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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
CHARLOTTE CORDAY (REVOLUTIONARY TRIBUNAL, JULY 17, 1793), by EDGAR LEE MASTERS Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: Where is your home? Last Line: I am content. Subject(s): Corday, Charlotte (1768-1793) | |||
MONTANE, Presiding judge. FOUQUIER-TINVILLE, Prosecutor. CHAVEAU-LAGARDE, Defending counsel. DANTON, ROBESPIERRE, Leaders of the Jacobins. MADAM EVARD, Marat's friend. CHARLOTTE CORDAY. MONTANE Where is your home? CHARLOTTE Caen. MONTANE Why did you come to Paris? CHARLOTTE To kill Marat. MONTANE Why? CHARLOTTE His crimes. MONTANE What crimes? CHARLOTTE The woes of France! His readiness to fire All France with civil war. MONTANE You meant to kill When you struck? CHARLOTTE Yes! I meant to kill. MONTANE How old are you? CHARLOTTE Twenty-four. MONTANE A woman Young as you are could not have done this murder Unless abetted. CHARLOTTE No! You little know The human heart. The hatred of one's heart Impels the hand better than other's hate. MONTANE You hated Marat? CHARLOTTE Hated! I did not kill A man, I killed a wild beast eating up The people and the nation. FOUQUER-TINVILLE She's familiar With crime, no doubt. CHARLOTTE You monster! Do you take me For just a common murderer? FOUQUER-TINVILLE Yes! Why not? Here is your knife! CHARLOTTE Oh! Yes, I recognize it. I bought it at the cutler's shop. MONTANE What for? CHARLOTTE To kill Marat with; cost me forty sous. After I came to Paris -- FOUQUER-TINVILLE When? CHARLOTTE Four days ago. FOUQUER-TINVILLE That was the day you wrote Marat? CHARLOTTE Same day. FOUQUER-TINVILLE Saying you knew of news in Caen, knew Means by the which Marat could render service To the Republic! CHARLOTTE By his death! FOUQUER-TINVILLE But yet You gave him credit in this note for love Of France, our France. You tricked him. CHARLOTTE Like a viper. He was a mad-dog, dog-leech, alley rat, With bits of carrion festering 'twixt his teeth, Hair glued with ordure, urine. Why not trick By best means, so to catch a beast with fangs As venomous as his? He was a fire That crawled and licked its way; why not put out The fire by water, snuffing, stamping, why Be precious of the means? MADAM EVARD You know me, woman? CHARLOTTE You struck me when I stabbed him. You're his whore! MADAM EVARD Oh! Oh! ROBESPIERRE (To Danton) This is enough! When fury claws at fury. I hear the tumbril for her. Come! DANTON The slut! (Danton and Robespierre leave the room together.) CHARLOTTE Was that not Robespierre who left the room? FOUQUER-TINVILLE Why do you ask? CHARLOTTE I wanted him for counsel. FOUQUER-TINVILLE For what? The guillotine? CHARLOTTE (Shrinking) You monster! You! MONTANE Have you a lawyer? CHARLOTTE No! I wrote Doulcet. He shirks the honor, doubtless; have not heard. I thought of Chabot and of Robespierre. MONTANE Chauveau-Lagarde shall counsel you. Proceed! FOUQUER-TINVILLE Is this your letter? CHARLOTTE Yes. FOUQUER-TINVILLE This letter here Is written to a man named Barbarous, Her lover -- CHARLOTTE No! You monster! FOUQUER-TINVILLE Very well! Is this yours: "To the French, friends of the laws, And friends of peace." CHARLOTTE Yes! I admit what's true. FOUQUER-TINVILLE And is this yours: "To the Committee of Public Safety"? CHARLOTTE I wrote it, yes. FOUQUER-TINVILLE Let's see now what's her mind. This letter to the friends of peace and laws: -- "O France, thy peace depends upon the laws." Laws! And she hastens to the cutler's shop, And buys a knife with which to slay Marat. Now look! This friend of France's peace and laws Must dodge self-contradiction. How? That's plain: "I do not break the law, killing Marat." Why? What's Marat? A man? Of course, a man. But then an "out-law," as she writes. How's that? Outlawed by whom? Charlotte Corday of Caen! What else? A man! But then condemned. By whom? "The universe." Voila! The universe Is swallowed by her swollen vanity. She speaks for God, for solar systems, stars; Adjudges laws, interprets, executes; Is greater than the Revolution, France. She's a descendant of the great Corneille; A stage imagination, actress, acts, And quotes here in this letter from Voltaire's "Mort de Cesar." Now listen what her hate Has used for whetrock, in the words of Brutus: "Whether the world astonished loads my name "And deed with horror, admiration, censure, "I do not care, nor care to live in Time. "I act indifferent to reproach or glory, "A free, untrameled patriot am I. "Duty accomplished I shall rest content. "Think only, friends, how you may break your chains." So Brutus lives in her! And like disease Loosed from the crumbling cerements and dust Of broken tombs, the madness which slew Caesar Infects, makes mad this woman; and she slays The great Marat! She does not care for the world's Censure or admiration! Does not care To live in time! She lies! Why, in this room A man, Huer, is sketching her. Behold He's drawing now her face