Postcard from the Past: Victor Hugo’s Easter

by Dick Perue

Dear faithful readers, this week I ask for your indulgence of a sentimental old codger as the world observes Easter and I turn 90 years old. 

Material for this week’s column was found in the April 5, 1912 issue of the Riverton Republican and fits both the celebration of the holiest days of the year, as well as another year of a joyous life.

Victor Hugo writes:

I feel in myself the future life. I am like a forest once cut down – the new shoots are stronger and livelier than ever. I am rising, I know, toward the sky. The sunshine is on my head. The earth gives me its generous sap, but heaven lights me with reflection of unknown worlds.

You say the soul is nothing but the resultant of the bodily powers. Why, then, is my soul more luminous when my bodily powers begin to fail? 

Winter is on my head, but eternal spring is in my heart. There, I breathe at this hour the fragrance of the lilacs, the violets and the roses as at 20 years. 

The nearer I approach the end, the plainer I hear around me the immortal symphonies of the worlds which invite me. It is marvelous, yet simple. It is a fairytale, and it is history.

For half a century I have been writing my thoughts in prose and verse, history, philosophy, drama, romance, tradition, satire, ode and song – I have tried it all, but I feel I have not said the thousandth part of what is in me. 

When I go down to the grave I can say, like so many others, “I have finished my day’s work.” 

But I cannot say, “I have finished my life.” 

My day’s work will begin the next morning. The tomb is not a blind alley. It is a thoroughfare. It closes on the twilight. It opens with the dawn.

As the Bible says in Romans 6:8-9, “Now if we died with Christ, we believe we will also live with Him. For we know since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again. Death no longer has mastery over him.”

The Good Lord willing, I hope to attend the big “surprise birthday party” the town is planning for me, as well as to continue writing – more like swiping – another Postcard from the Past which I have done for nearly 20 years.

For three quarters of a century, I have been writing, and next week I plan to pitch you the entire account of my glorious living over the past 90 years.