Paris and the Social Revolution Part 5

Then he buckles his belt, turns up his pantaloons, tightens his shoe-lacing, and gains the _trimard_ with a few sous in his pocket, _en route_ for the nearest large town, where he hopes to find employment and an unworked field for his neophytic zeal.

"If he sets out from Angers, from Trelaze, for instance, he tramps as far as Nantes, where he improvises himself porter or stevedore along the quays of the Loire, undertaking with the rashest indifference any occupation for which only muscle is required....

"Signalled anew, ... our man rebuckles his belt, turns up again his pantaloons, retightens his shoe-lacing, and gains the _trimard_ with a few sous in his pocket, headed towards St. Nazaire or Brest, towards Rennes or towards Cherbourg, towards any city whatsoever in which he can hope to earn his bread and convert men. Along the road he manages to get shelter on the farms, and he carries on his propaganda among the peasantry.

"This tireless fanaticism will carry him through Normandy towards the regions of the north. He will be expelled from the spinning-mills of Rouen, the gla.s.s-works of Douai, the mines of Anzin, the forges of Fives. From there he will pa.s.s into Belgium, always 'on the hoof' (_a pattes_) and on the _trimard_: he will visit Brussels, where the marvellous workingmen's organisations of Bra.s.seur and Jean Volders will make him shrug his shoulders,-'Fudge, all that! authoritative socialism, that'; Antwerp, which will detain him a week, a bit disconcerted by the machine; Liege and Scraing, which will keep him a month; le Borinage, which he will contemplate as a promised land. Perhaps he will go into Germany, the vast Germany so inclement to anarchy,-that is, if he does not descend into the east by the Luxembourg, and gain the Jura by the Vosges.

"In two or three years he will have seen many districts and many countries, and will have scattered behind him everywhere, indifferently, seeds of revolt without troubling himself about the nature of the ground. His information will be considerably augmented. He will have made good by experience the defects of his education. He will know various languages and _patois_, having spoken Breton at Vannes, Normand at Caen, Walloon at Namur, Flemish at Gand, Marollien at Brussels, German in the east or in Switzerland; and, like the cosmopolitan Bohemian who had learned to borrow five francs in all the tongues of the world, he will have become capable of preaching anarchy in all the '_argots_.'...

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 subst.i.tute 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 feconde Produit a.s.sez pour tout le genre humain, Nos exploiteurs veulent jouir sans cesse: Dans tous nos maux ils trouvent un plaisir.

Nous travaillons pour creer la richesse, Et de misere il nous faudrait mourir?_"

REFRAIN.

"_Allons, debout! les Trimardeurs, Tous les hommes, enfin, veulent l'independance; 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 ill.u.s.trative of the popular revolutionary _chanson_ (_chanson populaire revolutionnaire_).

"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 aegis 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 ma.s.ses of songs of revolt (_chansons de propagande_) is vigorously carried on by a number of revolutionary publis.h.i.+ng 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.

In these _chansons_, logic is deliberately ignored, and metaphysics and ethics are very little meddled with. All the subtleties and refinements of the doctrine, all the gentleness and sweet reasonableness of the accredited expounders of the doctrine, are crowded out by the necessity for the simple, downright, direct appeal to the pa.s.sion which is the _chanson's_ peculiar province.

The very t.i.tles of these _chansons de propagande_ show that their purpose is inflammation rather than persuasion. Notice a few of them:-

"_Ouvrier, prends la Machine!_" "_Crevez-moi la Sacoche_" (money-bag)!

"_Fusille les Voleurs_," _Les Briseurs d'Images_, _Le Drapeau Rouge_, _Le Reveil_, "_Vivement, Brav' Ouvrier!_" _La Chanson du Linceul_.

When proselytism is not sufficiently p.r.o.nounced in the _chansons_ themselves, caustic foot-notes make up the deficiency. Thus this definition of the word _deputes_: "Deputies are persons who make rules for others and exceptions for themselves."

These _chansons_, besides being sung in the various anarchist functions, appear, along with ballads, amorous ditties, and the topical songs of the day, on the programmes of the little wine-shop concerts of the faubourgs, at which each and every person present is expected to "do his turn" and all are counted on to help out with the choruses. These diminutive faubourg concert halls are the lineal descendants of the famous historic workingmen's _goguettes_ and _guinguettes_ into which the great Dejazet was happy to escape and from which the thought and the spirit of revolt were never far distant. "Behind their closed doors,"

says Jules Claretie, "the government was roundly berated, the couplets of the _chansonniers_ there becoming for it more redoubtable than the fiercest articles of the press."

