Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Tiphaine Blinded by his Bronze Eagle


F. Fremiet, from Cent dessins : extraits des oeuvres de Victor Hugo

What the heck!? I've never heard of this. It's from a Victor Hugo story? Can anyone fill me in? I love how it's his bronze eagle blinding him. That's my kind of treasure/trap combo. He probably broke a vow.

via OBI Scrap book blog

4 comments:

  1. Wow, cool post!

    I remember bits of the tale from french class:
    The story is about an increasingly ruthless knight who ends up being killed by his eagle helm after hunting down and chopping off the hands of a child as she prayed for mercy.

    If I remember correctly, it is an allegory about innocence and conscience.

    But it is a very good fable for those who don't take their alignment or vows seriously...

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  2. Thanks! Sounds like homeboy deserved it.

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  3. Yeah, my meager French translates the text as "Tiphaine the cruel knight had ignored all those who had begged for mercy and massacred John, lord of Angus, a young man, nearly a child, who had provoked him to a duel and fled. When he gloated over his hateful deed, the eagle of ore he had on his helmet started pecking him with his beak." The poem the goes on about the destruction of eyes, teeth, cranium, him falling down, bleeding, and the eagle taking off.

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  4. Danke, Alex! I know now where to go for French translations.

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