Victor Hugo - "Quot Libra in Duce" [tekst, tłumaczenie i interpretacja piosenki]

Wykonawca: Victor Hugo
Album: Les Misérables
Gatunek: Rap
Producent: Part 9: Waterloo

Tekst piosenki

The battle of Waterloo is an enigma. It is as obscure to those who won it as to those who lost it. For Napoleon it was a panic;10 Blucher sees nothing in it but fire; Wellington understands nothing in regard to it. Look at the reports. The bulletins are confused, the commentaries involved. Some stammer, others lisp. Jomini divides the battle of Waterloo into four moments; Muffling cuts it up into three changes; Charras alone, though we hold another judgment than his on some points, seized with his haughty glance the characteristic outlines of that catastrophe of human genius in conflict with divine chance. All the other historians suffer from being somewhat dazzled, and in this dazzled state they fumble about. It was a day of lightning brilliancy; in fact, a crumbling of the military monarchy which, to the vast stupefaction of kings, drew all the kingdoms after it—the fall of force, the defeat of war.
In this event, stamped with superhuman necessity, the part played by men amounts to nothing.
If we take Waterloo from Wellington and Blucher, do we thereby deprive England and Germany of anything? No. Neither that illustrious England nor that august Germany enter into the problem of Waterloo. Thank Heaven, nations are great, independently of the lugubrious feats of the sword. Neither England, nor Germany, nor France is contained in a scabbard. At this epoch when Waterloo is only a clashing of swords, above Blucher, Germany has Schiller; above Wellington, England has Byron. A vast dawn of ideas is the peculiarity of our century, and in that aurora England and Germany have a magnificent radiance. They are majestic because they think. The elevation of level which they contribute to civilization is intrinsic with them; it proceeds from themselves and not from an accident. The aggrandizement which they have brought to the nineteenth century has not Waterloo as its source. It is only barbarous peoples who undergo rapid growth after a victory. That is the temporary vanity of torrents swelled by a storm. Civilized people, especially in our day, are neither elevated nor abased by the good or bad fortune of a captain. Their specific gravity in the human species results from something more than a combat. Their honor, thank God! their dignity, their intelligence, their genius, are not numbers which those gamblers, heroes and conquerors, can put in the lottery of battles. Often a battle is lost and progress is conquered. There is less glory and more liberty. The drum holds its peace; reason takes the word. It is a game in which he who loses wins. Let us, therefore, speak of Waterloo coldly from both sides. Let us render to chance that which is due to chance, and to God that which is due to God. What is Waterloo? A victory? No. The winning number in the lottery.
The quine won by Europe, paid by France.
It was not worth while to place a lion there.
Waterloo, moreover, is the strangest encounter in history. Napoleon and Wellington. They are not enemies; they are opposites. Never did God, who is fond of antitheses, make a more striking contrast, a more extraordinary comparison. On one side, precision, foresight, geometry, prudence, an assured retreat, reserves spared, with an obstinate coolness, an imperturbable method, strategy, which takes advantage of the ground, tactics, which preserve the equilibrium of battalions, carnage, executed according to rule, war regulated, watch in hand, nothing voluntarily left to chance, the ancient classic courage, absolute regularity; on the other, intuition, divination, military oddity, superhuman instinct, a flaming glance, an indescribable something which gazes like an eagle, and which strikes like the lightning, a prodigious art in disdainful impetuosity, all the mysteries of a profound soul, associated with destiny; the stream, the plain, the forest, the hill, summoned, and in a manner, forced to obey, the despot going even so far as to tyrannize over the field of battle; faith in a star mingled with strategic science, elevating but perturbing it. Wellington was the Bareme of war; Napoleon was its Michael Angelo; and on this occasion, genius was vanquished by calculation. On both sides some one was awaited. It was the exact calculator who succeeded. Napoleon was waiting for Grouchy; he did not come. Wellington expected Blucher; he came.
Wellington is classic war taking its revenge. Bonaparte, at his dawning, had encountered him in Italy, and beaten him superbly. The old owl had fled before the young vulture. The old tactics had been not only struck as by lightning, but disgraced. Who was that Corsican of six and twenty? What signified that splendid ignoramus, who, with everything against him, nothing in his favor, without provisions, without ammunition, without cannon, without shoes, almost without an army, with a mere handful of men against masses, hurled himself on Europe combined, and absurdly won victories in the impossible? Whence had issued that fulminating convict, who almost without taking breath, and with the same set of combatants in hand, pulverized, one after the other, the five armies of the emperor of Germany, upsetting Beaulieu on Alvinzi, Wurmser on Beaulieu, Melas on Wurmser, Mack on Melas? Who was this novice in war with the effrontery of a luminary? The academical military school excommunicated him, and as it lost its footing; hence, the implacable rancor of the old Caesarism against the new; of the regular sword against the flaming sword; and of the exchequer against genius. On the 18th of June, 1815, that rancor had the last word. and beneath Lodi, Montebello, Montenotte, Mantua, Arcola, it wrote: Waterloo. A triumph of the mediocres which is sweet to the majority. Destiny consented to this irony. In his decline, Napoleon found Wurmser, the younger, again in front of him.
