The Cemetery of Pleasures

Photo courtesy of Luis Morgado.  Please visit the link to see his other pictures of Lisbon's wonderful architecture.

Cemetery of Pleasures:  that's got to be the most evocative name for a cemetery I've ever heard. But really, it's named after the Lisbon neighborhood where it can be found -- Prazeres -- "Pleasures" in English.

It's also right around the corner from a street where one can buy just about any drug one could desire, from branca to cavalo, or so I'm told. Cemetery of Pleasures indeed.

The cemetery is filled with the kind of memento mori that would make a goth kid spontaneously, to paraphrase The Lonely Island, jizz in their pants.

What caught my eye was a large tomb, pictured above. There was no indication as to what it was or who it contained. I'd meant to write about it at the time I wrote a few other posts about Lisbon (Dr. Martins' got soul and Axis-sixA) but didn't get around to it until my last post jogged my memory.

This pyramid is the Jazigo dos Duques de Palmela or Tomb of the Dukes of Palmela. According to Mort Safe, it was designed by Giuseppe Cinatti, a Freemason, under the direction of Pedro de Sousa Holstein (1781-1850). Pedro was one of the leading diplomats of his time and was named 1st Duke of Palmela for his services. Early versions of the Wikipedia entry on Sousa Holstein say he was a Freemason, but the current version has been changed.

The tomb was built near the end of its patron's life, between 1846-1849. Mort Safe makes some interesting observations about apparent Masonic symbolism I didn't get to see, as it was not open to visits when I was there.

First of all is the massive pyramid....which is unfinished.

Remember that one of masonic legends says that the Master Hiram Abiff, responsible for building the Temple of Solomon, was assassinated before completing the work, leaving the unfinished temple. This face, where it is usual to put up a stone Benben to complete the pyramid (or obelisk), is a statue, which some authors attribute to Calmels. This statue is a female figure, often identified as the Angel of Death....and is probably one of the Seven Virtues....

As Mort Safe points out, there are other Masonic symbols. There are seven steps leading to the gate. These could represent the seven virtues, seven liberal arts, seven ages of man. Between the gate and the tomb itself the ground is paved with black and white stones forming 12 lozenges. The Temple of Solomon allegedly had decorative motifs on the floor in contrasting black and white geometrical shapes. A grid of black and white tiling is still a common feature of Masonic Lodges in some jurisdictions.

Mort Safe also mentions that the statue on the unfinished top is holding a cross and thus conforms to the practice of "Christianizing" the pagan monument, something I mentioned in my last post about the obelisks fronting the cemetery of Levignac. The most famous precedent for this practice would have to be the obelisk in St. Peter's Square. The bronze cross at the top of this obelisk contains a fragment of the True Cross and has exorcising formulas inscribed on two sides of the base.

Other sources indicate the mausoleum contains over 200 bodies, all from the same family with the exception of two priests. That it reproduces the symbolism of a Masonic Temple is also confirmed.

Cinatti (1808-1879) was born in Siena and settled in Lisbon in 1836. He was most famous as a set designer and interior decorator, although he did do considerable work in painting and architecture.

The Prazeres Cemetery was built after a cholera outbreak in 1833. It is the biggest cemetery in Lisbon and is known for being the final resting place of many of its notable citizens, especially those involved in the arts.

Axis-sixA

Google Earth view of the "Pombal Axis"

On a recent trip to Lisbon I had the opportunity to stroll along the Avenida de Liberdad, from the Praça dos Restauradores at its Southeast extremity to the Parque Eduardo VII at the Northwest.  This creates a monumental axis which made me think of the East-West "axe historique" of Paris.  As you may recall, in a recent post LoS touched briefly on this "historical axis" between the Arche de la Défense and the Louvre.

It's not surprising that I was primed to think of this axis while strolling the Avenida:  "After much discussion and polemics, the avenue was built between 1879 and 1886, modeled after the boulevards of Paris."

As with the Paris axis, it is lined with monuments, including an obelisk at the Southeast end.  The Luxor Obelisk in the Place de la Concorde sits directly in the line of the axe historique.  So too the National Mall in Washington DC (also oriented East-West).  Pierre l'Enfant's original plan called for a tree-lined "grand avenue" which would have been anchored at one end by the US Capitol Building and of course, the Washington Monument--an enormous obelisk--at the other.