for Time to see. And in this letter written to the Committee She says: "Since I have little time to live, "I trust you will permit me to have painted "My portrait." Why? If careless if she live In memory or time? The secret's out, And written in her hand: "I want to leave "A picture for remembrance to my friends." What friends? Her father? Barbarous? Caen, Paris, the whole of France, the world, if Time Writes down the people's friend as beast, would see The face, in such case, which destroyed Marat, Condemned first by the "universe" and at last By France, the world! What next? She doubts her God, Her Brutus warrant, "universe" approval, And writes here as a reason, in addition: "That as men cherish memory of good men, "So curiosity" -- see her spirit flop And smile with idiot guilt upon itself -- "So curiosity sometimes seeks out "Memorials of criminals." That's her word: "Criminals," and by that word she stands Self-dedicated to the guillotine. CHARLOTTE Well, am I not a criminal in the eyes Of such a beast as you? Will nature spawn No other beasts like you? FOUQUER-TINVILLE Yes, in my eyes, You are a criminal. But you mistake. I have no curiosity about you. When you are dead I'd have your name erased, Your face erased, lest it corrupt the face Of Brutus, and lead hands in years to come To speak the "universe," interpret "laws," And slay whom they would slay. This is not all About her picture, a memorial For admiration by posterity. She writes this Barbarous, lover or what, It matters nothing, writes him pages here In detail of herself, and intimate Portrayal of her feelings: how she planned, And killed Marat. To Barbarous she writes About her letter to the Committee, asking To have her portrait painted. Now, for whom? Her friends? Not now! For the department now Of Calvados. There! hanging on a wall, A prize of history, is the deathless face Of Charlotte Corday, destroyer of Marat, Saviour of France, as Brutus struck for Rome! Yes, I invite your thought to what she writes To Barbarous: description of her act In sneaking to Marat with hidden knife; And as he sat there helpless in the tub, And unsuspecting of her hatred, quick She rips him like a butcher. Then, "A moi!" He cries, "A moi!" And she's elate, her eyes Bright as the lightning that has struck. Look now! How she writhes here, how passing cross her face Are lights of ghastly fields of fire and clouds When hurricanes descend. CHARLOTTE You beast! You beast! FOUQUER-TINVILLE I am a beast, eh? You are what? I'll tell. From Caen, as 'tis known. She's being sketched, I'll sketch her too. You see, she's strongly built, Large eyes of blue, large features, handsome though; Nose shapely, and good teeth; equipped to play In dramas of Corneille, her ancestor. She needs a man. A husband would have drawn Innocuously the electric passion, which Collected in a bolt to loose and lurch Against Marat. All women should be farmed. She has her schooling in a convent, reads; Lives with her thoughts and dreams. I'll sketch her soul: Has not enough of living to consume The forces of her dreams. She reads Rousseau, And Plutarch's heroes, Brutus most of all. Thrills at the words "Republic," "Liberty." Thinks the Girondists only can set up A real republic. Ideas are the stuff Of history. Kill ideas or be killed By ideas is the fate of man. Republic, Liberty, Brutus are ideas. Ideas Are dangerous, being truths, more so as lies. And lies destroyed Marat. Who was Marat? A man of study, learning. Physicist, Admired of Franklin, Goethe for his works On heat and light; a doctor, having won An honorary title at St. Andrew's In England. Linguist, speaking Spanish, German, Italian, English. Versed in Governments: -- You know his work on England's constitution Whereby he sought to clear the mind of France -- This Charlotte Corday's with the rest -- that England Is free, her systems free; stop the Girondists From that re-iterated lie; stop France From taking on the English system. So True ideas of Marat, evolved from life, Living and study must combat, destroy False ideas of Girondists, will succeed; But cannot bar the door to the idea That enters at his bathroom with a knife. How was it that no valet and no guard Preserved him? Why? Lovers of liberty Starve in her service! But there was a time When he knew elegance and privacy. But Liberty and Wisdom would be served. He went to rags, was hunted, had to hide In sewers for the cause of Liberty; And there took loathsome trouble, eased at times By steam, hot tubs. And thus our people's friend Is found accessible to this female lie, Girondist lie, possessing her, and stabbed. Or at the best ideas of Liberty Conduct her to his bath-room, where Marat Is tubbed in sequence and in punishment Of his idea of Liberty. Gods can laugh, But men must weep. O worthless, rotten world! It is most pitiful, most tragic, lifts Man's heart to spit at heaven, that these friends Of peoples must be slain, starved, hunted first, Then butchered