Paris and the Social Revolution Part 32

"Not that I don't recognise in Bruant, for all the harm he's trying to do me, my _cher maitre_. What should I be without him? Nothing at all. Oh, yes, I'm ready enough to admit that.

I am no ingrate. For the man who is ruining me, I have something _there_, at the heart, which abides, and which nothing can take away.

"When I began to wear the costume, Aristide didn't object. Not he. He thought me beneath his notice, I suppose. But, when he sees I am succeeding, then he brings me up in court.

"The truth of it is, he dreads my compet.i.tion. I frighten him.

My glory throws him in the shade. He says to Alexandre, 'Get out of my light!'

"The Law has smitten me in the name of Bruant: the Law does not know me. Since I have sung, I have gleaned upon the public places, in the streets, twenty-two thousand francs for the poor; and I am ordered to strip off my trousers. There's justice for you!

"Now on with the music! Twenty francs to pay every time I dare to don the forbidden costume, the costume Bruant. It's cheap at twenty francs. I don the costume, and I pay."

The law is effective, it would seem, in preventing Alexandre from appearing publicly in the costume outside of his own cabaret.

Out of the medley of monologists and _chansonniers_ (largely, of course, made up of mediocrities) who practise their professions in the cabarets of Montmartre, several of genuine poetical talent have emerged; and, of these, at least three are characterised by a thoroughly lawless or revolutionary spirit. These three are: Aristide Bruant, who exhibits a reality, a virility, a brutality, a grim humour, a picturesqueness of epithet, a boldness of imagery, and a tragic quality in caricature which make him (in a narrow field) a sort of French Kipling, with an honest devil-may-care quality by the side of which Kipling's bravado seems fustian; Jehan Rictus, less facile, less humorous, and less insolent than Bruant, but his equal in realism and his superior in sentiment; and Maurice Boukay (retired, and now a deputy), who lacks the grip on reality of Bruant and Rictus, but who atones partially for this lack by a wealth of stirring appeal.

Boukay's point of view is that of the _lettre_, the social philosopher, the reformer, the enlightened friend of the poor. His words are words of faith, trumpet-calls from the heights instead of gibes or moans from the depths. They ring true of reasoned and righteous revolt. His _Chansons Rouges_ are neither narrative nor descriptive; not _chansons vecues_,-that is, _chansons_ based on his own experience,-but symbolic poems,-symbolic in both language and thought, what he himself might call "_chansons d'humanite multiple et objective_."

"They were all written," says M. Boukay in his introduction, "in a complete independence of spirit, at a time when, not yet having entered political life, I listened to the great voice of the people, and endeavoured to seize its hidden meaning....

My master Verlaine said: 'The _chanson_ of love is blue. The _chanson_ of dreams is white. The _chanson_ of sadness is grey.' The _chanson sociale_ is red.... It is the colour of the gla.s.s of wine that your good heart offers the vagrant to comfort him on the high road of life. It is the colour of the rising sun towards which your ardent, hopeful eyes yearn. It is the most intense hue of the tricolor flag, which lies close to the heart of all the miseries, which waves in the wind of all the liberties.

"'Stop there!' exclaims some timorous spirit. 'Do you not fear, singer of fraternity, to deepen the regrets and inflame the anguish of the people under pretext of describing them?'

"But, my good critic, will voicing the plaint of him who travails and suffers, always, then, be to wound the sanctimonious egoisms of him who digests and does nothing else? Would you resemble the iniquitous rich man,-tolerate the stretching forth of the hand, silent and ashamed, to beg, and forbid the quivering lips to groan? If you do not hear the groan, how can you console it? If you do not see the sore of poverty stripped of all its bandages, how will you know how to cure it?... Be brave and be just, good critic! Open thine eyes! Open thy heart!... The love of woman has for its necessary complement the love of humanity. Is this your belief? If yes, you will sing these _Chansons Rouges_. If no, you will let the people sing them. In any case, you will understand."

[Ill.u.s.tration: AT ALEXANDRE'S

_Cabaret de la rue Pigalle_]

The t.i.tles of the _Chansons Rouges_ bear out the promise of this foreword: _Le Soleil Rouge_, _Le Coq Rouge_, _Le Noel Rouge_, _L'Etoile Rouge_, _La Cite_, _La Chanson du Pauvre Chanteur_, _Fille et Souteneur_, _La Chanson de Nature_, _Le Mot Pa.s.se_, _La Derniere Bastille_, _La Madeleine_, _La Femme Libre_, _Les Rafles_, _La Chanson de Misere_; and the songs bear out the promise of their t.i.tles.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MAURICE BOUKAY]

Note the thrilling refrain of _Le Soleil Rouge_,-

"_Compagnon, le vieux monde bouge: Marchons droit, la main dans la main!