Circumcision

So, Googling about I came across some good articles.  In "The Axis in Urban Design" Gary Gaston writes (emphasis added): 

As a tool of city building, the axis is a primary element in the European Baroque tradition, a tradition which urban historian Spiro Kostof describes in The City Shaped as the “Grand Manner.”  The most enduring themes of this tradition were first articulated in the master plan of Pope Sixtus V for 16th century Rome: the notion of the vista, the use of the obelisk as a striking spatial marker, and the overarching principle of geometric order for its own sake. France appropriated the Baroque aesthetic, most notably in the replanning of Paris by Baron Eugene Georges Haussmann between 1853 and 1868.

The axe historique, National Mall and Avenida de Liberdad fit this tradition to a "T".  They are furthermore, quite clearly what Kostof calls "constellations of monumentality": 

The street is no longer thought of merely as “the space left over between buildings, but as a spatial element with its own integrity.” The buildings defining the street channel are viewed as continuous planes rather than independent entities. And straight streets are used to connect churches and other public buildings--creating “constellations of monumentality.”

He continues:

“The European Baroque,” Kostof says, “is a phenomenon of capital cities.”  As such the city not only houses the mechanisms of government but itself became a kind of living monument and includes "The siting of monuments on major axes to memorialize leaders and events that helped to form the nation."  In City of Light I referred to Washington as a hieratic city.   I owe a debt here to Camille Paglia, who I'd already quoted as saying: 

"Our cold white Federal architecture is Roman. Banks and government buildings are vast temples of state, tombs and fortresses....Rome rediscovered the hieratic Egyptian funeralism latent in Greek Apollonian style...."

In Washington, the entire city serves only one purpose, to house and glorify the state and its organisms.  Gaston goes as far to say that the "The evolution of [the L'Enfant] plan, extending its strongly formalistic nature, reaffirms the capital as the physical manifestation of the nation."

In Building a Sense of a Nation, Tomaz Pipan writes: 

We can not say that architecture and urbanism on themselves contribute to the constitution of national identity but rather that they can be utilized by ruling regime to graft the notions of nation. They became symbolic carriers of national ideas. Through constant upholding and renewal, these symbols get written into collective sub-consciousness, becoming collective memory thus enabling cultural and historical continuity of a nation.

I've said as much in at least two posts (1, 2) quite explicitly; where not explicit in others, it is certainly implied.

But for all the ceremonial or monumental functions of a capital city axis, there are certainly practical concerns; take the Haussmann plan: 

The project encompassed all aspects of urban planning, both in the centre of Paris and in the surrounding districts: streets and boulevards, regulations imposed on facades of buildings, public parks, sewers and water works, city facilities, and public monuments. Beyond aesthetic and sanitary considerations, the wide thoroughfares were constructed to facilitate troop movement and prevent easy blocking of streets with barricades, and their straightness allowed artillery to fire on rioting crowds and their barricades.

Clever, innit?  If yer gonna design a city, why not make it easy to lob bombs on its residents?

Gaston cites Pope Sixtus V as the inspiration behind the tradition which led to such monumental axis-oriented urban design, but I would suggest the seeds of this were planted by the ancient Romans during their period of expansion and city-founding....which gave them plenty of opportunity to create planned cities which anticipate Haussmann's practical concerns: 

The ancient Romans used a consolidated scheme for city planning, developed for military defense and civil convenience. The basic plan consisted of a central forum with city services, surrounded by a compact, rectilinear grid of streets, and wrapped in a wall for defense. To reduce travel times, two diagonal streets crossed the square grid, passing through the central square. A river usually flowed through the city, providing water, transport, and sewage disposal....They would lay out the streets at right angles, in the form of a square grid. All roads were equal in width and length, except for two, which were slightly wider than the others. One of these ran east–west, the other, north–south, and intersected in the middle to form the center of the grid. All roads were made of carefully fitted flag stones and filled in with smaller, hard-packed rocks and pebbles. Bridges were constructed where needed. Each square marked by four roads was called an insula, the Roman equivalent of a modern city block.

