© Gunnar Tómasson

12 January 2015.

Francisco Goya et Victor Hugo – Nous sommes Charlie.

Introduction

Francisco Goya (1746-1828) and Victor Hugo (1802-1885) were the “Charlie” of their respective times. Nietzsche once wrote that there had been only one Christian – and he died on the cross. That is hyperbole, of course, but “speaking truth to power” has ever been the mark of “Charlie” – and bane of hypocritical pomposity in the world’s seats of temporal and spiritual power.

Witness Goya:

Ferdinand VII reportedly once told Goya that „You deserve to be garroted, but you are a great artist so we forgive you.“ Others in Spain were not so lucky as the king sought to crack down on liberals who sought to make the country a constitutional state. […]

The political climate subsequently became so tense that Goya willingly went into exile in 1824. Despite his poor health, Goya thought he might be safer outside of Spain. Goya moved to Bordeaux, France, where he spent the remainder of his life. (Wikipedia)

Witness Hugo:

A giant of French literature, Victor Hugo was a politically active man. He declared Louis Napoleon was a traitor when the latter seized complete power in 1851. He imposed self-exile upon himself afterwards to the channel island of Guernsey where he wrote some of his best work, including Les Misérables. After the fall of Napoleon, he returned to France, where he was elected to the National Assembly and the Senate. (Wikipedia)

Les Misérables 22 May 1885…

[Hugo] died in Paris on 22 May 1885, at the age of 83. More than two million people showed up at his funeral procession, the largest crowd ever assembled in France for a funeral of a public figure and the first ever such reverence for a celebrity elsewhere in the world. (Wikipedia)

…and 11 January 2015.

At least 3.7 million people, including world leaders, marched in anti-terrorism rallies in Paris and elsewhere in France on Sunday, French officials said, calling the massive gathering in the nation’s capital the largest in France’s history. (CNN)

Ya es hora!

Goya’s masterpiece, Los Caprichos¹ – a set of 80 pictorial prints – concludes with a print of four human monsters screaming, “Ya es hora!” – The time has come. When construed as a reference to Time of the End, the opening text and “love poem” in Book Twelve, Ch. VI of Les Misérables, are suggestive of a conceptual link between the works of Goya and Hugo (more on that below).

While Waiting

(Book Twelve, Ch. VI)

In these hours of waiting what did they do?  This we have to tell, for this is history. While the men were making cartridges and the women lint, while a large pot, full of melted pewter and lead destined for the bullet mold was smoking over a hot stove, while the lookouts were watching the barricades with weapons in hand, while Enjolras, whom nothing could distract, was watching the lookouts, Combeferre, Courfeyrac, Jean Prouvaire, Feuilly, Bossuet, Joly, Bahorel, a few others besides, sought each other out and got together, as in the most peaceful days of their student conversations, and in a corner of this bistro turned into a pillbox, within two steps of the redoubt they had thrown up, their carbines primed and loaded resting on the backs of their chairs, these gallant young men, so near their last hour, began to recite a love poem. What poem?  Here it is:

18536 = Vous rappelez-vous notre douce vie,

22067 = Lorsque nous étions si jeunes tous deux.

20060 = Et que nous n’avions au coeur d’autre envie

16389 = Que d’être bien mis et d’être amoureux.

16669 = Lorsqu’en ajoutant votre âge à mon âge,

19767 = Nous ne comptions pas à deux quarante ans,

17075 = Et que, dans notre humble et petit ménage,

19714 = Tout, même l’hiver, nous était printemps?

16004 = Beaux jours!  Manuel était fier et sage,

16565 = Paris s’asseyait à de saints banquets,

16315 = Foy lançait la foudre, et votre corsage

14404 = Avait une épingle où je me piquais.

21940 = Tout vous contemplait.  Avocat sans causes,

15178 = Quand je vous menais au Prado dîner,

19952 = Vous étiez jolie au point que les roses

14717 = Me faisaient l’effet de se retourner.

13207 = Je les entendais dire:  Est-elle belle!

18731 = Comme elle sent bon!  quels cheveux à flots!

15531 = Sous son mantelet elle cache une aile;

16006 = Son bonnet charmant est à peine éclos.

20463 = J’errais avec toi, pressant ton bras souple.

19195 = Les passants croyaient que l’amour charmé

17538 = Avait marié, dans notre heureux couple,

15508 = Le doux mois d’avril au beau mois de mai.

