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Xerox University Microfilms 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106 75 - 11,309 BARNES, Stephen Leonard, 1945- BERANGER AND BONAPARTISM: A STUDY OF THE SONGS OF PIERRE-OEAN DE BERANGER AND OF THEIR ROLE IN THE PROPAGATION OF THE NAPOLEONIC LEGEND. [Recording of Songs by P.J. Beranger avaflable for consultation at Ohio State University Library.] The Ohio State University, Ph.D., 1974 Language and Literature, general
Xerox University Microfilms, Ann Arbor, Michigan48ioe
© 1975
STEPHEN LEONARD BARNES
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
THIS DISSERTATION HAS BEEN MICROFILMED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED. BERANGER AND BONAPARTISM: A STUDY OF THE SONGS
OF PIERRE-JEAN DE BERANGER AND OF THEIR
ROLE IN THE PROPAGATION OF THE
NAPOLEONIC LEGEND
DISSERTATION
Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for
the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate
School of The Ohio State University
By
Stephen Leonard Barnes, B.A., A.M.
The Ohio State University
1974
Reading Committee: Approved By Prof. Charles Carlut 'tkLjjA Prof, Pierre Astier S i V c * - e . Prof. Charles Williams
Adviser Department of Romance Languages ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Sincere gratitude is extended to the Librairie Armand Colin, the Librairie Hachette, and the Oxford press at Clarendon for permission to quote extensively from their books; to Mne Jean Touchard for her kind encouragement; to Professor Charles Carlut, who inspired an abiding interest in Napoleon and in the literature of the period, and whose guidance and counsel have since been invaluable; and to Patty, Sam and Babette, without whose patient forebearance and support the present study would never have reached completion.
ii VITA
June 15, 1945 • • • Born— Springfield, Ohio
1967 ...... B.A. Summa Cum Laude, Wittenberg University, Springfield, Ohio
196 8 ...... A.M., Woodrow Wilson Fellow, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana
1968-1971 ...... Instructor in French, Wittenberg University, Springfield, Ohio
1971-1974 ...... Assistant Professor of French and Director of the Honors Program? Wittenberg University, Springfield, Ohio
1974 • ...... Teaching Assistant, the Ohio State University, Dayton Graduate Center and Staffing Specialist, U. S. Government, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Dayton, Ohio
FIELDS OF STUDY
Major Field: French literature
Studies in Literary Criticism. Professors Robert Champigny, Quentin Hope, and Hugh Davidson
Studies in Nineteenth-Century French Literature. Professor Charles Carlut
iii TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ii
VITA iii
INTRODUCTION 1
Biography Bgranger*s fortunes Approach and methodology
Chapter
I. THE NAPOLEONIC LEGEND AND BONAPARTISM . . 30
Background and formation of the Legend Development of the Legend The politics of Libero-Bonapartism Bonapartism Beranger as a literary Bonapartist
II. THE CHANSON AND BERANGER 67 Definition of the song History of the genre before Beranger The tradition of the Caveau Types of songs by Beranger Beranger as chansonnier Beranger as litterateur The art of Beranger
III. BERANGER»S FORMATION AND DEVELOPMENT DOWN TO 1315 111
Childhood influences Lucienfs patronage Beranger and the Consulate Beranger and the Empire Bdranger and the bourboniens
iv IV. BETWEEN THE TWO NAPOLEONS 155
Beranger and liberal society The trials and prison terms Vox populi Passy Beranger and the Academy
V. BERANGER AND THE SECOND EMPIRE...... 203
The retour des cendres The triumph of Louis-Napol6on The final phase
VI. BERANGER AND POSTERITY...... 226
The posthumous songs Ma Biographie and the correspondence The quarrel Since the quarrel
CONCLUSION 253
Beranger in retrospect Beranger as Bonapartist
APPENDIX
A. The recording 270
B. The music 273
C. The texts 275
BIBLIOGRAPHY 237
v INTRODUCTION
Sous le simple titre de chansonnier, un homme est devenu un des plus grands poetes que la France ait produits; avec un g£nie qui tient de la Fontaine et d*Horace, il a chants, lorsqu'il l !a voulu, corame Tacite 6crivait. . • . — Chateaubriand, Etudes Historiques. preface
Biography
Pierre-Jean de Beranger (17&0-1857)> who was to be termed in his day le poete national and l fHorace francais. was born in Paris on August 19, 17^0, into a petit-bourgeois family in the Rue Montorgueil.
His father, an innkeeper*s son who had risen from the status of grocer*s bookkeeper to that of banker- financier-entrepreneur, styled himself Beranger de
Mersix and harbored a vague pretention to nobility, which, his son was later to remark, **ne manquait que des pieces justificatives, 1*exactitude historique •j et des vraisemblances morales.” Beranger*s father seems to have left him little more than a sharp business sense and the particule nobiliaire which our chansonnier insisted on using, all the while denying his right to do so. The father, described in all
^Pierre-Jean de B&ranger, Ma Biographie (Paris: Perrotin, 1B62), p. 15.
1 accounts as ldger. insouciant and prodigue. had married a tailorfs daughter and begot Pierre-Jean
and a daughter, who became a nun and outlived her brother in a convent near Paris. At Beranger*s birth his father had long since abandoned his family and fled to Belgium to avoid charges of embezzlement.
Young Pierre-Jean was sent off to a wet nurse and
ignored, he said, during his first three years, then passed to his maternal grandparents, who indulgently let him grow into a boy who described himself as chgtif and d^licat, subject to violent migraines and eager to find pretexts for playing truant. He occasionally spent time visiting his mother, "insouciante et amie du plaisir," who took him to balls and the boulevard theatre where he observed others, listening constantly and learning much. In sum, he spent his formative years educating himself in the streets.
In early 17&9 Beranger de Mersix returned to
Paris and promptly put Pierre-Jean into a pension in the faubourg Saint-Antoine, where he witnessed the storming of the Bastille— the only real instruction he received, he was later to claim. Several months later he again found himself without parental support and was sent to live with a pious republican aunt who kept an inn at P£ronne. It was here that he spent the years 3
of the Revolution, listening to the distant rumble of
cannon while he received a very rudimentary instruction
based mainly on reading Voltaire, Racine, and the
T&L&naque. which comprised the totality of his aunt's
library. She insisted on sending him regularly to
catechism, had him commune at age eleven, arranged
for him to earn his keep by waiting on tables at the
inn, and countered as best she could the boy's growing
"esprit sceptique et frondeur," which has perhaps best
been summed up in the traditional ancedote recounting
her habit of sprinkling holy water on her house to
protect it; in May, 1792, young Pierre-Jean was knocked
unconscious by a bolt of lightning on its very threshold.
When he finally regained consciousness his first words were reportedly to his aunt: "Eh bien! Il quoi sert
ton eau bdnite?"2
Beranger's eyesight had been harmed by this
incident and he had to give up plans to apprentice
himself to a watchmaker. He became instead a saute-
ruisseau for a notary, Ballue de Bellenglise, who had
sat in the Legislative and returned to Peronne to found a free primary school modeled after Rousseau's doctrines.
Beranger adored this "Fenelon republican" and rapidly became his best pupil; he presided over the revolutionary
2Ibid., p. 23. 4
club and ignored his grammatical studies in order to
devote time to patriotic addresses to send to Citizens
Tallien and Robespierre, military drills, and chants
r6publicains: he was later to remark of this period,
"comme dans ma famille tout le monde chantait, c fest
sans doute alors q u fest n6 en moi le gotit de la chanson,"3
Beranger claimed he regretted the lack of classics at
the school, and felt that it hampered his later success
as a poet.
When M. de Bellenglise*s school closed, the master
arranged an apprenticeship with the printer Laisnez
for his prize pupil, Pierre-Jean claimed he learned
on this job, through daily exposure, all that he would
later need to know about spelling, grammar and versifi
cation; having begun this job "incapable de deviner que
les vers fussent soumis il une mesure quelconque,"
several months later he was turning out ribald couplets
of suprisingly good composition.
In 1797 Bdranger's father called back to Paris a
son who was by now a confirmed republican, enthusiastic
over the victories of the armies of the Convention and
imbued with the ideals of *#9, altogether a somewhat unsympathetic personnage to his royalist father, who had become a conspirator in charge of financing intrigues,
^Ibid., p. 25, Saved by the Thermidorian reaction, he had returned to
Paris to found a highly successful bank and lending house,
and he needed a son to help him manage his windfall
fortunes. B&ranger thus found himself in a position
to observe the workings of royalist plots against the
Directory and to get to know the thinking and character
of Bourbon partisans. He soon outdid his father in
profiteering, then foresaw the failure of the firm and
gave up financiering for what he later claimed were
reasons of conscience, a guilt for having profited so
greatly from others. His father had just acquired a
cabinet de lecture in the rue Saint-Nicaise, where the
machine infernale attempt on Bonaparte^ life took place
(Beranger claims to have narrowly missed the explosion),
and here he spent long hours rereading his favorite
authors, translations of the ancients (especially the
Iliade of Mme Dacier), Molidre, La Fontaine and Chateau
briand, whose G6nie du Christianisme opened his horizons
to Greek and biblical poetry.
At the age of twenty-five, Beranger was without a trade. He had spent the Directory years as a penniless aspiring poet and dramatist, living in a garret and trying his hand at comedy (Les Hermaphrodites) and epic poetry; he had begun at age eighteen a Clovis which he intended to rework and publish after age thirty. Only a few fragments of it can be found, most notably the 6 frequently-quoted:
Le soleil voit, du haut des vofltes 6ternelles*, Passer dans les palais des families nouvelles. Families et palais, il verra tout p6rir; II a vu mourir tout, tout renaltre et mourir; Vu des hommes formas de la cendre des hommes; Et. lugubre flambeau de la terre o-u nous sommes, Lui-mSme, Il ce long deuil fatigu£ d'avoir lui. S*6teindra devant Dieu comme nous devant lui.***
All things considered, the style and versification are quite good, in the style of the eighteenth century, and show what Mansion terms
. . • une certaine harmonie et une dignity de ton qu'on ne rencontre gu&re dans la po^sie 6puis6e de la premiere Rdpublique et de 1 'Empire; il est permis de croire que s'il etit persdv6r6 dans cette voie, Beranger efit proraptement obtenu croix, pensions, et fauteuil II l'Acad&nie, et ragrite, comme la plupart des acad^miciens de cette* epoque, l'oubli le plus complet dans la nfitre.?
Beranger also attempted conventional dithyrambics, idyls, odes and religious lyric poetry, including Le Deluge.
Le P^lerinage. Le Jugement dernier, and Le R6tablissement t du Culte. At twenty-two he had published some poetry in Les Saisons du Parnasse. a poetry journal well known in its day. He was known particularly as the author of an idyl entitled Glycfere« acclaimed by public and critics alike. A rereading of Moli&re discouraged Beranger from further attempts in the comic vein, and one can assume that the epic genre simply proved too taxing for him.
^*Jean Mansion (ed«). Chansons Choisies de Beranger (Oxford: Clarendon, 190&J, p. xi*
5Ibid. Our poet remained a penniless young man whose primary amusements were dinners with friends, such as
Wilhem Bocquillon, a popularizer of songs who was later to be known for his romances based on lyrics by Bdranger; established chansonniers such as Benjamin Antier; Pierre
Lebrun— wLebrun-Pindare,tt as Napoleon was to dub him— who composed odes on French victories; and the painter
Paulin Guerin, all members of what Mansion calls nce groupe de ’jeunes1 de l TEmpire qui n*6taient en r£alit6 que des Tattard€s’ du si&cle prdcddent.w6 For such occasions Bdranger began to rhyme couplets and rather bawdy drinking songs, of which several (notably Ainsi soit-il) found their way into collections of light verse.
It was about this time also that he began to frequent the drinking-singing-songwriting society of the Caveau.
Bdranger was beginning to find his vocation when he took the decisive step which was to launch him into his career.
In 1803, still jobless after three years of seeking his genre, Bdranger decided to request the patronage of the First Consulfs more intellectual brother, Lucien
Bonaparte, who was known for his oratory and interest in the arts and letters. Beranger sent to his potential
Maecenas his two dithyrambs on the D&Luge and the
^Ibid., p. xii. Rdtablissement du Culte; to his delight, he received a prompt favorable response. Lucien received him warmly, introduced him to influential friends, advised him on matters of style and form, encouraged him to abandon the "barbarian1* subject of Clovis in order to treat a more suitable Mort de N6ron (Beranger tried the topic, but without enthusiasm), and relinquished into
Beranger*s name his own thousand-franc pension as a member of the Institut. Beranger continued to collect the pension until 1&12, although his protector was exiled only a few months after their meeting.
Recommended by Lucien to the painter Landon, who was in charge of executing engravings of all the paintings and sculpture in the Louvre, B&ranger spent the years
1B05 to 1S07 composing textual commentary on these works, to be published as the Annales du Mus£e. Although his salary enabled him to live comfortably, he soon sought another position. Since 1S04 he had been trying to find academic employment through his newfound friendship with
Lucien and Antoine Arnault, the dramatist and fabulist whom Napoleon had appointed General Secretary of the
University. When a vacancy finally occurred in 1S09,
Bdranger was hired as a commis expSditeur at the University, a welcome opportunity to pay off the numerous debts left to him by the recent death of his father. Fontanes,
Grand Master of the University, had offered the young poet a 3,000-franc position as sous-chef. which Beranger
refused in favor of a lower-paying but less responsible
clerkship which would require only a few hours1 work per
day so that he could devote his energies to literary matters, Beranger spent twelve years in this post, leaving
only when deprived of it by the Restoration government
(see Chapter IV). He had also promised Landon’s son- in-law in 1£09 to write the text for a GalArie Mytholo- gique. and he did indeed draft over twenty well-researched articles on Achilles, Adonis, Apollo, etc. He never finished the series, but one can detect a trace of their influence in his tiresome tendency to insert mytholo gical allusions anywhere he thought he could or should.
Mansion suggests: "le chansonnier tenait peut-itre A honneur de montrer quTen dApit de son ignorance du grec et du latin il connaissait son Iliade aussi bien qu’un autre,"7 One must remember also that contemporary tastes ran to this sort of allusion-gathering.
During the Empire BAranger travelled frequently to PAronne to meet with friends in a social circle which called itself le Couvent des Sans-Souci and in which Beranger bore the title "Fr&re Hilarion." For these meetings he rhymed couplets such as La Chanson des
7lbid., p. xv. 10
Gueux and Les Infid<§lit<*s de Lisette; several of his compositions were published, with or without his per mission, in New Year’s collections such as La Guirlande and l ’Epicurien francais or the Etrennes Lyriques. Other pieces such as Roger Bontemps. la Gaudriole and Le Petit
Homme gris circulated in manuscript among friends, and were soon noticed by the Caveau, which he was soon invited to join. He was received in 1S13, singing as his acceptance speech L ’Acad4mie et le Caveau. Beranger had at last found recognition and success. In the following year he dared to begin his satirical vein of song in Le S6nateur„ which reportedly amused the Emperor himself, and his best-known song, Le Roi d ’Yvetot. a satire of the Empire which circulated rapidly throughout all of France. These two successes confirmed his choice of genre and career. In 1$15 he gathered most of his works to date and published them in a little volume entitled Chansons morales et autres. Except for their more polished style and rhyme, the songs contained therein were typical Caveau-type pieces. The only piece which truly stands out is the Roi d ’Yvetot, which gained for its author a reputation as a witty satirist which reached even Napoleon, who is reported in a well-known anecdote to have laughed when he heard the song.
Beranger welcomed the Restoration as an opportunity to consolidate constitutionally the liberties won by the 11l
Revolution but set aside during the Empire. His disil
lusionment was all the greater when Louis XVIII restored
censorship and religious intolerance. The monarchists
even considered reappropriating property nationalized
during the Revolution, and when 14,000 army officers were
put on demi-solde and replaced by returned emigres. most
of whom had never been under fire, our poet’s indignation
knew no bounds. He almost threw in his lot with the
reestablished Emperor during the Hundred Days; indeed,
Napoleon offered him a lucrative post as press censor, which he refused, saying he preferred independence to
honors and money, although one might suspect that he
foresaw the Emperor’s second downfall and wanted to
avoid compromising himself with a government of which
he was to say in retrospect: nNapol6on ne pouvait gouverner constitutionnellement. Ce n ’etait pas pour
cela qu’il avait £t£ donn£ au monde.tt&
Beranger witnessed with dismay the two allied entries into Paris and the White Terror; he became a most ardent po§te de 1 ’opposition and began a fifteen- year campaign against the Bourbons. Going beyond satire, he composed what Sainte-Beuve labeled ”la chanson libgrale et patriotique” (e.g., La Sainte Alliance des Peuples.
^Preface to the collection of 1d21. as cited in Beranger, Oeuvres, (Paris: Garnier, IS70 ), vol. 2, p. 211. 12
Les Enfants de la France, Le Vieux Drapeau, or Le Dieu
des Bonnes Gens), which attempted to add elevation and
dignity to the genre of the song. These songs became
the rallying anthems of a generation and have been
credited with an important role in bringing about the
Trois Glorieuses of 1830.
In 1821 Beranger published an enlarged edition of
the 1815 collection. The new edition aroused government
censors, who deprived Bgranger of his job at the University
and had him brought to trial for outrage to public morals,
decency, the person of the King, and religion, not to
mention a charge of seditious provocation. This was the
first in a series of confrontations between the
chansonnier and the regimes of the Restoration, confron
tations which were to make him famous and successful,
partly due to skilfull use of publicity and notoriety,
and partly due to a sympathetic harmony of aspirations
and sentiments between poet and people.
The 1821 trial brought Beranger three months’
imprisonment and "martyrdom” for the cause of a free
press. His works became enormously popular and success
ful, and the newspapers’ insistence on reproducing the
inculpated songs under the guise of "publishing evidence"
spread them nationwide very quickly. Bgranger spent his
time in the prison of Sainte-Pglagie receiving congrat ulatory visitors and writing new songs. He was again charged with arranging for the republication, at his
own profit, of all the "evidence" of his trial, but was I acquitted.
A new collection published in 1&25, although
containing some rather daring lines, passed quietly
through the censors and into the streets, apparently
because the newly-crowned Charles X did not desire
publicized confrontations until after he had consolidated
his power. Encouraged and assured of "best-seller"
status by the notoriety of the first trial, Bdranger
devoted himself wholeheartedly to his new literary genre
and confirmed his role as poSte de 1 Opposition.
His fourth recueil. published in 1B2B, boasted some particularly daring songs (notably Le Sacre de
Charles le Simple and Les infiniment Petits). This time
Bdranger did not escape punishment, nor did he try to do so, in spite of encouragements to flee to Switzerland.
Sentenced to nine months in La Force prison and a 10,000- franc fine (paid by public subscription), Beranger enjoyed in surprising comfort a new wave of popularity which was helped by obvious righteous indignation among royalists. The king spoke openly of the trial, and bishops followed his example in sermons. The failure of the courts in 1S21 to convict Beranger on charges of contempt (for publishing the pieces d*Evidence for profit) 14
brought about another widespread publication of "evidence"
which spread the songs even further.
Shortly afterward the government of Charles X
fell to public wrath over the extreme Ultra measures
implemented in 1830, and Bourbon rule gave way to the
July Monarchy. Beranger is widely credited with playing
a quiet but important role in the Revolution by working with the liberal party to establish a democratic and
viable government. Judging that the bourgeoisie,
although dominant in power and influence, was not yet ready for a republic, he threw in his lot with the
Orleanist party and Louis-Philippe, thereby putting himself in the somewhat problematic situation of com bating royalty while supporting a king as a "plank over the stream1* or temporary measure to get through the crisis.
Alexandre Dumas recounts Beranger*s explanation of his support of Louis-Philippe:
Dumas: "Ah! pour Dieu, vous venez de faire un beau coup, monsieur mon p&re!" Beranger: "Qu*ai-je done fait, monsieur mon fils?" Dumas: "Ce que vous avez fait, malheureux! Vous avez fait un roi!" Beranger: "Ecoute bien ce que je vais te dire, mon enfant; je n fai pas pr6cis6ment fait un roi, non; . . • j*ai fait ce que font les petits Savoyards, quand il y a de l*orage; j*ai mis une planche sur le ruisseau."9
9Le Monte Cristo. 30 juillet 1857, cited in Mansion, Chansons Choisies. p. xxiii. If we are to accept B6rangerTs explanation we
must conclude that he saw the July Monarchy as a resting
stage, for consolidation of gains, on the road toward a
new republic. As soon as the new regime had taken
power, he declared his mission accomplished, withdrew
from the public arena, and refused all honors, titles
and offers of pensions or support, even the 600 francs
to which he was entitled as a condamn6 politique of the
Restoration. He chose instead to be an independent
gadfly to society, "tapi dans son petit coin,” receiving
visitors and corresponding but no longer playing an
active role. B6ranger soon became a sort of solliciteur
universel for anyone claiming unjust treatment (he quite
possibly saw himself as a nVoltaire at Ferney” ) or
seeking financial aid or literary advice and encourage
ment. He especially enjoyed tutoring young aspiring writers and passing out sage advice on putting others above oneself and devoting one^ life to the advance ment of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity.
Having published in 1$33 his fifth collection,
Chansons nouvelles et derniferes. dedicated belatedly to Lucien Bonaparte (a dedication which Restoration
censors would never have passed), Bdranger moved to
Tours. He had finished the active, productive period of his life and now entered his twenty-four-year retirement.
The songs of 1&33 reflect this nchange of life": 1i6 although still containing echoes of the long struggle against the Bourbons, and numerous songs about and references to Napoleon, the collection stresses pleas in favor of the oppressed (H&tons-nousl and Poniatowski) and especially "chansons socialistes" in a new humani tarian vein. Beranger, in harmony with the Romantic concern with social questions, began to depict social outcasts, vagabonds, beggars and other "victims of society" in a series of Hugoesque vignettes described by critics as embodying the essence of contemporary social theory.
A trace of bitterness which had never clouded the early songs began to appear in the last ones. He felt increasingly that the new regime and the liberal party had betrayed the ideals of fB9. Moreover, he was growing old. His final years were marked by rather frequent changes of residence: to Passy, then to Fontaine bleau, then to la Grenadiere of Balzacian fame, then again to Tours in 183#> then back to Passy. In 1S50 he returned home to Paris, where he died seven years later. His long retirement had contributed nothing positive to his fame; it had, rather, brought a progres sive weakening of his standing. The man who had talked incessantly of his dream that one day France would again be under a republican form of government did not support the Revolution of 1B4S which established the Second Republic. His only memorable reaction to it was the famous "Nous avions un escalier £i descendre, et nous sautons par la fen£tre." He was unwillingly elected deputy to the Assemble Constituante. an honor which he twice refused, pleading to be left in peace ("Je ne veux rien Stre" was his refrain). A disenchanted public let him return home. The poet widely regarded as one of the chief propagators of the popular legend of Napoleon and the glories of the Empire remained practically silent at the advent of the Second Empire in 1&51, thus disap pointing supporters of the new regime by refusing to endorse it publicly and, conversely, convincing its enemies that he bore a large share of the responsibility or blame.
In the midst of this public controversy over
Beranger*s true position relative to Empires and Republics, his friend and publisher Perrotin released, posthumously,
Ma Biographie. dated Tours, 1B40, but treating essen tially nothing after the Revolution of 1&30, and a collection of previously unpublished songs which, perhaps unfortunately, contained a significant pro portion of songs in praise of the first Emperor, which could not help but confuse friend and foe alike con cerning the issue of his support of the Bonapartists.
The rather bland autobiography disappointed those who eagerly read it seeking revelations and insights, A IS lively quarrel ensued, centering around his literary merits, his Bonapartism, and his political and social ideals. The concurrent publication of Beranger1s collected correspondence added fuel. By the time this quarrel subsided in the late 1360’s, very little was left of the universal acclaim which had greeted the po&te national in 1330. The downfall of the Second Empire completed his ruin, for the name Bonaparte had lost most of its fascination.
All in all, the times had passed Beranger by.
Flamboyant Romanticism was alien to his style and soul.
Nor was the generation of 1350 cordial to him (Flaubert’s evaluation of him as nle chantre des amours faciles et des habits r5pds" has stood as the classic), and he himself seemed resigned to oblivion, as he had retired from literary activity at his apogee and had done almost nothing for a quarter century afterward. Napoleon III arranged an impressive state funeral for him in an obvious effort to enlist the chansonnier one way or the other, which also widened the gap between supporters and detractors. By the end of the century the man who thought he had invented a new genre, the "serious" song or, as he termed it, "la po£sie chantre," the pofete national, the Horace francais. the "heir to La
Fontaine" whose "odes" had caused some of the greatest writers of his day to press him continually to present 19 his candidacy to the Academy, who figured prominently in poetry anthologies, was all but forgotten.
The state of the problem: B^ranger^ fortunes
It would appear that BSranger's eclipse since the
1860»s is due partly to his fall from public favor, partly to profound changes in literary tastes and styles since his day, and partly to our insistence on studying his songs only from the mute printed page, as if they had been written as poems to be read and not songs to be sung. Not until 1968, when the late Jean Touchard published his two-volume La Gloire de Bdrangpr. was there a true revival of interest in B6ranger, and even Touchard admittedly treats his subject mainly as a poet. Pierre-
Jean de Beranger has become a minor footnote to the
Napoleonic Legend, and his literary and critical fortunes follow those of the Legend.
While it is beyond the scope of this introduction to survey thoroughly the literary and critical fortunes of Bdranger, for the purpose of outlining a nstate of the problem,w one could summarize B&ranger*s critical fortunes as extended periods of darkness interspersed with brief surfacings into the light of public exposure.
Immediately after Bdranger’s death, attacks against his style and person began to appear in sundry journal istic writings. The publication soon after his death of 20 the Chansons Posthumes (1357)» Boiteaurs four-volume collected Correspondance de Beranger (1360), and Ma
Biographie (1362) touched off a full-blown literary quarrel, which was kept alive by the publication of numerous memoirs and anecdotes by friends and alleged acquaintances, sincere and otherwise, who rushed to outdo one another in revelations piquantes and accounts of varying degrees of unprovable authenticity,
Beranger was attacked especially by Renan and the
Figaro. and defended by Jules Janin (whose Beranger et son temps of 1366 compared him to Horace), George Sand,
Boiteau and Arthur Arnould, whose Beranger, ses amis. ses ennemis et ses critiques (1364) remained until the turn of the century the definitive summation of Beranger’s life, thought, and works, its central thesis being a repeated declaration that Beranger, of unassailable character and firm convictions, had been a great leader in humanity?s struggle toward universal peace and brotherhood, and that he had been innocent of exaggerated
Bonapartism or responsibility for the coup d fetat of 1351,
Beranger’s detractors depicted him as a vulgar panderer to popular tastes and desires, unprincipled and unwilling to face up to his responsibility as a chief cause of the Second Empire, who all too carefully protected his reputation by retiring and refusing to commit himself. His defenders countered that his very virtue lay in his modesty and moderation, his ascetic self-denial in refusing official recognition and not compromising himself in partisan politics after 1330. They parried attacks on his style and character and, above all, insisted on debunking the idea, held by Sainte-Beuve and many others, that Bdranger was an imperialist supporter of Bonapartism and was largely responsible for and guilty of collusion with the Second Empire.
Such quarrels tend to exhaust themselves without settling anything, and this one died undecided, just before the Second Empire did. The events of the 1370’s overshadowed preoccupation with the merits, ideas and role of a dead poet, and Beranger was consigned to history, to be almost ignored by scholars until 1397, when Jules
Garsou published Beranger et la lggende napoldonienne. a concise repertory of snippets interspersed with commentary intended to demonstrate that Beranger, a firm and unrepentant Bonapartist, had kept the Legend warm and alive until Napoleon III could usurp leadership.
