POETS OF LABOR

In Bergerac, a monument to a shoemaker will soon be erected... It is true that this shoemaker was also a poet. His name was Jacques Le Lorrain. Established, around twenty years ago, in a modest shop at No. 25 rue du Sommerard, in Paris, he had posted on his door a sales pitch in verse which ended like this:

“Author, I once made illegible pieces,
Bouif, I'm wearing invisible pieces today. »

The “bouif”, however, had not given up writing plays. He gladly read them in the evening to students, his clients and his friends. This is how Armand Bour, director of the Théâtre Trianon, heard about a certain Don Quixote written by Le Lorrain. He asked for the play, read it, put it on... Too keen a joy, after so many years of work and misery. The poor “boob” did not have the strength to resist: eight days after the first, he died.
Ten years later, Henri Cain took a libretto from Savetier's play that Massenet set to music. The “bouif” posthumous collaborator of the author of Manon... What revenge for posterity!...
The tribute to Bergerac, hometown of Le Lorrain. will honor the memory of the cobbler-poet is an example to offer to many cities in France. Decentralization in literary matters is just an empty word. How much talent remains ignored in the depths of our provinces! How many modest poets are not even known to those around them! If I looked closely, we would discover that there is not a profession that does not have its poet. And what a lovely collection we would make with the works of all these bards of work.
Talk about worker-poets, it will be difficult to cite some of the most illustrious names. We will remind you that Pierre Dupont and Hégésippe Moreau were typographic composers. We will perhaps also remember Savinien Lapointe, the poet-shoemaker, because Bérenger once revealed his name to the attention of scholars. Finally when you have been named master Adam Billaut, the carpenter of Nevers; Jasmin, the wigmaker from Agen, Reboul, the baker from Nîmes, whom his famous play: The Angel and the Child saved from oblivion, you will think you have named them all.
And, yet, how many others whose talent deserves to be highlighted!
In the Square d'Anvers, in Paris, there is the statue of a poet who had flashes of genius and who was a worker before being a poet. This is the statue of Sedaine. Look at her in passing. The poet is dressed in the costume of stonemasons. Before chiseling rhymes, he cut blocks of sandstone.
The poet of the masons does not have a statue, but his name nevertheless survives, thanks to an illustrious friendship, that of George Sand.
Charles Poncy, a mason by trade, celebrated in lyrical stanzas around 1848, the noble aspirations of the republican ideal and worker solidarity. George Sand took a liking to the man and his works. She guided him. In a curious letter that was published from her not long ago, we find some advice that she gave to Poncy. She recommends that he remain modest: "My child," she wrote to him, "you can be the greatest poet in France one day if the vanity that kills all our bourgeois poets does not come near your heart..."
Poncy retained the advice: he remained modest. And, yet, he did not become the first poet of France.

All professions, even the harshest, have or had their poet. I will not tell you the name of Jules Mousseron, the miners' poet, who found moving and joyful inspiration in the hard work of the mine and in the monotonous life of the "corons". His ideal is that of many worker poets who sing only for their brothers in labor. But how can I cite them all?...
Here is Eugène Granger, the poet mover, who introduces himself as follows: “For a meager salary, a modest sum, Strong mover, courageous, but haughty, I move, like a beast of burden, Under the cartman's whip. ..”
Here is Pierre Frobert, the mechanical poet, author of a charming book called Les Feux Follets; here is Magu, the weaver-poet; Ponty, the rag-poet; Jules Heurtel, from Dinan, the poet-binder. Here is Adolphe Vard who, for thirty years, was a wagon oiler, and who, among other pretty verses, found, to glorify manual work, this charming couplet:
“The artisan is better than the artist; The rose is not worth the ear. »
Here is the poet-miller, Léon Boureau, who, although aspiring to poetic success, knows how to remain faithful To the graceful rustic mill Preserved like a relic
And which is reflected in the waters.
Here is Sylvain Bargues, the poet-postman, who says in sonorous stanzas how difficult the work of the rural postman is:

With a rhythmic step he walks
Towards the farm, towards the factory,
By the valley, the hill,
Distributing his treasure.
On the monotonous road,
His gnarled staff resonates.
Everywhere already strikes noon
May it still work, again.

Here is even the poet-trimardeur, the cantor of the free life, Pierre-Emile Jouin, who describes himself thus:
“Through the burning suns, through the dreary seasons, I am the wanderer who goes aimlessly and without a homeland, Endlessly dragging the weight of his withered soul...”
This one is taciturn, a pessimist, because he is idle. But this is not generally the spirit that animates the poetry of workers: melancholy sometimes, but more often good humor, resignation, a feeling of pride for the profession, a touch of corporate pride , this is what we find in the work of worker poets.
I have only mentioned a few, but think of all those whose names are forgotten. In the shoemaking profession alone, how many are there? I have only named Savinien Lapointe here, but we should also mention Father Martin, the old singer of the Companionship; Alfred Fardin, known as “the Beloved of the Tour de France”, formerly established a cobbler in the Goutte-d'Or district; Jean-Marie Rollin, the shoemaker-poet from Billancourt, and Vestrepain, the cobbler-poet from Toulouse, to whom his hometown also erected a statue, the work of the great sculptor Antonin Mercié.
Thus, in almost all manual professions, we would find unknown, unrecognized or forgotten talents. Who will write the anthology of labor poets?

ERNEST LAUT.