Rome is famously said to have been built on (a symbol-heavy) seven hills.  Wikipedia lists 51 other cities which also make this claim.  Lisbon is one of these.  Skipping centuries of history, let's cut to 1755 when Lisbon was devastated by a massive earthquake and tsunami.  As much as 25% of the population may have been killed and 85% percent of its buildings destroyed.  But the people reacted admirably and were fortunate to have the good leadership of  Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, 1st Count of Oeiras, 1st Marquess of Pomba.  There were no epidemics and within a year the city was being rebuilt.  New buildings were designed and tested to withstand earthquakes and the Marquess had the wits to send out a survey to the affected areas with intelligent questions which contributed to the science of seismology.

The Marquess has been described as Portugal's quintessential Enlightenment figure.  Part of his rebuilding plan included the hard hit Baixa Pombalina: "The Marquis of Pombal imposed strict conditions on rebuilding the city, and the current grid pattern strongly differs from the organic streetplan that characterised the district before the Earthquake."  The Pombalina district encompasses, incidentally, the axis formed by the Avenida Libertad.

Let me again quote Pipan: 

We can not say that architecture and urbanism on themselves contribute to the constitution of national identity but rather that they can be utilized by ruling regime to graft the notions of nation. They became symbolic carriers of national ideas.

What ideas, then, does the "Pombaline Axis" represent?

The beginning of the axis is the Parque Eduardo VII, 26 hectares honoring Edwards VII's state visit to Portugal in 1902.  The park framed with two pairs of columns surmounted by circular forms:

Bacon and Joaz

These circular forms, upon closer inspection, are like victory wreaths, reposing on three isosceles triangles:

Tri Delta

Now, these triangles and pairs of pillars geek me out on Freemasonic imagery, but it's still a bit of a stretch to claim that they represent Jachin and Boaz in a stylized form; there are after all, four pillars all told.  That said, there's nothing to prevent us from hypothesizing that the architect, aware of the use of monumental columns in Mediterranean (Egyptian and Phoenician, specifically) architecture to emphasize the entrance to a sacred space, was referencing this tradition.  That the Temple of Solomon and Masonic Lodges also used/use this design element is probably a coincidence.

The motif of two pillars is reinforced by a curious sculpture fountain which (in yet another example) brings together stones and water.   The two pillars appear broken, and the rocks in the pool at the base of the fountain suggest rubble, perhaps evoking the same theme we shall see again in relation to the Pombal monument.

Got milk?

The central column is clearly a phallus, ejaculating.  The shaft is slightly curved and clearly has a glans.  It has been suggested that the obelisk is a stylized holdover from phallus worship; here the connection is made explicit as the fountain has the somewhat naturalistic form of a penis and at the same time evokes an obelisk.  Thus, with the obelisk at the opposite end of the axis, we find symmetry.  I would also suggest that in addition to an obelisk and free-standing pillars, a pyramid is suggested by the buttress-like support structure  In some ways I'm reminded of an infamous masonic monument erected by Solomon's Pillars Lodge No. 59 in Izmargard, Israel (photos here), placed in a roundabout, incidentally, on the road to Egypt.  A gateway, wot?

(BTW, this guy reports that one Jerry Golden claims that the monument "makes a clear statement to anyone crossing the border into Israel that the Illuminati (or Freemasons) are in control here."  (The Illuminati (Freemasons) are in control of Israel)  This is the kind of shit that makes my job difficult!  Izmargad is a suburb of Eilat, itself with a rough population of 47,000.  Israel has a population of nearly 8 million.  Hard to see how a small monument in a traffic circle in an obscure suburb indicates that the Freemasons or Illuminati control the country!.  But there you have it.  No wonder people roll their eyes when I wonder aloud if other public architecture bears a Masonic stamp.)

More interesting is the possibility that this phallic fountain is a sly nod to the obelisk at the opposite end of the axis and an intimation of the theme of regeneration.  This other obelisk sits in the Praça dos Restauradores, and is dedicated to the restoration of the Portuguese monarchy, a new beginning.  Likewise the monument to Pombal, which honors the man behind Lisbon's renewal after the 1755 earthquake.

