II
41 lines✦
à: vivre à coups de fouet!--passerEn fiacre, en correctionnelle;Repasser à la ritournelle,Se dépasser, et trépasser!-- --Non, petit, il faut commencerPar être grand--simple ficelle--Pauvre: remuer l'or à la pelle;Obscur: un nom à tout casser!... Le coller chez les mastroquets,Et l'apprendre à des perroquetsQui le chantent ou qui le sifflent-- --Musique!--C'est le paradisDes mahomets ou des houris,Des dieux souteneurs qui se giflent! People, at least some of them, think more highly of his Breton subjectsthan of the Parisian, but I can not see that he loses force on leavingthe sea-board; for example, his "Frère et Sœur Jumeaux" seems to me"by the same hand" and rather better than his "Roscoff." His languagedoes not need any particular subject matter, or prefer one to another."Mannequin idéal, tête-de-turc du leurre," "Fille de marbre, en rut!","Je voudrais être chien à une fille publique" are all, with a constantemission of equally vigorous phrases, to be found in the city poems. Athis weakest he is touched with the style of his time, i.e., he fallsinto a phrase _à la Hugo_,--but seldom. And he is conscious of the willto break from this manner, and is the first, I think, to satirize it, orat least the first to hurl anything as apt and violent as "gardenationale épique" or "inventeur de la larme écrite" at theRomantico-rhetorico and the sentimento-romantico of Hugo and Lamartine.His nearest kinships in our period are to Gautier and Laforgue, thoughit is Villon whom most by life and temperament he must be said toresemble. Laforgue was, for four or five years, "reader" to the ex-Kaiser's mama;he escaped and died of _la misère._ Corbière had, I believe, but onelevel of poverty. Un beau jour--quel métier!--je faisais, comme çaMa croisière.--Métier!....--Enfin. Elle passa.--Elle qui,--La Passante! Elle, avec son ombrelle!Vrai valet de bourreau, je la frôlai....--mais ElleMe regarda tout bas, souriant en dessous,Et--me tendit sa main, et....m'a donné deux sous.
✦