Dedicated to a friend

Louis Boulanger  
The Witches' Sabbath (Souvenir of Victor Hugo) 1828

The first poem in Gaspard de la Nuit by Louis Bertrand that is dedicated to someone appears in the second book (of six), Vieux Paris. "Les Gueux de la Nuit" is dedicated to Louis Boulanger, a successful painter of the period whom Bertrand would have known from his time in Paris, having escaped the small town irritations of Dijon.

Boulanger illustrated many of Hugo's books including the very famous Notre Dame de Paris. This painting illustrates a poem from Hugo's collection of Romanticist Verse, Odes and Ballads, published two years earlier. A lithograph of the piece also exists, Ronde du Sabat, from which it is guessed that Bertrand did get the inspiration for his poem "La Ronde Sous La Cloche" (The Circle Beneath the Bell). Oddly, Bertrand does not dedicate his poem on "Départ pour le Sabat", but chooses to address Boulanger in the context of a poem of soldier's conversations regarding their gun escapades.

Callot

The 'gueux' of Paris were a group of mendicants during the Middle Ages. Bertrand writes about them in one of the poems in the second book, Vieux Paris, "Les Gueux de Nuit". A good image of such are the ones by Callot above, who was an aesthetic inspiration for the poem series as well. The war of the 'gueux' refers to a battle of 1566 in which the Netherlands opposed Spanish rule while also defending their rising Protestantism. The poem conversation has one man mention their having killed two night thiefs, where the previous poem has a band of houligans kill two Jews, including a rabbi, who are out at night, past curfew, with a few coins. The poem "Les Gueux de la Nuit" then suggests night beggars, but ones who are nonetheless respectable, in complete contrast to Bertrand's portrayal of them.

The lithograph, however, seems likely to have inspired his poem about the bell at the church of Saint Joan. This is particularly humorous since he knew that the better part of the church had been destroyed in 1810 to enlarge the Place of Saint Joan. Additionally, he has the devil worshipers faint to their death and a fire rage. The flames of hell cast shadows back onto the church walls, while shadows from the enormous statue of Saint Joan, which never existed, are cast on the neighboring buildings.

The poems focus on the medieval period. The wars, anti-semitism, gallows, mercenary soldiers of the time are all alluded to through literary and geographic references. The witch-hunts and convictions that fairies, gnomes and elves were ever-present tricksters allow the narrator's voice to appear uncertain of time, place and sanity. The poems play with the possibility of all that might be more than this world while laughing at such lunacy.