A renewal of interest in Bonapartism followed shortly thereafter, causing a brief flurry of studies on Bdranger after the turn of the century, notably the school antholo gy of selected songs published in 1903 by Jean Mansion, who refused to take sides in the "Beranger as Bonapartist*1 controversy, and a Bgranger by Stgphane Strowski in 1913, which largely ignored this issue and concentrated on a
"life and works" approach. H. A. L. Fisher’s Bonapartism did much toward defining with considerably more precision than former attempts the nature of the somewhat amorphous doctrines to which Beranger had supposedly adhered, and the first chapter of the present study will make use of its definition. Between the wars two noteworthy studies of the Napoleonic Legend appeared: Jules Dechamps’
Sur la l£gende napolgonienne (1931) and Jean Charpentier’s
Napoleon et les hommes de lettres de son temps (1935)» which almost ignore Beranger or gloss over him with remarks suggesting his unquestioned and unquestioning support of the cause. Jean Lucas-Dubreton, a prolific writer on the period in question, published in 1934 a biography entitled Beranger which, although devoid of any semblance of documentation, tended to refine earlier absolute judgments on Beranger’s role as propagator of the
Legend, although the usual commonplaces were still to be found therein.
Scholarship since the 1930*s has added greatly to the body of documents and information relating to the questions to be examined here. First of all, the number of new books on Napoleon and the Empire is nothing short of amazing. To attempt even a partial inventory of important sources of information on the fortunes of
Napoleon in literature alone would be far beyond the scope 23 of this study. Jacques Bainville, in his Napoldon of
1930» lists over 200,000 bibliographical entries and
10,000 books, of which he considers over 500 "essential, reading." The production of new titles has accelerated in the forty-four years since those figures were offered.
With so many avid Napoleon scholars constahtly researching in^dits and bringing new facts to light, one could expect certain revisions in viewpoint to be inevitable.
Of capital importance to any study of Napoleon in literature are books such as Lucas-DubretonTs Le Culte de Napoleon. 1815-1#48 (1960) and Maurice Descotes1
La lSgende de Napoleon et les Scrivains francais du XIXe si&cle (1967); the latter ignores B&ranger completely, which is unfortunate for our purposes, but the former does speak to the issue, at least long enough to repeat commonplaces concerning B6ranger*s unwavering support of the Legend. The most recent study is the excellent book by Touchard, which will necessarily constitute a basic source of information for this dissertation. Any study of Beranger should at least mention Pierre BronchonTs
La Chanson francaise. Beranger et son temps (1956), although for the purposes of our topic the book*s usefulness is severely hampered by its strong ideol ogical (Marxist) bias and its overriding concern with social questions irrelevant to the literary topic in question. Berangerfs fall from favor and assimilation into
the Napoleonic Legend as a mere footnote are unfortunate
because they obscure one of his greatest contributions.
As a lyrical poet in the fullest sense of the term,
he attempted to develop a new poetic genre, that of the
nseriousw song, which would rise above the traditional
preoccupation with erotic and drinking themes or malicious,
bitter satire in order to treat in an artistic and highly
individual manner more elevated themes, although often
remaining satirical in tone. Beranger took a native
vein of French wit and humor, the tradition of the
esprit gaulois. and tried to poeticize it in song.
The genre did not die out, as numerous living examples
in modern France attest. Beranger has been compared to
Jacques Brel, Georges Moustaki and Georges Brassens,
among others. Whatever else he may have done— propa
gating the Napoleonic Legend, castigating governments and individuals, publicizing humanitarian social concerns, acting as a tempering foil to the flamboyant side of the
Romantic school, counseling young aspiring writers, leaving his own songs as documents of his era— what ever may be his other accomplishments, Beranger, who is today so little known, did leave an indelible mark on the letters and thought of his day. Touchard comments on what he terms ttle cas BGranger1*:
• . • ce peu sSduisant personnage a b£n6fici6 pendant un demi-si&cle d fune gloire sans 6gale. 25
II a 6t6 traitg comme un vrai po3te par les plus grands Scrivains de son temps et plusieurs d'entre eux se sont liSs avec lui d'une Stroite amitiS. La critique 3 peu pr3s unanime a vu en lui le npoete national,” le po&te franqais par excellence. Peu d ’Scrivains ont StS plus admirSs et plus souvent traduits 3 1*Stranger. D Tautre part, 3 une Spoque ou les ouvrages impriraSs ne touchaient quTun public rSduit et ou les journaux n favaient qu fun faible tirage, la France entiSre a chantS les chansons de BSranger; son oeuvre a connu non seulement dans toutes les rSgions, mais dans tous les milieux, y corapris les plus populaires, une diffusion sans prScSdent • . • L'historien qui s fintSresse aux mouvements d'opinion publique n*a pas souvent 1 'occasion d'Studier un phSnomSne comparable . . . ce que les marxistes appellent 1'idSologie d ’une sociStS . . . il est rarissime de rencontrer un phSnomSne assez durable et assez caractSristique pour servir de rSactif ou de rSvSlateur au sens chimique du terme, 3 une sociStS tout enti3re pendant un demi-si3cle.
Certainly a man who knew and interacted, to varying degrees, with Chateaubriand, Hugo, Lamartine, Lamennais,
Michelet, Thiers, Stendhal, and George Sand, among others, could not have helped leaving a mark on his century.
Approach and methodology
Touchard begins his study of the po3te national with a resolve to accept Beranger for what he was in his day as well as what he has become. It is in this same spirit of open inquiry, and following paths of investigation suggested by Touchard, that the present
fOjean Touchard, La Gloire de BSranger (Paris: Colin, 196&), vol. I, pp. 6-7. 26
writer will attempt a new examination of B6rangerfs
songs in both their musical and literary context, concen
trating his attention on those songs dealing directly
with Napoleon and Bonapartism, in an effort to demonstrate
their importance to their age, both as works represen
tative of a legitimate literary genre which B&ranger
believed he had established, and as popular manifestations
of the protean phenomenon known as the Napoleonic Legend.
Previous scholarly works, such as those cited above,
must of necessity form the basis of such a study, but
at this point Beranger has perhaps been "overstudied"
from the vantage point of the mute printed page. A
reexamination of the songs, as such, pursuing close
textual analysis and study of variants and chronological
evolution, yields considerable information and insight
when the works are studied as "musical poetry," text
and music recombined as one.
The present dissertation will attempt, through
comparison, codrdination, and contrast of these two
major sources of information (scholarly works and
reconstitution of the songs as such), to throw new light
on the evolution of Bonapartism as a creative force in
Beranger1s art and thought and, conversely, the development
of his role as a creator and/or sustainer of the Napoleonic
Legend. Yet another aspect to be considered is Berangerfs attitude toward his own role as propagator of the Legend, 27 specifically to determine whether he was not immune to what has been called "Romantic irony" and whether his last Napoleonic songs did not in fact reflect a preoccupation or introspection of the poet regarding his own past role.
The dissertation, which will proceed both themat ically and chronologically, proposes to call into question three cliches or common assumptions concerning
Beranger:
1. that he was sympathetic to the Empires, by extension from the belief that he was an ardent Bonapartist
2. that he did not evolve in his attitude toward and/ or songs about Napoleon
3. that he shaped the Legend, rather than reacting to it or capitalizing on its power over the popular imagination.
Chapter One will retrace the development of the
Napoleonic Legend in an effort to permit an accurate determination of BIrangerTs place within it, and will also define Bonapartism in such a manner as to allow us to determine whether or not the songs and other writings of Beranger would permit classifying him as a Bonapartist in the proper sense.
Chapter Two will retrace the history of the political and satirical chanson as a genre in French letters down to the era of Napoleon, concentrating specifically on those types of song which culminated in the genre of the
Caveau. Next we will study in a general overview 2d
Berangerfs place within this genre and comment on the
"art" of his songs. This chapter will be correlated with a cassette tape of the Napoleonic songs played on a period instrument and sung by the present writer.
This tape is appended to the dissertation*
In Chapter Three Bdranger^ "formation" period will be examined, down to the end of the Empire, with special attention to the early attempts at literature, the patronage of Lucien, the collection of 1315, and
Beranger1s initial reactions to Napoleon and the First
Empire.
The fourth chapter, entitled "Between the two
Napoleons," will treat the productive period or maturity of Beranger, from 1315 to 1343. During the Restoration
Bdranger published three recueils. served both of his terms in prison, and molded the reputation of pofete napolgonien which was to be his for all time. He also became a political "opposition poet" during the Restor ation, which was followed in 1330 by the July Monarchy,
Beranger*s apogee period, and also, pardoxically, his retirement.
Chapter Five will examine Beranger*s relationship with the events of 1343 and 1351 and the subsequent
Second Empire, his insistence on remaining "above the ra£l6e," his alienation from politics, and his fall from favor, culminating in his death and state funeral. 29
The sixth and final chapter will discuss BerangerTs posthumous fortunes and, finally Beranger in retrospect, from the vantage point of a student of literature over a century later*
Such a study is undertaken with full awareness of the difficulties to be encountered, but it is hoped that the work will be its own reward. No one could be more aware of the pitfalls than Touchard, who comments:
Une etude de cette nature, qui se situe aux fronti^res de la litterature, petite et grande, de l ’histoire politique, de l ’histoire des id£es, de celle des mentalites et de la sociologie retrospective, tout en faisant parfois appel & l ’histoire de l ’art et & la litterature comparde, doit aborder beaucoup de probl&mes et ne peut en approfondir aucun. C ’est 1?inconvenient des ouvrages qui font appel & diverses disciplines, mais c ’est precisement la que reside leur inter§t, sinon peut-Stre pour celui qui les lit, surement pour celui qui les fait.^*
^Touchard, La Gloire de Beranger, vol. I, p. 13* CHAPTER ONE
THE NAPOLEONIC LEGEND AND BONAPARTISM
J ’ai refermE le gouffre anarchique et dEbrouillE le chaos* J*ai dessouillE la Revolution, ennobli les peuples et raffermi les rois. J*ai excite toutes les Emulations, rEcompensE tous les mErites et reculE les limites de la gloire. — Napoleon, MEmorial de Sainte HElEne
The backEround and formation of the Legend
A recent survey by the Institut franqais d 1opinion
publique (April 3, 1969) reported that 35$ of the French
still consider Napoleon Bonaparte ttle personnage le plus
important de notre histoire,n whereas Louis XIV and
Jeanne d fArc were cited by only 5$ of those polled. Louis
Pasteur garnered a mere 3$. This disproportion becomes
all the more interesting when one notes that £$ of those
polled were unaware that the France of Louis XVIII was
smaller than the France of Louis XVI; that is, £$ of the French continue to believe that Napoleon increased
French territory.1 One must conclude that the Napoleonic
Legend is alive and well, and that a dissertation dealing with it is not wasted on a ndeadn topic.
i AndrE Soubiran. Napoleon et un million de morts (Paris: Kent-Segep, 1969), p. 10. "”~
30 The origins of this Legend can be traced back to
Napoleon himself; finding himself a pretender to his
own throne on Saint Helena, he consciously set about
retouching his image for posterity, painting himself
as a misunderstood idealist whose liberal plans for
France and Europe had been ruined by a cruel fate. Le
Memorial de Sainte H&Lfene. a record of the conversations
and musings of the exiled Emperor by the Marquis Las
Cases, was an instant "best seller" and exercised immea
surable influence on the Romantic generation,2 Full
of pithy anecdotes and idealized reminiscences, and
emphasizing the innocent martyrdom of a Great Man at
the hands of Perfidious Albion, it was sure to become
a popular classic in the aftermath of one of the most
awesome upheavals in memory. The effect of such a book
was to rehumanize "the Emperor" back to "Napoleon,"
no longer the invincible Ubermensch. but onee more "one
of us," a man with a vision who had tragically overstepped
the bounds; betrayed by the forces of reaction, this
Prometheus now lay chained to a desolate rock. Such a
theme was ideally suited to the reading public of the
Romantic era.
^See especially Louis Rozelaar, "Le Memorial de Sainte H61fene et le Romantisme," Revue des Etudes NapolSoniennes 29 (Oct., 1929): 263. At the time of Beranger, Napoleon was viewed by many as the Son of the Revolution, the great consolidator and codifier of the cherished gains wrested at such great cost from the ancien regime, the champion of patriotic liberalism who had suppressed feudalism and its privileges and rid France of those who hated Liberty, Equality, and
Fraternity. The brief period of "peace with honor1* brought about by Bonaparte in 1£01-02 had brought him instant popularity, and in the Memorial he was very careful to present himself as a peace-loving man of action regretfully forced to resort to warfare, after having exhausted every possible alternative, by the English, the Amigr^s. and the traitorous elements who were ulti mately to blame for all the bloodshed. Had he been victorious in 1S12 and 1£14-1#15, Napoleon, or so he said from Saint Helena, would have been able to abolish the more despotic and dictatorial aspects of his system and make of the Empire a grand Reign of Liberalism, a unified Europe (the dream of "the Golden Age shot from the cannonfs mouth**), if only envious and treacherous enemies of his dream had not betrayed it by forcing continued warfare. In brief, he had been forced to conquer Europe in self defense and in defense of his dream for mankind. 33
Napoleon had always been convinced that what France
really wanted was glory and honor more than freedom, and
that in bestowing the code and other revolutionary reforms
on their "allies" while heaping laurels on themselves, the
French would be willing to overlook a few limitations on
their liberty; equality under universal law was worth
some sacrifice of its inferior terms in the revolutionary
trilogy, liberty and fraternity, which could await the
consolidation of the Pax Napoleonica. Once Napoleon was
victorious, there would have been a United States of
Europe, a confederation of free peoples under enlightened
leadership from Paris, Napoleon did not seem to see any
inconsistency in overlaying this dream with a thick
veneer of military glory. He insisted to the end that
everything he had done was done for the glory of France;
he had picked up her crown from the gutter, and he had
wanted her to follow him to the stars. Even though
he had failed, his last wish was to be entombed wsur les
bords de la Seine, au milieu de ce peuple frangais que
j'ai tant aim6." In death as in life, Napoleon himself was thus the fountainhead of the Napoleonic Legend, Once
he was gone it was easy to forget the sufferings of war
and the lack of freedom3 and to idealize and enshrine the
3see, for example, the graphic description of the negative side, "l»envers de l'dpop^e," in Jean Robiquet, La Vie quotidienne au temps de Napoleon (Paris: Hachette, 191*35'), 34
memories of glory, to praise the pofete de 1 'action
(a term used by Chateaubriand and Elie Faure, often paired
with Barrfcs's characterization of Napoleon as the
professeur de 1*gnergie). the harbinger of the New Age,
the commoner who had risen to dizzying heights by dint
of sheer will and energy and who bade men and nations to
do the same. Napoleon himself was the incarnation of the
idea of advancement by merit and ambition, not birth or
status; under his reign equality had meant equality of
opportunity and the opening of all careers to merit and
competence alone. He was, for example, popularly quoted as having declared, "Chaque soldat a dans sa giberne
son bSton de mar6chal."4
Caught up in this dynamic conception which was to become the Nietzschean spirit, the Zeitgeist, were Balzac and Chateaubriand, Stendhal and Michelet, Thiers and Hugo.
"The boundless yearning of the poets," wrote Albert
Gudrard, "is but the negative aspect of the Will to Power unappeased. And the Will to Power, which was to find supreme literary expression in Nietzsche, had already found its most complete realization in Bonaparte."5 The Legend
^Jean Mistier, ed., Napol4on et 1 ♦Empire (Paris: Hachette, 1963) vol. II, p. 3lb.
5Albert Gu6rard, Reflections on the Napoleonic Legend (New York: Scribner, 1#i4j, p. 177. was based on memories of restless energy and great deeds; one of the main fibers in the muscle of Romanticism was this "force qui va" which caused Julien Sorel to consider the Memorial an "object of ecstatic admiration." Signifi cantly, Robiquet cites two key elements in society responsible for keeping alive the Legend: "l*arm6e qu’il a faite si grande et la jeunesse qu’il a nourrie de sa gloire."^ One recalls Vigny’s attack on s^idisme in
Servitude et Grandeur Militaires. The influence of the growing Legend on youthful hero worshipers, and their subsequent contribution and devotion to it, would account in no small measure for the rapid growth of both the
Napoleonic Legend and Romanticism. The frequent use of pen-sword terminology by the young Romantic authors is very revealing. Much of this youthful idealism was shattered by their encounters with the powers reestablished by the Restoration, and boredom was bound to set in, along with a perplexed sense of powerlessness in the imposed calm that followed a quarter century of tumult. Musset’s
Confession d ’un Enfant du Sifecle expressed well the emotional state of his generation "begotten between two battles," obsessed in its imagination with David’s figure of Napoleon crossing the Alps, and bored with the present: feelings of admiration, pity, reverence for fallen glory, even nostalgia listening to demi-soldes retelling the
^Robiquet, La Vieqqotidienne. p. 280. 36
"Gospel According to Saint Helena" to respectful peasants,
most of whom harbored framed images of the Emperor under
their thatched roofs. The tale was one of miracles;
Napoleon’s mother had dedicated him to God so that he
might restore religion to France; he was therefore invul nerable and destined to victory. The Egyptian venture was a return to the Holy Land, and the identification of
Napoleon with Jesus Christ (encouraged by the exiled
Emperor himself) led to frequently-discussed parallels between, for example, the Code Civil and the New Testament, the visit to the plague victims at Jaffa and Christ’s healing miracles, Prince Eugene and Saint John, perse
cution at the hands of the English and of the Jews, Elba and the Garden of Gethsemane, Saint Helena and Golgotha, and the death bed scene and the consummatum est.
Curious iconographic images of a haloed "Saint
Napoldon" bearing a banner replete with the ancient
Christian symbols were common, and Dechamps cites some rather disturbing examples, located by modern scholars, of what must be termed sacrilegious idolatry, a
Napoleonic Pater, Ave and Credo:
Notre Pdre Napoleon, Empereur des Fran<;ais, qui Stes A Paris, que votre nom soit sanctifiS, dans notre pays galicien comme il l ’est dans les pays allemands et prussiens . . .
Je vous salue, France, pleine de graces, Napoleon est avec vous et le fruit de vos 37
entrailles est b6ni', Napoleon, le lib^rateur du peuple polonais • • .7
Napoleon compared his fate to Christ*s, and with success, for the idea took root. The idea of martyrdom on Saint Helena harmonized with the image of a deified son of the people who had attempted to lead humanity to the light, who was defeated by the forces of darkness, crucified and buried in a nameless place, but who was to rise again when the time was ripe in the person of his dynastic successor. It was not uncommon to hear
Napoleon referred to as "le Christ de la Gloire."
Such naive popular traditions were contemporary to the images d*Epinal. which were immensely popular woodcut engravings depicting memorable, yet "human," moments in the great epic. These represented the facile side of the Legend, all the elements capable of mesmer izing people unused to critical evaluation of oral tradition. Their appeal was to hero worship, the craving for the miraculous, chauvinistic nationalism, religious feeling, and republican and anti-aristocratic tendencies: a "heady mixture," says Geyl,^ of elements that were often incompatible. Indeed, the entire Legend
?cited by Jules Dechamps„■ Sur la lggende de Napoleon (Paris: Champion, 1931), p, 70.
^Pieter Geyl, Napoleon: for and against (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1949), p. 26, is an amalgamation of loyalties and feelings, often
contradictory, loosely bound by a vague nostalgia for
an idealized memory. One finds the same baroque mixture
of disparate elements in the contemporary coalition
party which Lucas-Dubreton terms le libdrobonapartisme.
Bonapartism and the Legend resemble one another in their
patchwork nature; they are incoherent in goals and
ideologies, yet unified in sentiment. This situation
makes the identification of a writer as a "literary
Bonapartist" and/or propagator of the Legend somewhat
difficult, unless one is willing to accept as absolute
criteria the presence, or absence in the writerfs works of
. . . pity for the hero’s personal fate, dislike for cold-blooded England, unregenerate pleasure in military power, and at the same time an attempt to give spiritual life to the great struggle by linking it to the spread of French thought all over Europe, to liberty, to world peace, so that the spectacle of the catastrophe may be lifted onto a high plane.9
We shall return to this list of criteria when we define
Bonapartism at the end of this chapter.
The development of the Legend
The well-known Napoleon scholar J. Christopher
Herold, in speaking of the Legend, has written that
"history experienced and history remembered are two very different things," and cites Bonaparte’s own observation to Moreau in 1B00 that "greatness has its
t ' i 4 ^Ibid., p. 30. 39
beauties, but only in retrospect and in the imagination.”^®
The tendency of human memory and imagination to embellish
and idealize the past, forgetting its darker side, is
at the very root of the Napoleonic Legend, along with the
seed deliberately planted by the dying Napoleon in the
Memorial de Sainte Hdlfene. That seed took deep root
among the people and bore fruit quickly in the form of
a popular tendency to associate all the glory and
achievements of the Revolution and Empire with one person, i Napoleon, and to see recent history as subsumed in him.
The people took the Legend suggested by its molder and
gave it form. As Gonnard sums up the situation:
Que 1 ’opinion ait enfld l ’iraportance des victoires napol£oniennes, qu’elle ait vu dans cette dpoque un homme^ et nlglig£ ses aides ou ses instruments, il y a la une simplification populaire inevitable, mais opdrant dans le sens du vraij les masses, qui ne peuvent garder tous les noms, ont garde le plus digne de memoire; le peuple, qui ne fait pas de statistique, a retenu une impression vraie de succ£s demesures,--suivis de revers ecrasants: le peuple, en cela, a resume, il n*a pas cree la 16gende.1i
Veterans of the Grande Armde recounting stories of
glory and greatness to their grandchildren probably did more in the short run to spread the Legend than their learned counterparts who formally institutionalized for all time the exuberance of a memory larger than life,
^Oj. Christopher Herold, The' Age of Napoleon (New York: American Heritage, 1963), p. 392,
Philippe Gonnard, Les Origines_de la Ldgende Napoldonienne (Paris: Calmann-!Ldvy, 19U0J, p. 2. 40 men such as Thiers and Michelet, not to mention the literary influence of a Hugo. From nogren to wthe greatest man of modern times,” the transformation of
Napoleon was both learned and popular. If the scholarly aspect has served— albeit in a negative sense, for scholarship has done mueh more to debunk the Legend than to preserve it— to sustain interest in the Legend, the popular element was the more important in Beranger*s era and is more germane to this dissertation, for it was to the people that Beranger addressed his treatment of the Legend, and it was the people who were to link him forever to it. The very mention of Napoleon evoked in the popular mind the strains of Les Souvenirs du
Peuple with its refrain ”Parlez-nous de Lui, Grandfmdre.n
Also responsible for propagating the Legend was the demi-solde immortalized by Balzac. Jean Lucas-
Dubreton, author of numerous studies on the Legend, has described the situation in the early days of glory remembered:
II n*est guere de village, de hameau en France, qui ne rec&le un on plusieurs v£t6rans . . . officiers et soldats se rassemblent pour rappeler, confronter leurs souvenirs . . . Ainsi se forme a travers les provinces une multitude de petits clans, de cellules— de futurs nids de conspiration — ou la flamme napoldonienne reste toujours vive, oil les z61ateurs du culte se confirment dans leur foi— et dans leur hostility aux Bourbons cou- pables d favoir attir£ l fennemi en France et d'etre rentr^s dans ses fourgons: & cela se borne leur conception politique. On les £coute et parfois on les approuve . . .12
Les anciens soldats, les grognards rentr€s sage- ment chez eux . . . sont les chroniqueurs non lit- tdraires de la grande 6pop6e et maintiennent vivant dans le pays le nora de celui qui a sauvegard6 l'essentiel de la Revolution: suppression des privileges, 4galit6 devant la loi. Le despotisme, la conscription impitoyable, le sang verse s ’oublient une ferveur, une esperance mystique naissent . . .13
The result of this insemination of the peopled
memory with images of the "field of glory" which they
could not have seen first-hand, but which they visited
through the tales of those who had been there, was the
birth of a new respect for the popular element in the
Epic, a glorification of the deeds of the brave ordinary
soldier without whom the great Emperor could not have
ruled. Napoleon himself had carefully cultivated the
loyalty of the rank and file and his image as a simple
soldier in plain uniform, one of the men, sharing their
common hardships. In spite of the increasing tendency noted above to deify the Emperor and credit all national achievements to him, there began to grow an opposing, but related, tendency to view him primarily as the "son of the people" who had risen from the ranks. The
12jean Lucas-Dubreton, Soldats de Napoleon (Paris: Flammarion, 194#), p. 314.
^Idera, La France de Napoleon (Paris: Hachette. 1947), p. 291. 42
iconographies of the Empire and its aftermath are literally
full of popular engravings and humble images representing
the Emperor sharing drinks, snuff, and words of encour
agement with privates, old crones, and other mortals,
Napoleon sought to reinforce this association during the
Hundred Days, Benjamin Constant, in recounting an
interview with the Emperor at the Tuileries shortly after
the return from Elba, quoted Napoleon as having said
to him:
. . • Je ne suis pas seulement, comme on l ’a dit, l ’Empereur des soldats, je suis celui des paysans, des pl^bdiens, de la France. Aussi, malgrd tout le pass£, vous voyez le peuple revenir £i moi: il y a de la syjnpathie entre nous . . . la fibre populaire r^pond A la mienne. Je suis sorti des rangs du peuple, ma voix agit sur lui,^4
Gonnard presents a melange of similar statements attributed to the Emperor:
Mon ambition £tait grande, je l favoue, mais elle reposait sur l fopinion des masses . . . On ne fait de grandes choses en France qu’en s ’appuyant sur les masses. . . . Moi, je me suis appuyd sur tout le monde sans exception; j fai donn£ le premier exemple d Tun gouvernement qui favorise les interSts de tous . . . j Tai gouverne pour toute la commu- naut£, pour toute la grande famille franqaise . . . j fai toujours pensd que la souverainet£ reside dans le peuple . . . Le gouvernement imperial 6tait une sorte de rSpublique . . . Je suis l^omme du peuple, je sors du peuple moi-m§rae.'5
^Cited by Jean Charpentier, Napoldon et les hommes de lettres de son temps (Paris: Mercure de France, 1935), PP. 249-250.
^Gonnard, Qrigines de la Lggende. p. 197. 43
Alongside the popular image was the literary
Napoleon as seen by poets and novelists. While this study cannot pretend to undertake a review of literary images of the Emperor, as it is not the purpose here to explore what has already been done by Chass£, Charpentier,
Descotes, and many others, it can be observed that the
Legend overcame opposition from most intellectuals and writers (nparmi les 6crivains,n observes Chass£, ttl♦Empereur comptait sans doute plus d ’ennemis que d ’admirateurs sinc£resn )l6 largely because the Romantic school found in
Napoleon ample material supremely suited to its thematic needs for a Man of Destiny, a hero bigger than life, thus further developing the growing Legend, nurturing it as it was itself nurtured by it.
Just as Napoleon had cultivated the popular side of his Legend, he also attempted to foster its literary aspect by encouraging and even commanding propagandistic poetic and musical productions. It was general knowledge that the Emperor rewarded suitably flattering productions, while punishing unacceptable ones. There are accounts of the fate of at least one hapless poet who had dared to rhyme Napoldon and cam616on: he was rewarded with a life sentence at Charenton.
