The last production which we shall present in our present bundle of samples, selected from Púshkin's lyrics, is the irregular ode entitled André Chénier. 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 Chénier'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 Chénier, in any biographical dictionary, will be amply sufficient to recall to the memory the principal facts of the sad story which Púshkin 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 Púshkin's elegiac ode, is little else than an amplification, or pathetic and dignified paraphrase, of the exquisite composition actually written by Chénier 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'échafaud 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 mystères;" 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 Púshkin has recorded the noble generosity and self-sacrifice which conducted Chénier to the revolutionary scaffold, it will be sufficient to quote the words of De la Touche, and to refer the reader to Chénier's Iambics, which drew down upon his head, and with good cause, the hatred and suspicion of Robespierre and his subordinate demons:—"Chénier avait mérité la haine des factieux. Il avait célébré Charlotte Corday, flétri Collot d'Herbois, attaqué Robespierre. On sait que le Roi avait demandé à l'Assemblée par une lettre pleine de calme et de dignité, le droit d'appeler au peuple du jugement qui le condamnait. Cette lettre, signée dans la nuit du 17 au 18 Janvier, est d'André Chénier."—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 Chénier to the guillotine, conveyed also to the same scaffold the poet Roucher, his friend:—"Ils parlèrent de la poesie à leurs derniers moments; pour eux, après l'amitiè, c'était la plus belle chose de la terre. Racine fût l'objet de leur entretien et de leur derrière admiration. Ils voulurent réciter ses vers; ils choisirent la prémière scène d'Andromaque."—H. de la Touche.
At the place of execution, Chénier struck his forehead with his hand, and exclaimed—"Pourtant j'avais quelque chose là!"
While earth, with wonderment and fear,
O'er Byron's urn is sadly bending,
And unto Europe's dirge its ear
By Dante's side his shade is lending,
Another shade my voice doth crave,
Who erst, unsung, unwept, unfriended,
In the grim Terror-days descended
From the red scaffold, to the grave.
Love, Peace, the Woodlands, did inspire
That Poet's dreams, sublime and free;
And to that Bard a stranger's lyre
Shall ring—shall ring to him and thee.
The lifted axe—what! cannot slaughter tire?—
For a new victim calls again.
The bard is ready; hark, his pensive lyre
Awakes its last, its parting strain.
At dawn he dies—a mob-feast hot and gory;
But that young Poet's latest breath
What doth it sing? Freedom it sings and glory,
'Twas faithful even unto death.
" * * * * *
* * * * * *
* * * * * *
* * * * * *
* * "I shall not see ye, days of bliss and freedom:
The scaffold calls. My last hours wearily
Drag on. At dawn I die. The headsman's hand defiling,
By the long hair will lift my head on high
Above the crowd unmoved and smiling.
Farewell! My homeless dust, O friends! shall ne'er repose
In that dear spot where erst we pass'd 'neath sunny bowers
In science and in feasts our careless days, and chose
Beforehand for our urns a place among the flowers.
And if, my friends, in after years
With sadness my remembrance moves ye,
O, grant my dying prayer!—the prayer of one who loves ye:
Weep, loved ones, weep my lot, with still and silent tears;
Beware, or by those drops suspicion ye may waken;
In this bad age, ye know, e'en tears for crimes are taken:
Brother for brother now, alas! must weep no more.
And yet another prayer: you've listen'd o'er and o'er
Unto my idle rhymes, my spirit's careless breathings,
Mournful and gay by turns, traditions and bequeathings
Of all my vanish'd youth. And hopes, and joy, and pain,
And tears, and love, my friends, those burning leaves contain,
Yea, they contain my life. From Abel and from Fanny
Gather them all; for they are gifts of Muses many.
Keep them. The stern cold world, and fashion's gilded hall,
Shall never hear of them. Alas! my head must fall
Untimely: my unripe and crude imagination
To glory hath bequeath'd no grand and high creation;
I shall die all. But ye, who love my parting soul,
Keep for yourselves, O friends! my true though simple scroll;
And