In fact, to get Wurmser, it sufficed to blanch the hair of Wellington.
Waterloo is a battle of the first order, won by a captain of the second.
That which must be admired in the battle of Waterloo, is England; the English firmness, the English resolution, the English blood; the superb thing about England there, no offence to her, was herself. It was not her captain; it was her army.
Wellington, oddly ungrateful, declares in a letter to Lord Bathurst, that his army, the army which fought on the 18th of June, 1815, was a "detestable army." What does that sombre intermingling of bones buried beneath the furrows of Waterloo think of that?
England has been too modest in the matter of Wellington. To make Wellington so great is to belittle England. Wellington is nothing but a hero like many another. Those Scotch Grays, those Horse Guards, those regiments of Maitland and of Mitchell, that infantry of Pack and Kempt, that cavalry of Ponsonby and Somerset, those Highlanders playing the pibroch under the shower of grape-shot, those battalions of Rylandt, those utterly raw recruits, who hardly knew how to handle a musket holding their own against Essling's and Rivoli's old troops,—that is what was grand. Wellington was tenacious; in that lay his merit, and we are not seeking to lessen it: but the least of his foot-soldiers and of his cavalry would have been as solid as he. The iron soldier is worth as much as the Iron Duke. As for us, all our glorification goes to the English soldier, to the English army, to the English people. If trophy there be, it is to England that the trophy is due. The column of Waterloo would be more just, if, instead of the figure of a man, it bore on high the statue of a people.
But this great England will be angry at what we are saying here. She still cherishes, after her own 1688 and our 1789, the feudal illusion. She believes in heredity and hierarchy. This people, surpassed by none in power and glory, regards itself as a nation, and not as a people. And as a people, it willingly subordinates itself and takes a lord for its head. As a workman, it allows itself to be disdained; as a soldier, it allows itself to be flogged.
It will be remembered, that at the battle of Inkermann a sergeant who had, it appears, saved the army, could not be mentioned by Lord Paglan, as the English military hierarchy does not permit any hero below the grade of an officer to be mentioned in the reports.
That which we admire above all, in an encounter of the nature of Waterloo, is the marvellous cleverness of chance. A nocturnal rain, the wall of Hougomont, the hollow road of Ohain, Grouchy deaf to the cannon, Napoleon's guide deceiving him, Bulow's guide enlightening him,—the whole of this cataclysm is wonderfully conducted.
On the whole, let us say it plainly, it was more of a massacre than of a battle at Waterloo.
Of all pitched battles, Waterloo is the one which has the smallest front for such a number of combatants. Napoleon three-quarters of a league; Wellington, half a league; seventy-two thousand combatants on each side. From this denseness the carnage arose.
The following calculation has been made, and the following proportion established: Loss of men: at Austerlitz, French, fourteen per cent; Russians, thirty per cent; Austrians, forty-four per cent. At Wagram, French, thirteen per cent; Austrians, fourteen. At the Moskowa, French, thirty-seven per cent; Russians, forty-four. At Bautzen, French, thirteen per cent; Russians and Prussians, fourteen. At Waterloo, French, fifty-six per cent; the Allies, thirty-one. Total for Waterloo, forty-one per cent; one hundred and forty-four thousand combatants; sixty thousand dead.
To-day the field of Waterloo has the calm which belongs to the earth, the impassive support of man, and it resembles all plains.
At night, moreover, a sort of visionary mist arises from it; and if a traveller strolls there, if he listens, if he watches, if he dreams like Virgil in the fatal plains of Philippi, the hallucination of the catastrophe takes possession of him. The frightful 18th of June lives again; the false monumental hillock disappears, the lion vanishes in air, the battle-field resumes its reality, lines of infantry undulate over the plain, furious gallops traverse the horizon; the frightened dreamer beholds the flash of sabres, the gleam of bayonets, the flare of bombs, the tremendous interchange of thunders; he hears, as it were, the death rattle in the depths of a tomb, the vague clamor of the battle phantom; those shadows are grenadiers, those lights are cuirassiers; that skeleton Napoleon, that other skeleton is Wellington; all this no longer exists, and yet it clashes together and combats still; and the ravines are empurpled, and the trees quiver, and there is fury even in the clouds and in the shadows; all those terrible heights, Hougomont, Mont-Saint-Jean, Frischemont, Papelotte, Plancenoit, appear confusedly crowned with whirlwinds of spectres engaged in exterminating each other.