^Charles Chass6, Napoleon par les £crivains (Paris: Hachette, 1921), p. vii. 44
As F. G. Healey has put it so wbll:
Napoleon’s view of the poet’s function was to celebrate the great feats of French arms and the most glorious epochs of French history. The epic was to have been their true domain and they were to work in close harness with the historian, history and literature together being the instruments for arousing national feeling and extolling the Emperor . . . Literature, as he once said, came under the aegis of the Minister of the Interior. The government, which effectively was Napoleon, decreed that it should produce works in accepted genres, on subjects chosen by Napoleon, for the greater glory of Imperial France . . . Napoleon did not so much stifle literature by oppression as smother it by official encouragement, coupled with attempted regimentation . . .'7
Jules Romains has summarized this attitude:
La science, l ’art, la litt£rature, il en fait certes le plus grand cas, mais il les traite un peu comme des services auxiliaires de l'arm£e. Les savants tendent a trouver leur place dans les troupes du gdnie; les £crivains, du c8t£ des fanfares.■°
It was against this literary background that
B&ranger made his d£but. Much of his work and style can be viewed as a reaction to regimentation, particularly since his formative milieu was that of singing clubs and political circles.
Since the first days of the Restoration, such societies had kept alive patriotic fervor and memories of glory; among their more notable representatives
17f . G. Healey, The Literary Culture of Napoleon (Paris: Minard, 1959), p. 148.
1Alules Romains et al., Napoldon (Paris: Hachette. 1961), p. 294. 45 were the Caveau and a smaller circle called "les Enfants de la Gloire." These groups published their litanies and repertories of songs to be passed around, and one can readily visualize such "centers of sedition" becoming the rallying points for those who wanted to remember the glories of the past. From such groups came many of the elements of the Legend and many a song celebrating it.
The politics of Libero-Bonapartism
The political underpinnings of all this nostalgic loyalty to a ghost regime are somewhat difficult to define with any degree of precision, but the confused and often contradictory aims which went to make up the agglom eration termed le libSrobonapartisme can perhaps best be schematized as Lucas-Dubreton does when he speaks of la comddie lib^rale. "une coalition baroque de bourgeois antibourboniens, r^publicains caraoufles, et bonapartistes"1 9 which operated under the omnibus label of "liberal party" and engineered the revolution of 1330. The catalyst which permitted such unlike elements to mix at all was, in the last analysis, opposition to a common enemy: the
Bourbons and the "foreigners" who had brought them back over French corpses. Thus patriotism and revanchisme. the principles of *39 and those of Bonapartism all tended
1‘9jean Lucas-Dubreton. Le Culte de Napoldon 1315- 1343 (Paris: Albin-Michel, 195"0), p. 133. ------to merge under a common tricolor. The Empire was increas
ingly seen as the final phase of the Revolution, its
culmination, and Napoleon as a r6publicain autoritaire
rather than a despot.
The differing goals of the three factions— a consti
tutional monarchy under the due d 1Orleans, a return to the
regime of 1791, and a Second Empire— made for a neces
sarily vague program of action, but their union in one
cause, that of patriotism, sufficed to earn them the
popular sympathy, a situation which Lucas-Dubreton sees
as the beginning of democratic compromise in France.
No less disparate were the party leaders: Lafayette,
a changeable anti-Bonapartist accused of deraagoguery;
the lawyer Manuel, who believed France too large to be
a republic and preached a monarchy without Bourbons, and
who hated Napoleon but was a Bonapartist; and Jacques
Laffitte, a banker and socialite reputed to have the
Emperor1s fortune stowed away waiting for a revival of
"the cause." If ever there was a party offering something
for everyone, such was the liberal party in France after
1815. Its broad base of power was its strength, and
pamphlets, popular poetry and songs its weapons. It
needed a rallying image, a symbolic focus of loyalty, and
since display of the tricolor was out of the question
(as B6ranger was to discover when the government prosecuted him for Le Vieux Drapeau). the external manifestations 47 of unity centered around the Napoleonic Legend, and numerous references to former glories sometimes suggested a considerably deeper Bonapartist sentiment thafa was probably intended, which made for a fagade of Napoleonic trappings with little formal Bonapartism behind them.
One tends therefore to overestimate the strength of the
Bonapartists’ following and to assume wrongly that the liberal party was thoroughly imbued with doctrinary, political Bonapartism. Put another way, the problem is to determine what proportion of sentiment in the liberal party was truly Bonapartist, and what proportion was only
"liberal" and loosely grouped with Bonapartism for convenience and for the sake of unity, but not sympathetic to its doctrines. Put bluntly, how many liberals who made a show of Bonapartism would have been willing to commit themselves to a second 13 Brumaire?
The test came on April 6, 1323. During the "second invasion of Spain," Bonapartist partisans joined the
French army moving south, and attempted to incite the troops to turn back and march on Paris. The agitators were fired upon and routed. It was duly noted in official reports that there were found on the prisoners "beaucoup de chansons de ce temps-lil," one of the first indications of a measurable effect of Bonapartist songs and propaganda on a course of action. The manifestation had been short lived, however. This defeat was a severe set-back for the 43. party, now discredited in the eyes of moderates and lacking military support.
Accordingly, the liberal campaign subsided briefly, at least until December 2, 1824, when a royal ordonnance
"retired” fifty-six lieutenant generals and eleven mardchaux de camp, most of them veterans of the Empire, and replaced them with inexperienced young officers of demonstrated royalist sentiment. General Foy, who styled himself ”le dernier soldat du carre libdral,” fulminated against such an atrocity (committed, of all days, on the anniversary of the coronation of Napoleon and the battle of Austerlitz), provoking widespread reaction with his cry ”C fest un coup de canon dchappd de Waterloo qui arrive au but dix ans apr&s la bataille!”
The old struggle revived, with Bdranger again at the head of the column. His recueil of 1825 literally flared with some of his most memorable and widely-acclaimed Napoleonic songs: Waterloo. Les Deux Grenadiers. Les Souvenirs du
Peuple. and Le Vieux Drapeau. It is not without signif icance that Lamartine chose to refer to Bdranger at this time as ”l*homme nation.”
Reverence for the memory of Napoleon often approached fanaticism. Maxime de Camp told of hearing a generalTs son sing Le Vieux Caporal after a family dinner and watching in amazement as
Mes oncles reprenaient le refrain en choeur; 5 un dernier couplet on me poussa violemment: 49
WA genoux, petit, c ’est un chant sacr6” . . . on levait les bras au ciel comrae si cette pauvre po£sie eut sonnd l ’heure de ddlivrance . . ,20
In the boulevard theaters there began to appear a series of Napoleonic plays, and Scribe’s developing repertory of vieux grognard types reflected the contem porary vogue of alluding to imperial glories. A flood of memoirs concerning the private life of Napoleon stirred renewed interest: Montholon, Gourgaud, S§gur,
O ’Meara, Antommarchi, Las Cases, Savary, Bourrienne, etc.— everyone was ’’getting into the act.” The glories of the past were being absorbed into the sentiments of the present, as witnessed the common dictum: nDe
Napoleon il n ’est restd que sa gloire, qui est la patri- moine de tous.n2^
Accompanying this resurgence of interest in
Napoleon and the Emperor was a renewed political fervor among revanchistes who took up the line from Beranger’s
Vieux Sergent— nLe Rhin seul peut retremper nos armes”
— and began to speak of reclaiming ”natural” borders.
The climate was becoming very favorable to revolutionary talk; Bonapartist clubs were known to foment insurrections, especially after 1&27. Once more, patriotism began to
20 Maxime du Camp, Souvenirs litt^raires I, pp. 23-25, cited by Lucas-Dubreton. Le Culte de Napoleon, p. 239.
^^Lucas-Dubreton, Le Culte de Napoleon, p. 249. 50
support a resurgence of a Bonapartist mystique:
Cle bonapartisme) a repris toute sa vigueur; mais il ne constitue pas un parti, il represente seule- ment une somme de croyances, de souvenirs, de traditions et d*espoirs: une mystique. Ce n Test pas une force organisee.22
Lucas-Dubreton points out that Stendhal recorded
the progress of the revolution of 1&30 in the margins of
his copy of the Memorial de Sainte Hdlfene. observing
that the events appeared to be "la revanche de 1815."
Such was to be the feeling of many, that they were
engaging in a restoration by force of French grandeur
and glory, reconquering liberty and dignity. To be sure,
there were numerous Bonapartist slogans shouted in the
streets during the fighting, and the very sights and
sounds of street fighting were certain to evoke spoken
and unspoken comparisons with former battles for French
ideals, but Lucas-Dubreton sees only a veneer of Bonapartism,
"une foule d ’admirateurs et pas un partisan." Bonapartism
had not yet ripened, and 1&30 was not to be its year.
Whatever plans the Bonapartists may have had to bring to power one of their own in 1B30 quickly failed;
even Bdranger proclaimed "Je suis bonapartiste comme le peuple, mais nullement imperialist . . . Napoleon II, c'etait la guerre inevitable, generale." The royalists saw in Bonapartist pretentions "une puissance tout ideale.
22Ibid., p. 270. 51 On ne gouverne pas avec si peu d ’^lgments."2-^ Nonetheless,
Louis-Philippe decided to be nKing of the French," not
"King of France," and his ceremony of recognition in the
Chambre seemed strangely reminiscent of another time.
Under the old tricolor, the king received his crown from
ex-marshal Macdonald, his sceptre from Oudinot, his glaive from Mortier, and the main de .justice from Molitor.
Except for Oudinot, none of these former Mardchaux de
1 TEmpire could be called anti-Bonapartist. Moreover, there seems to have been considerable public confusion over terms, and few understood the establishment of a constitutional monarchy immediately after the violent overthrow of another monarchy based on divine right. Many were heard to ask in the streets (Lucas-Dubreton’s words)
"Vous allez faire un roi, pourquoi pas un empereur? Nous aimerions autant crier vive 1 TEmpereur que vive le Roi!"
Unsure of which faction on which to base his power, the new king restored numerous veterans to the army in order to appease the Bonapartists.
The return to favor
Like the Restoration, the July Monarchy became a boring period conspicuously lacking the glamor and panache of the Empire, so it sought to boost its popularity— and, no doubt, to take the wind from the sails of
23lbid., p. 279. Bonapartism— by allying itself with the national memory.
Louis-Philippe restored Napoleonfs statue to the Vendome
Column (1333), finished the Arc de Triomphe de l ’Etoile
(1336), struck medals commemorating the Empire, made the museum at Versailles into a gallery of Napoleonic battle paintings dedicated "A toutes les gloires de la France," and, perhaps most importantly, arranged for the return to
French soil, in 1340, of the Emperor’s body. The magic name of Napoleon was again heard in parliamentary chambers.
Victor Hugo, for example, is remembered for his attempt to brighten a tiring session with the famous "Tenez, parlons un peu de l 1Empereur, cela nous fera du bien."
Hugo perceived the full significance of the type of statue replaced on the Vend6me Column he celebrated; no longer a toga-clad Emperor, the new Napoleon was clearly the Son of the Revolution in his plain hat and greatcoat. As 1336 had seen the completion of the Arc, it was also the year of the exposition of Horace Vernet’s battle paintings and the works of Charlet and Granville
(the latter mostly illustrations for the songs of B6ranger).
The year 1336 also saw Louis-NapolSon Bonaparte’s first attempted military coup at Strasbourg. The theatre was again literally swept by an epidemic of spectacular presentations featuring Napoleon or aspects of the Legend.
Bonapartism came back into the light of public exposure, and anti-Bonapartist statements were much rarer, in spite 53
of remarks such as Metternich's that Bonapartism without
Bonaparte made no sense. The bourgeois monarchy, which
had never truly consolidated a base of power around any
one faction, lacked real support from any party, and once
more the memory of a strong, efficient Napoleon who had
been able to govern decisively grew in appeal and tended
to merge with democratic ideals. A pamphlet of the day
put it succinctly: nLe bonapartisme n ’est pas mort, il
s*est fait rdpublicain.”
Contemporary ob.jets d !art of all levels of refinement frequently reveal, under scrutiny, the profile of the
Emperor and/or Duke of Reichstadt in the background.
Ubiquitous bibeloterie napoldonienne kept the imperial visage ever present: tableware, snuff boxes shaped like the petit chapeau, ink wells in the form of miniature copies of the tomb in the Invalides, cane handles and pipe bowls, wall plaques and pictures, even tricolor suspenders, everything bore the imprint, and the French became reaccustomed to the Napoleonic presence in their daily lives. The deification of Napoleon became more evident. Bellangd*s lithograph representing a peasant addressing his curd and pointing to a portrait of the
Emperor on the wall, with the caption: "Tenez, voyez-vous, monsieur le curd, pour moi le v*lcl le Pdre dternel” is reflected in BerangerTs Le Dieu des Bonnes Gens. Several modern writers have amused themselves with a "Sun God myth" 54 theme developed about this time, an elaborate demonstration that Napoleon -was a myth,^4 and one cannot resist thinking
of the popular Parisian tradition that the Sun of Auster- litz is visible every May 5 through the Arc de Triomphe de l ’Etoile.
Indeed, the Emperor was widely considered immortal among the peasantry. The news of his death in 1S21 had been received with widespread disbelief. B6ranger’s vieille in Les Souvenirs du Peuple echoes this attitude, as we shall see later. Rumors of Napoleon’s escape from Saint Helena were common, as were stories to the effect that he was "alive and well” in Persia or Africa, training armies of escaped slaves. In 1#23, two years after the Emperor’s death, Courier could still write,
”11 n ’y a pas un paysan dans nos campagnes qui ne dise que Bonaparte vit et q u ’il reviendra. Tous ne le croient pas, mais le d i s e n t . ”^5
Louis-Napoldon and after
Since the untimely death in 1&32 of the Aiglon. due de Reichstadt, King of Rome and intended Napoleon II,
24see especially Jean-Baptiste Per&s, ’’Grand Erratum. The Non-Existence of Napoleon Proved,” as reproduced in Henry R. Evans, The Napoleon Myth (Chicago: Open Court, 1905).
25Paul-Louis Courier, Questions contemporaines. 320, cited by Lucas-Dubreton. Le Culte de Napoleon, p. 466. 55 Louis-Napoldon Bonaparte had been the pretender to his
uncleTs throne. Freshly returned from a brief exile to
the United States after the failure of the attempted
coup at Strasbourg in 1^36, he published in 1S39 his
Des Id£es Napolgoniennes. a curious sequel to the
Memorial exaggerating his uncle’s socialistic ideas, and
whose theme was: ’’L’Empereur n ’est plus, mais son esprit
n ’est pas mort.” The book seems to be an appeal for
support from the growing radical socialist movement. It
did not produce any measurable response.
Sentenced to life imprisonment after a second
foolhardy attempt at a military coup in 1S40, this time
a fiasco at Boulogne, he returned to writing. L fExtinction
du pauperisme (1S44) was another socialist program of
action. In IB46 he walked away from prison unrecognized
and fled to England, whence he returned in 1 #4$ to seize
an opportunity (the revolution having opened the politi
cal arena) to run for president of the new republic.
Victor Hugo was quick to comment, wCe n ’est pas un prince
qui revient, c ’est une idde. Sa candidature date d ’Auster-
litz.11^ Despite disorganized Bonapartist support, he
got himself elected on a ”law and orderw platform. Three years later he repeated his uncle’s coup d ’dtat and was
crowned Napoleon III, the last Emperor of the French.
26cited by Mistier, Napoldon et 1 ’Empire, vol. II, p. 304. The Second Empire all but destroyed Bonapartism.
Mired down in Victorian respectability and indecision,
it tried unsuccessfully to merge its doctrines into
current social, political, and economic theories. The
result was a confused ideology of inconsistencies
further compromised by the problematic Crimean, Austrian,
and Mexican campaigns, all of which weakened public
confidence. The ignominious, blundering fall of the
Empire to Bismarck and the subsequent chaos in 1B71
sapped the power of the name Bonaparte. A humiliated
France stripped of two provinces and torn by civil war in
its capital wanted nothing further to do with military
dictators, as Boulangism was to demonstrate at the end
of the century. This sentiment is particularly evident
in Tainefs Les Origines de la France contemporaine.
where Napoleon is vilified and Napoleonic institutions and
the Legend are seen as debilitating, stultifying influ
ences largely to blame for Francefs decadence and downfall.
Those who remained faithful to the Bonaparte cause
and to the Legend, however, did not let the views of
Taine and his followers pass unchallenged. The ensuing
controversy brought about a turn-of-the-century revival
of interest in the Legend which has remained alive until today.
Although Bonapartism as a political system col lapsed at Sedan, the Second Empire, pardoxically, had 57 enhanced the Napoleonic Legend by giving it a permanent shape and glorifying it by contrast; to use Hugo's terms,
”Napol6on le Grand” was forever to appear greater in comparison with ”Napol6on le Petit.”
Moreover, Herold insists that a ”transmuted,” if debilitated, version of political Bonapaartism lived on in France during the Third Republic in the form of a widespread attitude
. . . characterized by its distrust of parliamentary procedure, its hatred of liberalism in any form, its contempt for democratic notions, its exaltation of glory, honor, and patriotism for their own sakes. Drawing its strength from the various groups of the extreme right, it repeatedly threatened to take over France during the first half of the present century, beginning with the Dreyfus Affair.^7
Building on dubious statements, Herold goes on to suggest that the Vichy regime was Bonapartist in character, then he mentions, although quite rightly dismissing them as facile, comparisons between Bonapartism and the Fifth
Republic, based on superficial aspects such as the use of plebiscites to sidestep parliament and to sanction strong measures, the insistence on a strong central authority figure, and tendencies to appeal to the nationTs historic consciousness. It should be noted here that none of these tendencies is unique to Bonapartism.
Herold concludes, as must we, that
• . . Bonapartism as such has become engulfed in the Tightest political ideologies of the twentieth
27Herold, The Age of Napoleon, p. 412. 5* century, to which it admittedly contributed a great deal.28
To summarize the fortunes of the Legend since Sedan,
one must point up three factors. First, scholarship and
historiography enshrined the Legend between 1#70 and
World War I, overusing the terms 11 glory” and "honor,”
which, Herold concludes, is "more characteristic of the
French bourgeoisie and the military class than of the
working class, which on the whole has rejected the memory
of Napoleon."29 This marks a noticeable shift away from
the traditional popular base of loyalty. Second, it is
still fashionable to praise Napoleon in certain circles,
but such praise today is largely a question of the speaker^
politics. Third, modern scholarship and the modern
intellectual current have taken a markedly anti-Napoleon
stance, and the Legend is probably in for an extended
period of critical reappraisal and debunking.
Bonapartism
B6ranger has been termed a "Bonapartist” who
allegedly adhered to the doctrines of "Bonapartism." In
order to define terms before labeling a writer a Bonapartist,
one must distinguish between emotional Bonapartism, which
is little more than a nostalgic enthusiasm for the memories of the Empire (the major cause and heart of the
Legend), and political Bonapartism in the proper sense of
2SIbid., p. 413. 29lbid. the term. In B6ranger*s time it was difficult to separate
the two, as Bonapartists were by nature ardent believers
in the Legend, and the first plank in the Bonapartists*
political platform was a fervent desire to realize the
Legend by restoring the Empire. Only in retrospect is
it truly possible to speak of a political and ideological
Bonapartism as distinct from an emotional "Bonapartism,”
i.e., the spiritual climate of reverence for a memory.
The following discussion will attempt to isolate the
doctrinary basis of Bonapartism from its popularized
context. True Bonapartists, committed to full military
and political restoration of the Empire, were rather rare.
Most people labeled "Bonapartists” were in reality only
dreamers. They were Bonapartists by opposition to the
Restoration, and members of the liberal party, with all
its Bonapartist rhetoric and imagery, not so much out
of any positive political conviction as out of hate and
fear of the Bourbons. They were not so much committed to
a doctrine as they were committed against one. Enamored,
to be sure, of glory and pageantry, they idealized the
past and paid patriotic homage to the creator of such
greatness. Although pitying the fate of a betrayed
leader and country, they would certainly not have wanted
to return to the despotic rule, bloodshed, and financial burdens, had it suddenly become possible to do so. Most
of these so-called "Bonapartists” were in fact nostalgic 60
for the simple tricolor of the Revolution and counted
the days of glory from July 14, 17&9 rather than from the
18 Brumaire or December 2, 1804. For them, Napoleon’s
greatness consisted in his being the son of a popular
revolution and the savior, codifier, and consolidator
of its greatest accomplishments; even among political
Bonapartists the revolutionary, common-man simplicity of
Napoleon was the dominant trait of his image— the petit
chapeau and redingote grise. not the laurel leaves and
ermine coronation robes. Most ’’Bonapartists11 would probably have more readily welcomed back the Consulate than the Empire.
Recognizing these difficulties in attempting to isolate a political stance from its larger emotional
context, the following discussion will nonetheless attempt to identify an ideological and doctrinary basis of Bonapartism.
"It is one of the commonplaces of history,” said
H. A. L. Fisher, "that the passion for equality is stronger in France than the love of liberty.” Having recently undergone a bloody Revolution and struggle to establish and maintain the principle of equality before the law, and in a sense being somewhat unaccustomed to liberty, the French who lived at the juncture of the
30h . A. L. Fisher, Bonapartism, six lectures delivered in the University of London (6xford: Clarendon. 1914), P. 11. eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were indeed in a position where such a preference could become under standable. Fear of anarchy and desire for peace and order must surely have been among the chief factors explaining the support they gave after the 18 Brumaire.
They were tired of indecisive government and eager to give their support to a man of energy and will who could get things done, even at the sacrifice of some personal liberties (indeed, they had seen in 1793 what happens when everyone is given too much liberty); above all, they were tired of corruption and intrigue. In sum, the French were ready for a government which would act responsibly and decisively, subject to their formal approval (they were not about to give up the concept of popular sovereignty), and which would govern not for any class or faction, but in the interests of the general welfare, rather like an enlightened despotism supported by a Rousseauistic General Will, an autocracy based on plebiscites, summed up in Si6y£sfs dictum, "confidence from below, power from above." Fisher concludes that
Napoleonic France was willing to support and revere her
Emperor because that is precisely what he gave her.
We may call the government of the Consulate and the Empire a tyranny if we please, but compared with the government which went before, it was a reign of freedom. It bridled the press, stamped out political debate, shook itself free from constitu tional checks, and here and there, when political interests were involved, harshly interfered with 62
the course of justice and freedom of the subject. But it substituted a regular, scientific, civilized administration for a condition of affairs which bordered on anarchy, clearing the air of spite and suspicion, and making life safe and easy for the ordinary householder, who was content to let the great world of politics go its own way.31
Chateaubriand, in the same vein, also observed that the Frenchman’s instinct is to strive after power, not caring for liberty but rather making an idol of equality; there being a connection between love of equality and willingness to accept despotism, Napoleon was able to take control of the French, whose liking for military glory and democratic desire to see everything leveled caused them to follow blindly a proletarian ruler who humiliated kings and noblemen. Bonaparte’s power had depended upon ’’leveling upward,” not downward, stimulating ambition through equal opportunity.32
By establishing the Legion of Honor, Napoleon reaffirmed his belief that distinctions were necessary in order to encourage men of merit to achieve (men are led by baubles, he said) and that he did not believe that the French really loved liberty or even equality; they had not been changed by ten years of revolution, but were still proud, fickle Gauls driven by and toward honor. Yet, while retouching his portrait for posterity, the Emperor was very careful to emphasize the importance
31lbid., p. if7.
32cited by Geyl, Napoleon; for and against, p. 29. of liberty in his system. Stressing its liberal aspects and its suitability for constitutional government, he returned repeatedly in his conversations to the word liberty: nJe ne hais point la liberty • . . je l fai dcartSe lorsqufelle obstruait ma route; mais je la comprends, j*ai nourri dans ses p e n s 6e s ."33
The apology of his intentions thus presented through Las Cases stresses four major propositions, to wit, that Napoleon (a) had stood for the Revolution,
(b) had defended the principle of nationality, even self-determination, (c) had never deviated from a fundamental love of peace (one recalls Napoleon IIIfs succinct "L^mpire c Test la paix"), and (d) had restored and respected the influence of religion in society.
Founding a Bonapartism of sorts on these affirmations h&L&ioises. his worshipers were able to claim a doctrinary basis on which to support the aspirations of a dynasty.
"Napoleon (it is a singular fact) was a Bonapartist," concludes Philip Guedalla, "but he did not become one until he had ceased to be an Emperor."34
The new doctrine was designed to compete with that of the Congress of Vienna, and its accent was accordingly
^^Charpentier, Napoleon et les hommes de lettres, p. 250.
34philip Guedalla, The Second Empire (New York: Putnam, 1922), p. 3. 64 made clearly liberal, offering a measure of both democracy and nationalism. Bonapartism was therefore driven to affirm the principles of T#9 in the name of him who had used the "whiff of grapeshot" on the 13 Vend6miaire; the struggle between the white lilies and the tricolor was greatly simplified. If Napoleon had been a Bonapartist in 1&10, it has been justly said, he would have made peace with the world. Be that as it may, one must deal with the fact of the existence of Bonapartism, regardless of its credibility.
Let us try to sum up the dogma, then: it would appear that a Bonapartist, in B6rangerTs day at least, was a person who:
1• reveled in and revered the Napoleonic Legend
2. supported the pretentions of the Bonaparte dynasty to the imperial throne
3* accepted the four propositions of the Gospel according to Saint Helena, as cited above
4. put equality above liberty or fraternity, and
5. adhered to the principle of autocracy supported by the General Will through plebiscites.
A true "literary Bonapartist," then, would be a person who, in his works and correspondence, presented
Napoleon and the Empire in accordance with the tenets outlined above; that is, he would:
1. treat in a favorable or idealized manner subjects taken from the Napoleonic Legend, glorifying the Emperor and the Empire 65
2. support, directly or by implication, the Bonaparte dynasty and the reestablishment of the Empire
3. present Napoleon as the embodiment of the principles of *89
4. see him as a proponent of nationalism
5* present him as basically peace-loving, butforced to fight
6. recognize him as Restorer of the Faith
7. stress equality above liberty or fraternity, and
8. support as valid and desirable the basic political concept of autocracy approved by the General Will through plebiscite.
Perhaps one could add a ninth quality, militarism, or,
as Geyl expressed it, ,!unregenerate pleasure in
military power.”
B6ranger as a literary Bonapartist
In the following chapters it will be demonstrated
that, despite B£rangerfs reputation as ”chansonnier of
the Emperor,” he cannot accurately be termed a true
Bonapartist, although his role in propagating the
Legend cannot be denied. Whether or not he intended to
support the Bonaparte dynasty (and it is the conclusion of
this study that he did not), he was without doubt at least
indirectly and partially responsible for its restoration.
B6ranger used the Legend as a subject suited to his
genre and the public taste. To what degree he merely
exploited the Legend for the sake of popular appeal and to what relative degrees he was an emotive, as opposed to doctrinary, Bonapartist, will have to be discussed later, but one can assert with reasonable certainty now that he did so not entirely with a cynical motive of profit or fame, but that he was truly caught up in the Legend.
He admired Napoleon’s positive contributions and his human side, while deploring the despotic Empire and some of its doctrines. That is what he would have us believe and that interpretation seems plausible, with certain refinements to be noted as our study progresses. CHAPTER TWO
THE CHANSON AND BERANGER
La France est par excellence le pays de la chanson. Celle-ci? tout au long du cours des ages, refl&te les qualitds du g6nie de notre race: bonne humeur, sensibility, grSce, malice, mesure. Dans la guerre ou dans la paix, vainqueur ou vaincu, heureux ou malheureux, le Franqais chante toujours et ne laisse passer aucune circonstance sans la souligner par un couplet. On a dit avec raison que notre Histoire pourrait etre £crite en chansons. — the Encyclopydie. s.v. "Chanson"
La chanson, comme la balonnette, est une arme franqaise. — Jules Claretie
Definition of the song
In contemporary English, a song is defined as "a brief musical composition written or adapted for singing,"
"poetry; verse," or "a lyric poem or ballad" (The
American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. 1970).
