Why a dead man walking should write down all hishfeelings the days before to being killed? And why not to do that, considering that there won't be a tomorrow, but since there is life, facts can be clearly told, reported as an act of legacy, for the posterity? They will remain for the posterity, written by someone who won't be in grade of course, of telling the final moments of this, let's baptize this a "journal of legacy about death penalty."
Victor Hugo in Le Dernier Jour D'Un Comndamné returns to speak of a thematic treated also in Les Miserables: in that case a man who had stolen some bread obtained as a punished 19 years of jail!
In this one Hugo tries to imagine what happens in the mind of someone who knows that will lose his/her life because of justice and a verdict.
The condamend one will write:
Qu’est-ce que la douleur physique près de la douleur morale !
"What is the physical pain if compared with the psychological one!"
About dying:
..."Le soleil, le printemps, les champs pleins de fleurs,
les oiseaux qui s’éveillent le matin, les nuages, les arbres, la na-
ture, la liberté, la vie, tout cela n’est plus à moi" , "The sun, fields of flowers..., clouds, trees, nature, freedom, my life, nothing will be mine anymore."
The guillotine was horrible. Just the idea of remaining headless was scaring, like it was scaring to lose the existence. What, sometimes, it is not important for a common and free man, like the rays of sun, the outside world, become for the condamned, with the idea of losing this world in a certain day, reason for thinking, observing, appreciating, desidering that the path would be different, that death wouldn't touch him.
Fainted and brought to the infirmary of the hospital he will think: "Mourir si jeune et d’une telle mort ! " "Dying so youg and of such a death!"
Shades of a life, a sing sang by a child; flowers, remembered when there was still freedom; rays of sun, a symbol of existence.
Before to discover his end the condamned man wrote:
"Inondé d’air et de soleil, il me fut
impossible de penser à autre chose qu’à la liberté..."
"Inundated by air and sun, it was impossible imagining something else than freedom."
The irony of all this story is that he is treated with great respect and formalism. "Monsieur" "Gentleman" tells him the various guards and people of the prison where he is spending his final hours of life.
At the end he will write
"Je suis calme maintenant. Tout est fini, bien fini."
"I am calm, after all. It's finished, and it is a good end."
He also adds that he doesn't hope anymore.
The day of the execution of a condemnded one, a so-called dead man walking, is a ritual as you will read made in particular by gestures, a formal protocol but also by certain people, like the priest, a key character, for searching for redemption in the condemned one... I loved the dialogue with the police-man the gendarme and what it happens between them.
"---d’oublier le présent dans le passé". What a dead man walking can does is trying to forget the present, for remembering the past.
More let's say, reassuring. Past: it's sweet remembering what it was, and what it meant to spend his life, now that there is the black hole of death waiting for him.
The man starts to be confused because the hour is close. When they brought the condemned one to the place of the execution, not the funniest one of the world, he gives another last look at Notre Dame and what that church, the church of all parisiennes meant to him, like also other spots of the city, that, soon will become just "memories of a lifeless man."
The final chapters will be moving.
This book is an analysis of what it meant France in that historical moment, of the parossism of the abuse of death penalty, as coercitive, scaring method for discouraging acts of rebellions of every sorta. Most people lost their existence just for a sunspect. Both the king and Queen, Louis XVI and Marie Anoinette died in this way, but we musn't never forget that Robesperierre, the man who established that period of Terror and horror in France would have done the same end.
Is there sense to death penalty? Another question that Victor Hugo remarks opening a dialogue still not yet sorted out.
I love Victor Hugo because he speaks gently to everyone, opening doors of compassion, of knowledge, filtered by sentiments of benevolence, goodness, with admirable characters in grade to make the difference, reaching the heart of people: Victor Hugo is not just remarkable but absolutely touching. I am also reading Les Miserables (in italian this time) and what I admire the most of him is the possibility of seeing all the time in every person goodness and possibility of redemption, and the ability of putting in the mouth of people gem of wisdom of admirable profoundity; characteristics that maybe, if seen and lived by people could open doors of understanding unknown to the most, but surely cultivated, appreciated and admired by this big,battentive, visionary author.
I suggest this book to everyone.
I downloaded this ebook here
http://www.ebooksgratuits.com/
Anna Maria Polidori
No comments:
Post a Comment