ici on s'honore du titre de citoyen

Illustrated by Renato Guttuso (Italian edition, 1966)

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heyyy it's January 21st...happy anniversary to the beheading of Louis XVI 🎉🎉🎉

"there is no true revolutionary spirit without the idealism which alone inspires sacrifice"

To His Majesty Frederick king of Prussia

Thy lyre and thy hand lend me at once,

fine manners inspire me, oh divine Apollo:

not the imperious gaze of a darkish eye,

nor a lovely dishevelled hair,

but tis thee, present Deity, that I sing. 

Thou from the paternal sky descended upon us

under the guise of the gentle youth, 

Prussia’s ruler, the world’s delight.

Tis thee I recognize with holy pleasure,

more than the waving hair and the golden crown,

the dignity, the appearance, the new poems. 

With thy witty lyre thou deigned 

to sing what is man’s benefit and delight.

Hope is born in the bosom of the fiercest evil,

as the fragrant, curative herbs 

grow at the top of the wildest mountains. 

Because of thee on the strict order

dripped the tender ascrean ambrosia.

Fine arts are like pretty Egle, 

whose long-desired flower Tirsi cannot pick, 

if not faithful, if not steady. 

Surely hard was your first season,

as a flower torn at its bloom, by the cruel cold, the winter

and the dark clouds,

as a flower between the rarities, on a solitary shore,

unknown to the commons, hidden among the mortals, 

thou didn’t nearly dare to touch the lyre

which achingly hanged from thy shoulder, 

afraid of discovering thyself a god. 

But among the Celestials you were welcomed, 

the Kings’ oracle, the God of poems;

of the golden chariot Jupiter gave thee the reins, 

so that thou could dispel the gloomy

night, only sun to appear, and brighten up the world.

To thy fruitful ray from its dried stem

fine arts’ flower already rises up again,

as by the Tiber’s bank the halcyon days

of Augustus and Leo filled the earth

and the centuries with an eternal scent. 

Philosophy soothed her brow and opened her chest

to an unusual pleasure and a renewed hope,

and on Mars’ heinous face still crawled a glimpse of laughter. 

Late, oh late, 

may the desire of thy birth sky catch thee, oh Deity: be rather

the restitutor orbis as it pleases thee, 

merry aster in this gloomy night, 

salutary plant in the bosom of our cliffs. 

If thou allow us to call thee Augustus, 

Distribution principale pour le spectacle DANTON ET ROBESPIERRE monté par Robert HOSSEIN en 1979 au Palais des Congrès.

> bottom left is Desmoulins, bottom right is St Just