21687 = Nous vivions cachés, contents, porte close,

15454 = Dévorant l’amour, bon fruit défendu;

13985 = Ma bouche n’avait pas dit une chose

14735 = Que déja ton coeur avait répondu.

17073 = La Sorbonne était l’endroit bucolique

13888 = Où je t’adorais du soir au matin.

18853 = C’est ainsi qu’une âme amoureuse applique

12832 = La carte du Tendre au pays latin.

12374 = O place Maubert!  O place Dauphine!

17760 = Quand, dans le taudis frais et printanier,

15225 = Tu tirais ton bas sur ta jambe fine,

15892 = Je voyais un astre au fond du grenier.

17688 = J’ai fort lu Platon, mais rien ne m’en reste

16065 = Mieux que Malebranche et que Lamennais;

14533 = Tu me démontrais la bonté céleste

14238 = Avec une fleur que tu me donnais.

15746 = Je t’obéissais, tu m’étais soumise.

13243 = O grenier doré!  te lacer!  te voir!

13433 = Aller et venir dès l’aube en chemise,

20650 = Mirant ton front jeune à ton vieux miroir!

17582 = Et qui donc pourrait perdre la mémoire

15087 = De ces temps d’aurore et de firmament,

14466 = De rubans, de fleurs, de gaze et de moire,

14699 = Où l’amour bégaye un argot charmant?

16877 = Nos jardins étaient un pot de tulipe;

16922 = Tu masquais la vitre avec un jupon;

12306 = Je prenais le bol de terre de pipe,

13172 = Et je te donnais la tasse en japon.                                     

21432 = Et ces grands malheurs qui nous faisaient rire!

13915 = Ton manchon brûlé, ton boa perdu!

17521 = Et ce cher portrait du divin Shakspeare

22530 = Qu’un soir pour souper nous avons vendu!

13671 = J’étais mendiant, et toi charitable;

17467 = Je baisais au vol tes bras frais et ronds.

15232 = Dante in-folio nous servait de table

17278 = Pour manger gaîment un cent de marrons.

17244 = Le première fois qu’en mon joyeux bouge

13613 = Je pris un baiser à ta lèvre en feu,

15375 = Quand tu t’en allas décoiffée et rouge,

17401 = Je restais tout pâle et je crus en Dieu!

19249 = Te rappeles-tu nos bonheurs sans nombre,

17190 = Et tous ces fichus changés en chiffons?

21244 = Oh!  que de soupirs, de nos coeurs pleins d’ombre,

19465 = Se sont envolés dans les cieux profonds!

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Seven Young Men

The names of the seven young men who recite the Love Poem – Combeferre, Courfeyrac, Jean Prouvaire, Feuilly, Bossuet, Joly, Bahorel – have a combined Cipher Value of 29222.

This may be construed as “confirming” through “hidden cipher poetry” a conceptual link between the works of Goya and Hugo as suggested in the introductory remarks above:

Light of the World’s Passage In Time

1000 = Light of the World

2118 = Time

The Sleep of Reason – Light – Produces Monsters

6892 = Los Caprichos

19212 = El sueño de la razón produce monstrous ¹

29222

Saga Myth, Los Caprichos and Les Misérables

Hugo once wrote a book entitled Han d’Islande, whose dark imagery is evocative of themes from ancient creation myth.

The same was true of a series of paintings by Goya that I once saw in the Prado Museum in Madrid.

These themes also form the background for the Edda of Snorri Sturluson and the Sagas co-authored by Snorri and Sturla Þórðarson in 13th century Iceland.

Hugo’s Love Poem – 1,137,823 – Goya’s Los Caprichos

and Saga Armageddon

583353 = Los Caprichos¹

552503 = List of “dead” at Saga Armageddon²

3331 = WILL – For my name is Will, Shakespeare’s Sonnet # CXXXVI

                …and knowledge shall be increased.³

5596 = Andlig spekðin – Icel. for Spiritual Wisdom

                Reason awakened

-6960 = Jarðlig skilning – Icel. for Earthly Understanding

1137823

¹ See http://blog.pressan.is/gunnart/2015/01/05/francisco-goya-los-caprichos-saga-myth-ii/

² See item I at http://blog.pressan.is/gunnart/2014/12/23/armageddon-ad-orlygsstodum-ii-af-ii/

³ Daniel 12:4. Latin text featured on title page of Francis Bacon’s Advancement of Learning

***

A calculator for converting letters to cipher values is on the Internet at:

http://www.light-of-truth.com/ciphersaga.htm