Genius and Discovery by Stefan Zweig

Author:Stefan Zweig [Stefan Zweig]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781782273547
Publisher: Steerforth Press
Published: 2016-03-12T16:00:00+00:00

The hour is late, after midnight. The 25th of April, so exciting a day for Strasbourg with the declaration of war, is over, and it is really the 26th of April now. Nocturnal darkness lies above the houses, but the darkness is illusory, for the city is still in a feverish state. In the barracks, the soldiers are getting ready to march, and behind closed shutters many cautious citizens may already be preparing for flight. A few platoons are marching down the roads, now and then you can hear clattering hooves as dispatch riders pass by, then a rumble again as a battery of heavy artillery comes up, and again and again you hear the monotonous call of the sentries communicating with each other. The enemy is too close, the mind of the city too unsure and agitated for anyone to sleep easily at such a crucial moment.

Rouget, who has now climbed the spiral staircase to his modest little room at 126 Grande Rue, is in a curious state of excitement himself. He has not forgotten his promise to try to write a marching song, a war song for the army of the Rhine, and do it as quickly as possible. He walks restlessly up and down in his small room. How to begin? All the stirring proclamations, the speeches, the toasts are still whirling chaotically around in his mind. “To arms, citizens!… March, children of liberty… we will crush all tyranny! The flag is now unfurled…” He also remembers other words heard in passing, the voices of women trembling for their sons, the peasants’ concerns for the fields of France: will they be trampled, will blood be shed by foreign cohorts? Half unconsciously, he writes down the first two lines. They are only an echo, the repetition of the echo, and that cry:

Allons, enfants de la patrie,

Le jour de gloire est arrivé!

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