In French, it is a "petite composition musicale de caractdre populaire, sentimental ou satirique, divisAe en couplets et destinee A etre chantye" (Petit Larousse, 1959).
Mansion further refines our definition of this "produit populaire et spontand du gAnie national" by terming it
67 63
"une petite piece de vers qui se chante sur un air auquel elle est si intimement li6e que musique et paroles restent inseparables.
Assuming that the general acceptation of the word chanson in the French language has not evolved signifi cantly since the last century, and that it neither denotes nor connotes a work or genre fundamentally different from what is called a "song" in English, for the purposes of this dissertation we may therefore define the chanson or song as a short musical composition intended for singing, capable of varied intention or character (ranging, for example, from satire to piety), usually designed to appeal to popular taste, and divided into strophes or couplets to facilitate memory and singing, whether or not a refrain is used. The words "song" and chanson shall be used hereafter synonymously and interchangeably.
Obviously, this chapter cannot pretend to attempt a theoretical discussion of the song in general, or its history as a genre, nor even of the French chanson in general, although we shall touch upon such matters.
There being two main types of songs, the folk song, which is the expression of an entire community, and the art song, created by a composer as a serious art form, our task of defining the subject is complicated somewhat
"Mansion, Chansons choisies. p. xxxiii. by the rather peculiar nature of B6rangerfs works, which were meant to be legitimate literary and musical art
forms, yet at the same time were generally set to tunes
borrowed from a folk heritage, and were intended for and adopted by the general populace. B6ranger, in sum, sits astride the defining line, although inclined toward the art song, since he was a careful practitioner of his trade and reworked his compositions with respect to their prosodic and musical qualities. We must assume for our purposes that the songs of B£ranger were primarily art forms, and only secondarily folk forms. The present study will necessarily limit its scope to two certain types of popularly-inspired songs, the political song and ballad, as these are the songs germane to our topic.
History of the genre before B£ranger
Literature and song have been related since their mutual beginning. Almost all early literatures were sung and passed down orally through generations; especially is this true of poetry, which has retained the closest relationship to music of any of the literary genres.
It would probably not be too much of an exaggeration to say that lyric poetry is at the very root of literature.
At the very least one cannot deny the importance of the song as an influence on nationalism and culture, particularly before the era of the educated reading public and the mass media. The song was capable of 70
penetration and distribution far beyond that of learned
literature intended for the circumscribed public of the
initiated and wealthy, and in a sense it reflected better
and gave more voice to the nation’s soul. A people’s
triumphs and woes tend to find their most natural expres
sion in verse and song, and, conversely, the emotive
power of the song, its ability to inspire, is shown by
the attention given to it by those who have sought to
control public opinion; this would explain, for example,
the prohibitions during the last century against whistling
the Marseillaise in Vienna or the Internationale in the
Germanies. It has been written, "in a nation’s songs we
can see the breathing of a people’s inner life, which
history cannot possibly record. It is the reflection of
their wants and aspirations and the truest history of
their feelings.’’^
The origins of political song and the song of
great deeds are lost in human history. Perhaps their
earliest recorded manifestations date from ancient
Greece and Rome, especially in the works of Alcaeus,
Tyrtaeus, Anacreon and Horace, who happen to be
chansonniers remarkably similar to B6ranger. References to our poet as the Horace francais. Tyrtde. or le nouvel
Anacreon abound in contemporary commentaries.
2cited by Hen Piggott, Songs that Made History (London:: Dent, 193 , p.2. Alcaeus was known for Bacchic songs and satires, as
was Tyrtaeus, who composed patriotic war songs for Sparta.
Anacreon especially reminds the modern reader of Biranger,
not only because of the similarity in subject matter, but
all the more for his personality; one recalls the famous anecdote in which he returned a large gift of money,
explaining that he preferred gaiety, independence and worry-free sleep. Horace, like Beranger a soldat manqui. is remembered for his political concerns yet aloof stance, his epistles and satirical songs. He too was fundamentally
Epicurean. The usual comparison between Maecenas and
Lucien Bonaparte, however, breaks down; Lucien's active patronage was very brief and far less substantial.
After the Roman era one finds the same tradition of song continued in ancient Gaul by the bardes who celebrated the exploits of great warriors (and who, by the way, also composed and sang Bacchic songs for banquets), followed in the eighth century by the early chansons de geste. Indeed, modern scholars could not study certain aspects of early medieval history without consulting rhymed legends and accounts intended for singing. Long before the Crusades there were references to nchansons familieres, satiriques et badines.” The trouvferes and troubadours and m^nestrels are well within the tradition which was to culminate in the nineteenth- century singing societies. 72
French history and literature have always been accompanied by song. To cite a few examples culled at random from literary histories of the Middle Ages and the
Renaissance, one finds songs composed by Thibault de
Champagne, Jean de Meung, Alain Chartier, Christine de
Pisan, and Charles d 1Orleans. Nor must we forget Villon’s ballads, nor Olivier Basselin de Vire, who is credited with creating the vaudeville. Frangois Ier himself composed songs, as did Clement Marot, then later Bertaut and Desportes; Henri IV’s gallant songs addressed to
Gabrielle d ’Estr^es are still extant.
It must be admitted, however, that B6ranger was largely ignorant of the medieval song, and one cannot justifiably credit with any notable influence on his work the pastourelles. lais. virelais. rondeaux, or what ever. While these were popular song forms, his meager education could not have embraced serious study of them.
We need really go back no further than the early seven teenth century to determine the "roots’* of the art of
Bgranger.
It was not until the time of Louis XIII that one finds political songs truly in the vein of B6ranger’s satires.
In seventeenth-century (french) society everyone from the king downwards showed an interest in vocal music. Louis XIII showed such an interest that he composed songs and sang them himself. The number of distinguished singers, male and female, was immense. In many cases, the singers were the composers, and they accompanied themselves as they sang.3
The gallant and refined airs de cour and musique courtoise soon engendered a reaction in the form of airs bachiques.
. . . trivial and burlesque forms of song, gay and dance-like, celebrating the pleasures of wine and of the flesh. They were not spurned by the most refined society. MoliSre liked to use them in his plays, and Louis XIV liked to hear them sung by young girls.b
Concomitantly, the political song which had manifested itself during the religious wars, most notably in the
Satire M 6nipp6e. assumed in the seventeenth century a place of primary importance. Satirical ditties were written about Louis XIII, the Ligue, the Fronde, and especially Richelieu and Mazarin.
The vaudeville. which had existed since the sixteenth century, is especially noteworthy in this respect, for it was the first genre to combine the drinking song and political satire, thus precursing the Caveau. Mansion notes
A partir de cette 6poque le terme vaudeville s ’ap- plique en commun & la satire politique et a la chanson de table; celle-ci rend 6galement hommage au vin et & l^mour, mais dans des termes crus et w6grillards,n comme aurait dit B6ranger . . .5
3Denis Stevens, ed. A History of Song (New York: Norton, 1960), p. 195.
Vtbid., p. 197.
^Mansion, Chansons choisies. p. xxxvi. 74
The era of the Fronde stirred the ambitions of such aspiring chansonniers as Maynard, Rotrou, Racan,
D*Urf6, Saint-Amant and Th^ophile de Viau, as well as an ouvrier-poete little-known in literary history, Adam
Billaut or nma£tre Adam” (who was for a time an intimate of the Hotel de Rambouillet). Scarron, Bois-Robert,
Benserade, Voiture and Sarrazin all wrote songs. Even
Lulli left a collection of light songs.
The Mazarinades ("pamphlets set to music") of the early years of the reign of Louis XIV were basically
B6ranger-style chansons 6grillardes. The former frondeur baron Blot, surnamed Blot-1'Esprit, had put politics into song. He was probably the author of the most daring lines of the Mazarinades. and Mine de S6vign6 herself is said to have remarked later of his songs that they had
"le diable au corps."
Mazarin is reported to have reacted to the songs with a menacing "Ils cantent, eh bien, ils pagueront!"^
Over thirty volumes of Mazarinades have been collected, not counting all the contemporary pastorals, madrigals and other precursors of the ballade that B&ranger knew.
Nor should one forget the popular songs of Philippe le
Savoyard, whose lazzi and farce rimges performed on the
6Henri Avenel, Chansons et Chansonniers (Paris: Flammarion, 1&90), p. 9„ 75
Pont-Neuf gave the name ponts-neufs to popular airs subsequently passed down through generations.
The Grand Siecle was certainly not devoid of chansonniers. Avenel inventories over a dozen, including the due de Nevers who reportedly did an Abr6g6 de l^istoire de France en chansons, from Hugues Capet to Louis XIV.
Avenel sees the seventeenth century as the beginning of a new era for the song:
Le regne de Louis XIV est le point de depart de la transformation de la chanson. Elle se perfectionne, sa forme est plus accentu^e, elle a un but plus s^rieux. Elle ne c^lebre plus seulement la beauts d'une adorge. ou ne fait plus simplement l T61oge d'une Altesse; elle s'occupe des affaires publiques: elle ridiculise les gros fermiers g£n€- raux. les favorites de la cour et tourne ses refrains vers le pouvoir][ Elle commence a oser, elle grandit,7
The chansons des rues flourished under Louis XIV, and the Regency which followed his reign was to see a veritable explosion of "chansons libertines, gaillardes, graveleuses et obsclnes."^ In fact, the lesser-known history of the failures and shortcomings of the Grand
SiScle, and specifically a history of popular views of the doings at Versailles, could be reconstituted from songs, as the popular verve never missed an opportunity to jibe authority, which brings to mind Chamfort's quip that
France was "une monarchie absolue temp£r£e par des
7Ibid., p. 22. Sibid., p. 25. 76
chansons." Hundreds of such "innocent" satirical songs
were to greet the due d TOrleans and, of course, la
Dubarry. But by the time of Louis XVI these songs were
no longer mocking but had become threatening; many
were to evolve into revolutionary songs.
Thus by the eighteenth century the vein of song-
writing in which B6ranger would be nurtured was already
established. The drinking song had now to "civilize"
itself and take on some of the taste for esprit which
developed as the cafe and cabaret became fashionable.
The popular chansonnier Panard, along with Gallet,
Piron, C0II6, and Cr6billon fils, founded in 1727 the
Soci6t€ des diners du Caveau, a club of "rimeurs de
couplets" who met monthly to compose and perform songs
in praise of wine and women, as well as an occasional
political satire. This first group dispersed in 1739.
Twenty years later the Deuxidme Caveau took up the cause.
It counted among its numbers several "veterans,"
including C0II6 and CrSbillon fils, but the admission of
Marmontel and Helv6tius, among other distinguished men
of letters, very quickly altered its character to that of an "aimable reunion de gentils esprits," friends of
"le gai-savoir” rather than drinkers. The group met weekly at the home of the fermier g£n£ral Pelletier, who soon cut short its growing artistic potential by 77 marrying, thus depriving the wamis de la chanson"
of a meeting place.
The events of ff$9 suppressed for a time the Caveau, which gave way to more pressing concerns. The chanson r^volutionnaire displaced joyous conviviality, and songs were now performed in the streets rather than around the table. There were tales of victims of the guillotine going to the scaffold with revolutionary songs on their lips. One song from 1794 quipped:
La guillotine est un bijou Qui devient des plus a la mode, J ’en veux une en bois d ’acajou Que je mettrai sur ma commode. Je l Tessaierai soir et matin, Pour ne pas paraltre novice, Si par malheur le lendemain A mon tour j ’£tais de service.9
Refrains of Ca ira. the Carmagnole. the Marseillaise and the Chant du Popart soon took the upper register.
The two latter songs, of course, became popular rallying songs and served to stir patriotism. A general of the
Republic wrote to the Minister of War, "Envoyez-moi des vivres, un exemplaire de la Marseillaise, et je r^ponds de la victoire.^lO Boy’s popular tune Le Salut de la
France was even transformed into the official anthem,
Veillons au salut de 1 ’Empire. As Avenel summarized the situation, nLa chanson devenait histoire, elle coiffait cranement le bonnet phrygien et marchait en avant.”^
9lbid., p. 12. 10Ibid., p. 22. Hlbid., p. 11. 78
But there was another side to the world of song during the Revolution and Empire. Numerous cahiers of songs by aspiring writers appeared regularly, bearing such titles as L TAlmanach des Muses and Le Chansonnier patrio- tique. These pieces were not always concerned with politics; indeed, many, even most, of them were hymns to drinking and l 1amour gaulois. What politics and topical issues were discussed within were hardly the subject of unanimity of views; in fact, one notes in passing the presence among their number of at least one consistently royalist publication, Les Actes des
Apotres. which satirized the Jacobins.
Even after Thermidor popular songs continued to chide and satirize. The Directory was a prime target for such jibes. Singing societies reappeared. As these were colorful groups, they adopted colorful names, such as the Soci6t6s du Gigot de Caen, des Gobemouches, des
Sots, des Ours (each song of this group boasted a loud refrain of growls), des Joyeux, des Flambants, and, perhaps most striking, la Socidt6 du Chat qui pisse.^2
The Caveau was certainly among the more restrained and cultivated of these groups.
The soci6t6s chantantes continued to thrive during the Empire. At the end of 1S05 a bookseller reorganized
12Jean Lucas-Dubreton, Bdranger. la chanson. la politique, la spci£t6 (Pariil Hachette, 1934), p. 46* the remnants of the defunct Diners de Vaudeville in order to suit the needs of wceux qui, ayant 6chapp6 a la conscription et refusant de rien §tre dans le gouvernement, entendaient pratiquer un paisible 6picurisme.n13 In 1fJ06 the Caveau resumed activity and was rechristened the
Caveau Moderne (although it appears to have used at first the title nle Rocher de Cancale” as well); established in the rue de Montorgueil under the able leadership of
Marc-Antoine D6saugiers, the best-known chansonnier of the day, it quickly became very productive, publishing a monthly cahier and a yearly volume of songs in order to pay for its food and drink. As it began to prosper, its fame quickly spread throughout the provinces. The public, tired of the Pindaresque, bombastic official poetry of the period, welcomed its naive couplets of gauloiseries. It occasionally invited honorary performer guests; B6ranger was one such guest, and it was in this manner that he became a member. He remained active in the Caveau Moderne until it dissolved in 1&17, although he was later to claim he had always disliked the chanson goguette. He also belonged to the purely Bacchic society of the Soupers de Momus.
The tradition of the soci£t6 chantante and the song as B6ranger knew and practiced it was to continue in France
13lbid., p. 42. so down to the end of the century, in spite of a loss of momentum and declining membership. Avenel could write in 1d90 that it was still alive and represented in Paris by two remaining groups, one of which was still the Caveau
(which he labeled royalist).
The tradition of the Caveau
Of the formally-organized socidtgs chantantes of its era, the Caveau was the oldest, the best-known, and perhaps the most aesthetically-oriented, while offering a full measure of "franche gaiety et 1 'esprit gaulois de la chanson de table.” Since its founding in 1729, when it met in a cabaret named le Caveau (whence its title), it had devoted itself to singing, in turn around the table, joyous celebrations of Bacchus. The Caveau did harbor, however, some pretentions to being "l'Acad&nie de la chanson.” In keeping with these aspirations, the members published, before the first dissolution in 1739, their official compendium, the Clef du Caveau. which was a compilation of some 3,000 airs on which its members could compose their songs, in the best of the "broad- sheet” tradition^ of popular musical composition; i.e., using pre-existing popular tunes as settings for original lyrics, usually of a topical nature and frequently
^‘^The Oxford Companion to Music. 1970 edition, defines a "broadside” or ^broadsheet** as a "sheet of paper, crudely printed on one side with some ballad or the like, and hawked through the country." satirical. The practice was common throughout Europe
at the time. It was said, for example, that a member
of the Caveau could set the same lyrics to more than
two hundred tunes by using the Clef alone.
After its reconstitution in 1759, the Caveau lasted until the Directory, giving way to the society of the
Diners du Vaudeville, an interesting group which met
in an inn kept by the actor Julliet. They dabbled in both poetry and songs, and counted among their number
Sdgur, later Grand Master of Imperial Ceremonies for
Napoleon. S6gur arranged and "orchestrated” the coro nation and all grand ceremonies, and his relations with the Caveau and simultaneous involvement in politics and official court music, such as that of Mdhul and Boy, can only point up the importance of the popular singing society.
Contemporary songwriters almost always composed on timbres. which are defined thus by the Clef du Caveau:
"on entend par timbre la designation d fun air quelconque, en citant le premier vers de la chanson ou du couplet qui lui a donnd lieu,1* This "broadsheet" manner of composing— adapting new verse to established repertory tunes— seems to have fulfilled the artistic needs of the
Caveau Moderne, which left as its legacy to the genre an eleven-volume recueil published soon after its rebirth in 1B05. The Soupers de Momus mentioned above was in truth 32
little more than a branch of the Caveau, and lasted only
from 1313 to 1323. By and large, these singing societies
of the Empire and Restoration contented themselves with
continuing the tradition of the chansonniers of the
preceding century. They added little new or original,
and possessed even a narrower range of subject matter,
since neither imperial nor royal censorship permitted the traditional liberties in refrains. The Caveau Moderne
had therefore to limit itself almost exclusively to rehashing the chanson bachique and "light" subjects, postulating that "il ne faut point mettre de po6sie dans la chanson.11
It was into this situation that Beranger brought his talents in 1313 when he joined the Caveau, composing as a discours de reception his L TAcad&nie et le Caveau. a witty and light piece quite in keeping with the vaude ville and singing society tradition. After all, he had learned to write songs through acquaintance with the contemporary repertories, and as he was still discovering his genre he was hesitant to reveal his "serious" poetic aspect, the one he reserved elsewhere for the D&Luge and the Jugement dernier. Mansion remarks:
. . ..Cii] se garde d'afficher au Caveau la moindre vell£it£ po^tique. Si pendant ces premieres anndes il se permet un brin de podsie dans des morceaux tels que Les Adieux de Marie Stuart ou Les Oiseauxf ce n*est pas au Caveau qu'il les ira chanter. Ce n fest qu*un peu plus tard, lorsquUl a entame sa campagne politique contre la Restauration, que sa popularity grandissante lui inspire assez de confiance pour q u ’il se permette de chanter A table Le Dieu des bonnes gens; de tels couplets ne convenaient point, d ’ailleurs, a une society nourrie dans la tradition de Colly et de Panard, et elle en mourut peut-£tre: du moins, ayant applaudi aux vers de Byranger, cessa-t-elle d ’exister la meme annye.1?
And so it was outside of the Caveau, and defining himself against its influence, that Byranger, having found his genre and vocation, was to undertake his task of widening the domain of the French chanson, seeking to create a chanson A idyes by incorporating into its themes a more restrained brand of political satire, a rather
Voltairian irony of tone, intimate or wlyricalM effusions, frequent allusions to the nation’s past glories, and, later on, pretendes to social commentary, ’’sans du reste permettre jamais au couplet de tourner A la strophe, et sans s ’affranchir du refrain.”16
Types of songs by Byranger
Sainte-Beuve’s classification of Byranger’s songs, done in 1&50, still stands as the definitive general overview of Beranger’s production. Rather than attempt to even paraphrase or summarize it, we shall quote Sainte-
Beuve himself:
. . . On pourrait diviser les chansons de Byranger en quatre ou cinq branches: 1° L ’ancienne chanson,
^Mansion, Chansons choisies. p. xxxix. 34
telle q u ’on la trouve avant lui chez les Coliy, les Panard, les D 6saugiers, la chanson gaie, bachique, ypicurienne, le genre grivois, gaillard, ygrillard? Le Roi d'Yvetot. La Gaudriole . • . ce fut par ou ll dybuta. 20 La chanson sentimentale, la romance, Le Bon Vieillard . . . surtout Les Hirondelles; il a cette veine tr&s fine et trSs pure par moments. 3° La chanson lib4rale et patriotique, qui fut et restera sa grande innovation, cette esp£ce de petite ode dans laquelle il eut l fart de combiner un filet de sa veine sensible avec les sentiments publics dont il se faisait l forgane; ce genre, qui constitue la pleine originality de Byranger et comme le milieu de son talent, renferme Le Dieu des bonnes gens. Mon Ame. La Bonne Vieille. ou 1 ’inspiration sensible donne le ton; Le Vieux Sergent. Le Vieux Drapeau. La Sainte Alliance des peuples. etc., ou cfest l faccent liberal qui domine. 4^ II y faudrait joindre une branche purement satirique, dans laquelle la veine de sensibility n ’a plus de part, et ou il attaque sans ryserve, avec malice, avec Screty et amertume, ses adversaires d falors, les ministeriels, les ventrus, la race de Loyola, le pape en personne et le Vatican; cette branche comprendrait depuis le Ventru jusqu* aux Clefs du Paradis. 5° Enfin une branche suplrieure que B4ranger n'a produite que dans les derni4res annyes, et qui a yty un dernier effort et comme une derniere greffe de ce talent savant, dyiicat et laborieux, c Test la chanson-ballade, purement poetique et philosophique, comme Les Bohymiens. ou ayant dyj& une iyg4re teinte de socialisme, comme Les Contre~ bandiers. Le Vieux Vagabond.1'
This article predates, of course, the posthumous
songs of 1359 with their strongly-defined social themes— yet another type of song— and the Napoleonic songs which
Bdranger had shown only to a very restricted group of friends. We must also mention yet another type of song written by Byranger, the romance, a genre admired by
Napoleon and very popular during the Empire and one well
*'7Sainte-Beuve, Causeries du Lundi. vol. II, 1350, s.v. "Byranger," cited in Ibid., pp. xxxix-xl. suited to B6ranger’s proclivity for sentimental effusions.
J. J. Rousseau described it in his Dictionnaire de Musique
of 1767 as treating "quelque histoire amoureuse et souvent
tragique."^ The romance was intended for singing in
drawing rooms and salons rather than in cabarets and public
places. Rather than being set to a timbre, it was sung
to music especially composed for it by a musician of
talent, such as B6ranger*s friend Wilhem Bocquillon, and
in this case the music dominated the lyrics. The romance
was very recent, having existed only since the mid eighteenth century.19 As a practitioner of it, B6ranger
wrote, in the taste of his era, a member of plaintive
pieces such as Charles VII. Les Adieux de Marie Stuart
and Les Hirondelles.
B6ranger as a chansonnier
Among other things, one fact is clearly demonstrated
by the posthumous recueil with regard to B6ranger’s talent
for writing songs: unless he was inspired by and worked
from the basis of a given timbre or popular tune with a
"catchy" rhythm, he was quite capable of producing
locited by Stevens, A History of Song, p. 200.
1l9For a thorough treatment of the subject, the reader is referred to H, Gougelot, La romance francaise sous la Revolution et I 1Empire: Etude historique et critique. 2 volsl (Melun, 1938-43), and Thi6bault, Baron de 1*Empire, Du chant et particuliSrement de la romance (Paris, 1813). 36
pretentious, heavy and unsingable material, as segments
of the enclosed cassette demonstrate.
The best, most natural songs seem to be those of the
apogee period, when he was still inspired by popular
timbres and given to walking while seeking inspiration.
The later songs are sedentary armchair pieces conspic
uously lacking the ”feel" of the rhythmic earlier works.
A grand marcheur like Rousseau, B£ranger conceived most
of his masterpieces while strolling idly. The rhythm
of walking seemed to facilitate rhythmic composition
and choice of refrain. Often the subject itself occurred to him in this way; for example, Le Roi d'Yvetot owes
its existence to a picturesque old inn sign glimpsed on
such a stroll.
B£ranger, after choosing both his subject and the general rhythm or type of tune appropriate to it, underwent a rather lengthy and tedious period of incu bation wa petit feu, ainsi qu’on fond la cire," letting both subject and rhythm simmer within, until he settled on a haunting refrain— when he had this, he said,
”il tenait son affaire,” and the rest of the song T,en d£coulait tout naturellement,tt Occasional flaws notwithstanding, he did rework and polish his verse, and relished exacting, detailed revision. He worked very slowly, producing at most only sixteen songs a year.
It will be recalled that B^ranger had thought himself S7 gifted for watchmaking (before the lightning incident).
He recounted in Ma Biographie (p. 6 ) his hobby of carving miniature baskets out of cherry pits, surely an indication of patience, exactitude and attention to detail.
Every writer, it has been said, has a recognizable
"formula” for composing works. In B&ranger's case, we could summarize a formula: He would use a timbre or pont-neuf. carefully matching tone to subject, then construct a series of dramatic tableaux, deciding the rhythm as he went. Having found his refrain, he would then rework and hone the material into a concise, coherent whole designed to drive home his idea or theme.
No doubt he felt more able to develop his own formula in a genre practically without poetics which left at his disposal the entire dictionary. He insisted in several places that the song was more than a genre, it was "toute une langue." This liberty and leeway, however, were counterbalanced by B6rangerTs uncompromising insis tence on "les soins m#caniques de la versification." The wider his horizon, the more he demanded of himself in discipline. He is credited with the dictum, "Malheur a qui n ^ s t pas bon ouvrier! Mais aussi malheur & qui n*est que cela!"^0
20 B6ranger*s note to Ma Lampe in Dernieres chansons (Paris: Perrotin, 1&59), p. 276. sa
Bernard quotes Biranger's closest attempt to formulate his poetic art:
II ne fallait pas cesser d 1employer des airs connus; s'attacher a varier et entremeler les tons, comme serable l'exiger notre langue; chercher des formes dramatiques, donnant & la composition plus de mouveraent et de vie, donnant en meme temps au poete plus de liberty de pensie et de langage; il fallait surtout, quoi qu'il en put couter, conserver le refrain, . . .21
Biranger, according to Arnould, had a set routine for composing his verse: starting from a limited, specific idea or theme, he would sketch out first a plan, then plot each stanza or couplet, then apportion specific images or ideas to be developped in each couplet, all in a calculated order for effect. Next he settled on the most appropriate rhythm, most often determined by a previously-chosen timbre, then he finally worked up a refrain. "Alors, disait-il, je regardais ma chanson comme faite: je n'avais plus q u ’A icrire les vers."^
Biranger set great store by style, clarity, con cision (this he inherited from the Caveau, where brevity was a necessity in song composition), and above all, what we shall call the three R ’s: rhythm, refrain, and rhyme, all of which are demonstrated by the songs on the
21 Joseph Bernard, Biranger et ses chansons (Paris: Dentu, 1&5S), p. 134.
^Arthur Arnould, Biranger, ses amis, ses ennemis et ses critiques (Paris: Cherbuliez, I864), vol. II, p. 357. cassette. He was to write in 1350, "J’aime la rime riche et peut-§tre ai-je contribu£ A en faire reprendre le gout en France."23
Touchard further comments:
Parce qu’il a d6couvert seul la prosodie, parce q u ’il a du mal a icrire des vers, B6ranger a une conception passablement formaliste de la po£sie. Parce qu’il est un autodictate, il a une conception utilitaire . . . La literature si elle n ’est pas utile, lui semble "chose bien creuse.n II s ’int£- resse aux disciplines scientifiques et lit avec plaisir le Journal des savants • . ,24
As for B6ranger*s formal knowledge of and taste for music, Bernard recounts that he went to only one concert, finding it all ’’mediocre," except for the final piece, the Pastoral Symphony, which greatly impressed him. He disliked opera, but he could tolerate church music. His favorite instruments were the organ and violoncella. Surely he harbored no pretentions to being a great musician, but contented himself with whatever proved effective and popular.
Each of B6ranger’s songs is unique, and every one of the three hundred of them should really be judged individually, but there are nonetheless certain traits which they hold in common. BSranger tends to reuse the same tunes with varying lyrics. His originality was to
23cited by Touchard, La Gloire de BGranger, vol. I, p. 33.