In I ♥ Phoenicia I wrote about the Pillars of Hercules, two pillars symbolizing the rocky outcrops on the Straits of Gibraltar.  These pillars figure on the Spanish flag and in a sense (explained in the Phoenicia post) represent Spanish naval power.  In the post I also mention that a representation of the Pillars of Hercules appears on the title page of Sir Francis Bacon's Instauratio Magna or "Great Renewal", framing a ship sailing on a vast sea.  Bacon's works demonstrate his belief that the New World would regenerate the old; remember then, that Portugal was once a mighty naval power itself and its language, flung around the globe, is the last remnant of its vast colonial holdings:  Macau, Goa, Cape Verde, Angola, Mozambique, Brazil....

That the pillars represent the Pillars of Hercules is supported by the fact that when viewed from the Northwest, the pillars frame the Atlantic Ocean, exactly like the cover engraving of Bacon's Great Renewal.  It may be worth mentioning that in front of Lisbon's City Hall there is a pillar with an astrolabe, the essential tool for maritime navigation and a device which figures on Portugal's national flag.

Tessellation of the plane

These hedges in the Parque Eduardo VII represent the basic principle of order underlying the Marquess' reconstruction plan.  Three layers of symmetry bringing to mind a Greek frieze.  As we've seen, the park honors the visit of England's Kind Edward VII (7 again, hrmph), thus honoring the historical links between England and Portugal.

Incidentally, Edward was: 

An active Freemason throughout his life when Edward VII was installed as Grand Master in 1874 he gave great impetus to the fraternity. The Prince was a great supporter of and publicist for Freemasonry. He regularly appeared in public, both at home and on his tours abroad, as Grand Master laying the foundation stones of public buildings, bridges, dockyards and churches with Masonic ceremonial....From 637 in 1814 the Grand Lodge had grown to 2,850 lodges when the Prince resigned the Grand Mastership on becoming King in 1901. Edward VII was one of the biggest contributors to the world's largest fraternity.

I encourage you to take a look at this page, detailing Pombal's extensive involvement in and protection of Freemasonry at a time when the Inquisition and the Jesuits had long harassed the Fraternity. 

Athena on the Pombal Monument

At the end of this geometrical vista one finds the Praça do Marquês de Pombal, usually translated as the Marquess of Pombal Square, which is odd, given that it's a traffic circle.  But no matter, squaring the circle is an old game, no?  The Marquess de Pombal is honored here, with a monumental column (1917-1934), upon which a bronze version of the man gazes towards his orderly neighborhood....and the sea.

At his feet are several allegorical figures and broken stones representing the ruins of Lisbon, like so many rough ashlars inviting improvement.  Facing in the opposite direction is a bronze sculpture of Athena, symbol of wisdom, which bears a passing resemblance to Bourdelle's La France, discussed here.  Like La France, Athena/Minerva holds her spear in her right hand.  The snake Erichthonius is wrapped around it's shaft and her owl sits at its base.

Athena/Minverva's owl, incidentally, also figures on the medallion of Portugal's Ordem dos Advogados and its website features another representation of the goddess which presumably, graces their HQ somewhere:

Athena and owl

From the Praça do Marquês de Pombal one proceeds down the tree-lined Avenida de Liberdad, a tony boulevard housing many of Portugal's high-end shops and which will eventually become famous for the time I ran from my comrade's car spewing vomit into the bushes as a police cruiser rolled by, after a night of too much too many as it were.  Other monuments, including a memorial to Portugal's WWI dead, are sheltered under the trees.

The axis terminates in the Praça dos Restauradores, an oval-shaped plaza "dedicated to the restoration of the independence of Portugal in 1640, after 60 years of Spanish domination. The obelisk in the middle of the square, inaugurated in 1886, carries the names and dates of the battles fought during the Portuguese Restoration War, in 1640."

So, I think a lot more well-informed and cleverer things than I'm capable of could be said to wrap all this up with something resembling a point, but it ain't me babe.  No answers here, just associations....

Lisbon Story #1: Dr. Martins' got soul

Monument to Dr. Sousa Martins

Folk saints are a long-standing interest of LoS.  This type of saint includes those who have never been canonized, but are venerated just the same, often with a fervency unparalleld by the "official" saints.  Some of them may or may not have been canonized -- the origin of their sainthood is obscure; in some cases the church has de-canonized them or felt compelled to issue a statement clarifying that they have never been, in fact, official saints.  In some cases their very existence as historical personages is dubious and in more than one case the Church strongly disapproves of their cults, as in the case of Santa Héléna of Toulouse.

