes!" Dandy subculture was strongly anglophilic, owing in part to the movement's British roots.