Silke Bauer, Couplé, September 16 – October 27, 2007
On the way to work
Christoph Gerozissis
The days of May 21st through the 28th, Paris 1871, should be remembered as the “bloody week.” With the help of
the Prussian army the conservative French government had struck down the Paris Commune with brutal force. Eugène Pottier who had just been elected to the Council of the Commune of the 2nd Arrondissement with 3352 of 3600 votes cast, was lucky to escape the bloodshed. Within a few days and still shaken by the current disaster, he wrote a poem entitled L’Internationale in which he urges the disparate workers’ movement organizations and workers’ clubs to join a supra-national organization, namely the International Workers’ Association which had been initiated in 1864 by Karl Marx. Among the communards, Pottier was known as a poet, a “worker-poet” as they called him, since he did earn his living as a packer and later by tracing patterns on fabrics. Pottier propagated radical reforms like legislation by the workers, equal rights for women, a Proletarian People's Militia, controlled prices and compulsory attendance of schools. At the end of the “bloody week” he fled to England like so many ex-communards, intellectuals, and artists, finally emigrating to the United States. The French government pardoned him in 1880 but he did not return until 1887. He died that same year in poverty leaving his wife and daughter behind. The workers of Paris carried his remains to the Père Lachaise cemetery and buried him among the executed communards. Shouts of “Long live Pottiers” could be heard at the funeral.
In 1888, the Lille section of the French Workers’ Party founded a choir called “The Workers’ Lyre.” This choir asked one of its members, Pierre Degeyter, to set Pottier's poem to music. Degeyter was a worker who had started work at the age of seven. Devoted both to music and to the cause of the working class, he had studied at the Lille Conservatorium of Music. He played several instruments. The song was publicly performed for the first time in July 1888. "The Workers’ Lyre" published the song in an edition of 6,000 copies. The battle song of the workers’ movement was born.
And this on the train, an excerpt of Knut Hamsun’s Pan (1894), translated from the Norwegian by W. W. Worster.
For three nights I did not sleep; I thought of Diderik and Iselin.
“See now,” I thought, “they might come.” And Iselin would lead Diderik away to a tree and say: “Stand here, Diderik, and keep guard; keep watch; I will let this huntsman tie my shoestring.”
And the huntsman is myself, and she will give me a glance of her eyes that I may understand. And when she comes, my heart knows all, and no longer beats like a heart, but rings as a bell. [And this part was omitted by the English-language publisher: She was naked under her gown, from head to toe.] I lay my hand on her.
“Tie my shoe-string,” she says, with flushed cheeks. ...
The sun dips down into the sea and rises again, red and refreshed, as if it had been to drink. And the air is full of whisperings.
An hour after, she speaks, close to my mouth: “Now I must leave you.”
And she turns and waves her hand to me as she goes, and her face is flushed still; her face is tender and full of delight. And again she turns and waves to me.
But Diderik steps out from under the tree and says: “Iselin, what have you done? I saw you.”
She answers: “Diderik, what did you see? I have done nothing.”
“Iselin, I saw what you did,” he says again; “I saw you.”
And then her rich, glad laughter rings through the wood, and she goes off with him, full of rejoicing from top to toe. And whither does she go? To the next mortal man; to a huntsman in the woods.