24lbid. take old tunes and give them new meaning. The origin of these tunes is almost exclusively popular (borrowed timbres or vaudevilles). judging by their original titles: ttElle aime a rire, elle aime & boire," nFaut d*la vertu, pas trop n'en faut," or "QuTest-ce q u ’ga me fait & moi?tt
Often the tune is a nonsense ditty such as "La farira dondaine, gai" or "Boira qui voudra larirette, paiera qui pourra larira!" Even his best-known piece, Les
Souvenirs du Peuple. is set to a popular tune based on a completely unrelated subject, "Passez votre chemin, beau sire" (cf. cassette). B6ranger never claimed to be a musician; on the contrary, one has only to read his song
La Musique to find a disclaimer of any expertise. In cases where the tune was not traditional, he very seldom composed his own tunes. Only a half dozen can be attributed to him with any degree of confidence. He preferred to leave this task to Wilhem. Accounts of friends agree that he himself did not even like to sing. Early in his career he prepared for his own use a "personal repertory" of 212 favorite tunes, mostly popular airs from the end of the eighteenth century. He seldom used any others, and he frequently set several songs to the same favorite tune.
There is no indication that he ever thought to update or expand his repertory.
Toward the end of his career especially, the music lost its importance with relation to lyrics; more and more 91 frequently Bdranger assigned no tune to a 11 song" and neglected or suppressed the refrain. Poetic ambitions, as we shall see, increasingly overshadowed musical consid erations, and he drifted away from popular inspiration toward poetic ambitions.
B&ranger as a litterateur
In order to keep the songs of B£ranger in a correct time perspective, one must remember that the first recueil is posterior to Chateaubriand's Les Martyrs and
Mine de Stall’s De 1'Allemagne. The second collection, which established its author's standing, appeared between
Lamartine’s Meditations and the Odes et Ballades of
Victor Hugo. The keystone recueil of 1633 followed
Hernani. B6ranger was therefore clearly contemporary to the energetic thrust of nascent Romanticism, yet he remained strangely apart from it. He was thirty-five in 1615 when he made his formal literary d^but; by 1630, when Gautier and the battle of Hernani began to gpater les bourgeois. B^ranger was fifty years old and about to retire. This "age lag" explains at least partially our chansonnier's aloofness to all the brouhaha. He was too old to become a flamboyant Romantic. He belonged to the preceding literary generation, that of the Revolution,
Directory and Empire. The Restoration was to serve as a foil to and subject for his mature works, not as a forma tive matrix as it did for the Romantics. 92
To understand B&ranger’s conception of good
literature and poetry, therefore, one must be acquainted
with the literary conceptions of his generation, which
has been relegated to that great literary morgue of
convention- and cliche-ridden, pompous, pseudo-classical
periods of imitative, "hollow" literature. A quarter
century of upheaval partly explains such fallowness,
as does Napoleon’s conception of and policy toward liter
ature. The period of B&ranger’s formative years has
traditionally been judged unworthy of serious study or
even a careful inventory of names and works. Typical
of critical opinion concerning the literature of the
era is Robiquet’s evaluation:
Une 6poque a les ecrivains qu’elle m£rite, et celle-ci est affligde de quelques graves d£fauts qui suffisent £ tout expliquer . . . trois passions communes a tous les contemporains: le culte du style pretendu noble, le gout des situations drama- tiques et la manie lacrymatoire. Ne rien exprimer simplement, voilA d ’abord le grand principe, aussi bien pour les prosateurs que pour les poetes.25
One must therefore rely on whatever contemporary treatises on literature he can find in order to glean
some idea of the literary ethos of the period. Such treatises are rare. Mansion cites one Bibliothfeque portative des Ecrivains francois of 1£03, whose third volume begins with a "discourse on versification"
25Robiquet, La Vie quotidienne. p. 142. 93
freely adapted from exaggerations of the purple precepts
ascribed to Boileau which one learns in undergraduate
surveys of French literature: an elevated poetic diction,
a predilection for archaisms, "noble" turns of phrase and
all the proper "poetic” allusions sanctified by tradition,
and so on. Obviously, no recognized writer had yet put
the phrygian cap onto the old dictionary.
After appropriate excerpts from the great masters of
the Grand Siecle, the treatise praises contemporary poets
most in favor, all of whom have happily passed from anthologies. Most favored is the Abbe Delille, whose
cumbersome and unrewarding verse laden with capitalized nouns, mythological allusions and classical paraphrases has long lain neglected.
A selection of romances, vaudevilles and chansons of the era does little more than demonstrate by contrast why B6ranger rose quickly to public notice and success as a refreshing talent. Mansion concludes:
Contemporain de la Revolution, B6ranger fut au dix- neuvieme siScle, dans la politique, un soldat d Tavant-garde, raais, dans la literature, un ^attarde" du siecle precedent: si on le considfere a ce point de vue. on ne peut nier son talent, sa superiority, et meme son genie.
Beranger himself points up this anachronistic situation in a letter to a young poet, in which he seeks to explain
^ M a n s i o n , Chansons choisies. p. xliv. 94 his concision and strangely old-fashioned "classical1*
style: "Songez que j*ai €t€ en nourrice vingt ans chez le dix-huitieme siScle et que ces vingt ans doivent dominer encore sur le reste."27
Ignorance of Latin did pose an obstacle to B£ranger*s success. While he sought to compensate for it by reading the ancients in translation, he nonetheless remained on the literary sidelines and as a result,
. . . il lui manquait une gymnastique d*esprit, une appreciation critique du sens propre des mots et du g6nie de la langue, indispensables pour 6crire le franqais avec facilite . . . J. J. Rousseau et Bdranger sont & peu pr£s les seuls £crivains fran- qais qui n*aient pas subi cette discipline, aussi dans la coramunaute des lettres furent-ils l ’un et l ’autre des Outsiders*; ils s*en rendaient bien compte: de la chez Rousseau cette fiert£ ombra- geuse, et chez B6ranger cette modestie outrde. De la aussi les fautes contre le bon gotit. les imperfections et les obscurit£s que le poete laissa subsister dans des piSces q u ’il remit certainement vingt fois sur le mdtier, car il travaillait si lentement et si pSniblement qu*il n*6crivit jamais plus d ’une quinzaine de chansons par an.28
On balance, it must be admitted that Bdranger’s lapses are rather rare; literary criticism (see chapter VI) has chosen to attack his works as a whole rather than to cite specific faults. Attacks on the art of Beranger always take the form of generalizations.
27Ma Biographie. p. 295*
2^Mansion, Chansons choisies. p. xlv. 95
In order to understand B£ranger*s view of his own art, one must read his “manifesto,” the preface to the 1833 reeueil. This document sets forth essentially all the elements of a ”B6ranger par lui-meme," to be developed later in Ma Biographie. Among other dogma, he insists that his inspiration is popular and that all literature is necessarily evolving in that direction:
Le peuple c'est ma muse . . . D6sormais c'est pour le peuple qu*il faut cultiver les lettres . . . Quand je dis peuple, je dis la foule, je dis le peuple d fen bas, si l Ton veut. Inventez, concevez pour ceux qui tous ne savent pas lire; 6crivez pour ceux qui savent 6crire.
He insists also that he could have practiced a
“nobler” genre, but that he chose to be a chansonnier in order to serve his country:
II y aurait injustice a porter sur les chansons un jugement ou il ne serait pas tenu compte de 1 *influence q u Telles ont exerc^e. II est des instants, pour une nation, ou la meilleure musique est celle du tambour qui bat la charge,,
Moreover, he claims that he had deliberately taken on the challenge of transforming, Pygmalion- fashion, the inferior genre he had found into a worthy creature (a “singuliSrement bourgeois” metaphor, comments Touchard):
Je suis peut-etre, dans les temps modernes, le seul auteur qui, pour obtenir une reputation populaire, eflt pu se passer de l^mprimerie, A quoi ai-je du cet avantage? Aux vieux airs sur lesquels je mettais mes id£es a cheval, si j*ose dire, et au bon esprit qui ne me fit pas d£daigner la culture d*un genre inf^rieur qui ne menait en rien aux honneurs litteraires. Parmi les hommes qui 96
s*adonnaient aux lettres a cette gpoque, aucun, j*en suis convaincu, n*eut voulu suivre la m§me voie: je n ’ai pris que le rebut des autres «... Par £La chanson}, g ’gchappais aux exigences acadg- miques et j *avais a ma disposition tout le diction- naire, dont la Harpe pretend que les quatre cinqui&mes sont dgfendus II notre pogsie . . • D&s que je me fus rendu compte de la nature de mes facultis et de l*indgpendance littgraire que la chanson me procu- rerait, je pris mon parti rgsolfiment; j*gpousai la pauvre fille de joie avec l Tintention de la rendre digne d*etre presentee dans les salons de notre aristocratie, sans la faire renoncer pourtant 3. ses anciennes connaissances, car il fallait qu*elle restSt fille du peuple, de qui elle attendrait sa dot.2°
In summary, one could say that Bgranger felt a need to create works for the whole nation, songs which would be "engaged** or "committed** to a cause. This limited field of action precluded poetry of an abstract or metaphysical nature, as the chansonnier had to be easily understandable in all levels of society— one thinks of
Malherbe*s counsel to create works polished and artistic, yet comprehensible even to the crocheteurs at the Porte aux Foins,
. . . il connait son public, n*ignore point que la chanson est la littgrature de ceux qui ne savent pas lire. Done point de longue haleine, de grand vol; le cygne et l*aigle, dira Lamartine, ne s ’abattent pas dans la rue . . . et les gaillardises sont des compagnes fort utiles donnges aux graves refrains et aux couplets politiques: "Sans leur assistance, avouera-t-il, je suis tentg de croire que ceux-ci auraient bien pu n ’aller ni aussi loin, ni aussi bas, ni meme aussi haut, ce dernier mot dut-il scandaliser les vertus de salon.
29Ma Biographie. pp. 166-166.
30Lucas-Dubreton, Bgranger, p. 62. 97
Bgranger recognized the limitations of his chosen genre. While a chansonnier could be cultivated and effusive, his songs must be pruned to concision— tailored for effect, as it were. Voltaire wrote what became one
5f Bgrangerfs favorite passages:
Pour bien rgussir dans ces petits ouvrages Cchansons}, il faut dans l fesprit de la finesse et du sentiment, avoir de l^armonie dans la tete, ne point trop s ’Clever, ne point trop s Tabaisser et savoir n ’etre pas trop long.31
For Bgranger, the song, far from being neasy,n required long, hard work as a genre suited to "esprits fiers et indgpendants." Yet, never an academic art, the song was "la fille du peuple."
The art of Bgranger
Above all else, Bgrangerfs songs were meant to be sung. Mansion observes that: "c'est au piano, et non aprfes lecture, qufil conviendrait de passer jugement sur
1 Tensemble de cette oeuvre." Such judgments are quite difficult to pass today, considering the extreme rarity of written musical scores to Bgrangerfs "poems" and the evolution in musical tastes over the last century, not to mention the changes in piano tonality and musical styles.
One regrets the absence of electronic recording devices in his day. As a partial remedy for this situation, the
3lTouchard, La Gloire de Bgranger. vol. I. p. 91. 9$ cassette appended to this dissertation is intended to provide, insofar as possible, an accurate reconstitution of the music done in the taste of the period. The reader is referred to Appendix B for particulars. It was felt that the only way to appreciate B4ranger "in context" is to hear his songs performed.
To be sure, reconstituting the songs does much to
"rehabilitate" B 6ranger by obscuring or softening prosodic weaknesses, stylistic flaws and dubious rhymes.
A singer caught up in rhythm, melody and "catchy" refrains is likely to gloss over faults in poetry. This much must be admitted at the outset, that B6ranger, judged as a poet, is no doubt ineligible for election to the pantheon of the art of the muses. But to stop there is to miss the point of this dissertation, for the importance of B6ranger lies not in his poetic or musical virtuosity, but rather in his influence and impact on his century, on public taste and attitudes and sensibility*
B 6ranger is worth studying because he was, like Victor
Hugo, both pied piper and 6cho sonore of his time.
Why then judge him as a poet? During his lifetime he was considered worthy of election to the Academy, so let us submit him to the scrutiny which would have been performed if he had agreed to submit to candidacy. Were the present writer to attempt a "capsule analysis", of the songs as poetry, the result could be summarized as follows. B6rangerTs verse is regular and usually octosyllabic.
When the tone and subject are more elevated the verse
becomes decasyllabic (e.g., Le Cinq Mai, Le Dieu des
Bonnes Gens. La Sainte Alliance des Peuples). Occasionally
there is a variable five-to-eight-measure pattern
seemingly governed by the irregular musical rhythm to
which it is set (e.g., Les Gaulois et les Francs. Le Petit
Homme rouge). The rhyme scheme is generally rime croisge
with masculine-feminine alternation. Rhymes are almost
always at least sufficient, with a marked tendency
toward rich rhyme.
There are usually six or seven stanzas to a song,
the stanzas almost always of eight lines each, such an
arrangement apparently representing the most singable
pattern to remember and perform, and offering a natural
breathing pause for the voice every eight lines. Examples
of "poetic license" in syntax and enjambment are very
rare, and even then dictated more by musical rhythm than
by poetic considerations. The refrain is usually at the
end of the stanza, but frequently set off as a separate
grouping of recurring lines or a repeating envoi. The
refrain recurs regularly and usually at short intervals,
setting the pace for the entire song and giving a unifying
effect. Bgranger is also fond of interspersing "interior
refrains" in mid-stanza in the form of a half-line. The refrain is especially useful as a poetic device because 100
it reinforces doubly, through both poetic and musical
patterns, the desired key thought to retain. Interior refrains and the characteristic repetition of words or phrases fall into the same category of mise en valeur
(cf. especially Vieux Habits! Vieux Galons! and Les
Souvenirs du Peuple on the cassette).
While there is a certain elevation and elegance of language in the "nobler11 songs, Bdranger generally ignores poetic diction in an effort toward vigorous, authentic expression, sometimes using earthy terms32 and rendering lower-class patois through the use of apostrophed contractions, WZ linkings," etc. As one would expect, interjections, imperatives and exclamation points are frequent. Aphorisms and antithetic or paradoxical slogans are also common, and verbal and dramatic irony form the basis for many of the songs.
One could schematize B&ranger’s art thus:
qualities faults overall skillful use of excessive dependence on "catchy" refrain, rhythm and rhyme refrain to "carry" the work
occasional chevilles and dubious rhymes
sense sometimes obscured by form for the sake of fitting verse to music
32See especially the little-known- B6ranger, Chansons drotiques (Paris: Cres, 1924). 101
qualities faults skillful and dramatic use oversimplification in the of l fart du r6cit33 interest of dramatic antithesis gifted use of vignette weak transitions or liaisons or tableau de scene respect for classical occasional abuse of its facile tradition side: mythological allusions and cliches concern for concision occasional obscurity due to excessive concision careful craftsmanship occasional rigidity in later in versification and poems form desire for clarity and concessions to strophic direct expression musical form and primacy of the refrain
It has been noted that Byranger sometimes slips into "obscurity a force de concision.” After reading such a passage one understands Boileau's "Je veux §tre concis et je deviens obscur." Arnould^ excuse for this is that Byranger "met souvent autant d*id£es que de mots dans ses vers,” this within the larger context of a justification for Bdrangerfs
-. . . phrase nerveuse et d*une grande simplicity . . . c'est bien la le style franqais par excellence, vif, net, arrety, ennemi des grands- mots, des images forcyes, sans nul alliage ytranger . . . il a retrouvy le secret de cette prose.en "cotillon court et souliers plats" qufon pouvait croire perdu depuis Voltaire . . . Byranger, ycrivain, est vraiment en
33syranger seems to have been a good story-teller, judging by the story of la mere Jary in Ma Biographie. pp. 51-64. 102
reaction contre la "decadence.n Chez lui ni senti- mentalisme larmoyant et affadissant, ni enflure sonore et vide; il sacrifie tout A lidde . . .34
It is true that obscurities are not to be found in
Bdranger’s prose, which, if little else, is at least
straightforward and easy to read. Yet, in spite of his
difficulties with verse, Bdranger always felt more at
ease writing poetry than prose. Bernard, for example,
quotes him as saying one day, "Au diable la prose, c Test trop de peine pour si peu, et je ne me sens pas Id
chez moi.n35
The refrain has been termed the "soul" of the
Caveats songs, and its importance to Bdranger must not be underestimated, but to his contemporaries he was better known for fond than forme. Critics praised first his pensde and sentiment inspirateur; the refrain served only to enliven these:
Le refrain devait dtre une dtincelle vive et dblouissante. Ses dclairs rdguliers revenant a des temps fixes, gtaient un mouvement, une gdne sans doute, un coup de sonnette ou de cordon, inattendu, brusque et saccadd, qui arretait a court l ’essor du chansonnier. Ndanmoins Bdranger comprit a merveille que dans une langue aussi peu rhythmique que la notre, le refrain dtait 1 indispensable vehicule du chant, le frdre de la rime, la rime de l ’air,.le seul anneau qui permit d'enchainer encore la pogsie aux ldvres des hommes. II vit de plus que, pour dtre entendu du peuple auquel, de toute ndcessitS, beaucoup
^Arthur Arnould, Bdranger. ses amis, vol. I, pp. 2B7-2B&.
2^Bernard, Bdranger et ses chansons, p. 103
de details ftchappent, il^fallait un cadre vivant, une image oft la pensee^fut en relief, un petit drame en un mot: de la, tant de vives conceptions si artistement achevftes, tant de compositions exquises, non moins actives et parlantes que les plus jolies fables de La Fontaine.36
Bftranger himself is quoted by Bernard as saying of the refrain:
La chanson est faite pour l^reille; de la 1 Obligation des vers rftpdtfts a la fin du couplet, ou des reprises en forme de rondeaux. Et, quoi qu’on puisse objecter a cet egard, il y aurait maladresse, quand on traite un genre, de vouloir lutter contre le gout general. Nos vers sans prosodie ont besoin de la rime, qui bientot amftne celui des refrains. Or, je voulais faire de la podsie chantfte et je devais en consequence m fefforcer de plaire d Tabord ft l ’oreille, avec les seuls moyens que m ’offrait le genre de la chanson.37
The refrain, by this reckoning, is for the mind what measure is for the ear, a sort of rhythm of thought which, if carefully orchestrated, contributes to the gradual development of the theme and its realization in the mind of the listener. The results Bftranger was able to achieve through such an apparently simple device are sometimes surprising. For example, his use of the final word is noteworthy. It sometimes reinforces or completes the idea (as in Le Vilain or Ce n*est plus Lisette), some times softens a blow or tempers satire by assuming a
"parried thrust" or "pulled punch" stance (Le Vieux
36Notice by Perrotin in Bdranger, Oeuvres completes (Paris: "Terrotin, 1#34), vol. I, pp. lxx-lxxi.
37Bernard, Bdranger et ses chansons, p. 11. 104
Drapeau. Plus de politique), or drives home a point through a rhther evident irony (La Restauration de la chanson. Des Deux Cousins). Sometimes, as in the traditional Caveau song, the refrain can be a dynamic recurrent charge of renewal (as in Les Gueux. Le Ventru.
Le petit homme gris). Or, as in Les Souvenirs du Peuple. a naive refrain can alternate with sombre vignettes or tableaux to contrast and relieve vigor or emotion, as a recurring refreshing interlude. Louis XI falls into this category.
B6rangerfs expression can be termed forceful, yet there is nothing brusque about it; it has what has been termed "grace" and "charm.IT B6ranger does not slip into bitterness or threatening anger, even when his satirical bite is the deepest. Despite his taste for "poetic allusions" early in his career, his songs generally avoid conventional metaphors and keep to a moderate and easily understandable style, almost elegant in its straight forward simplicity. He readily adopted the idiom of the new popular literature, including many of the terms used by the Romantics (e.g., illusion. m&Lancolie. harmonie. rfverie, fantaisie. and meditation podtique). He denounced "la langue jnorte de Ronsard" with its ambitious expressions which "mettent la po£sie & la surface"; poetry for B£ranger must always remain "en dessous," out of respect for "la nettete de la pensile" and "la limpiditd 1i05
de notre langue" and disdain for nl*ornement frivole."
Subsequent critics have generally agreed with Jules Janin*s
statement of B6rangerfs chief merit: "dfavoir toujours su
ce qu*il voulait dire, et n favoir jamais dit que cela."3^
B£ranger cited La Fontaine as his authority in this matter,
as one who had known how to "saisir l Tinstinct du vulgaire."
B£ranger, in essence, is an anti-precious writer.
He was opposed, in theory and practice, to recherches de
1 *esprit and the delicacies of official taste and bien-
s6ances. He had studied his Shakespeare and was wont to
justify some of his more dubious lines with his famous nplus est pur l*azur du ciel et mieux s*y voit le raoindre nuage," or else he tossed off a quick "ainsi faisait Shakespeare." He was fond of placing himself between Shakespeare and La Fontaine, "entre le grand drame et le petit drame." As the former, he said, had taught him to talk to and lead the crowd, the latter had shown him "comment on dispose en un cadre dtroit une leqon vive et rapide a l Tusage des plus simples esprits."39
In poetry, he preached and adopted "la ligne droite— aller II son but par le plus court chemin." He admired, for example, HugoTs Feuilles d^utomne and Chants du crOpuscule, but complained that their exalted passages took
3#Jules Janin, Bgranger et son temps. (Paris: Pincebourde, 1366) p. 31.
39ibid., pp. 15-16. 106
the reader too far from the truth of the vulgaire. It
is precisely on this point that he chided (in the 1633
preface) the pretentions of the Romantic school as too
similar to the ambitions of the marshals and imperial
parvenus who had affected nobility:
Tout ce qui appartient aux lettres et aux arts est sorti des classes inf^rieures, & peu d fexceptions pres; mais il ressemblent tous S des parvenus, d£sireux de faire oublier leur origine,
Beranger’s popular inspiration is perhaps best
reflected in the "purple passage" from the preface of 1633•
Le plus grand poete des temps modernes, et peut- Stre de tous les temps, Napoleon, lorsqu’il se d£gageait de limitation des anciennes formes monarchiques, jugeait le peuple ainsi que devraient le juger nos poetes et nos artistes. II voulait, par exemgle, que le spectacle des representations ratis fut compose des chefs-d1oeuvre de la scene franqaise. Corneille et Molidre en faisaient souvent les honneurs et l ’on a remarque que jamais leurs pieces ne furent applaudies avec plus de discernement. Le grand homme avait appris de bonne heure, dans les camps et au milieu des troubles rdvolutionnaires, jusqu’S quel degr4 d 1elevation peut atteindre 1*instinct des masses, habilement remu£es. On serait tent6 de croire que c'est pour satisfaire & cet instinct qu’il a tant fatigu6 le monde. L 1amour que porte a sa m&noire la g6n6ration nouvelle, qui ne I ’a pas connu, prouve assez combien l ’6motion po6tique a de pouvoir sur le peuple. Que nos auteurs travaillent done s&rieusement pour cette foule si bien pr6par6e & recevoir 1 ’instruction dont elle a besoin. En sympathisant avec elle ils acheveront de la rendre morale, et plus ils ajouteront & son intelligence? plus ils 6tendront le domaine du gdnie et de la gloire . • .
In addition to shedding light on B6ranger’s
sympathies for Napoleon and his liberal leanings, this passage expresses perhaps the best of any our chanson- nier’s view of the relationship of his art to popular 107 taste. He apparently saw creative aesthetic works as essentially originating in, intended for and founded on public taste, all of which suggests a Rousseauesque concept of man’s natural virtue and discriminating taste waiting to be drawn out by skillfully-arranged, edifying aesthetic experiences. A liberal’s concern for improving the lot of the masses permeates this train of thought.
An enlightened ruler would naturally wish to see this edification encouraged, and Napoleon’s efforts undoubtedly contributed to BSranger’s sympathy for the Emperor. At least in this respect, BSranger’s art and view of his art are integrally linked to his "Bonapartism.”
In the 1&21 preface we read:
D ’abord, je ferai remarquer que la chanson, comme plusieurs autres genres, est toute une langue, et que, comme telle, elle est susceptible de prendre les tons les plus opposes. J ’ajoute que, depuis 17^9, le peuple ayant mis la main aux affaires du pays, ses sentiments et ses idees le prouvent. La chanson, qu’on avait definie 1 ’expression des sentiments populaires. devait dis lors s ’Slever & la hauteur des impressions de joie ou de tristesse que les triomphes ou les dSsastres produisaient sur la classe la plus nombreuse . . . il fallait de plus que la nouvelle expression des sentiments du peuple put obtenir 1 ’entrSe des salons pour y faire des conquetes dans 1 ’intSret de ces sentiments. De la, autre nScessitS de perfectionner le style et la poSsie de la chanson. . . . Pourquoi nos jeunes et grands poetes ont-ils dSdaignS les succls que, sans nuire a leurs autres travaux, la chanson leur eut procures? Notre cause y eut gagnS, et j ’ose le leur dire, eux-memes eussent profitd a descendre quelque fois des hauteurs de notre vieux Pinde, un peu plus aristocratique que ne le voudrait le gSnie de notre bonne langue frangaise . . . par compensation, ils se seraient habituSs A rSsumer leurs idSes en de petites compositions variSes ioa
et plus ou raoins dramatiques, compositions que saisit I 1instinct du vulgaire, lors m§me que les details les plus heureux lui 6chappent. C*est la, selon moi, mettre de la po£sie en dessous.40 Peut-Stre est-ce,en definitive, une obligation qu1impose la simplicity de notre langue et A laquelle nous nous conforraons trop rarement. La Fontaine en a pourtant assez bien prouve les avantages . . • desormais c*est pour le peuple qu’il faut cultiver les lettres . . . Quand je dis peuple, je dis la foule; je dis le peuple d*en bas, si l ^ n veut. II n Test pas sensible aux recherches de l fesprit, aux d&Licatesses du gout; soit! Mais, par la meme, il oblige les auteurs a concevoir plus fortement, plus grandement, pour captiver son attention.
Clearly, B6ranger was convinced that turning liter
ature over to the general public would engender "plus de
naturel et de verity." Especially noteworthy is his
conviction that French was not suited to ethereal poetry.
B£ranger shows himself a man of the previous century,
essentially in the camp of Rivarol.
A careful examination of B^ranger!s lexicon
confirms his consistently popular inspiration. The most commonly-used adjectives are without doubt gai. petit. bon, pauvre. and vieux; his preference for these words reveals his attitude toward life as well as literature. These words were already favored in the early songs of 1B15 and before. Abundantly used thereafter
40l’h1is somewhat puzzling phrase has been explained by Bernard (B6ranger et ses chansons, p. 306): nB€ranger entendait par la que la po§sie d ’une composition doit rdsulter, meme & l finsu du lecteur de l'esprit meme et des conditions intimes de cette composition, non de son execution litt&raire, au dessous de laquelle se trouve, dans ce cas, tout ce qui peut agir sur l fimagi- nation.11 109 in various combinations, notably "bon petit," "pauvre petit," and "bon vieux," they bring to mind ThibaudetTs comments on the French affection for the word "petit."
Touchard remarks in this regard:
Le mot "petit," chez Bdranger, exprime d fabord une certaine conception de la vie, la sagesse de l ’homme qui a su mod^rer ses ddsirs et ses ambitions, qui se defie des grands 61ans et des grandes passions, qui profite de la vie petits coups," et qui demande seuleraent un "petit coin" pour Stre heureux * • • c fest la philosophie du Petit homme gris . . . mais le mot "petit" exprime encore autre cnose: le choix de l Thomme qui s'est rangd du cotd des etits contre les grands et les gros, la defiance f l Tdgard des politiques de grandeur et de conquete.41
One notes especially the traditional "little manfs" suspicion of any "politique de grandeur." The other adjectives fit into the scheme as well: pauvre invokes the chansonnierfs sympathy for the petits gens without ambition: "Les gueux, les gueux, sont les gens heureux." Bon seems to be identified with pleasure, and vieux would appear to signify authority and wisdom gained through experience. Respect for age seems to run through Bdrangerfs characterizations, be it with old sergeants, corporals, crones or whatever.
