The Volokh Conspiracy

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Literature

Poetry Monday!: "Les deux voix" ("The two voices") by Victor Hugo (French)

"Frères ! de ces deux voix étranges, inouïes, / Sans cesse renaissant, sans cesse évanouies, / Qu’écoute l’éternel durant l’éternité, / L’une disait : nature ! et l’autre : humanité !..."

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Here's "Les deux voix" (1831) ("The Two Voices"), also known as "Ce qu'on entend sur la montagne" ("What one hears on the mountain") by Victor Hugo (1802-1885). (This is on my YouTube channel, which mostly consists of my Sasha Reads playlist, plus a smattering of law-related songs.) Franz Liszt wrote a symphonic poem on this theme, which you can listen to here.

Avez-vous quelquefois, calme et silencieux,
Monté sur la montagne, en présence des cieux ?
Était-ce aux bords du Sund ? aux côtes de Bretagne ?
Aviez-vous l'océan aux pieds de la montagne ?
Et là, penché sur l'onde et sur l'immensité,
Calme et silencieux, avez-vous écouté ?…

For the rest of my "Sasha Reads" playlist, click here. Past poems are:

  1. "Ulysses" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
  2. "The Pulley" by George Herbert
  3. "Harmonie du soir" ("Evening Harmony") by Charles Baudelaire (French)
  4. "Dirge Without Music" by Edna St. Vincent Millay
  5. "Clancy of the Overflow" by A.B. "Banjo" Paterson
  6. "Лотова жена" ("Lotova zhena", "Lot's wife") by Anna Akhmatova (Russian)
  7. "The Jumblies" by Edward Lear
  8. "The Conqueror Worm" by Edgar Allan Poe
  9. "Les Djinns" ("The Jinns") by Victor Hugo (French)
  10. "I Have a Rendezvous with Death" by Alan Seeger
  11. "When I Was One-and-Twenty" by A.E. Housman
  12. "Узник" ("Uznik", "The Prisoner" or "The Captive") by Aleksandr Pushkin (Russian)
  13. "God's Grandeur" by Gerard Manley Hopkins
  14. "The Song of Wandering Aengus" by William Butler Yeats
  15. "Je crains pas ça tellment" ("I'm not that scard about") by Raymond Queneau (French)
  16. "The Naming of Cats" by T.S. Eliot
  17. "The reticent volcano keeps…" by Emily Dickinson
  18. "Она" ("Ona", "She") by Zinaida Gippius (Russian)
  19. "Would I Be Shrived?" by John D. Swain
  20. "Evolution" by Langdon Smith
  21. "Chanson d'automne" ("Autumn Song") by Oscar Milosz (French)
  22. "love is more thicker than forget" by e.e. cummings
  23. "My Three Loves" by Henry S. Leigh
  24. "Я мечтою ловил уходящие тени" ("Ia mechtoiu lovil ukhodiashchie teni", "With my dreams I caught the departing shadows") by Konstantin Balmont (Russian)
  25. "Dane-geld" by Rudyard Kipling
  26. "Rules and Regulations" by Lewis Carroll
  27. "Vers dorés" ("Golden Lines") by Gérard de Nerval (French)
  28. "So That's Who I Remind Me Of" by Ogden Nash
  29. "The Epic" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
  30. "La chambre double" ("The Double Room") by Charles Baudelaire (French)
  31. "Медный всадник" ("The Bronze Horseman") by Aleksandr Pushkin (Russian)
  32. "Herbst" ("Autumn") by Rainer Maria Rilke (German)
  33. "Romance de la luna, luna" ("Ballad of the Moon Moon") by Federico García Lorca (Spanish)
  34. "The Four Friends" by A.A. Milne
  35. "anyone lived in a pretty how town" by e.e. cummings
  36. "Листья" ("Leaves") by Fyodor Tyutchev (Russian)
  37. "The Pobble Who Has No Toes" by Edward Lear
  38. "The Persian Version" by Robert Graves

Sasha Volokh is professor of law at Emory University.