CHAPTER XVIII

THE REVOLUTIONARY SPIRIT IN POETRY, MUSIC AND ART

“_The maker of poems settles justice, reality, immortality, His insight and power encircle things of the human race, He is the glory and extract thus far of things and of the human race._”

WALT WHITMAN.

“_Venez à moi, claquepatins, Loqueteux, joueurs de musettes, Clampins, loupeurs, voyous, catins, Et marmousets et marmousettes, Tas de traîne-cul-les housettes, Race d’indépendants fougueux! Je suis du pays dont vous êtes: Le poète est le Roi des Gueux._

“_Vous que la bise des matins, Que la pluie aux âpres sagettes, Que les gendarmes, les mâtins, Les coups, les fièvres, les disettes, Prennent toujours pour amusettes, Vous dont l’habit mince et fougueux Paraît fait de vieilles gazettes, Le poète est le Roi des Gueux._”

JEAN RICHEPIN.

“_Je voudrais dire à mes amis, Sculpteurs d’idéal et de rimes, Que s’enfermer n’est plus permis, Lorsqu’au dehors grondent les crimes. Chantons la justice et l’amour! Le peuple va nous faire escorte. Poète, descends de la tour! Et puis ferme ta porte._”

MAURICE BOUKAY.

“_Persons of anarchistic mentality are signalised by their love of the new in art and in science, by their feverish search after new forms._”—A. HAMON.

“_So it is you who are the poet. Well, as for me, I do not like poets nor_ intellectuels. _I do not like them because they are all more or less anarchists, and because the anarchists blow up the bourgeois. I am neither a poet nor an_ intellectuel, _and I am proud of it._”

Monsieur Dupont, in La Petite Bohème of ARMAND CHARPENTIER.

Zola, being asked to define an anarchist, said, “_Un anarchiste, c’est un poète._” Conversely, the poet is more or less of an anarchist. Job and Isaiah are currently quoted by the _libertaires_ in support of their position. Æschylus, in his immortal “_Prometheus_,” Euripides in his “_Bacchantes_,” Schiller, Shelley, Swinburne, Robert Burns, and Walt Whitman, in portions of their works, all promulgated good, sound anarchist doctrine. As to the poets who, without being specifically anarchistic, are revolutionists of one sort or another, their name is legion. A bulky volume would scarcely suffice to name them.

In France, especially, revolutionary singers have never been lacking. “_Console-toi, gibet, tu sauveras la France!_” cried André Chénier, greatest of the galaxy of poets who illustrated the Revolution. Béranger, before he was dazzled by the _épopée_ of Napoleon, had his moments of revolt. The two Augustes of the Restoration, Barbier and Barthélemy, the first in his _Iambes_ and the second in his _Némésis_, glorified insurrection.

Hégésippe Moreau, who died in the _Hospice de la Charité_ at twenty-eight, just as his _Myosotis_ was winning him recognition, heaped terrible imprecations upon the heads of the rich and powerful, and played a valiant part in the outbreak of 1830,

“_Non comme l’orateur du banquet populaire Dont la flamme du punch attise la colère: Comme un bouffon dans ses parades, non! Mais les pieds dans le sang, en face du canon._”

“_Pour que son vers clément pardonne an genre humain, Que faut-il au poète? Un baiser et du pain_,”

sang Moreau in his beautiful “_Elégie à la Voulzie_,” which is recited in revolutionary meetings more often than any other poem. “He was hungry,” remarks Sainte-Beuve, apropos of Moreau’s vindictiveness, “and he composed, in his hunger, songs that betrayed by their fierceness and bitterness the want within.”

Moreau defends the excesses of the mobs of the Revolution:—

“_Oubliez-vous Que leur âme de feu purifiait leurs œuvres? Oui, d’un pied gigantesque écrasant les couleuvres Par le fer et la flamme ils voulaient aplanir Une route aux français vers un bel avenir. Ils marchaient pleins de foi, pleins d’amour, et l’histoire Absoudra, comme Dieu, qui sut aimer et croire._”

* * * * *

_Au jour de la vengeance, Si l’opprimé s’égare, il est absous d’avance._”

He predicts a general cataclysm, declares his intention of doing all in his power to bring it on,—

“_J’ameuterai le peuple à mes vérités crues, Je prophétiserai sur le trépied des rues,_”—

and exults in the prospect,—

“_Et moi, j’applaudirai; ma jeunesse engourdie Se réchauffera bien à ce grand incendie._”

Pierre Dupont (peer almost of Burns in his simple country songs), who died disgraced by reason of his toadyism towards the government of the Third Napoleon, which had banished and then pardoned him, displayed a fine revolutionary fervour in 1848, before his banishment. His “_Chant des Ouvriers_” and his poem—

“_On n’arrête pas le murmure Du peuple quand il dit, j’ai faim, Car c’est le cri de la Nature, Il faut du pain, il faut du pain,_”

will be recited and sung by the people of France as long as there is such a thing as hunger within its borders.

At the same epoch, Alfred de Vigny distilled bitterness against society in his _Destinées_ and _Journal d’un Poète_; and Leconte de Lisle vented his accumulated scorn as follows:—

“_Hommes, tueurs des Dieux, les temps ne sont pas loin Où, sur un grand tas d’or, vautrés dans quelque coin, Vous mourrez bêtement en emplissant vos poches!_”

Victor Hugo’s _Châtiments_ (destined to become the favourite reading of Caserio, the assassin of Carnot) was the supreme cry of revolt of the Second Empire. In such lines as these Hugo proclaimed the anarchist ideal without, however, recognising it as such:—

“_Les temps heureux luiront, non pour la seule France, Mais pour tous.... Les tyrans s’éteindront comme des météores.... Fêtes dans les cités, fêtes dans les campagnes!... Où donc est l’échafaud? Ce monstre a disparu.... Plus de soldats l’épée au poing, plus de frontières, Plus de fisc, plus de glaive ayant forme de croix.... Le saint labeur de tous se fond en harmonie.... Toute l’humanité dans sa splendide ampleur Sent le don que lui fait le moindre travailleur.... Radieux avenir! Essor universel! Epanouissement de l’homme sous le ciel!_”

Eugène Vermesch was the fiercest, though by no means the greatest, poet of the Commune. Laurent Tailhade and Jean Richepin, among the living, have achieved renown as poets of revolt.

Richepin[124] is as complete a nihilist of the open, rollicking, devil-go-lucky order as Anatole France is of the subtle, Jehan Rictus of the plaintive, and Zo d’Axa of the fantastic orders. Like them, he commits himself to nothing and credits nothing, not even the faiths and formulas of revolution; and, like them, he is nevertheless a formidable revolutionist.

In the introduction to _Les Blasphèmes_ he proclaims his intention of “scandalising the devout, the Deists, the sceptics, the materialists, the scientists, the worshippers of Reason, the prosperous and the unprosperous, in a word, the rout of fools and hypocrites who fancy it their duty to save Law, Property, the Family, Society, Morals, etc.” “In the defence of these conventions, of which I do not recognise the binding force,” he adds, “I shall hear all the geese of the Capital clack.”