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.”