“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 Montpernasse, A Belleville, A Ménilmontant, A Montrouge, A la Glacière, etc.,—Le Guillotine, A la Roquette, Le Rond des Marmites, A Mazas, Casseur 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
MAQUERAUX 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.
The monologues of Jehan Rictus (Soliloques du Pauvre, Doléances, and Cantilènes 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.”
In portraying the physical discomforts of poverty, the racking coughs, raging thirsts, aching bones, the nights without shelter or sleep, the days without food, the tears that scald and the tearlessness that deadens, Jehan Rictus has only done what has been done a score of times in prose and verse. Surely, an empty heart keeps close company, more often than not, with an empty stomach, and it is in portraying vividly the mental and spiritual aspects of poverty that his work is fresh and unique. The humiliation of poverty’s uniform,—unkempt hair, missing shirt, drafty shoes, outlandish and threadbare garments,—of the pavement bed, of the paroxysms of hunger attributed to intoxication, of the unsuccessful search for work, of debarment from places of public resort, of silent submission to insult and gibe; the disgust with filth, vermin, vulgar noise, endless monotony, enforced celibacy, patronising pity, petty deceits improvised to hide destitution, and hilarity improvised to keep back tears; the hatred of those who practise injustice and hypocrisy; the scorn of those who bestow and those who accept charity; the incipient madness of starvation, at once impelling to a shedding of the blood of the guilty and raising a horrid dread of confounding the innocent with the guilty; the regret for loss of respectability, courage, ambition, energy, talent, faith; the oppressive lonesomeness; the yearning for fresh distractions, innocent joys, cleanly living, for kindly words, sympathetic hand-clasps, kisses, caresses, companionship, friendship, love, precious responsibility; the stolid indifference to death,—all these, the underlying sentiments of poverty, have never before been given in poetry, at least not without the blight of palpable literary effort or factitious emotionalism.