In Lisbon, there is a rather elaborate monument to one of these saints:  Dr. José Tomás de Sousa Martins.  Although not canonized, his cult is certainly not one which antagonizes the religious and civil authorities, as in the case of Héléna or that of Jesus Malverde in Mexico.  These humble cults don't have elaborate shrines or monuments.  Doc Martins, on the contrary, is honored with a bit more traditional lavishness.

Detail of monument with healing serpent (previously on LoS)

In the Campo dos Mártires da Pátria, outside the medical school of the New University of Lisbon, one finds a pillar atop which stands a bronze statue of Martins.  At the base a seated female gazes upwards.  Inside the low circular barrier surrounding the pillar, votive plaques in marble are piled haphazardly but knee-deep.  Many of these ex-votos refer to Martins as "Brother" -- apparently because he was a Freemason.  The familiarity with which Martins is addressed is consistent with the cults of other folk saints and indicates that the ongoing creation of saints is a response to the needs of worshipers for a more intimate ear.  We have seen how Santa Héléna serves as a go-between for the faithful and the Virgin Mary.  It's always useful, in the hereafter as in the here and now, to have a friend or family member in high places.

As with all popular saints, the monument cum shrine is adorned with flowers and to one side a large metal cabinet provides a place for the faithful to place votive candles.

Ex-votos piled knee-high

So who was he?

Martins was born in Alhandra in 1843, moving to Lisbon where he studied pharmacy and medicine, qualifying for the former in 1864 and the latter in 1866.  He practiced in Lisbon, specializing in tuberculosis.  His practice was in no way affiliated with church-related philanthropy, but he worked tirelessly for the poor.

According to Wikipedia, Martins was poisoned by an unknown person jealous of his popularity among the medical community.  This is a good example of why one needs to take care with Wikipedia (although I freely admit to using it frequently).  First of all, if the murderer is unknown, why is the motive stated as a fact, without a caveat such as "Many speculate that...." or some such?  More importantly, all the other sources I've consulted, including Portuguese Wikipedia, state that he committed suicide after contracting TB, knowing a protracted and painful death was inevitable.  Which -- along with his Freemasonry -- would preclude him from "official" canonization.

He was the author of numerous works and there are many resources out there on the internets, but my Portuguese is too limited to make out the details.  I did glean, however, that he was an adherent of spiritualism and after his death other spiritualists began to attribute "miraculous" cures to him via the intercession of mediums.  On March 7 (birth) and August 8 (death) thousands flock to this monument to pray.  Along with his suicide, these spiritualist associations probably also preclude canonization.

The monument itself was erected 1904; I can only imagine that no one would have guessed it would become the focal point of a new cult for an unlikely saint.

More photos here.

Angry at the Earth

After an earthquake in 1755 destroyed Lisbon and killed tens of thousands of people, Voltaire wrote these words¹, which, to contemporary ears, seem marked at Pat Robertson and his ilk:

The vulture fastens on his timid prey,
And stabs with bloody beak the quivering limbs:
All’s well, it seems, for it.


We're not the first to quote Voltaire in reference to the disaster in Haiti, but we thought you might appreciate reading Voltaire's poem in its entirety (see the bottom of this page for notes on the translation & the cartoon²):

UNHAPPY mortals! Dark and mourning earth!
Affrighted gathering of human kind!
Eternal lingering of useless pain!
Come, ye philosophers, who cry, "All’s well,"
And contemplate this ruin of a world.
Behold these shreds and cinders of your race,
This child and mother heaped in common wreck,
These scattered limbs beneath the marble shafts—
A hundred thousand whom the earth devours,
Who, torn and bloody, palpitating yet,
Entombed beneath their hospitable roofs,
In racking torment end their stricken lives.
To those expiring murmurs of distress,
To that appalling spectacle of woe,
Will ye reply: "You do but illustrate
The Iron laws that chain the will of God"?
Say ye, o’er that yet quivering mass of flesh:
"God is avenged: the wage of sin is death"?
What crime, what sin, had those young hearts conceived
That lie, bleeding and torn, on mother’s breast?
Did fallen Lisbon deeper drink of vice
Than London, Paris, or sunlit Madrid?
In these men dance; at Lisbon yawns the abyss.
Tranquil spectators of your brothers’ wreck,
Unmoved by this repellent dance of death,
Who calmly seek the reason of such storms,
Let them but lash your own security;
Your tears will mingle freely with the flood.