for their service and their love. Saved not by truth; destroyed by lies, a lie That he was evil, by the maniac lie Of her mad vision that she knew what Freedom, Liberty, Republic mean. Slain by the lie Of this Girondist dream, this milk and water, Emasculated, luke-warm craft of states: Girondists: patches on the robes of kings; Girondists: autogamists; mating sisters, The past, and in the mating without child Of truth or progress. Neither hot nor cold, Spewed, therefore, from the mouth of Time. Betrayers, Waylayers of the brave, the clear of eye; Girondists: 'twixt republicans and kings, And holding hands of each to make them friends. Workers and owners of the new foaled mule Bred of the royal stallion and an ass. Girondists! loving wealth and ease, the church Which loves them too. Girondists picking steps Of moderate reform. Girondists hating The Revolution, which must kill the foes Of Liberty, as criminals are killed For robbery, yet rejoice to see the blood Of dead Marat. They're lofty! They are pure! They love the laws, love peace! Yes, as this woman Loves law and peace. What is it like? A play Where all is mimicked. Do we talk of facts? Are these not fautocinni? Where's the hand That plays this coarse and bloody joke to eyes Of men that crave reality? I mean this: A woman with lovers who suggest, abet; A woman with no man, who dreams and reads, Lives in the stench of these Girondist lies; Ghosts float on fogs of her miasmic soul. She hears Marat's a monster, dabbling blood, A rabid ignoramus running foul Of liberty and order, nihilist, And sanguinary madman, dragon slimed In back-wash of all hatred, envy, lust Of the dispossessed, malformed, misborn; and then She dreams of Brutus, who struck down -- there now I nail a lie that will be always truth To Charlotte Cordays. Caesar! Tyrant? No. No man is tyrant who sees truth and rules For truth's sake. For the ruled must share the truth Where Caesars rule. So much for her. She stands Watchful and envious in the wings, and sees Marat, not as we see him; not as Time Will see Marat. L'Ami du Peuple to her Is enemy of France, of Liberty. This man most rare, most pure of soul, most clear Of vision that the contest lies between The rich and poor, has always lain between The rich and poor, and not between the people And kings; that poverty's the thing, is seen By Charlotte Corday from the wings, as nothing But hatred, murder. Well, my girl, you'll get Your picture in the galleries of history. You'll get it; and to choke you with your words: "So curiosity would have memorials "Of criminals, which serve to keep alive "Horror for their crimes." Your picture's up Already. Horror stares! You killed Marat. That is your place in Time: you killed Marat! You sneaked upon a great man, true man, weak From torture of disease, contracted serving Democracy, and slew him like a beast. Charlotte Corday, assassin! That's your place, And character in history. CHARLOTTE Let it be. Assassin. Well, assassins kill assassins: The words repel, destroy each other, sir. If any grieve for me I beg of them To think of me in the Elysian Fields With Brutus and the heroes. CHAVEAU-LAGARDE Gentlemen! The deed's admitted. What to say, but ask Your clemency? The girl's fanatical. The prosecutor argues well for me In saying that a lie corrupted her, And maddened her to act; which is to say If that lie were a truth, she had the right To slay Marat. With this regard Voltaire, Great minds before him, painted Brutus great Because he slew a tyrant. But if Caesar Was not a tyrant, how does Brutus stand But mad-man who believed, was honest, slew In honesty of heart? Then what's the case? To punish for ill-judging of the facts, Or mercy show for human frailty Of judgment and of vision? Great Marat Has done his work, and left his legacy. We cannot help him, meting death for death, And would his noble spirit ask her death? Think of it! You will answer no, I think. He would say: kill the ideas of Caen, The world which fires these Charlottes with a lie. Smallpox is deadly as a butcher knife, He had to die. The syllabus is death In this our human logic: what's the odds What premises produce conclusions? Knives, Consumptions, fevers, wars? We may be gods Withholding death where we have power to kill; Withhold it saying: She mistook, believed A lie, was faultless for believing it, And slew believing. Were it truth and all Believed we would applaud, as nations war, Bound in a common vision of one truth. The Revolution, France, will lose not, rather Gain by this clemency; 'twill lift a light, First in the world, of reason, justice purged Of hatred's refuse: vengeance, fear, all passions Of bitterness of soul. We worship Reason, And this is Reason. CHARLOTTE You have done your part And served me well. I thank you. THE JURY Let her join Brutus in the Elysian Fields. We say: The guillotine! THE MOB (Outside) To the guillotine! To the guillotine! 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