It is not to be supposed that these poor devils of painters and poets, ardent-eyed and beauty-loving, are inwardly submissive because they rail outwardly at their misfortunes; that they pardon either the individuals who victimise them or the society which allows individuals to victimise them. Revolt is none the less revolt for perpetrating and relishing a joke.
The note of social revolt in the cavalcade of the Vache Enragée and in the mock ceremony of the marriage of the Rosière; in the more than unconventional daily life, with its contemptuous disregard of ordinances of state and sacraments of church; in the political and social satire of the chansonniers, who sing indifferently in the soirées of the socialist and anarchist groups and in the cabarets artistiques et littéraires; and in the coarse derision of the bawlers of the cabarets brutaux,—is not to be ignored on the ground that it bears a semblance of mirth. The child’s play theory is absolutely untenable in this connection. These jolly Bohemian dogs of Montmartre are capable of corroding rancours and terrible wrath. And, if that descent from Montmartre which the conscience-stricken bourgeois feel in their bones will come, ever does come, it will not be the simple proletariat that will inaugurate and lead it, but the rollicking prolétariat littéraire.
LES CORBEAUX