When earth its horrid jaws half open shows,
My plaint is innocent, my cries are just.
Surrounded by such cruelties of fate,
By rage of evil and by snares of death,
Fronting the fierceness of the elements,
Sharing our ills, indulge me my lament.
"Tis pride," ye say— "the pride of rebel heart,
To think we might fare better than we do."
Go, tell it to the Tagus’ stricken banks;
Search in the ruins of that bloody shock;
Ask of the dying in that house, of grief,
Whether ‘tis pride that calls on heaven for help
And pity for the sufferings of men.
"All’s well," ye say, "and all is necessary."
Think ye this universe had been the worse
Without this hellish gulf in Portugal?
Are ye so sure the great eternal cause,
That knows all things, and for itself creates,
Could not have placed us in this dreary clime
Without volcanoes seething ‘neath our feet?
Set you this limit to the power supreme?
Would you forbid it use its clemency?
Are not the means of the great artisan
Unlimited for shaping his designs?
The master I would not offend, yet wish
This gulf of fire and sulphur had outpoured
Its baleful flood amid the desert wastes.
God I respect, yet love the universe.
Not pride, alas, it is, but love of man,3
To mourn so terrible a stroke as this.
Would it console the sad inhabitants
Of these aflame and desolated shores
To say to them: "Lay down your lives in peace;
For the world’s good your homes are sacrificed;
Your ruined palaces shall others build,
For other peoples shall your walls arise;
The North grows rich on your unhappy loss;
Your ills are but a link In general law;
To God you are as those low creeping worms
That wait for you in your predestined tombs"?
What speech to hold to victims of such ruth!
Add not, such cruel outrage to their pain.
Nay, press not on my agitated heart
These iron and irrevocable laws,
This rigid chain of bodies, minds, and worlds.
Dreams of the bloodless thinker are such thoughts.
God holds the chain: is not himself enchained;
By indulgent choice is all arranged;
Implacable he’s not, but free and just.
Why suffer we, then, under one so just?
There is the knot your thinkers should undo.
Think ye to cure our ills denying them?
All peoples, trembling at the hand of God,
Have sought the source of evil in the world.
When the eternal law that all things moves
Doth hurl the rock by impact of the winds,
With lightning rends and fires the sturdy oak,
They have no feeling of the crashing blows;
But I, I live and feel, my wounded heart
Appeals for aid to him who fashioned it.
Children of that Almighty Power, we stretch
Our hands in grief towards our common sire.
The vessel, truly, is not heard to say:
"Why should I be so vile, so coarse, so frail?"
Nor speech nor thought is given unto it.
The urn that, from the potter’s forming hand,
Slips and is shattered has no living heart
That yearns for bliss and shrinks from misery.
"This misery," ye say, "Is others’ good."
Yes; from my mouldering body shall be born
A thousand worms, when death has closed my pain.
Fine consolation this in my distress!
Grim speculators on the woes of men,
Ye double, not assuage, my misery.
In you I mark the nerveless boast of pride
That hides its ill with pretext of content.
I am a puny part of the great whole.
Yes; but all animals condemned to live,
All sentient things, born by the same stern law,
Suffer like me, and like me also die.
The vulture fastens on his timid prey,
And stabs with bloody beak the quivering limbs:
All’s well, it seems, for it. But in a while
An eagle tears the vulture into shreds;
The eagle is transfixed by shaft of man;
The man, prone in the dust of battlefield,
Mingling his blood with dying fellow men,
Becomes in turn the food of ravenous birds.

Thus the whole world in every member groans:
All born for torment and for mutual death.
And o’er this ghastly chaos you would say
The ills of each make up the good of all!
What blessedness! And as, with quaking voice,
Mortal and pitiful, ye cry, "All’s well,"
The universe belies you, and your heart
Refutes a, hundred times your mind’s conceit.
All dead and living things are locked in strife.
Confess it freely -- evil stalks the land
Its secret principle unknown to us.
Can it be from the author of all good?
Are we condemned to weep by tyrant law
Of black Typhon or barbarous Ahriman?
These odious monsters, whom a trembling world
Made gods, my spirit utterly rejects.
But how conceive a God supremely good,
Who heaps his favours on the sons he loves
Yet scatters evil with as large a hand?
What eye can pierce the depth of his designs?
From that all-perfect Being came not ill:
And came it from no other, for he’s lord:
Yet it exists. O stern and numbing truth!