Compagnon, le grand soleil rouge Brillera, brillera demain_,"-

and the poignant, threatening _Chanson de Misere_:-

LA CHANSON DE MISeRE

I

_J'ai chante l'amour a vingt ans, Et j'ai perdu l'une apres l'une, Blonde ou brune, au clair de la lune, Mes illusions et mon temps.

Mon cur oubliait la Misere, Lire lon laire, Pourtant la Misere etait la, Lire lon la!_

II

_C'etait un matin de rancur, Que de ma tristesse accrue, Je butai du pied, dans la rue, Un pave rouge comme un cur.

C'etait le cur de la Misere, Lire lon laire, Entre deux paves plante la, Lire lon la!_

III

_Le pave, se dressant vers moi: "Combien j'ai vu de barricades, Combien j'ai recu d'estocades De par la lettre de la loi!"

Pa.s.sant, prends garde a la Misere, Lire lon laire.

Son cur n'est pas mort. Halte la!

Lire lon la!_

IV

_Je saigne a chaque iniquite, Je suis le pave de souffrance, Je suis rouge du sang de France Repandu pour l'humanite.

Fleur de pave, fleur de Misere, Lire lon laire, L'heroisme a pa.s.se par la, Lire lon la!_

V

_Egosme, arriere! Je veux Te marquer de ma chanson rouge.

L'espoir grandit. Le pave bouge.

Debout, clairon! Sonne les vux!

C'est la chanson de la Misere, Lire lon laire.

La Justice viendra par la Lire lon la!_

There is not a character of the Paris underworld nor a phase of its life about which Bruant has not cast the glamour of his suggestive _argot_: beggars and vagabonds; semi-vagabond acrobats, rag-pickers, and sandwich-men; thieves, thugs, _maquereaux_,[103] and murderers; foundlings and the lowest grades of prost.i.tutes, a veritable Maxim Gorky galaxy; starving, s.h.i.+vering, loafing, sinning, and suffering men and women; attractive sloth, picturesque horror, piquant degradation and savoury crime,-all in a lurid setting of teeming faubourg streets, public b.a.l.l.s, all-night restaurants, bagnios, prisons, and the guillotine!

"_Le Philosophe_," the opening poem of Bruant's published volume, _Dans la Rue_,-

"_T'es dans la rue, va t'es chez toi,_"-

the songs of the different faubourgs,-_A Batignolles_, _A la Villette_, _A Montperna.s.se_, _A Belleville_, _A Menilmontant_, _A Montrouge_, _A la Glaciere_, etc.,-_Le Guillotine_, _A la Roquette_, _Le Rond des Marmites_, _A Mazas_, _Ca.s.seur de Gueules_, _Le Grelotteux_, _Marcheuses_, _Les Quat' Pattes_, and _Pus de Patrons_ are absolutely convincing as literature and as studies of society, and, to be appreciated, have no need of their author's dramatic delivery. His most widely known _chanson_, _A St. Lazare_, is one of the poems of a generation; and his _A Biribi_[104] has probably done more to rouse the common people against the army than all the anti-militarist meetings of the socialists and anarchists combined. But propriety, alas! forbids their presence-and the presence of most of the best of Bruant's work in this volume.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MAQUERAUX]

The monologues of Jehan Rictus (_Soliloques du Pauvre_, _Doleances_, and _Cantilenes du Malheur_) are conspicuous among the poems of poverty for their absolute and abject despair. Jehan Rictus is a man who has done many kinds of hard manual labour, if report speaks true, and who knows the wretchedness of extreme penury by long and cruel experience. "A strange and highly typical figure; a pale, emaciated head we seem to have seen somewhere before. Where?-in church paintings, perhaps; sad, lean, narrow-chested, tall, 'long as a tear,' and an expression so weary! He does not essay a gesture. He has only his voice, the anguish of his face, and the feverish gleam of his eyes with which to move us.

His hands, held always behind him, twitch ineffectually as if trying to burst invisible bonds."

[Ill.u.s.tration:

Voila comment en verite Les pieds des Pauvres sont traites

Quand il saura ce traitement Jesus Christ sera mecontent

'Et moi je vous le dis mes freres Prenez bien garde a sa colere.

Jehan Rictus.]