Featured Translations
Explore a selection of translations completed by students in "Theater and Politics," a course taught by Professor Yann Robert at the University of Illinois at Chicago during the Spring, 2017 semester.
Legislative body.
The Council of Five Hundred.
Opinion of Chabaud (deputy of Gard), on the bill relative to theatres
Session of Germinal 14, year 6.
Representatives of the people,
It is not enough to have given to the French nation a constitution & a government that guarantee its rights and its liberty. It is not enough that our immortal defenders conquered Europe in an astonishing success. Finally, it is not enough, for legislators in a Republic, to have organized & balanced the diverse powers that govern the social body. It is also necessary to regenerate the morals of the individuals that make up this society, change their habits & coordinate them to a regime of liberty.
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the legislator nothing to do in this part. The theaters are like all the places that citizens gather: there, the troubles, the revolts, the insults made to morality or to the laws are subject to penalties; these penalties are determined.
But placing under these police laws, in particular regulations, the principal ways to enlarge and to republicanize the stage, that would be to propose something absurd for a people with so great a liberty and civilization; it would disturb and irritate its genius without inspiring it with a good idea, it would make its progress go backwards.
Which means remain for you in this moment to prepare for the future a regeneration in the theaters, and make them republican institutions? Your commission has presented some of them to you; and I believe you must adopt them, because they are just.
But there remains two more: pecuniary sacrifices, and national rewards. It is hardly possible for you, I know it, to lavish the first of these means; you cannot divert from their sacred source sums destined for the defense of the State.
However, you can create rewards, the most powerful way to perfect the arts, to give the theaters a republican direction, and to transform them in a short time into national schools.
My fellow representatives, the poet, like the warrior, is sensitive to glory, and does all to obtain it when he is sure to see his efforts crowned. Grasp, grasp this happy propensity, which is generally that of the nation.
It is through solemn rewards, distributed in some of your public festivals, that you will ignite genius, that you will signal to it a
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Literature has, like politics, its factions, who are no less irreconcilable, no less passionate, no less stubborn. One must say it: to the great honor of letters and those who cultivate them, never was the earth soaked with any blood spilled by their quarrels. A storm of epigrams, couplets, dissertations, critiques, and parodies are launched here and there; a profound oblivion soon comes to do them justice, and the masterpieces remain in spite of envy, just like works without merit fall, in spite of their apologetic prefaces; but schemers, who have no lasting grip on public opinion, omit nothing to call for the help and support of the authorities, which they sometimes manage to deceive, and in so doing to render odious.
The member of the Directory whose career was just brought to an end by destiny was himself a dramatic poet: I trust without reserve in his impartiality; however, I know of no dignity, nor even of any virtue, that may liberate a man from the toll he owes to human weakness, nor deprive him of the prejudices inherent to his profession and his habits.
Both Councils also count among their members men of letters whose productions have appeared on the stage; but the influence of such orators, in a public discussion such as ours, is limited to spreading light; and no one knows better than them the price of winning the favors of this public before whom one must talk here, since they have done all to obtain applause elsewhere.
Retain, therefore, on the question of the theatre, as on all others, the power that is attributed to you. Who could believe that morals and the public spirit fall outside the competence of legislation? Is it not legislation, above all, that is best suited to form them, regenerate them, and direct them; and without contesting the government’s part in influencing these great objects, its action seems to me to derive from the law, the intention of which it must first grasp. Be, I consent
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