O wondrous mingling of diversities!

A God came down to lift our stricken race:
He visited the earth, and changed it not!
One sophist says he had not power to change;
"He had," another cries, "but willed it not:
In time he will, no doubt." And, while they prate
The hidden thunders, belched from undergound,
Fling wide the ruins of a hundred towns
Across the smiling face of Portugal.
God either smites the inborn guilt of man,
Or, arbitrary lord of space and time,
Devoid alike of pity and of wrath,
Pursues the cold designs he has conceived.
Or else this formless stuff, recalcitrant,
Bears in itself inalienable faults;
Or else God tries us, and this mortal life

Is but the passage to eternal spheres.
‘Tis transitory pain we suffer here,
And death its merciful deliverance.
Yet, when this dreadful passage has been,
Who will contend he has deserved the crown?
Whatever side we take we needs must groan;
Nature is dumb, in vain appeal to it,
The human race demands a word of God.

‘Tis his alone to illustrate his work,
Console the weary, and illume the wise.
Without him man, to doubt and error doomed,
Finds not a reed that he may lean upon.
From Leibniz learn we not by what unseen
Bonds, in this best of all imagined worlds,
Endless disorder, chaos of distress,
Must mix our little pleasures thus with pain:
Nor why the guilt1ess suffer all this woe
In common with the most abhorrent guilt.
‘Tis mockery to tell me all is well.
Like learned doctors, nothing do I know.
Plato has said that men did once have wings
And bodies proof against all mortal ill;
That pain and death were strangers to their world.
How have we fallen from that high estate!
Man crawls and dies: all is but born to die:
The world’s the empire of destructiveness.
This frail construction of quick nerves and bones
Cannot sustain the shock of elements;
This temporary blend of blood and dust
Was put together only to dissolve;
This prompt and vivid sentiment of nerve
Was made for pain, the minister of death:
Thus in my ear does nature’s message run.
Plato and Epicurus I reject,
And turn more hopefully to learned Bayle.
With even poised scale Bayle bids me doubt
He, wise enough and great to need no creed,
Has slain all system -- combats even himself:
Like that blind conqueror of Philistines,
He sinks beneath the ruin he has wrought.
What is the verdict of the vastest mind?
Silence: the book of fate is closed to us.
Man is a stranger to his own research;
He knows not whence he comes, nor whither goes.
Tormented atoms in a bed of mud,
Devoured by death, a mockery of fate.
But thinking atoms, whose far-seeing eyes,
Guided by thought, have measured the faint stars,
Our being mingles with the infinite;
Ouselves we never see, or come to know.
This world, this theatre of pride and wrong,
Swarms with sick fools who talk of happiness.
With plaints and groans they follow up the quest,
To die reluctant, or be born again.
At fitful moments in our pain-racked life
The hand of pleasure wipes away our tears;
But pleasure passes like a fleeting shade,
And leaves a legacy of pain and loss.
The past for us is but a fond regret,
The present grim, unless the future’s clear.
If thought must end in darkness of the tomb,
All will be well one day — so runs our hope.
All now is well, is but an ideal dream.
The wise deceive me: God alone is right.
With lowly sighing, subject in my pain,
I do not fling myself ‘gainst Providence.
Once did I sing, in less lugubrious tone,
The sunny ways of pleasure’s genial rule;
The times have changed, and, taught by growing age,
And sharing of the frailty of mankind,
Seeking a light amid the deepening gloom,
I can but suffer, and will not repine.
A caliph once, when his last hour had come,
This prayer addressed to him he reverenced:
"To thee, sole and all-powerful king, I bear
What thou dost lack in thy immensity—
Evil and ignorance, distress and sin."
He might have added one thing further — "hope."

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¹Voltaire's "Poemes sur le Desastre de Lisbonne" was published in 1756. This translation is from Joseph McCabe's 1911 translation in "Selected Works of Voltaire". We thank our source.

²I first saw this cartoon on a cnn.com's ireport posting by "brixton". Is this the original source?