EVENING IN A CABARET
| “The little wine-shop concerts at which every person present is expected to do his turn.” |
“If during his travels the trimardeur has not acquired fine manners, at least he has acquired some very extended notions on customs and industries. He will know, without referring to a note, by a simple habit of memory, the distribution of the revolutionary contingents, here, there, and everywhere, in labour unions or socialist or anarchist groups, and the efficacy of each; what can be attempted at Montpellier, what is possible at Calais, how the iron is extracted at Mont-Canigan, and how it is worked at St. Chamond; why the fitters of the Seine are better paid than those of Nevers or Creuzot; where one stands a chance of being welcomed if one has been driven from the workshops of la Ciotat; by what artifice one may travel gratuitously in the baggage-cars of the company of the Midi, etc., etc. This miscellaneous information is not a bad substitute for science, and forms in fact a sort of fund of practical science very useful in the every-day life.”
“Nous partons tous faire le tour du monde Quand nous manquons de travail et de pain; Et cependant notre terre féconde Produit assez pour tout le genre humain, Nos exploiteurs veulent jouir sans cesse: Dans tous nos maux ils trouvent un plaisir. Nous travaillons pour créer la richesse, Et de misère il nous faudrait mourir?” Refrain. “Allons, debout! les Trimardeurs, Tous les hommes, enfin, veulent l’indépendance; Supprimons donc nos exploiteurs, Afin d’avoir le droit de vivre dans l’aisance.”
So runs the first stanza of the Chant des Trimardeurs; and this chanson, though execrable poetry, is, nevertheless, amply suggestive of the spirit of the trimardeur, and at the same time fairly illustrative of the popular revolutionary chanson (chanson populaire révolutionnaire).
“Of all the peoples of Europe,” said Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “the French people is the one whose temperament is the most inclined to the chanson.
“The chanson is the Frenchman’s ægis against ennui.... He uses it sometimes as a kind of consolation for the losses and reverses he sustains. He sings his defeats, his poverty, and his ills as readily as his prosperity and his victories. Beating or beaten, in abundance or in need, happy or unhappy, gay or sad, he sings always. One would say that the chanson is the natural expression of all his sentiments.”
France’s chanson populaire has always been one of the most important breeders and disseminators of social and political discontent. It has always kept pace with and frequently forerun revolutions. It is not surprising, therefore, that it is looked on by the anarchists as one of the most efficacious means of propaganda. The circulation among the masses of songs of revolt (chansons de propagande) is vigorously carried on by a number of revolutionary publishing concerns, which retail them at two sous each[8] and wholesale them at fr. 4.50 a hundred, and which also distribute them gratuitously as often as a camarade or sympathiser will provide a fund for the purpose.