Voilà comment en verité Les pieds des Pauvres sont traités
Quand il saura ce traitement Jésus Christ sera mécontent
‘Et moi je vous le dis mes freres Prenez bien garde à sa colère.
In portraying the physical discomforts of poverty, the racking coughs, raging thirsts, aching bones, the nights without shelter or sleep, the days without food, the tears that scald and the tearlessness that deadens, Jehan Rictus has only done what has been done a score of times in prose and verse. Surely, an empty heart keeps close company, more often than not, with an empty stomach, and it is in portraying vividly the mental and spiritual aspects of poverty that his work is fresh and unique. The humiliation of poverty’s uniform,—unkempt hair, missing shirt, drafty shoes, outlandish and threadbare garments,—of the pavement bed, of the paroxysms of hunger attributed to intoxication, of the unsuccessful search for work, of debarment from places of public resort, of silent submission to insult and gibe; the disgust with filth, vermin, vulgar noise, endless monotony, enforced celibacy, patronising pity, petty deceits improvised to hide destitution, and hilarity improvised to keep back tears; the hatred of those who practise injustice and hypocrisy; the scorn of those who bestow and those who accept charity; the incipient madness of starvation, at once impelling to a shedding of the blood of the guilty and raising a horrid dread of confounding the innocent with the guilty; the regret for loss of respectability, courage, ambition, energy, talent, faith; the oppressive lonesomeness; the yearning for fresh distractions, innocent joys, cleanly living, for kindly words, sympathetic hand-clasps, kisses, caresses, companionship, friendship, love, precious responsibility; the stolid indifference to death,—all these, the underlying sentiments of poverty, have never before been given in poetry, at least not without the blight of palpable literary effort or factitious emotionalism.
Equally unique and equally powerful with the exhibition of the multiform woes of the destitute is the poet’s satirical exposure of the inconsistencies, insincerities, vanities, and refined cruelties of the various sorts of people who exploit the destitute. With an ironical pretence of rendering deserved homage to poverty, he elaborates the important part it plays in the social scheme. Thanks to it, the employees of the _Assistance Publique_ are able to maintain their families in comfort; magistrates to attain a rotund and tranquil old age; economists (deferring to it as a dignified entity) to win professional chairs and academic honours; politicians to get the public ear; socialistic and anarchistic bawlers to finish out their careers as dawdling, alcoholic deputies; poets, painters, and novelists to swim in glory and good wine, and found luxurious establishments for their offspring.