Eulogy by Victor HugoAt the tomb of a young lady
Although this touching funereal prayer had been published by several journals it equally finds space in this Spiritist Review, given the nature of the thoughts that it contains and whose reach can be appreciated by everyone. The paper from which we took it reports the ceremony in the following terms:
“A said ceremony had a crowd gathered last Thursday, painfully touched at the cemetery of the independent, in Guernsey. It was the funeral of a young lady that death caught by surprise during a joyful time in which the family celebrated the wedding of a sister that had married a few days earlier. She was a happy young lady to whom the son of the great poet, Mr. François Hugo, had dedicated the fourteenth volume of his translation of Shakespeare. She died on the eve of the release of that book. As we have just mentioned, the assistance in such funerals was large and sympathetic and it is with a heartfelt sadness and tears dropped by friendship that she heard the last words of farewell, pronounced upon that prematurely open grave by the illustrious exiled of Guernsey, Victor Hugo himself. Here the speech given by the poet:
“In a few weeks we dealt with two sisters. We married one and buried the other. Such is the perpetual movement of life. Let us bow, my brothers, before the severe judgment of destiny but let us bend with hope. Our eyes are made to cry, but to see; our heart is made to suffer, but to believe. Faith in another existence comes out of the capacity of love. Do not forget, those in this life worried and reassured by love, it is the heart that believes. The son intends to find his father; the mother does not consent to losing her child forever. This refusal of nothingness is the greatness of man. Heart cannot be mistaken. Flesh is a dream because it dissipates. If such disappearance were the end of mankind, it would remove any sanction of life. We are not satisfied with this smoke that is matter; we need certainty. Whoever loves, knows and feels that none of the points of support of man is on earth. Love is to live beyond life. Without this faith, no perfect gift of the heart would be possible; love, the goal of man, would be his torment. This paradise would be hell. No! Let's say, no, out loud because the loving creature requires the immortal creature. Heart needs soul. There is a heart in this coffin and this heart is alive. At this very moment it hears my words.
Emily de Putron was the sweet pride of a respectable and patriarchal family. Her friends and loved ones loved her grace; her smile a party to them. She was like a flower of joy blossoming in the house. From the cradle, she was surrounded by kindness, had a happy upbringing and gave back that happiness. A loved person that loved. She has just left.
Where did she go? To the shadows? No. We are the ones in darkness. She? She is in the dawn. She is in glory, truth, reality and reward. These young dead ladies, who did no harm in life, are welcome in the grave, their heads stick slightly out of the tomb to a mysterious crown.
Emily de Putron seeks the supreme serenity up there, the complement of innocent lives. She is gone: youth to eternity; beauty to the ideal; hope to uncertainty; love to infinity; pearl to ocean and Spirit to God.
Go, soul!
The prodigy of this great celestial farewell called death is that those that depart do not move away. They are in a world of clarity, but watch our world of darkness like loving witnesses. They are high up and very close. Oh any of you that has seen a loved one disappearing in the tomb do not believe that you are abandoned. She is always here. More than ever she is closer to you. Presence is the beauty of death. An inexpressible presence of the loved souls, smiling to our eyes covered in tears. The mourned creature disappeared but did not leave. We know longer see their kind face… The dead are invisible but not absent.
Let us be fair with death. Let us not be ungrateful. Death is not an annihilation, as they say, a trap. It is a mistake to believe that here, in the obscurity of the open grave, everything is lost. Everything reunites here. The tomb is a place of restitution. Here the soul recovers infinity; here it recovers its plenitude; here it takes over its mysterious nature; here it is disconnected from the body, disconnected from the burden and disconnected from fatality. Death is the greatest of all freedoms. It is also the greatest of all progresses. Death is the ascension of everything that was lived on a superior level. Dazzling and sacred ascension. Each one receives their addition. Everything transfigures in light and by light. The one that was only honest on Earth becomes beautiful; the one that was only beautiful becomes sublime and the one that was only sublime becomes good.
And how about me, why Am I here? What do I bring to this sump? How dare I speak to death? Who am I? Nothing. I am mistaken, I am something. I am an exile. Forced exile yesterday, voluntary exile today. An exile is a defeated, a slandered, a persecuted, harmed by fate and disinherited by the homeland. An exile is an innocent under the weight of a malediction. His blessings must be good. I bless this tomb.
