The revolutions of 1830, 1848, and 1871, as well as the Great Revolution, left to the people generous heritages of bourgeois-baiting chansons. The barricades of those agitated periods rang with lyric improvisations born of the ferment and frenzy of the hour. The authors were oftener clerks or day labourers than they were poets or professional chansonniers, and their songs, many of the best of which have survived, were genuine songs of the people. But the one supremely great chanson populaire révolutionnaire of the last half of the century just closed, a song as striking in its way as the Carmagnole, the “Ça Ira,” the Père Duchêne, or the Marseillaise, is the Internationale. Wherever there is revolt or faith in revolt, brotherhood or yearning after brotherhood, this stupendous hymn of the religion of humanity (for it is much more a hymn than a chanson) is fervidly and reverently sung. The Internationale has something of the profundity and awfulness of Martin Luther’s “Ein’ Feste Burg.” Like that marvellous psalm, it is at once uplifting and crushing. In concept it is probably the biggest song of liberty that has ever been written. It is surely the biggest in this respect of all the French revolutionary chansons. As the Marseillaise, with its fierce, defiant staccatos and fiery, resistless appeal, is the perfect lyric expression of the fury of onset (furia francese) in the field, and as the Carmagnole, with its madly reeling, rolling, booming rhythms and its terrible, mocking, blasphemous mirth, is the perfect lyric expression of the drunkenness and dare-devilness of mobs and barricades, so the Internationale, with its slow, solemn, stately measure and its universal reach of feeling and of thought, is the perfect lyric expression of the eternal might and majesty of humanity. Hearing it, it is as if one heard the cadenced beat of the million-millioned tread of the advancing race, sweeping all barriers of pride and prejudice before it.
In the meetings, the numerous stanzas of the Carmagnole and the Internationale are generally delivered as a solo from the platform by a camarade who is blessed with a good memory and exceptional lung power, the audiences leaping into the choruses. The effect is invariably inspiriting, whatever the personality of the soloist or the quality of his voice, and whatever the composition and the voices of the audience. Indeed, these two chansons seem to belong to that rare sort of music which cannot be spoiled by bad, if it be not half-hearted, execution. So that there is conviction behind it, it carries,—the music in which sincerity and fervour atone for all defects of pitch, key, and voice.
In the open air, the more familiar stanzas are sung in unison just as is the Marseillaise, just as are the songs of the students, and just as are, for that matter, all the songs of the people in France,—a method by which a great deal more is gained in lilt and concentration (where only the primal emotions are concerned) than is lost in charm. And I defy any one who has a drop of red blood in him to be at the centre of several thousand excited people who are shouting the Marseillaise, the Internationale, or the Carmagnole, and not join in, even though his every instinct and belief be anti-revolutionary and he has neither voice nor ear. He who has not shared the surging and chanting of an angry Paris mob has only half experienced the popular thrill, and can have only half an idea what solidarity of emotion means.
The Internationale is as much the rallying cry of the opening of the twentieth century as the Marseillaise was of the opening of the eighteenth; and it would not be surprising if its author, Eugène Pottier, who is already called by the faithful “the Tyrtæus of the Social Revolution,” should win ultimately the same sort of an apotheosis as Rouget de Lisle won by the Marseillaise.
Poor Pottier, who died in 1887 at seventy-one years of age, saw only the beginning of the phenomenal vogue of his masterpiece as a revolutionary slogan.
Pottier was one of the few who dared to speak his mind freely during the Second Empire, and was a prominent figure on the barricades of both 1848 and 1871. He was proscribed for his participation in the Commune, but escaped to America, where he remained till amnesty was declared. Unable to work steadily at his trade after his return, because his natural employers resented the part he had taken in the organisation of his craft, as well as his share in the Commune, and systematically neglected as a poet and song-writer by the bourgeois press, his poverty was terrible at times,—so terrible that it is no hyperbole to say that many of his best pieces were written with his heart’s blood. They were real cries of real anguish. His boundless love and pity for the poor and his incessant struggle for the emancipation of the oppressed turned his life—like that of the noble Communard, Blanqui, to whom he dedicated a marvellous sonnet—into an uninterrupted series of self-sacrifices; and he stands side by side with Blanqui among the finest modern revolutionist types. Many of his chansons besides the Internationale have survived him. He left also a quantity of far from despicable poems.
They are legion, the men of the people whom anarchy has inspired of late years to sing; but the majority of them are unknown to the general public and even to other anarchistic groups than their own. A few, however, have a Parisian reputation for their abilities or eccentricities.
Paul Paillette, a quaint, picturesque personality, inhabits a correspondingly quaint and picturesque lodging, which he calls his “grenier de philosophe” (philosopher’s garret) on the summit of Montmartre. He was originally a jeweller; but of late years he has supported himself by rendering his own productions and those of Bruant and Xanrof in the salons of the bourgeois, who gladly pay him for ridiculing and abusing them. He is also a favourite feature of the union meetings and soirées familiales in several quarters of the city.
Paul Paillette can be bitter, caustic, and violent when he chooses; but his dominant note is gentle, hopeful, idyllic, and ideal, as the following chanson from his principal volume, Les Tablettes d’un Lézard, testifies:—
HEUREUX TEMPS Air: Le Temps des Cerises. I Quand nous en serons au temps d’anarchie, Les humains joyeux auront un gros cœur Et légère panse. Heureux, on saura, sainte récompense, Dans l’amour d’autrui doubler son bonheur! Quand nous en serons au temps d’anarchie, Les humains joyeux auront un gros cœur. [52] II Quand nous en serons au temps d’anarchie, On ne verra plus d’êtres ayant faim Auprès d’autres ivres: Sobres nous serons et riches en vivres; Des maux engendrés ce sera la fin. Quand nous en serons au temps d’anarchie, Tous satisferont sainement leur faim. III Quand nous en serons au temps d’anarchie, Le travail sera récréation Au lieu d’être peine. Le corps sera libre, et l’âme sereine, En paix, fera son évolution. Quand nous en serons au temps d’anarchie, Le travail sera récréation. IV Quand nous en serons au temps d’anarchie, Les petits bébés auront au berceau Les baisers des mères. Tous seront choyés, tous égaux, tous frères; Ainsi grandira ce monde nouveau. Quand nous en serons au temps d’anarchie, Les bébés auront un même berceau. V Quand nous en serons au temps d’anarchie, Les vieillards aimés, poètes-pasteurs, Bénissant la terre, S’éteindront, béats, sous le ciel mystère, Ayant bien vécu, loin de ces hauteurs. Quand nous en serons au temps d’anarchie, Les vieillards seront de bien doux pasteurs. VI Quand nous en serons au temps d’anarchie, Nature sera paradis d’amour; Femme souveraine, Esclave aujourd’hui, demain notre reine, Nous rechercherons tes ordres du jour! Quand nous en serons au temps d’anarchie, Nature sera paradis d’amour. VII Il semble encore loin, ce temps d’anarchie; Mais, si loin soit-il, nous le pressentons; Une foi profonde Nous fait entrevoir ce bienheureux monde Qu’hélas! notre esprit dessine à tâtons. Il semble encore loin, ce temps d’anarchie; Mais, si loin soit-il, nous le pressentons!