It is in these characterizations that Bdranger can be called a creative writer. He paints a figure with few words, his habitual concision increasing the difficulty involved: anyone with imagination can accept the Roi
41fouchard, La Gloire de B^ranger. vol. I, p. 152. 11iO
d fYvetot, or Roger Bontemps, or Lisette, or the bonne vieille of Les Souvenirs du Peuple. as a "type," yet altogether believable and easily visualized. A few well- selected traits suffice to breathe life into an abstraction.
B6ranger, it will be recalled, had nursed theatrical ambitions as a youth and had aspired to write comedies.
One can see some talent along these lines in the chansons. but transitions between scenes (stanzas) are sometimes weak and "rough," owing perhaps to the intrusion of the refrain. All in all, it is fortunate that he chose to reject theatrical drama for the drama of the song.
The art of B6ranger can be summed up in a phrase once used to describe that of another writer: "il savait exploiter les petits faits." The petit. the menu, the modest and moderate, that is the essential for Bgranger. A modest but polished work was his goal. CHAPTER THREE
BERANGER1S FORMATION AND DEVELOPMENT DOWN TO 1815
Napoleon, after reading Le Roi d TYvetot: — Qui a fait cette chanson? — Sire? c Test un employ^ a l fUniversitd. — Combien gagne-t-il? — 1200 francs, Sire. — Eh bien! vous lui en donnerez quinze. — Savinien Lapointe
II faut dire a la louange du gouverneraent imperial que l*auteur n ’dprouva aucune persecution. — B£ranger, Ma Biographie
II faut pardonner bien des choses a l ’auteur du Roi d ^ v e t o t . — Louis XVIII
Childhood influences
The Introduction has already presented an outline
of Beranger’s childhood and formative period. It will
be recalled that he was largely self-taught, owing what
meager instruction he received to politically-biased
but concerned adults such as M. de Bellanglise or his
aunt at Pdronne. Brought up on a steady diet of Voltaire,
Rousseau and political oratory, he had nonetheless been
exposed to, and had cultivated an appreciation of, the ancients (in translation) and the French classics,
especially the theater of the Grand SiScle, La Fontaine and F6nelon.
111; 112
Having been forced to become independent and keen
witted by parental passivity combined with positive
influences from republican aunts and teachers, he was
naturally interested in ambitious pursuits such as politics.
Judging himself to be gifted in writing, and having been
exposed continually to political slogans and oratory in
school, he sought a vocation combining politics and some
form of creative writing. Like Moliere, whom he admired
and tried to imitate at first, B&ranger had observed
people constantly, especially at the theater. His
fatherTs business practices had taught him evasive
cleverness and "sharp dealing"; he would be no onefs
dupe. Moreover, it was through his fatherfs political
involvement that he found further contacts with all sorts
of people, especially royalists and plotters.
B6ranger had always been sensitive and withdrawn.
His childhood migraines and frequent truancy reveal a
desire for independence and solitude, buttressed by constant
exposure to his republican aunt, who only encouraged his
"esprit sceptique et frondeur" by her attempts to
"civilize" the boy. She was later to warn his father, who was making plans to introduce Pierre-Jean some day to influential royalist friends, "Prenez garde q u Til ne leur
chante la Marseillaise!"11 One could hardly be surprised
^'Ma Biographie. p. 32. 113
at his unruly disposition and love of militant slogans.
All the influences to which he had been regularly exposed
seem almost calculated to form a "tough* mind with a
ready wit and love of satire and badinage. a sophisti
cated skepticism and distrust of authority. Add to this
mixture a strong interest in what he was to call "notre
grande Revolution" and "notre sainte Revolution" and in
republicanism, exposure to the Caveau and a taste for
forceful writing, and the emergence of a chansonnier
egrillard who relished confrontation with authority
could not long be in doubt.
Beranger and militarism
Young Pierre-Jean*s stay at the school of M. de
Bellenglise was a key element in his formation. He was
eager to involve himself both in writing and in the
events of his day; if he could do both simultaneously,
so much the better. His experience in writing oratory
to send to Tallien and Robespierre must have fired his
ambition as jiiuch as witnessing the storming of the
Bastille. The constant drills and marching songs at the
school would surely have encouraged a taste for things
military and, by extension, the likelihood of a sympa thetic stance relative to the Empire, at least in its more superficial aspects. Indeed, Bdranger did follow
enthusiastically the bulletins of the revolutionary 114 armies, just as he was later to sing of military grandeur and glory as seen through the eyes of common people.
Some would even label his songs jingoist or, to para phrase Geyl, "unrepentently railitaristic.n Perhaps it was simply that drum cadences lend themselves so readily to song, but when one listens to La Vivandi&re. for example
(cf. cassette), he can discern a special "feeling” for the soldier.
As an aspiring chansonnier coming of age during the
Empire, Bgranger was subjected to a barrage of militarily-inspired music, which could not help but influence his tastes. The situation of literature in general under the Empire, as discussed earlier, was also found in the case of the song. Napoleon had made it a practice to use songs as propaganda to build morale among troops and populations. For example, one of the favorite marching songs of the Imperial Guard, "J ’aime les oignons fruits A l'huile," was rechristened ”0n va leur percer le flanc” and "encouraged” at public gatherings, although it was to remain a mutual favorite of the
Emperor and his guard, a sort of private joke. We have seen that songs in praise of the Empire were already deeply rooted in the Revolution.
B6ranger,s sympathy with soldiers becomes all the more noteworthy in view of his conduct with relation to conscription, conduct which can only be termed "draft- dodging.” In all fairness, one must observe that atti
tudes on this subject were very different in his day.
Avoiding conscription was not unpatriotic in the eyes
of many, and it was not unusual to hire a replacement,
mutilate oneself or hide from the authorities.2 B6rangeir was not alone in seeking to avoid military service.
His fellow chansonnier Casimir Delavigne wrote at age
eighteen a dithyramb on the birth of the King of Rome
(1S11). Napoleon summoned the young poet and offered him as a reward any favor he chose, whereupon Delavigne asked to be exempted from conscription, a request begrudgingly granted. Lebrun-Pindare himself was also known for his efforts to evade conscription, and Armand Gouff6 even hazarded a joyous song in honor of his exemption on the grounds of poor eyesight. In the context of his era and profession, Bgranger was hardly conspicuous in his atti tude. Nonetheless, it does seem worthy of note that
B€ranger shares with Victor Hugo the dubious distinction of enjoying consecration as national chronicler of the
Legend of great deeds of military heroism, a reputation achieved in ”bad faith,” for both men had spent their youths assiduously seeking to avoid military service.
Hugo, son of a distinguished general, preferred not to discuss his military status, while B6ranger practically
2 See Robiquet, La Vie quotidienne. for a detailed account of these common practices. 116 boasted (at least when peace and safety had returned) about his successful ruse. Prematurely bald, he looked much older than his years, and he found it sufficient to doff his hat and greet respectfully any gendarme or conscription officer who seemed to be scrutinizing him. The sight of his shiny pate, he claimed in Ma Biographie. was enough to convince everyone that he was overage.
In retrospect, and having become a public figure unable to conceal the less laudable aspects of his career,
Bdranger did feel a need to justify his actions, and to gain an advantage against his critics through frankness, so he chose in his biography to steer discussion over to the issue of hiring a replacement. He explained his refusal to enroll for conscription as due to three reasons:
(a) his eyesight would surely have exempted him anyway,
(b) he was constitutionally and philosophically opposed to taking the trouble to register, and (c) he wanted to save his father the expense of paying a replacement.
These rather weak excuses are rendered even less effective by an unfortunately flippant tone entirely out of place for a reader or judge of any degree of sensitivity who believes that a writerfs acts and slogans should be consistent.
L*optique de ce temps n'est plus la meme que la notre, raais l fon ne peut s Tempecher ici de comparer la destinee du chansonnier avec celle du canonnier Paul-Louis Courier, son associ£ dans l ’histoire litt^raire, qui lui aussi ne montra que peu de gout "pour les jeux ddsastreux de conqu^rant" et y participa tout de m§rae.3
In a somewhat "cheap" attempt to mock the authorities,
B6ranger attempted to gain public sympathy for his stand.
He was able to avoid military service because, he says,
"le ciel me vint en aide," and he ends the whole account with "les r&fractaires de ma classe ne furent amnisti^s qu*au mariage de Napoleon avec Marie-Louise. Ce qui prouve que les petits ne pStissent pas toujours des sottises des grands." Such words and sentiments do not readily harmonize with B£ranger*s image as poete napol^onien.
The first stirrings
Having steeped himself in great literature in his father*s cabinet de lecture in the rue Saint-Nicaise
(and witnessing in the same street the "infernal machine" attempt on First Consul Bonaparte*s life), and having taught himself the basics of composition, versification and grammar while learning the printer’s trade with
Laisnez, BSranger felt prepared to embark on his literary career, despite his frustrations in the role which has since become so commonplace— that of the starving, striving bohemian in a garret awaiting his first "break."
He had tried to emulate MoliSre, and told friends that
3Lucas-Dubreton, BGranger. p. 2£. 113 he hoped to rival him some day. The only reasonably successful attempt to do so that we know of is Les
Hermaphrodites. of which only the title and a few scattered fragments remain. B6ranger apparently burned the manuscript during one of his introspective critical periods, and he wrote later that an objective rereading of it had convinced him that he lacked the divine spark in this genre. He did a satire of the Com6die Franqaise entitled Les Amis de Molifere and at least one comedy of character, Le Paresseux. which was not staged until
1907. In poetry he fared much better. The epic genre had always tempted him, and, like most aspirants to literary greatness in his day, he felt obliged to serve an apprenticeship in this domain before settling into a genre. The Clovis he had begun at age eighteen, with the announced intention of reworking it for publication at age thirty, was never pushed beyond the fragmentary stage before its author renounced the epic. Its most- often-quoted passage (see Introduction, p. 6) speaks well of his effort, but it was becoming increasingly apparent to B£ranger that the epic was not his genre.
There is a record of his having written at age twenty . another epic entitled Charlemagne & Boulogne. Joseph
Bernard seems to be almost the only scholar to know of its existence and it is unfortunate for our purposes that 119 only a single line of it has 'survived: wLe flot frappe le roc et rejaillit en pluie.” Such a subject, treated at this stage in his career, could have revealed much to us of B£ranger*s early feelings toward Bonaparte, assuming of course a treatment going beyond the conventional cliches, such ’’carolingian” poems being commonplace at the time.
Conventional dithyrambics, idyls like GlvcSre. odes and religious lyric poetry proved to be good exercise for his aspiring pen, and undoubtedly he learned from his attempts, but here too he felt that others out did him. His success in composing delicate romances and vaudevilles went largely unnoticed, even though subsequent critics have judged these pieces to be the best in the collection of 1S15. He dabbled in comic opera, producing a libretto entitled La Vieille Femme et le Jeune Mari which was promptly refused by publishers as immoral. He had first envisioned the king of Yvetot as a subject for a comic opera rather than a song.
In spite of his poverty and obscurity, the "garret years” were pleasant ones for Bdranger. Convivial dinners, contacts with influential established poets and chansonniers like Lebrun, Antier and, of course, Wilhem, the stimulation and encouragement afforded by opportunities to compose and perform songs for such a company and to have one’s works 120 published in the Saisons du Parnasse— all this was to pre pare him for his "breakthrough" when it came in 1803.
Lucienls patronage
Lucien Bonaparte was known and respected for his intellectual interests and love of the arts and letters.
He prided himself on his ability to play tragic roles, especially Orosmane in Zaire; Talma is said to have applauded his performance. During his term in the office of Ministre de l ’Int&rieur he consciously encouraged and subsidized letters, sciences and arts, and had set an example himself by composing a Parall&le de Bonaparte avec Charlemagne, subtitled "magnus in bello, major in pace.** But Lucien was altogether not a brother to suit the tastes of Napoleon, a very pragmatic man who detested metaphysicians, ideologues (one of his favorite terms of contempt) and pedants. Lucien’s headstrong tendencies compounded their difficulties, culminating in LucienTs exile to Rome when he married ill-advisedly. Indeed, he was only months away from disgrace when he took B£ranger into his protection.
B6ranger’s comments concerning his relationship with his protector are confined almost exclusively to
Ma Biographie (p. 88f), in which Lucien is lauded as an willustre orateur et poete." B6ranger admits that he saw
Lucien only twice, and that his Maecenas had criticized 121
certain hardiesses in his style and had recommended as a topic La Mort de N£ron. which B6ranger soon abandonned,
explaining "l1imitation m*a toujours impossible."
Touchard rediscovered the "lost" Mort de N£ron in a private library, but concludes that "il peut, semble-t-il, y rester sans inconvenient." Its beginning may seem bold,
considering that it was written for Lucien during the
Consulate:
S ’il faut des lois au peuple, un frein a la licence, Sans abus de pouvoir n Test-il pas de puissance? Les rois agiront-ils toujours en conqu£rants?
But the conclusion is mollifying and unoriginal and recalls at very best the lesson of Yvetot and the
Traite de Politique?
Dieux bons, accordez-nous des princes vertueux!^
B£ranger considered LucienTs literary tastes antiquated, but he recognized that his association with
Bonaparte's brother and the useful "connections" thus established afforded him a measure of instant success and prestige.
Bdranger is careful to mention repeatedly his constant devotion to his protector and his numerous attempts to slip expressions of gratitude to him past the censors, concluding in the successful acknowledgement in the 1B33 preface. Despite his later attempt to paint this
^Touchard, La Gloire de Bdranger. vol. I., p. 97. 122 commitment to a protector about to be exiled as an act of* courage, one must conclude that Lucien Bonaparte was an excellent choice as a patron and that B6ranger was well aware of this. He acknowledged the value of this relationship in finding employment and recognition in the literary world, and concluded, WI1 faut avoir quelque chose & dire de soi, et c f<§tait beaucoup de pouvoir dire q u ’il me prot^geait."5
Lucien, it should be noted, was later to chide
B£ranger, in his infrequent correspondence, for writing only songs and not devoting himself to the more elevated genres.
Little remains of the poetry Bdranger read to
Lucien. The appendix of Ma Biographie. however, does preserve intact the elegy of 1£02 reproduced in part below, which casts light on his development. Flattery of the
First Consul was of course, to be expected.
Nos grandeurs, nos revers, ne sont point notre ouvrage: Dieu seul m£ne'& son gr4 notre aveugle courage; Sans honte succombez, triomphez sans orgueil, Vous, mortels, qu’il pla ^Ma Biographie. p. 91. 123 Spectateur ignorS de ce d£sastre immense, Un homme enfin, sortant de I 1ombre et de l'enfance, Parait. Toute la terre, It ses coups 6clatants, Croit, cSs le premier jour, l favoir connu longtemps. II combat, il subjugue, il renverse, il 61&vej Tout ce q u ’il veut de grand, sa fortune l'acheve. Nous voyons, lorsqu1^ peine on connait ses desseins, Les peuples 6tonnls tomber entre ses mains. Alors son bras puissant, apaisant la victoire, Soutient le monde entier, qu*£branlait tant de gloire, Le Tr£s-Haut l'ordonnait. Ou sont les vains mortels Qui s ’opposaient au cours des arrets 6ternels? Faibles enfants qu'un char gcrasa sur la pierre, . Voila leurs corps sanglants rest6s dans la poussi£re.& The road to notoriety and fame The job as University clerk, the terra as hack writer, the associations with singing groups and first publications of songs, and finally the induction into the Caveau, all were stages on Beranger’s road to his new career. Le S6nateur and Le Roi d'Yvetot were, of course, the first songs to gain widespread notoriety, and the Chansons morales et autres. par M. un tel. membre d'une soci6t£ de gens de bon gout et de mauvais ton did become an overnight success, but their publication date of 1B15 is misleading in that it obscures the long and careful preparation undergone during Bdranger's attempts to "break into** literature as a recognized writer. Besides the previously-quoted passages, one can cite a number of remnants of B&ranger's early attempts 6lbid., p. 330. 124 which illuminate his poetic talent. Touchard,^ for example, managed to locate the eighteen-line text of Glycfere and several other interesting early texts, including a little-known idyl entitled Le conqu£rant et le vieillard. Both works are conventional in form and moral, deriving from the traditional juxtaposition of pastoral calm and the vanity of glory, with strong carpe diem overtones, but the latter seems to be an early indication of B6ranger’s attitude toward Bonaparte. In Glycere a young girl is picking flowers to adorn her hair in order to outshine the village beauty, Glycere, when a sage vieillard informs her that she is picking flowers from Glycerefs tomb. In Le conqu£rant et le vieillard we find another lesson on vanity: a proud conqueror is humbled by meeting another wise old man who doesnft know who the conqueror is and excuses himself for this by emphasizing, ”le calme est grand sous le chaurae ou je vis.” Says the conqueror: ”Tu ne me connais pas! . . . Plus d ’un an s Test pass6 / Que, subjuguant l ’etat ou le sort te fit naitre, / J*en ai chassd tes rois; leur trone est renvers6,” to which responds the vieillard, "Excusez; j ’ignorais avoir changd de maitre.” After hearing a description of the felicitous simplicity of the old m a n ^ humble way of life, the conqueror takes leave ^Touchard, La Gloire de BSranger. vol. I, p. 9&f. 125 with a ttHeureux vieillard, adieu!" One could, of course, dismiss this conqueror as a mere conventional type rather than representing Napoleon, but the poem is dated 1S05, the year of both Austerlitz and Trafalgar, one year after the establishment of the Empire. Bdranger admittedly had followed enthusiastically the rise of Napoleon’s star and was quite aware of current events, and it would appear entirely possible that this idyl represents an early, low-key Roi d ’Yvetot or admonition to the new Emperor to temper his ambition and to consider the merits of peace and tranquility. This piece would accordingly reflect both Bdranger’s interest in Napoleon and his reservations concerning his growing ambition. Until Le S6nateur and Le Roi d ’Yvetot (1314), however, there are almost no further indications of B6ranger’s attitude toward the Consulate and Empire. Even his correspondence is singularly silent concerning these attitudes and feelings. The only material Bdranger left for scholars is after-the-fact commentary in prefaces and his biography, and it is altogether too evident that in these instances he is creating an image or striking a pose for posterity. In the preface of 1333, for example, B£ranger professes an "admiration enthousiaste et constante pour le g£nie de l ’Empereur," who had been "le representant de l'dgalit6 victorieuse." Napoleon is termed "le soldat 126 de la Revolution1* in Ma Biographie. which is quite in keeping with the "gray coat and little hat1* image. Bgranger was to speak constantly of France*s fifteen years of unsurpassed glory and grandeur, forever thereafter revealing by comparison the insignificance of "marionnettes royales,1* Myrmidons and "infiniment petits.1* Bgranger insists, however, that he had never let his admiration for the genius of the Emperor temper his criticism of the despotic Empire, and he had never taken part in obsequious praise, but rather had boldly opposed all errors and excesses, allowing himself to indulge in flattering treatments of the Emperor only after it was no longer fashionable to do so and the l&che-bottes had all deserted: 11 Je n*ai flattg que 1 1 inf or tune,11 says the last couplet of Le Vilain. and this was to become a theme. In contrast to others who had praised Napoleon in his greatness, then turned on him in his weakness, Beranger insisted that he had done the very opposite, having served as opposition gadfly during the reign of glory, following always the dictates of patriotism over those of loyalty to any individual. Bgranger and the Consulate Our only substantial source of information concerning B6ranger*s attitude toward the Consulate is Ma Biographie. which is, of course, Bgranger*s edited and calculated 127 version of the truth in retrospect. In the almost complete absence of any other documents against which we can compare his account to get closer to the truth, we must accept on faith many of his statements and anecdotes contained therein. According to Ma Biographie. BAranger was caught up in the national enthusiasm over BonaparteTs return from Egypt in 1799. He recounts the general acclamations: A la fin du pouvoir directorial, l ’anarchie devint telle que les coeurs les plus forts y perdaient 1 ’espArance . . . Au milieu de ces malheurs publics, pauvre disciple de Juvenal, je rimais des alexandrins contre Barras . . . mes chefs-d’oeuvre en ce genre n ’eurent pas le temps d ’Aclore: Bonaparte revint d ’Egypte. Lorsque la grande nouvelle de son retour inattendu arriva, j ’Atais a notre cabinet de lecture, au milieu de plus de trente personnes. Toutes se leverent spontanAment en poussant un long cri de joie. II en fut de meme a peu prAs dans toute la France qui se crut sauvAe. Quand on produit de pareils effets sur un peuple, on en est le maltre: les sages n ’y peuvent rien. En debarquant A FrAjus, Bonaparte Atait dAjA l ’empereur NapolAon.® One notes in this passage BAranger’s insistence on harmonizing his sentiments with those of "toute la France." He continues by making a more definitive pronouncement concerning the 13 Brumaire. In order to chide his royalist father, he had repeatedly praised Bonaparte: Je m ’Atais toujours fait un malin plaisir de prAdire A mon pere 1 ’AlAvation future du vainqueur d ’Arcole et Lodi. Sa course en Egypte ne m ’avait point otA 1 ’idAe qu’il arriverait a la supreme magistrature % a Biographie. p. 70. 123 . . . J fapplaudis avec toute la France a la revolution du 13 Brumaire, non pourtant sans craindre gue le jeune general ne s'arr6t£t pas au Consulat.9 The use of the word revolution in the context of the 13 Brumaire is surely significant. Touchard remarks of this particular passage: . • . Beranger parle du 13 Brumaire comme d fune "revolution" et non comme d ’un coup d'Etat: le 13 Brumaire, a ses yeux, n ’acheve pas I 1ere rdvolu- tionnaire, mais la prolonge; le Consulat est pour lui 1 ’accomplissement de la Revolution frangaise.'O The expression of such sentiments is quite in keeping with the Legend, as is Berangerfs explanation of his joy. For him, the Consulate represented a return to order and political moderation. "La France avait besoin d ’un gouvernement fort qui la sauv£t des jacobins et des Bourbons, de 1 Tincertitude et de l ’anarchie. Si l ’on me demande comment, avec mes previsions, je n ’ai pas ete revolte par la violation de la consti tution au 13 Brumaire, je rdpondrai nalvement qu’en moi le patriotisme a toujours domind les doctrines politiques et que la Providence ne laisse pas toujours aux nations le choix des moyens de salut. Ce grand homme pouvait seul tirer la France de l ’abime ou le Directoire avait fini par la precipiter. Je n ’avais que dix-neuf ans et tout le monde semblait n ’avoir que mon Sge pour penser comme moi.'2 9lbid., p. 71. ^Touchard, La Gloire de Beranger. vol. I, p. 163. U Ma Biographie. p. 69. 12Ibid., p. 71. 129 Patriotic pride and a desire to resist the enemy determined Bdranger's loyalty to the new government. The song Le Grenier, besides being a nostalgic reminis cence to the happy days of poverty and aspiration, contains a reference to his reaction at hearing the news of the victory at Marengo (1£00): A table un jour, jour de grande richesse, De mes amis les voix brillaient en choeur, Quand jusquTici monte un cri dTalegresse: A Marengo Bonaparte est vainqueur! Le canon gronde; un autre chant commence; Nous c£l£brons tant de faits 6clatants. Les rois jamais n'envahiront la France. Dans un grenier qu'on est bien a vingt ansi It may be questioned whether the enthusiastic exclamation points in this passage are intended only to convey anecdotally the general, national mood at the time or whether they do indeed betray a degree of excitement experienced by Beranger himself in recounting his own feelings. Invariably, in speaking of public reaction to these events, Beranger describes how la .ieunesse felt, but avoids including himself specifically among these youth. Certainly such expressions of enthu siasm are rare in BerangerTs accounts of this period; all in all he seems quite moderate in his feelings toward the Consulate. As Touchard has observed, Le Bonaparte de B&ranger reste lointain, abstrait, sans Sge. ^Rien de comparable au Bonaparte de Stendhal, a sa triomphante jeunesse, a la po€sie de ses campagnes italiennes. Jamais, dans ses chansons, Beranger n fa 6voqu6 cette p6riode qui pass lui avoir laiss6 de grands souvenirs . . . Bdranger and the Empire Just as it was to become a cliche of the Restoration1 liberal press to praise the Consulate in opposition to the faults of the Empire, Beranger admitted proudly to having approved the Consulate while disapproving the Empire: . . . quoique j Teusse prlvu & peu pres la raarche que suivrait l fambition de Bonaparte, le rgtablissement d tun trone fut pour moi un grand sujet de tristesse . . . je suis de nature r£publicaine . . . Mon admiration pour le g6nie de Napoldon n f6ta rien a ma repugnance pour le despotisme de son gouvernement, d fautant plus qufalors je me rendais moins bien compte que je ne l*ai fait depuis des n6cessit£s que lui imposait la lutte a soutenir contre les entreprises sans cesse renaissantes de 1 ’aristocratie europeenne.1^ As one would expect from this anti-pedant, repub lican young man, there is a notable criticism leveled against the Empire in Ma Biographie. that of larding the imperial style with pseudoclassical (and, to B&ranger, anachronistic) nomenclature: • . . ma premidre velleit£ d*opposition au gouver nement consulaire fut contre l remprunt fait & Rome et & la Grece des noms . . . {qui} me semblaient jurer avec le nouveau monde quTavait enfant^ ’$9 . . . j fai toujours d6test6 cette routinifere imi tation des anciens . . . Mon admiration pour Bonaparte ne m fa pas emp§ch£ de le traiter souvent l3Touchard, La Gloire de Beranger. vol. I, p. 163. H M a Biographie. p. 107. 131 d*homme de college; Paoli l*avait bien devin6: c*6tait sous beaucoup de rapports un h6ros de Plutarque; aussi restera-t-il, je l'espere, le dernier et peut-3tre le plus grand des hommes de l*ancien monde, q u ’il airaait a refaire, a sa maniere toutefois. H61as! rienne porte malheur comme de lutter contre1un monde nouveau! Napoleon a succombS a la tliche. ^ We could have expected B&ranger, in his full liberal, ultra-republican phase when he wrote the passage above, to draw such a conclusion, seeing Napoleon*s tragic error as that of working against history and trying to resist social evolution. A careful examination of Beranger*s correspondence down to 1314 (as collected by Boiteau) reveals very few expressions of patriotism at all in what he wrote to friends. Surprisingly, especially in the light of his later pronouncements about his patriotic fervor, he almost never mentions contemporary political or military happenings, and when he does do so, their treatment is restricted to their possible effects on him and his freedom from conscription. A parallel situation exists in the songs, which likewise generally neglect politics and mention of war. Les Gueux and La Gaudriole (1B12) two of the earliest widely-known, Caveau-type songs by B6ranger, do contain references (unmentioned by most critics, including even Touchard) to the excesses of the Empire: "Trop de 1'5ibid., p. 72. 132 gloire nous a nui: / Le plaisir s'envole" (La Gaudriole) and an apparent warning of what could happen to an overambitious Emperor: nDu faste qui nous £tonne / L'exil punit plus d*un grand” (Les Gueux). The first song cited by critics as reflecting the overall situ ation is Le Mort vivant. dated 1811 but in reality composed, according to Beranger*s notes, in 1813. The stanza in point is: Faut-il aller guerroyer dans le Nord, Priez pour moi: je suis mort, je suis mort! Que pres du feu, l'un l Tautre se bravant, On trinque assis derriere un paravent: Je suis vivant, bien vivant, tres vivant. This stanza above (which was suppressed by censors in 1814) summarizes neatly the theme of the song: praise of creature comforts and drink, underlaid with fear of being interrupted or importunately disturbed by the war outside. Touchard notes with good reason with respect to this passage that it was no doubt one of the grounds for the press*s and critics* attacks upon Beranger*s good faith and patriotism, and in truth one can understand his feeling a need to justify himself later in notes and statements as having had the courage to express his convictions rather than follow the other "chameleons.'* He was to insist that the courage required to write Le Roi d'Yvetot far outweighed any cowardice others sought to uncover in retrospect. 