I bless the noble and gracious creature in this grave. We find oasis in the desert; in the exile we find souls. Emily de Putron was one of those charming found souls. I came to pay her with the debt of a reassured exile. I bless her in the somber depth. In the name of the sufferings upon which she shone kindly; in the name of the atonements of destiny determined to her; in the name of everything that she hoped for in the past and everything that she got today, in the name of everything that she loved, I bless this dead young lady, I bless her in her beauty, in her youth, in her sweetness, in her life and death; and bless her in her white sepulchral dress; in her house that she left devastated; in her coffin, covered in flowers by her mother and that God shall fill with stars!”
There is nothing missing in these remarkable words but the word Spiritism. They are not only the expression of a vague belief in the soul and its survival; even more the cold nothingness, succeeding life, burying forever under the cold mantle of ice the Spirit, the grace, the beauty and qualities of the heart. Neither is it the soul lost in the ocean of infinity called the universal whole. It is effectively the real being, individual, present in our environment, smiling to the loved ones, seeing them, hearing them and talking to them through their thoughts. Nothing more beautiful and truer than these words: “Love is to live beyond life. Without this faith, no perfect gift of the heart would be possible; love, the goal of man, would be his torment. This paradise would be hell. No! Let's say, no, out loud because the loving creature requires the immortal creature. Heart needs soul.”
Which idea of death is fairer than this: “The prodigy of this great celestial farewell called death is that those that depart do not move away. They are in a world of clarity, but watch our world of darkness like loving witnesses. They are high up and very close. Oh any of you that has seen a loved one disappearing in the tomb do not believe that you are abandoned. She is always here. More than ever she is closer to you. Presence is the beauty of death. An inexpressible presence of the loved souls, smiling to our eyes covered in tears. The mourned creature disappeared but did not leave. We know longer see their kind face… The dead are invisible but not absent. Let us be fair with death. Let us not be ungrateful. Death is not an annihilation, as they say, a trap. It is a mistake to believe that here, in the obscurity of the open grave, everything is lost. Everything reunites here. The tomb is a place of restitution. Here the soul recovers infinity; here it recovers its plenitude”.
Isn’t that exactly what is taught by Spiritism? But to those that could believe to be victims of a delusion he adds the sanction of the material fact to the theory by the communication between those that left with the ones that stayed. Why is it then strange to believe that those very creatures by our side, like in an ethereal body, can enter into communication with us? Oh you, skeptical, that laugh at our beliefs, laugh then at these words of the poet-philosopher whose intelligence you know! Would you say that he hallucinates? Would you say that he is mad when believe in the manifestation of the Spirits? Is the person that writes this mad: “Let us have compassion of the punished ones? Ah who are we, ourselves? Who am I, speaking with you? Who are you that listen to me? Where do we come from? Is it certain that we did not do anything before we were born? Earth is similar to a prison. Who knows that mankind is formed by reincident in the breach of the divine justice? Watch life closely. It is such that punishment can be found everywhere.” (The Miserable, Volume 7, Book VII, Chapter 1).
Isn’t that the preexistence of the soul; the reincarnation on Earth, the world of atonement? (See the Imitation of the Gospels, #27, 46 and 47). Those that deny the future, what a strange satisfaction you find in the idea of annihilation of your own being and your loved ones? Oh! You are right by fearing death since for you it is the end of all hopes.
After reading the speech above in the session on January 27th, 1865 at the Parisian Society of Spiritist Studies, the Spirit of the young Emily de Putron, that undoubtedly heard him and shared the emotion of the assembly, manifested spontaneously through Mrs. Costel, dictating the following words:
“The words of the poet fell onto this assembly like a sonorous breath. They shook the Spirits and evoked my soul that still floats uncertain in the infinity of space! Oh poet, revealer of life, you know death well, for you do not crown with cypress the ones you mourn but you attach to their heads the trembling violets of hope! I passed lightly and fast, just flowering the comforting joys of life, and at the end of the day I was taken away by the shaking bolt that faded away at the heart of the waves.
Oh mother, sister, my friends, great poet! No more crying, but remains alert! The caressing whisper in your ears is mine; the perfume of the withered flower is my breath. I join the great life to better feel your love. We are eternal! What has no beginning cannot end and your genius, oh poet, like the river that flows to the ocean, will fill eternity with the power that is force and love!”
Emily