The _chansons de propagande_-the more catchy, least compromising of them, that is-are sung in the public squares and on the street corners of the working districts by the itinerant musicians, who are at all seasons, but especially at fete times, a picturesque feature of Paris streets, and who conduct so many open-air singing schools, as it were, in that they teach their motley audiences to sing the songs they have the wit to sell them.

Only a few of the anarchist _chansons_ ever see the types. The majority either circulate in handwriting among the groups or, without having been taken down, are transmitted orally, like the mediaeval folk-songs or the Homeric lays, suffering, like those, all sorts of modifications and corruptions of text in the transmission.

Of the _chansons populaires revolutionnaires_ which have come down to the present from the Great Revolution, the _Ma.r.s.eillaise_, a true _chanson de propagande_ in its time, well called by Lamartine "the fire-water of the Revolution," is not in favour with the orthodox anarchists, because it is essentially patriotic and uses the offensive word _citoyen_. The "_ca Ira_" is still sung by the anarchists, but not always to its original words. The _Pere d.u.c.h.ene_, a part of which dates from the Directoire, is sung mainly by the coal-miners of the region of the Loire. The _Carmagnole_ alone-the saucy, rollicking, explosive, diabolic _Carmagnole!_-has held its own against all new-comers, changing, but losing nothing of its sauciness, its explosiveness, and its diabolism as it has pa.s.sed from the versions of 1792-93 through its seven clearly defined texts to the version of the memorable strike of Montceau-les-Mines in 1883.

After the execution of Ravachol[9] the airs of the "_ca Ira_" and the _Carmagnole_ were combined into a chanson called _La Ravachole_, which, in spite of this hybrid origin, may fairly be cla.s.sed as the latest and by far the most vindictive version of the _Carmagnole_.

LA RAVACHOLE

I

_Dans la grande ville de Paris (bis) Il y a des bourgeois bien nourris, (bis) Il y a les misereux Qui ont le ventre creux.

Ceux-la ont les dents longues, Vive le son, vive le son, Ceux-la ont les dents longues, Vive le son D' l'explosion._

REFRAIN

_Dansons la Ravachole, Vive le son, vive le son, Dansons la Ravachole, Vive le son D' l'explosion.

Ah, ca ira, ca ira, ca ira, Tous les bourgeois got'ront d' la bombe, Ah, ca ira, ca ira, ca ira, Tous les bourgeois on les saut'ra, On les saut'ra._

II

_Il y a les magistrats vendus, (bis) Il y a les financiers ventrus, (bis) Il y a les argosins; Mais pour tous ces coquins Il y a d' la dynamite, Vive le son, vive le son, Il y a d' la dynamite, Vive le son D' l'explosion!_

_Dansons, etc._

III

_Il y a les senateurs gateux, (bis) Il y a les deputes vereux, (bis) Il y a les generaux, a.s.sa.s.sins et bourreaux, Bouchers en uniforme, Vive le son, vive le son, Bouchers en uniforme, Vive le son D' l'explosion._

_Dansons, etc._

IV

_Il y a les hotels des richards (bis) Tandis que les pauvres dechards (bis) A demi-morts de froid Et souffrant dans leurs doigts.

Refilent la comete, Vive le son, vive le son, Refilent la comete, Vive le son D' l'explosion._

_Dansons, etc._

V

_Ah, nom de dieu, faut en finir! (bis) a.s.sez longtemps geindre et souffrir! (bis) Pas de guerre a moitie!

Plus de lache pitie!

Mort a la bourgeoisie, Vive le son, vive le son, Mort a la bourgeoisie, Vive le son D' l'explosion!_

_Dansons, etc._

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 revolutionnaire_ of the last half of the century just closed, a song as striking in its way as the _Carmagnole_, the "_ca Ira_," the _Pere d.u.c.h.ene_, or the _Ma.r.s.eillaise_, 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 crus.h.i.+ng. 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 _Ma.r.s.eillaise_, 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.