133 It must not be forgotten that Napoleon was quite capable of severe retaliation against any criticism, however humorous. He was quoted by a page as having remarked menacingly in 1313 that n0n disait autrefois que la France etait une monarchie temp£r6e par des chansons. On ne peut pas permettre aujourd’hui de chansonner les choses et les personnes • • ."16 Beranger added as an author’s note to the Roi d ’Yvetot in subsequent editions of his works, ”Lors q u ’en 1313 cette chanson courut manuscrite, elle fut regardde comme un acte de courage, tant alors 1 ’esprit d ’opposition etait dteint en France," and in Ma Biographie, looking back on the beginnings of his career from the secure vantage point of a consecrated po&te national, he was to amplify this view: Critique fort moddrde du gouvernement imperial, lorsque le mutisme etait d ’ordre public, elle eut la bonne fortune de voir la police la suivre II la piste. Le travail des vers, 1 ’exactitude de la rime n 1empichSrent pas d ’abord de l ’attribuer k des hommes du monde haut places, ce qui me ddcida a prier mes amis, et Arnault surtout, de faire savoir le nom de 1 ’auteur k ceux qui, disait-on, avaient mission de le decouvrir. On a rdpete plusieurs fois que cette chanson m ’avait valu des persecutions; il n ’en est rien, et j ’ai lieu de croire pourtant q u ’elle avait ete mise sous les yeux de l ’Empereur.1? Incited by Lucas-Dubreton, La France de Napoleon, p. 132. ^‘?Ma Biographie. p. 139. ti34 Although, of course, neither the name Napoleon nor any other specific name is to be found in this song (the name of Napoleon does not appear in his songs until quite late), the irony in the obvious allusions to, for example, the Emperorfs sleepless work habits ("Se levant tard, se couchant t6t, / Dormant fort bien sans gloire"), his extravagance ("Et couronnd par Jeanneton / D*un simple bonnet de coton"— and— "II faisait ses quatre repas / Dans son palais de chaume"), the Imperial Guard ("Joyeux simple et croyant le bien, / Pour toute garde il n ’avait rien / Qu*un chien."), the incessant warfare ("II n*agrandit point ses Etats, Fut un voisin commode."), and the Code civil ("Et module des potentats / Prit le plaisir pour code.") all make it quite evident that the song is a humorous and witty comparison of an unpopular regime with that of a "bon petit roi" much more to Beranger^ liking. The message is clear: in a bantering, almost gentle manner later to develop into the Traitg de Politique a l*usage de Lise. Beranger is prodding the Emperor, who has let himself be led astray by ambition, extravagance and loss of contact with the healthy restraining effect of popular opinion. The Emperor is gently reminded that, to borrow the other song^ refrain, the essential concern of any ruler out to be "le bonheur de tes sujets," who, in Yvetot at least, were happy: "Ce n'est que lorsqu’il expira / Que le peuple qui 135 l'enterra / Pleura." Clearly Beranger1s ideal of a monarch would live and rule frugally and simply, avoid any policy of conquest and/or grandeur, and keep his subjects happy through a healthy laissez-faire approach to government. Comparing this ideal to that of poujadisme in our own time, Touchard observes of this song . . . On rencontre dans cette chanson famili&re la plupart des themes, essentiellement n6gatifs, qui apparaissent en France jusqu’a l T4poque contemporaine chez ceux qui se r^clament d'un certain type de libdralisrae. Le "roi d'Yvetot" est l ’ancStre du "citoyen contre les pouvoirs" et Alain £rigera en doctrine l*id£al du "bon petit roi."18 In its own time this song was to find a very enthusiastic reception among all classes. In its praise, one must admit with Touchard that "Le roi d^vetot est bien une chanson d fopposition, mais il s'agit moins d*une opposition a un homme ou & un regime que d fun voeu pour la paix et la tranquillity."19 And one must point out as well that, written shortly after the execution of Malet and shortly before the collapse of the Empire, Byrangerfs song is truly moderate and good- natured in tone when compared with other "opposition songs" of the period. One could extrapolate from this fact and earlier remarks and conclude that Berangerfs opposition to the Empire was, all in all, quite discreet 1^Touchard, La Gloire de Byranger, vol. I, p. 169. 19lbid. 1136 and moderate. The only other contemporary songs relating to the imperial government do not change this conclusion. Beranger mentions in various notes two songs he did not ■write down— and which have consequently been lost, even eluding Touchardfs tireless efforts to find a trace of them— entitled Le boeuf gras and Le decrotteur suivant la Cour. He refers to these as opposition songs but reveals nothing of their content. Le S£nateur (1813) has also been termed an opposition song, but such a classification would appear to be unfounded. The fact that its "hero” is a Senator of the Empire seems irrel evant to the theme of this fabliau-like song which could apply just as well to another time and place. Other scattered references to dictatorial practices and injustices may be found in various songs from the recueil. notably the prophecy in Ainsi soit-il (dated 1812) that a future age shall see the end of censorship and the rebirth of taste and truth, and the final stanza of Roger Bontemps. which enjoins "Vous, dont le char d£vie / Apres un cours heureux, / Vous, qui perdrez peut-etre / Des titres 6clatants . . ,n to emulate Roger and lift their glasses. But surely these must be seen as purely conventional material and not as special indictments of the Empire. 137 Beranger and the crisis of 1&14 Around 1#14, however, there is an abrupt change in tone in both songs and correspondence. Frivolity, nonchalance and comfort-seeking are displaced by a concern with national affairs. The imminent fall of the Empire and subsequent threat of invasion figure prominently in Beranger’s writings. A general attempt to rally the national energies and patriotism had been ordered by Napoleon, who had, of course, consistently used this form of musical propaganda throughout his reign. During the Boulogne encampment, for example, he had ordered specific songs— and even specific tunes to set them to— in honor of the occasion. The memoirs of Chaptal, Minist£re de l TInt£rieur, contain this rather interesting directive from Bonaparte dated November 29, 1S03: wJe desire, citoyen ministre, que vous fassiez faire, sur l fair du Chant du depart, un chant pour la descente en Angleterre. Faites faire egalement plusieurs chants avec le meme sujet, sur diffbrents airs."20 In 1B14 the time had once again come to command morale-boosting songs which were to be circulated by the police and nencouraged" in the guinguettes. Paid singers were sent into the streets with orgues de Barbarie 20cited by Charpentier, Napoleon et les hommes de lettres. p. 70, 133 for the purpose of reviving interest in the Marseillaise and other patriotic anthems. The success of this project was meager, for satirical songs far more caustic than Le Roi d ’Yvetot had already captured the public favor. The Caveau was well aware of the country’s plight, and the light bantering tone of earlier songs gave way to earnest attempts at rallying spirits through music. Dozens of songs were written, including Beranger1s Les Gaulois et les Francs (cf. cassette) and Ma derni&re chanson, peut-etre. Neither song mentions proper names— notably that of Napoleon— and, especially in Les Gaulois et les Francs, the overall effect seems to have fallen short. Souriau’s contention that "L’air (des Gaulois et les FrancsJ semble railler les paroles. On dirait la Marseillaise jou£e sur un mirliton^l would seem to account partly for the song’s shortcomings, as would its bizarre attempt to encourage resistance to invasion by reminding the population that it had originated from invasions, but when compared with the other commanded songs, it fares well musically and artistically, and one can readily imagine it played by fife and drum and used as a marching song, as indeed it was, according to a number of memoirs. 2I'M. Souriau, Histoire du romantisme en France, vol. I, p. 94, cited by Touchard. La Gloire de Bdranger. vol. I, p. 171. 139 In sum, Les Gaulois et les Francs was and is rather appealing, and represents an expression of Beranger's patriotism totally isolated from his usual partisan preoccupations; like the later La Sainte Alliance des Peuples. it reveals the character of Beranger*s patri otism and feelings for his countrymen. There is humor within, but nothing heavy. One could fault the taste of Les Gaulois et les Francs, it is true. By modern standards especially, the reasons given therein for resisting invasion (e.g., French bread is too fine for coarse Russians, French women are too good for Kalmouks, and French wines are too fine for Prussians) seem somehow ridiculous— Touchard lumps them under his epithet npatriotisme grotico-gastronomiqueM — yet in their day they were accepted. Moreover, the song was written at the high point of Beranger’s asso ciation with the Caveau and is quite in keeping with its spirit; it is therefore hardly surprising that drink, bonne chdre and eroticism should form its basis. Les Gaulois et les Francs is as much a work of the Caveau as of Bgranger. The same can be said of its companion piece, Ma derni&re chanson peut-etre. also written in January 1&14 and intended to show its author1s intention to wtenir tete & l fennemi!* with boast of fortitude inter spersed with encouragements to combat the enemy by 140 drinking freely and gaily ("Autant de pris sur l ’ennemi,1* repeats the refrain, again entirely in the tradition of the Caveau). Beranger later felt a need to justify in his notes the frivolity of this song in relation to the gravity of the situation, excusing the light tone by saying that he had not yet conceived of elevating the genre, nor did he believe that Paris would really collapse so readily or that the situation was really that bad. Arnould’s rather weak defense of Beranger (. . . £en 1£13-1#14] c ’est le poAte qui hAsite, bien plus que le citoyen. Le chansonnier tient une arme, mais il n ’en connait ni 1 ’usage ni la portee”22) notwithstanding, we must generally agree with the conclusion of Touchard: . . . pendant l ’agonie de 1 ’Empire, tandis que les allies marchent sur Paris et que Napoleon fait des prodiges pour essayer de les arreter, Beranger se tait. II laisse a d fautres le soin d ’affirmer que les Franqais sont invincibles et que rien ne peut faire trembler l TEmpereur . . . Lorsqufon compare les chansons de Beranger aux autres chansons datant du Premier Empire, on se rend compte A quel point les preoccupations politiques et les sentiments patriotiques tiennent peu de place dans son oeuvre. En 1814, & la chute de 1 ’Empire il n ’a pas d 1opinions qui lui soient propres. C ’est un litterateur sans convictions affirmees, qui s ’est fait connaltre grSce A des protections officielles, un modest employe qui n ’a touche que trAs occasionnellement A la chanson politique et qui a exprime dans Le roi d ’Yvetot les idees de 1 ’immense majorite des Franqais.2^ 22Arnould, Beranger. ses amis, vol. I, p. 285. 23Touchard, La Gloire de Beranger. vol. I, p. 173, 141 Whatever his subsequent attempts at rendering more patriotic his early deeds and works, the undeniable fact remains that during the glorious days of the Empire, B6ranger was more or less comfortably ensconsed with friends, drinking and writing joyous light verse. His correspondence reveals that the most important events of his life between 1303 and 1314 were convivial dinner parties and carnivals, while others his age were marching through Spain, Russia and Prussia. The defeat and first allied occupation awoke this dormant Caveau chansonnier and made of him ”le chantre de la France vaincue,w as Boiteau was to label him: . . . La patrie ensanglantee pleure, et c’est une l£chet6 ddsormais que de chanter le troupeau d ’Epicure . . . il revient a ses anciens reves d ’orgueil, et, puisqu’il sait chanter, c ’est au nom de la nation d6sesp6ree q u ’il chantera . . . La Revolution, qui a perdu son h£ros militaire, s'incarne cette fois encore en un homme. Elle a brise son 6pee; elle prend une lyre. Beranger n ’est plus le chansonnier de la petite academie de Pdronne, c ’est le chantre de la France vaincue, humiliee et raenaqante.2*** A popular legend even held that Berangerfs baldness was brought about suddenly by his anger at the invasion. Beranger speaks freely of his reactions to the events of 1315 in all of the major documents: Ma Biographie. the 1333 preface, songs and letters. The problem for the scholar is that these accounts contradict one another. 2^Paul Boiteau, Correspondance de Beranger (Paris: Perrotin, 1360), vol. I, p. 203. 142 The traditional account (and the last written) is that of Ma Biographie: “Moi aussi, j ’avais en vain 6te demander un fusil & ceux qu’on disait charges de faire la distribution. II m*a toujours sembl£ que j ’aurais 6t6 brave ce jour-l&.“25 Beranger chooses in this official, posterity- oriented account to use the time-honored excuse of charging betrayal by superiors while contrasting the readiness and willingness to fight on of the people and army (“Nos gibernes n ’dtaient pas vides,” complains the old grenadier in Les Deux Grenadiers)— “les ressources ihfinies du patriotisme populairew as over against the treason and cowardice of the government: “On coraptait le peuple pour rien,“ complains their self-appointed spokesman. Beranger1s rather obvious attempt to reflect credit upon his own courage and willingness to bear arms as “one of the people’* is an excellent example of his tendency to embellish his past and enhance the courage of his stand, especially in the “definitive” statements of Ma Biographie. in which he also claimed (p. 74) to have planned to volunteer for Bonaparte’s Egyptian expe dition until dissuaded by friends. As demonstrated earlier, ^ Ma Biographie. p. 147. there is considerable room for doubt whether he was truly willing to do such a thing during the Consulate, Jules Janin, an ardent admirer of Beranger, accepts at face value the account, and goes so far as to harmonize Beranger’s feelings with the Bonapartism we have discussed II aimait la gloire, en ce temps-lS, un peu plus q u ’il n faimait la liberty; il se plaisait au bruit lointain de la bataille; il eut voulu partir pour 1 *Egypte. II itait presque un soldat, il 6tait d£ja un poete.26 The same Janin, however, admits nine pages later that his idol had always been deathly afraid of weapons, especially firearms: , , , le seul aspect d'une arme a feu lui causait un veritable malaise, une sensation p&iible. II halssait ce feu, ce bruit, cette balle et les meurtres a distance . . . II frissonnait sitot que, par hasard, il entendait un coup de feu.27 In 1#33» Beranger described the situation in his preface in terms much less daring and without a hint of readiness to take up arms: En 1814, je ne vis dans la chute du colosse que les malheurs d ’une patrie que la R^publique m*avait appris A adorer. Au retour des Bourbons, qui m ’6taienfc indiff6rents, leur faiblesse me parut devoir rendre facile la renaissance des libert<§s nationales. On nous assurait qu’ils feraient alliance avec elles; malgr6 la Charte, j ’y croyais peu; mais on pouvait leur imposer ces libert6s. Quant au peuple, dont je ne me suis jamais separ6, ^Janin, B6ranger et son temps, p. 18. 27lbid., p. 27. 144 apres le denouement fatal de si longues guerres, son opinion ne me parut pas d*abord d^cidement contraire aux maitres qu’on venait d 1exhumer pour, lui. Je chantai alors la gloire de la France . • . sans Stre encore hostile a la royaute retrouv£e. What correspondence exists from this period supports this version rather than the bravado of Ma Biographie. B^ranger shows himself in his letters at the time to be mildly concerned over his personal security and that of his job at the University, due to the change in governments, but happy to see peace reestablished and very proud of the courage he had shown during artillery bombardments. His reactions are those of a simple civilian spectator content on the sidelines and with no desire whatever to take up a musket. One must conclude that the 1333 version is seasoned for posterity. From the outset, however, Beranger did show contempt for collaborators and turncoats who were too quick to welcome back the Bourbons and allies. Le Bon Francais (May, 1#14), B&ranger^ first song written after the abdication of Napoleon, repeats this theme in its refrain: "Soyons de notre pays.11 This was to be a leitmotif in his subsequent songs, scorn for "chameleons,11 oppor tunists and turncoats, former adulators of Napoleon turned royalists overnight. He made a point ever after to repeat that he had never numbered among these. He never tired of recalling to mind his solitary courage in criticizing Napoleonfs excesses while the latter was 145 still in power. It is true that he had openly mocked Napoleon1s favorite characterization of France as a faithful mount for an impatient rider like himself and the official vision of Napoleon as Alexander and France as Bucephalus with his image of France as "un ane qui sait trop ou le b£t le blesse.” B6ranger especially detested those who would be known a century and a quarter later as "collaborators,” and he showed a marked and increasing xenophobia in this matter as in others. In literature he disliked styles and works inspired by other nation alities— perhaps another reason for keeping a safe distance from Romanticism. Bgranger and the "bourboniens” The declaration of Saint-Ouen (May 2, 1S14) by the recently-returned Louis XVIII was to strike a responsive chord in B6ranger's heart. He had already expressed faith in the Bourbons* professed intention of preserving French integrity and independence while pursuing a policy of fraternal codperation and peace with other nations. The comte d*Artois* famous pronouncement, ”11 n*y a rien de change en France, il n ’y a qu’un Franqais de plus,” had become a rallying cry for optimists. Among the articles signed at Saint-Ouen was a solemn promise to r&Ly on the counsel and services of veterans of the Empire and not to indulge in immediate political purges. B6ranger trusted this in good faith, as witnessed 146 Le Bon Francais. Evoking Frangois Ier and the ntout est perdu fors l ’honneur” and proclaiming a similar "chin-up” attitude, this song concluded with references to Henri IV. The new king had chosen to associate his reign with memories of his popular ancestor who had established the Bourbons solidly on the throne, and Byranger was ap parently willing to go along with this policy of rallying ’round the flag (and throne), forgiving and forgetting for the sake of national unity and consolida tion of the true gains of the Revolution. Despite its repeated exaltations of France and her untarnished glory, the song must be classed as a gesture of alle giance, albeit restrained and cautious allegiance, to the new monarchy, or at least to its professed aims, and the fact that Beranger later felt a need to justify his new attitude underlines his allegiance* II n ’y avait plus de boussole politique qui put guider le patriotisme, L 1habitude de penser s ’dtait, pour ainsi dire, perdue sous 1 ’Empire. Les plus sages avaient bien de la peine a opposer un frein a la demence des royalistes . . . Beranger ne pensa d ’abord qu’ll reclamer, au nom de la gloire nationale indignement radconnue, et, quoiqu’il n ’aimSt point les Bourbons, il crut devoir se servir de leur nom pour c£16brer, en presence des Strangers eux-memes, et nos nombreux faits d ’armes et la superiority de nos arts .... Beaucoup de chansons de commande furent faites alors en faveur des Bourbons et contre Napoleon par plusieurs membres du Caveau, qui avaient chanty l ’Empereur dans toutes les occasions. Byranger avait aussi sollicitd; mais il refusa, non pour s ’en faire un myrite, mais parce qu’il pensa toyjours q u ’il faut de la conscience, meme en c h a n s o n s . 28 ^Byranger’s note to Le Bon Francais. 147 Beranger had at least flirted briefly with royalism, and would probably have remained loyal if only Louis XVIII had continued to follow a liberal program. In this he was not alone; those who opposed the Bourbons in 1314 were very rare indeed, according to all contemporary accounts, and a man like Beranger who kept his thumb on the pulse of public opinion could not have afforded at this point in his career to go against the tide by openly professing any opposition to the Bourbons which he may have felt at this stage. Nor must one forget that the Caveau (which at that time was the dominant force in his inspiration and style) was generally royalist after 1314, just as it had been loyal to the Empire. Beranger was careful not to commit himself fully to either party, neither flattering a king Mrentr£ dans les fourgons de l fStranger" nor openly lamenting the demise of the Empire. The political songs composed during the "First Restoration11 are rare, and they all center around the theme just mentioned: ridicule of turncoats and adulators of things foreign. ("VivT nos amis les enn'mis," cry the sottes in L fOpinion de ces Demoiselles). The Requite presentee par les chiens de quality (June, 1314) and Vieux Habits I Vieux GalonsI (cf. cassette) are the most representative of this attitude. At first reading these songs appear quite moderate, but when one compares them 14S with the songs of the Caveau from the same period their audacity and firm conviction are remarkable. Touchard sees in them a definitive break with the Caveau*s conformity and loyalty to the current regime. It must be noted that Beranger does not attack directly either the king or his government, choosing instead to indict the girouettes and carnal6ons who bit the heels of him whose boots they used to lick (Requete des chiens de quality). He opposed not so much the Bourbons as the bourboniens described in Ma Biographie as lining the streets to cheer the allies and boo their own troops. . . . Nos ennemis semblaient se presenter chapeau bas dans la ville de Clovis, de Saint Louis, d*Henri IV, de Louis XIV et de Napoleon, dans cette ville de la Constituante et de la Convention, ou depuis des siScles s*61abore avec une activity incessante 1*oeuvre grande et sainte de la d£mocratie euro- p£enne. Ainsi un lache troupeau de Franqais foulait aux pieds les trophies de nos vingt-cinq derni&res ann6es de gloire devant des etrangers qui, par leur tenue, prouvaient si bien qu*ils en gardaient un profond souvenir.27 Beranger is careful to point up that the turncoats were bourgeois and upperclass, whereas the ouvrier class had remained patriotically indignant. On the whole Beranger was quick to accuse everyone but the common ?Ma Biographie. p. 160. Lucas-Dubreton, in La France de Napoleon, p. 269, calls this last remark **toiaiserie pure, car, en 1#14, pour un Baskir sujet du tsar, pour un Prussien descendant des soldats de Fr6d£ric II, le mot d&nocratie est exactement vide de sens . . .** 149 people of treachery. He also pointed up a reason for the general confusion and lack of direction in the popular defense of the city: Au reste, si l ’Empereur eut alors pu lire dans tous les esprits, il eut reconnu une de ses plus grandes fautes, une de celles dont la nature de son g6nie lui fit faire. II avait bSillonn6 la presse, 8t6 au peuple toute intervention libre dans les affaires, et laiss£ s ’effacer ainsi les principes que notre Revolution nous avait inculqu^s: il en etait rdsulte l ’engourdissement profond des sentiments qui nous sont les plus naturels. Sa fortune nous tint longtemps lieu de patriotisme; mais, comme il avait absorb^ toute la nation en lui, avec lui toute la nation tomba toute enti&re, et, dans notre chute, nous ne sflmes plus etre devant nos ennemis que ce q u ’il nous avait faits lui-meme. Toutefois, disons-le A sa louange, ainsi que l ’ont prouvd son ddsir de copabattre jusqu’A la derni&re cartouche et sa facility a abdiquer, lui seul, en dehors du peuple, fut patriote dans ce moment solonnel . . ,2° He regrets the absence of the Emperor’s personal leadership in the midst of the general malaise, and, with a curious mixture of praise and blame, concludes: ". . . l ’Empereur avait tellement habitu6 le peuple a ne croire qu’en lui, que sa voix seule eut pu alors dissiper toutes les incertitudes, relever tous les courages et surtout leur donner une direction utile.tt29 By April of 1815 Beranger had withdrawn into cynicism, no longer trusting the Bourbons because of their broken promises and harsh reactionary measures; his new outlook is apparent in Le nouveau Diogene. which portrays 2% a Biographie. p. 148. 29ibid., p. 143. 150 him as having renounced political engagement in favor of peace within. But this brief interlude of sour tranquility was soon to end. Napoleon, escaped from Elba, had already landed on the first of March. Beranger and the Hundred Days The return of Napoleon was happily if cautiously hailed by a weary nation which had just received the return of the Bourbons in the same manner. In the midst of acclamations and Napoleon*s promises to reform, ruling constitutionally in the interests of peace, a fearful people anxiously braced itself for a renewed surge of warfare and deprivation, fears confirmed for many astute observers (Bdranger among them) when the Emperor disappointed them by appearing at the ceremony to swear to the Acte additionnel garbed in imperial finery instead of the beloved hat and gray coat. A veritable multitude of popular songs, both for and against, greeted the reestablishment of the Empire. B&ranger, true to form, abstained from swelling their number. Reserved in his joy over the reappearance of the tricolor, he felt obliged to proclaim as his own a commonly-held liberal opinion, that Napoleon neither could nor would reform: Dans les Cent-Jours 1 *enthousiasme populaire ne m ’abusa point: je vis que Napoleon ne pouvait 151 gouverner constitutionnellement, ce njest pas pour cela qu’il avait 6te donnd au m o n d e . 3 0 Le retour prodigieux de l ’Empereur au 20 mars 1815 fut un dvdnement tout a fait populaire. Dans cette journde d ’attente cependant, on pouvait lire sur le front des hommes qui r6fl£chissent, et il y en a dans toutes les classes, une preoccupation qui empechait la joie d ’etre gdndrale, malgrd la fascination qu’exerqait sur les esprits ce dernier miracle du grand homme.31 B£ranger held back from the celebrations of those who believed the Revolution returned, and he refused an offer, believed arranged by Napoleon himself, to assume the post of censor for the Courrier francais or Journal g6n6ral. His response, he was later to claim, was that he had "assez cherchg a ddconsiddrer le metier pour n ’avoir pas de m&rite a refuser de le faire, meme pour six mille francs."32 He applied himself instead to the Traite de Politique II 1 ’usage de Lise (cf. cassette), which appeared in several newspapers shortly after the proclamation of the Acte additionnel. Its transparent references to popular fears that Napoleon, addressed as Lise, would not be gentle with his "subjects,” accumulate with the effect of making the same point as the Roi dJYvetot: a plea for rule in the interests of ”le bonheur de tes sujets.” "Lise" is admonished to abjure tyranny, avoid a policy of conquest, listen to her subjects’ 30Preface to 1833 edition. 31lMa Biographie. p. 180. 32note to La Censure. 152 concerns. In his note to this song in later editions, Bdranger sought to explain, while defending himself against accusations of having flattered Napoleon during the Hundred Days, why he had not put it, along with Le Roi d ’Yvetot, into the 1 5 recueil. He cites this omission as an act of good faith, a refusal to jump onto the Bourbon bandwagon. The second invasion Waterloo appears to have made much less of an impression on Beranger than the brutal Terreur blanche of the second occupation. The key song from this period is Plus de politique, another "Diogenes’* piece renouncing further political song, but this time with a noticeable shift in tone. The former Caveau-style lightness and gaity are conspicuously absent. As Touchard observes, Lorsqu’on compare cette chanson datde de juillet 1&15 a ce qu’dcrivait Beranger un an plus tot, notamment a Ma derni&re chanson, peut-etre. qui traite a peu pres le meme sujet, on mesure l ’dtendue du chemin parcouru.-^ Once again, Beranger’s song seemed to reflect the national mood. Reprisals, purges and executions, desecrations and plundering of spoils, notably the vol du Musde. Wellington having declared that it was necessary to "teach the French a moral lesson"— the 33Touchard, La Gloire de Beranger. vol. I, p. 1^9. 