Victor Hugo on his birth in Besançon in Valery Bryusov's Russian translation

Victor Hugo's poem “Ce siècle avait deux ans! Rome remplaçait Sparte” is best known in Russian in the translation by Valery Bryusov, which begins with this stanza:

Our century was two years old; Rome was replacing Sparta:
Napoleon was already showing through Bonaparte,
And the narrow mask that the First Consul had put on
Was at times torn apart by the face of the emperor.
In an old Spanish town, in Besançon,
Cast like a grain upon a slope laid open to the wind,
Having blended Lorraine blood with Breton in his body,
A babe then came into the world: small, barely alive.
Voiceless, almost both blind and mute: a chimera!
Alien to all, he was saved only by his mother's faith.
For a neck so thin and pliant, like a hop vine,
A coffin seemed needed, but the coffin became a cradle!
Everyone thought that death stood close to the child,
That tomorrow fate would strike him off the list,
But that was I. Later, perhaps, I shall tell you
How much strength, care, love and prayers
To heaven the mother spent over her condemned son,
So that she made me twice born!
O angel! fate gave us three to you,
And you poured out your love on all of us equally.

Literal translation