Tłumaczenie piosenki

Nikt nie dodał jeszcze tłumaczenia do tej piosenki. Bądź pierwszy!
Jeśli znasz język na tyle, aby móc swobodnie przetłumaczyć ten tekst, zrób to i dołóż swoją cegiełkę do opisu tej piosenki. Po sprawdzeniu tłumaczenia przez naszych redaktorów, dodamy je jako oficjalne tłumaczenie utworu!

+ Dodaj tłumaczenie

Wyślij Niestety coś poszło nie tak, spróbuj później. Treść tłumaczenia musi być wypełniona.
Dziękujemy za wysłanie tłumaczenia.
Nasi najlepsi redaktorzy przejrzą jego treść, gdy tylko będzie to możliwe. Status swojego tłumaczenia możesz obserwować na stronie swojego profilu.

Interpretacja piosenki

Dziękujemy za wysłanie interpretacji
Nasi najlepsi redaktorzy przejrzą jej treść, gdy tylko będzie to możliwe.
Status swojej interpretacji możesz obserwować na stronie swojego profilu.
Dodaj interpretację
Jeśli wiesz o czym śpiewa wykonawca, potrafisz czytać "między wierszami" i znasz historię tego utworu, możesz dodać interpretację tekstu. Po sprawdzeniu przez naszych redaktorów, dodamy ją jako oficjalną interpretację utworu!

Wyślij Niestety coś poszło nie tak, spróbuj później. Treść interpretacji musi być wypełniona.

Lub dodaj całkowicie nową interpretację - dodaj interpretację
Wyślij Niestety coś poszło nie tak, spróbuj później. Treść poprawki musi być wypełniona. Dziękujemy za wysłanie poprawki.
Najpopularniejsze od Victor Hugo
"Solus Cum Solo, In Loco Remoto, Non Cogitabuntur Orare Pater Noster"
1,1k
{{ like_int }}
"Solus Cum Solo, In Loco Remoto, Non Cogitabuntur Orare Pater Noster"
Victor Hugo
"In Which the Reader Will Peruse Two Verses, Which are of the Devil's Composition, Possibly"
791
{{ like_int }}
"In Which the Reader Will Peruse Two Verses, Which are of the Devil's Composition, Possibly"
Victor Hugo
"Little Gavroche"
737
{{ like_int }}
"Little Gavroche"
Victor Hugo
"Post Corda Lapides"
675
{{ like_int }}
"Post Corda Lapides"
Victor Hugo
"Lux Facta Est"
644
{{ like_int }}
"Lux Facta Est"
Victor Hugo
Komentarze
Utwory na albumie Les Misérables
8.
626
13.
584
14.
581
16.
558
17.
555
20.
550
21.
548
25.
541
27.
539
28.
536
31.
532
33.
530
36.
526
39.
523
40.
522
44.
516
49.
501
51.
499
53.
495
61.
480
63.
476
72.
465
75.
464
78.
463
86.
457
91.
453
95.
"A"
450
96.
450
103.
446
106.
444
107.
443
111.
442
115.
440
124.
436
127.
436
135.
431
169.
417
Polecane przez Groove
we can’t be friends (wait for your love)
5,3k
{{ like_int }}
we can’t be friends (wait for your love)
Ariana Grande
HILL BOMB
262
{{ like_int }}
HILL BOMB
Guzior
FRI(END)S
2k
{{ like_int }}
FRI(END)S
V (뷔) / BTS
NIE OBIECAM
413
{{ like_int }}
NIE OBIECAM
Małach & Rufuz
Nadziei Słowa
105
{{ like_int }}
Nadziei Słowa
KęKę (PL)
Popularne teksty
Siedem
51,7k
{{ like_int }}
Siedem
Team X
34+35
42,4k
{{ like_int }}
Love Not War (The Tampa Beat)
25,5k
{{ like_int }}
Love Not War (The Tampa Beat)
Jason Derulo
SEKSOHOLIK
161,6k
{{ like_int }}
SEKSOHOLIK
Żabson
Snowman
74,6k
{{ like_int }}
Snowman
Sia