ORATION ON VOLTAIRE
Translated by James Parton.
INTRODUCTION
This oration of Victor Hugo brings out in clear contrast a strange contradiction. Our progress is but an evolution from and at the same time it is a revolt against the past.
This apparent contradiction exists because the peoples are not as yet familiar with the law of evolution in social progress. The picture of a child imprisoned within the ribs of a skeleton is the picture of the world that many have for want of this conception of time and growth. They revolt against the order of time, because time is not solid, and is only visible to the eye of the intellect.
Therefore such revolts have been necessary. They are the great revolutions and social volcanoes of which Paris has been the favorite crater in Europe. Hugo’s great soul has seized the lights and shadows of the great catastrophes of the 18th century, and, their meaning visible to mankind forever in his wonderful oration.
It is a warning, a consecration, and a hope. It tells that progress is the only condition of human safety. It consecrates the noble Voltaire who made its conditions possible. It is a prophecy of hope and peace in evolution under the light of knowledge and love. It is the inspiration of every liberated soul to realize this aspiration for “peace on earth and good will to men,” which rises immeasurably higher than any Christian myth ever dreamed.
The magnificent word painting of this oration and its inspiration is one of the highest points humanity has ever reached. We are at a loss to find anything superior to it. Compare with it the great orations of Pericles, Demosthenes, Cicero, Chatham, Mirabeau, Henry, Webster, or the consecration of the dead at Gettysburg of Abraham Lincoln, and you will feel that those mighty voices were limited by local and temporary interests and feelings.
Hugo has spoken for all the races of earth and for all time. He has realized to the heart and eye humanity’s heaven of progress sustained by all of the powers of the good in the human soul. To those who can but catch a glimpse of its mighty meaning it will be a treasure forever. No one can read and understand it and be the same person he was before.
Hugo, the greatest French poet of his century, perhaps the greatest French poet of all time, was a fervent Theist, reverencing the prophet of Nazareth as a man, and holding that “the divine tear” of Jesus and “the human smile” of Voltaire “compose the sweetness of the present civilization.” But he was perfectly free from the trammels of creeds, and he hated priestcraft, like despotism, with a perfect hatred. In one of his striking later poems, Religien et les Religions, he derides and denounces the tenets and pretensions of Christianity. The Devil, he says to the clergy, is only the monkey of superstition; your Hell is an outrage on Humanity and a blasphemy against God; and when you tell me that your deity made you in his own image, I reply that he must be very ugly.
As a man, as well as a writer, there was something magnificently grandiose about him. Subtract him from the nineteenth century, and you rob it of much of its glory. For nineteen years on a lonely channel island, an exile from the land of his birth and his love, he nursed the conscience of humanity within his mighty heart, brandishing the lightnings and thunders of chastisement over the heads of the political brigands who were stifling a nation, and prophesying their certain doom. When it came, after Sedan, he returned to Paris, and for fifteen years he was idolised by its people. There was great mourning at his death, and “all Paris” attended his funeral. But true to the simplicity of his life he ordered that his body should lie in a common coffin, which contrasted vividly with the splendid procession. France buried him, as she did Gambetta; he was laid to rest in the Church of St. Genevieve, re-secularized as the pantheon for the occasion; and the interment took place without any religious rites.
Hugo’s great oration on Voltaire, in 1878, roused the ire of the Bishop of Orleans, who reprimanded him in a public letter. The free-thinking poet sent a crushing reply:
“France had to pass an ordeal. France was free. A man traitorously seized her in the night, threw her down and garrotted her. If a people could be killed, that man had slain France. He made her dead enough for him to reign over her. He began his reign, since it was a reign, with perjury, lying in wait, and massacre. He continued it by oppression, by tyranny, by despotism, by an unspeakable parody of religion and justice. He was monstrous and little. The Deum Magnificat, Salvum fac, Gloria tibi, were sung for him. Who sang them? Ask yourself. The law delivered the people up to him. The church delivered God up to him. Under that man sank down right, honor, country; he had beneath his feet oath, equity, probity, the glory of the flag, the dignity of men, the liberty of citizens. That man’s prosperity disconcerted the human conscience. It lasted nineteen years. During that time you were in a palace. I was in exile. I pity you, sir.”
Despite this terrible rebuff to Bishop Dupanloup, another priest, Cardinal Guibert, Archbishop of Paris, had the temerity and bad taste to obtrude himself when Victor Hugo lay dying in 1885. Being born on February 25, 1802, the poet was in his eighty-fourth year, and expiring naturally of old age. Had the rites of the Church been performed on him in such circumstances, it would have been an insufferable farce. Yet the Archbishop wrote to Madame Lockroy, offering to bring personally “the succor and consolation so much needed in these cruel ordeals.” Monsieur Lockroy at once replied as follows:
“Madame Lockroy, who cannot leave the bedside of her father-in-law, begs me to thank you for the sentiments which you have expressed with so much eloquence and kindness. As regards M. Victor Hugo, he has again said within the last few days, that he had no wish during his illness to be attended by a priest of any persuasion. We should be wanting in our duty if we did not respect his resolution.”