153 situation was altogether unsuitable for writing joyous songs. Yet all this was directly responsible for Beranger1s €veil. his coming to grips with his ’♦mission.” Until 1#15 he had been neither a Bonapartist nor an anti-Bourbon, just an average patriotic citizen concerned with peace, prosperity and the pursuit of happiness; such had been the theme of his works. Now, however, he was to become the implacable enemy of those who, through treason, malice, avarice or cowardice, had brought misery and shame on a glorious and proud nation. He was henceforth to wage unremitting warfare on the Bourbons and their partisans, on those who had abandonned or betrayed the army— thereby betraying the people— and in general on all the infiniment petits (to borrow a song title) who grovelled and scrounged after favors. One cannot forget two episodes recounted in various letters as well as in Ma Biographie. Beranger tells of watching a group of royalists attempting unsuccessfully to pull down the statue of Napoleon from the Vendome column; their angry frustration at last turns into amusement, and with a wry smile of irony Beranger concludes with them that the Emperor is here to stay. On another occasion he watches a cuirassier slap a dandy who had insulted him, then shred with his spur the dress 154 of his foefs lady companion. One can almost feel the vibrant exaltation of B6ranger as he tells the story. That much is clear. Only the chronology of this development remains to be clarified. As Touchard remarks, Beranger seems to confuse his feelings and reactions in 1315 with those of 1314 and, accordingly, to attribute to himself much more anti-Bourbon feeling in 1314 than he apparently had. This is obvious in the final account, Ma Biographie. in which his treatment of 1314 far outweighs that of 1315, assuming much of the emotional color of the latter period. In the biography Beranger traces his opposition to the Bourbons back to the first invasion, when in fact the songs and correspondence belie this contention. Clearly, Beranger, in 1314 still a Caveau singer, did not become a true chansonnier de 1 Opposition until 1315. Only when he published his first recueil did he really enter the list. As he himself said, "La publication de mon premier volume acheva de faire de moi le chansonnier de 1 'opposition.”34 34Ma Biographie. p. 196. CHAPTER FOUR BETWEEN THE TWO NAPOLEONS Les chansons, comme les fables de La Fontaine, les comddies de Molilre et les contes de Voltaire, ont conquis parmi le peuple et les hautes classes une dgale celebrity. Et c fest ce qui ellve Beranger au-dessus de tous les poetes contemporains: en fait d ’art et de podsie une pareille universality d'admiration est ddcisive et dispense de tout autre argument. — Pierre-Joseph Proudhon Oter sa chanson a Beranger, il serait plus facile d ’arracher a Hercule sa massue, a V6nus sa ceinture, ou son flambeau au dieu du ^Jour. — Jules Janin J ’ai fait bien jeune un pacte avec l ’orage Tremblez, Bourbons, je vais chanterI — Beranger, La Rose et le Tonnerre The privileged moment Despite, or perhaps because of, the confusion and disruptions brought about by the political events of 1S14 and 1&15, Bdranger was in many respects in a privileged position after the return of the Bourbons. The publication of the Chansons morales et autres in November, after the monarchy was solidly reestablished, was a solid success, due mainly to the popularity of its ’•lighter” songs. Bdranger did not seem to be taking his songs seriously; to save on printing costs, only a 155 156 few tunes were included with the texts, and the preface "dialogue1* between B&ranger/Colld and the censor ended with a disavowal of any political intent: Le moment serait mal choisi pour publier des chansons, si la futility meme des productions n*<£tait une recommandation & une epoque ou l*on a plus besoin de se distraire que de s ’occuper. The new government was, of course, trying to create an atmosphere of reconciliation and tolerance. Moreover, collections of drinking songs by unknown authors were not generally controversial anyway. No threat seemed forthcoming from light-hearted songs about Lisette, Frdtillon or Madame Gr^goire, couplets recalling "la licence un peu cynique de notre vieille litterature.1* The king himself set the tone for his censors, being basically a man with an eighteenth- century taste for epigrammatic wit and Voltairian irony in poetry and song. It would appear that he really did utter the remark attributed to him that one must pardon much from the author of the Roi d*Yvetot. Another popular legend even insists that a copy of Beranger’s songs was found on his nightstand the day he died. In sum, far from endangering his job at the University, as Beranger had feared, the publication of his first volume of songs launched his career. Royalists enjoyed his satire against figures from the preceding regime, and he received a few offers of favors in exchange 157 for lending his lyre to the Bourbon cause, offers which he later claimed to have answered with, "Qu^ls nous donnent la liberte en dchange de la gloire, qu*ils rendent 1 la France heureuse, et je les chanterai gratuitement." Having found his genre, Beranger sported a newfound self-assurance bordering on arrogance. He broke with many of his former Caveau friends over real or imagined affronts to his dignity, and turned his back on D6saugiers, who had become a sycophant to the new masters, insulting Napoleon with his Le Terme d fun Rfegne ou le Regne d*un Terme. BGranger and the other members of the Caveau had in fact parted company, both in philosophy and politics. The road to liberalism and fame was open at last. Beranger and liberal society Louis XVIII*s "Charter,1* which provided for a parliament to complement the monarch, promised at first to bring into the royal fold virtually every dissident republican and liberal malcontent. The first elections were, however, supervised by foreign troops and accom panied by civil commotion, and they resulted, not surprisingly, in a legislative majority of intransigent royalists committed to restoring order. A growing "ultra" faction vowed to punish elements responsible for the % a Biographie. p. 176. 153 Hundred Days and to suppress any remnants of the Revolution, setting in motion a series of reprisals and purges. All the hauts fonctionnaires of the imperial administration were summarily dismissed and promptly replaced by right- thinking £migrgs strongly reminiscent in their dress and style of the ancien regime. The army was to be spared, for a while, any severe pruning; only marshals, generals and officers commanding sensitive positions were weeded out. There were even some incidents of massacre and executions (e.g., the massacre of Generals Brune and Ramel and the execution of Lab£doy£re and Ney^). To make matters worse, the biens nationaux and various government funds were confiscated and given to the gmigr6s as compensation for damages. A rather severe censorship and generally oppressive atmosphere were soon noticeable, along with a growing frequency among leaders of the opposition in the use of the term "la honte de 1S15.1* The public was aroused, after the apolitical Empire, and the atmosphere was right for a rebirth of controversy and partisan politics. No doubt journalism would have become the vehicle for such exchanges, had the press been more free, but under the circumstances there arose a need for a form of popular ^However, the legend according to which Michel Ney was allowed to escape to North Carolina, where he lived out his days as schoolmaster Peter Stewart Ney, seems quite plausible. See, for example, Clarence E. Macartney and Gordon Dorrance, The Bonapartes in America (Philadelphia: Dorrance, 1939). expression which could proclaim opinions, yet elude the police, a medium to complement and supplement journalism, an organ which could express the full range of sentiments, a genre completely French in spirit through which 1*esprit gaulois could romp unfettered. The song as it existed at that time had to be enhanced in order to fulfill this mission, and it was Beranger who took the initiative in transforming the diaphanous songs of the Caveau into a hardened, yet light and flexible political weapon. At a time when over half the population was totally illiterate, he set up an effective mass medium of communication. His art in doing this depended at least in part on his Gallic inspiration, his ignorance of foreign literatures and influences and his instinctive understanding of popular taste and humor which enabled him to speak directly to his public. Like almost all the great figures in French literary history, Beranger was to remain attach^ au terroir. He had the gift of knowing how to season for French wit— where to interject bons mots amid graves refrains, where and when to pique or soothe or flatter. The success and notoriety afforded by the Chansons morales et autres gave Beranger a key to the world of the liberal salons, and he spent his first few years as a public figure making the social rounds, meeting Bonapartists, 160 Jacobins, liberals of all shades of opinion and disen chanted deputies. Just as the royalists -were seeking to enlist his lyre, the liberals also sought a vehicle in his poetry and song. Perhaps most important were the contacts he made at these gatherings with journalists and men of letters. He admittedly felt uncomfortable in the presence of literary critics, and he countered suggestions that he become a journalist or critic himself by modestly pleading ignorance of the profession. He was quoted as having said the following at one such gathering. The quotation is very revealing of his wit and outlook on life and literature. J*ai une conscience trop timor£e pour faire le metier de journaliste . . . Chaque jour je jetterais du rez-de-chaussee des pierres £ ceux qui occupent les Stages supSrieurs de la maison; et comme ils tiennent a leurs vitres sans faire cas de la lumiSre, il est a croire q u ’ils videraient sur moi leurs cassolettes pour se dSbarrasser d'un voisin incommode.3 It was during this "modest period” that he composed and first sang Le Dieu de Bonnes Gens (cf. cassette), which caused a genuine uproar. His hosts and neighbors did not understand it at first. The homespun "theology” of the song, the idea of worshiping "glass in hand" a Dieu de goguette seemingly in direct contradiction with the usual conception of elevation in religion. 3cited by Lucas-Dubreton, B|ranger, p. 64. 1.61 Perhaps the unique feature of the song is the hardly- obscured praise of Napoleon in its central stanza: Un conquerant, dans sa fortune altiSre, Se fit un jeu des sceptres et des lois. Et de ses pieds on peut voir la poussiere Empreinte encor sur le bandeau des rois. Vous rarapiez tous, o rois q u fon ddifie! Moi, pour braver des maitres exigeants, Le verre en main, gaiement je me confie Au Dieu des bonnes gens. This stanza is doubly striking because there are no other references to Napoleon in the song, which remains sincerely religious in tone. There were those who chose to see the entire song as a camouflaged hymn to Napoleon as God, but this view would seem highly exaggerated. A more likely explanation is that Bdranger chose to sing here of Napoleon, as he says in the song itself, wpour braver des maitres exigeants,11 i.e., as a "grandstand play1* or defiant gesture against royal censors. This would then constitute one of the most noteworthy examples of Bdranger*s using the magic of the Legend in order to curry public favor and advance himself politically. At this stage in his career Beranger seems to have been willing to take advantage of any means of attaining popularity. Regardless of his motive for inserting this central stanza, the song was a "hit" and the concept of a Bonapartist rather than royalist God found a ready and cordial reception. Bdranger had won acceptance as an orig inal, creative writer capable of elevating the drinking 162 song to the level of a very serious subject, and his songs were soon called Modes,n a term which he always at least affected to scorn as too aristocratic for his meager productions, although he must have felt flattered by the use of the term. It was by attending liberal salons that Beranger made the acquaintance of such important personages as lawyer/deputy Manuel, parliamentary leader of the party, the banker Laffitte, and Thiers. He struck the same sort of image as Franklin had enjoyed at the court of Louis XVI, that of the charming rustic whose wit and easy manner breathed a draught of freshness into the stuffiness of etiquette. The common view was to compare him to Jean- Jacques Rousseau. From the salons back to the guinguettes was only a small step. Beranger assumed the leadership of the Moulin Vert, a large song society on the outskirts of Paris, then found his reputation gradually spreading through Bonapartist guinguettes, which were tolerated by the police provided they observed decorum and restricted their membership to twenty persons per gathering. Songs in praise of the Emperor were numerous and generally considered ttpatrioticM until 1B20, when the strains of Le Vieux Drapeau began to irritate the patient good will of the authorities. They outlawed its singing in public gatherings, and the stage was set for a confrontation. Beranger had been exploiting the more popular aspects of the Legend since 1&15, tending to portray the liberal Napoleon of the Code civil as the champion of liberty, equality and fraternity who had Mcristallis6 la Revolution en lui jetant sur les £paules un manteau de gloire.” The former draft-dodger who was afraid of firearms had succeeded in molding himself a reputation as a vieux grognard. intoning La Vivandi&re (cf. cassette), which became overnight a standard repertory piece in the guinguettes, although the police soon repressed it. While Manuel and Foy were filling the chambers with talk of the Emperor, Beranger was busy popularizing the more facile side of the Legend, fueling old hopes and hatreds. Perhaps unknown to him, Le Vieux Drapeau was mass printed and circulated throughout the army. Our poet’s pen had become a political force to be reckoned with. Lamartine at the same time termed him ”1 ’homme-nation.” Beranger exploited all the popular themes: respect for Liberty, Equhlity and Fraternity, hatred of the ancien regime, anticlericalism, reverence for the Legend and hope for revenge. He unfurled a banner in praise of ’’notre grande Revolution,” and dwelt on Revolutionary victories rather than Imperial defeats. He never flagged in his attacks oh the abuses of royal and clerical powers. His audience, he was well aware, was 164 the little man and the bourgeois, the peasant and artisan veterans who still revered the tricolor, the petit bourgeois businessman dreaming of the days when ambition, not ancestry, made advancement possible. This audience is reflected in Berangerfs songs, which almost never exalt to hero status anyone but the commoner, all the while doing so in a classical form capable of satisfying the taste of the educated bourgeois. The songs earned favor both as songs per se among the unlettered, and simultaneously, among the more educated classes, as printed literature— i.e., poetry to be read from a volume, and perhaps sung as well. The storm gathers On February 13, 1&20, Louis XVIIITs policy of "Union et Oubli" took a very sudden turn for the worse. His nephew, the due de Berry, was assassinated at the 0p6ra by a Bonapartist fanatic, and almost instantly an angry wave of repression overtook all moderation. The government turned "ultra" almost overnight. Talk of reprisals against "liberals" was rampant. Beranger was grouped de facto with the offending liberals, for his widely-circulated Le Ventru and an early version of Les Myrmidons had made implacable enemies of priests, Jesuits and nobles. Spies and informers began to hound him. A typical anecdote tells of an informer who went to the prefect to report Beranger 165 for having sung certain chansons anarchiques at a dinner the evening before. The prefect duly noted the report, although he was somewhat amused, as he himself had been singing at the dinner in question.^ As if determined to call down thunder on his head, Beranger proceeded with even more daring songs. Les Deux Cousins, ou Lettre d !un Petit Roi a un Petit Due (cf. cassette) is a fanciful missive from the Roi de Rome, exiled in Vienna, to the newborn due de Bordeaux, posthumous son of the murdered due de Berry. The subject seemed doubly shocking to proper royalists al ready incensed over public mockery of the birth which was hailed as a Godsend or Miracle by loyalists, and as one might well imagine by skeptics. Although really quite restrained in tone, the song repeated a traditional moral, a reminder that power and glory are transitory, which was considered offensive by right-thinking officials. Other songs by Beranger were circulated in manu script as well, songs deploring the fate of exiled compatriots. Le Cinq Mai (cf. cassette; the title refers to the date of Napoleon's death in 1B21) represents the only song apparently inspired by the Emperor's death. The black flag of mourning is seen by a veteran returning to France on a Spanish ship. He responds appropriately. 4Ibid., p. 79. 166 Beranger explains in a note that the Spaniards, of all peoples, had the most justifiable grievances against Napoleon, whence his choice of a Spanish ship in order to demonstrate quel point les malheurs du grand homme avaient r£concilie tous les peuples avec sa gloire.” B6ranger was later to add the following note to Le Cinq Mai: Jamais la chanson n ’avait 61ev6 ses pretentions si haut qu’en osant d£plorer la mort du plus grand homme des temps modernes et peut-etre des temps anciens, de celui qui avait, A lui seul, gagn£ autant de batailles qu’Alexandre et C6sar, autant administr<§ que Charlemagne et Louis XIV, et a qui nous devons un code civil, r£sum6 de notre nouvelle position sociale dont le bienfait compense, A lui seul, les maux que les ennemis de Napoleon ont pr^tendu qu’il avait faits a la France. The liberal image of Napoleon could not be expressed more simply than that. B6ranger pointed out in his note that the separated refrain of this song, an imitation of ancient poetry, was meant to emphasize that nNapoleon ajoutait a ses malheurs deja si longs celui de mourir loin de sa patrie et du fils qui devait avoir ses dernieres pens6es et qui aurait du lui fermer les yeux.” L ’Exil6 and Le Cinq Mai were not the only songs in which Beranger treated the plight of political exiles during the Restoration. His open sympathy toward exiled imperial veterans was well-known, but perhaps nowhere more evident than in his attempts to publicize the 167 establishment of "colonies" in the New W o r l d . 5 The establishment of the Champ d ’Asile on the Trinity River in Texas (1B1&) by General Lallemand garnered more public sympathy than most such efforts, and, as one would have expected, Biranger was in the forefront of the movement to generate support for it, writing Le Champ d ’Asile (cf. cassette), a song very "Romantic" in tone and style with none of the usual banter and bons mots interspersed with "heavier" passages. The song’s effect was surely heightened by its simultaneous publication along with such songs as Le Dieu des Bonnes Gens and Le Vieux Drapeau. In 1B21 Beranger’s partner in song, Paul-Louis Courier, was sentenced to two months’ imprisonment at Sainte-Pilagie for "offense a la morale publique." Visiting him there frequently and finding the prison com fortable and access to visitors and outside contacts quite easy, Bdranger seems to have determined to join his friend. He did not have long to wait. The liberals had just suffered a severe electoral setback, so to stimulate public awareness party support was thrown behind Beranger’s announced plans to publish a new recueil; despite his 5Despite the lack of studies concerning them until quite recently, these short-lived attempts to create an asylum for refugees in America could well form the basis for several studies. See especially the Macartney- Dorrance book cited above and Simone de la Souch£re Del&ry, Napoleon’s Soldiers in America (New Orleans: Pelican, 1972). 1,6$ publishers* fears, the refusal of several printers to risk retribution, and repeated urgings from friends to omit Le Vieux Drapeau from the volume, he decided to go ahead and print everything. On October 25, 1$21, the two- volume recueil went on sale. On October 27, B6ranger learned that he had been relieved of his post at the University, and on October 29 all copies of the condemned book were ordered seized. Of the 10,500 copies printed, only four could be found. The 1&21 trial and Sainte-P61agie Justice was swift. Charges of offenses to public morals, religion, and the person of the King led the prosecution*s case, but Le Vieux Drapeau became the focal point of the trial on the grounds that it was a "provoca tion au port public d*un signe de ralliement non autoris6.u Before a packed courtroom, Beranger self-assuredly fought his first battle. The details of his trials make for truly fascinating reading, and the reader is referred to Lucas-Dubreton1s BGranger. Touchard*s La Gloire de Bgranger. Ma Biographie or the appendix to the 1$34 Oeuvres completes for all the succulent traditional anecdotes, but it would be far beyond the scope of this study to attempt more than a capsule summary of the results. The rhetoric of both defense and prosecution was brilliant. Dupin, for the defense, parried accusations of sedition by retracing the history of French political song to the Fronde in order to demonstrate that "to prosecute a song is absurd in France.1* He portrayed B6ranger*s works as innocent amusements (**Je ferai siraplement observer que ce ne sont que des chansons et que rien ne peut faire que ce n*en soit pas.1*) and reminded the court that Napoleon himself had not prosecuted a single chansonnier during the Hundred Days. Supporters even hawked copies of Les Adieux a la Campagne outside to sing during recesses. By a vote of seven to five, B6ranger was found guilty of "outrage a la morale publique et religieuse.11 The charge of seditious provocation, based on Le Vieux Drapeau. was thrown out by the judges. Comfortably installed for a three-month stay in Sainte-P61agie prison, B6ranger enjoyed a new wave of popularity. His days were soon filled with entertaining distinguished visitors. His room comfortably furnished and stocked with generous gifts of food and wines, he announced to visitors, **la prison va me gater," and managed to complain only of the lack of privacy and time to think and write in solitude. But the escape of two Bonapartist officers on Christmas day ended the luxury and "spoiling.** Almost with a sigh of relief, Beranger returned to solitary confinement and devoted his time to turning out new satirical songs. 170 His subsequent publication of the complete transcript of the trial, supplemented with the texts of the incul pated songs, brought further unsuccessful prosecution. Freed on March 17, 1322, Beranger was able to look back on his trials, his nationwide publicity, the free publication of the "evidence" and his 32,000-franc profit, and revel in his good fortune. Committed now to his literary career, and praised as a poet by critics and journalists, he redoubled his satirical attacks on the authorities and waited for new shifts in the course of public events. Interlude Shortly after his release from prison, the secret political societies of the carbonari were rather brutally repressed, after a series of Bonapartist insurrections at Belfort, Toulon, Saumur, and Colmar, resulting in the execution as an "example" of the "four sergeants of La Rochelle" (1322), an act which only increased public unrest. The 1323 expedition into Spain revealed grum blings of discontent within the ranks of the army. BGranger was not alone in urging desertion in his Nouvel Ordre du Jour: "Brav* soldats, v !la l ’ord'du jour: / Garde !i vous! demi-tour!" The Chansons nouvelles of 1325 were launched quietly, and met no resistance from the newly-crowned king or his censors, who had fresh memories of the way their perse- 171 cutions in 1321 had backfired. Moreover, the songs in this recueil are indeed milder and more innocent, constituting in effect something of a resting stage or truce period in B&ranger*s battle with the Bourbons. Le Vieux Sergent is really the only strident note in this collection of Lisette-type songs. But while the young royalists Hugo and Lamartine were composing odes in honor of Charles X ’s accession to the throne, Beranger was in reality preparing the way for his second confrontation. Seeing an ideal subject for a song in the new king’s choice to be crowned at Reims, and sure of a large audience of those who feared a return to the "momeries de l ’Ancien Regime,” he committed Le Sacre de Charles le Simple, an audacious piece conspicuous in its sheer nerve, full of malicious wit and caustic anticlericalism, and sure to call down official wrath, although it was circulated clandestinely in manuscript until the publication of the collection of 1323. On the other hand it must also be admitted that the Ultras seemed to be provoking opposition just as con sciously and conscientiously. The reactionary laws and the censorship of the press were becoming intolerable to even moderate factions, and B&ranger quickly drove home Les Infiniment petits and a series of songs deriding the barbons. as he had come to term the Bourbons and bour- boniens: nils n font rien appris en exil" became the constant theme of his furies. His anticlerical vein ran deepest in L f£nge gardien. Not all his energies were expended on negative criticism. He had begun to accumulate and multiply references to Napoleon and the Legend— still always within the larger context of the glorious Revolution— as if this represented a replacement for the crumbling Bourbon dynasty and institutions. Some of his most noteworthy efforts in this vein date from this period, when his Napoleonic pieces were still fresh and more or less naive, addressed directly to the heart of the common people and conserving a tone and manner appropriate to this purpose. The songs were not yet burdened with poetic ambitions, nor written defensively by a laureate poet anxious to redemonstrate his talent and/or good faith. The Napoleonic songs of 1£25 and 1£2£ still have a certain naive quality about them which betrays, perhaps to all but the most cynical reader and critic, the wonderment of the grandchildren in Les Souvenirs du Peuple who ask wide-eyed to hear again the old stories. The warmth and elegant simplicity of this song^, as well as ^Chateaubriand^ famous remark notwithstanding: wLes Souvenirs du Peuple ne sont qufun admirable pont-neuf Bonaparte n ’avait rien du bonhomme.1* that of Les Deux Grenadiers, were unfortunately soon to give way to more stereotyped material. The martyr^ way In October 182# there appeared a nondescript little volume entitled Chansons ingdites which was his most provocative recueil to date. Once more, the police raided the publisher, only to find nineteen of the three thousand copies. The others had been snatched up by a public forewarned that 1*homme-nation, avowed archenemy of Charles X, was about to publish another short-lived volume. Once more there would be a trial. Dupin was among a number of well-known lawyers who offered their services, some free of charge, and B^ranger received offers of asylum from several places, notably Geneva. Politely refusing all such propositions, B&ranger went to trial defended by the worthy Barthe, who decided to plead his case in a very restrained and rational manner. The state insisted that, had B^ranger written before 1815 a Sacre de Napoleon le Simple, the subsequent retribution would surely have been much more severe. The sacrilege of L*Ange gardien also figured prominently in the prosecution's case. Barthe chose to restrict himself to defending his client against insinuations of Bonapartism as a poet who had only "d£pos£ une fleur sur la tombe de celui qui, pendant sa puissance, n ’avait obtenu de lui 1i74 qufune critique," a man motivated only by noble, unselfish patriotism. This time the jury was not so readily swayed. Bgranger was sentenced to nine months in La Force and a fine of 10,000 francs, which was paid by public sub scription. He asked to be locked up immediately, probably a shrewd manoeuvre to avoid overexposure in public opinion. But even in his sudden absence newspapers throughout France printed the pieces d 1Evidence, thereby spreading both the songs and the notion of BGranger as martyr for a free press. La Force was also comfortable, but B£ranger complained that every bonnetier or gargotier or reader of the Constitutionnel felt obliged to come hound him while he was trying to think and write. He was in truth bothered by visitors, but among them numbered Dumas, Vigny, Hugo and Sainte-Beuve, and he did recognize value in their new ideas and seemed to enjoy their visits. To his "classical" friends like Lebrun, who had accused the Romantics of obtuseness and insults to the glory of France and to the memory of Napoleon, BGranger was to answer that they would in time mature and come around to his way of thinking. Overview The evolution of the references to Napoleon, as they have just been traced, reveals a noteworthy pattern. 1i75 In the early Restoration songs, Napoleon is never men tioned specifically; he is referred to periphrastically, usually as 1,un conqu£rantM or wun homme,” as if, recent cataclysmic events being foremost in everyone’s mind, there were no need to be too specific. It is all too evident that for B6ranger during this period Napoleon was a bold usurper, a noteworthy historical figure who had succeeded briefly in crowning himself; the evocation of his memory was a gesture of defiance toward the Bourbons. Napoleon is,, in sum, wun petit sous-lieutenant qui, pendant quinze ans, nous donna la mesure de toutes les marionnettes royales.M7 Certainly one cannot conclude from these songs that he viewed the fallen Emperor as anything like a champion of liberalism. The dominant elements in his portrayal of the achievements of the preceding quarter century are centered around Revolu tionary victories, great deeds by common people inflamed with great and noble ideals. Napoleon is mentioned almost incidentally as one of their leaders, a conqueror who dethroned anti-liberal monarchs, thereby helping the cause. The vivandi&re Catin represents this period very well, and the veteran harboring the Vieux Drapeau under his mattress never even alludes to Napoleon, only to the national glories. ?Ma Biographie. p. 155. As is so often the case, praise was withheld until it was posthumous. Only after Napoleonfs death in 1321 does B6ranger produce a song directly concerned with the Emperor, even to its title, Le Cinq Mai. And yet even amid its positive, sympathetic treatment of the theme (”Sa gloire est 1& comme le phare immense / D ’un nouveau monde et d ’un monde trop vieux.w) there remains a strong note of Yvetot-Lise criticism, an easily-dis- cernible echo of his usual lament (’’Grand de ggnie et grand de caractdre, / Pourquoi du sceptre arma-t-il son orgueil?). As to entertaining any hope or desire of a Bonapartist return to power, the final line of Les Deux Cousins (”Et cependant je suis & Vienne.” ) would most likely suggest that B6ranger saw no hope for a Napoleon II. The 1325 recueil, far less controversial, and almost devoid of the Napoleonic presence, includes the Vieux Sergent. another ’’tricolor and common man” piece, not mentioning Napoleon but reminding of past glories. The call to arms at its end (’’Peuple, & ton tour, que ces chants te r^veillent: / II en est temps I” ) is for a restoration of liberalism, not Bonapartism. Here too the tone is Legend-oriented with imperial-veteran trappings, but the message is liberal. The most militaristic line, ”Le Rhin seul peut retremper nos armes,” although picked 1177 up by revanchistes as a rallying cry, was probably not intended so strongly. Le Convoi de David, written on the death of the great painter, makes only two rather incidental references to Napoleon: "Du plus grand de tous les soldats / II fut le peintre le plus digne," and "Le hdros, apr£s cent combats, / Succombe, et l fon proscrit l ’artiste." Clearly, Napoleon is at best a minor element in this collection of songs, a figure in the Revolution. The tricolor dwarfs the eagle. By 1323, however, the tone has changed noticeably, owing perhaps to the political situation and its subse quent growth of "discontent movements." In 1325 the nation had harbored hopes that its newly-crowned king would soon reverse the Ultra trend and rule liberally; in keeping with this conciliatory mood, B6ranger had tempered his tone and perhaps selectively held back from publication some of his libero-Bonapartist pieces. Three years later, it was apparent to all that Charles X was not a king after Beranger’s heart, and he accordingly brought out his heavy pieces, including his best and best-known Napoleonic songs, Les Deux Grenadiers and Les Souvenirs du Peuple (cf. cassette). Couplets sur la .journ^e de Waterloo is somewhat disappointing to a reader/listener awaiting revelations; there is essentially nothing new in its theme— the "g£ant 1?8 des batailles" falls, and the dwarves gather to divide the spoils. Almost as though afraid to treat a subject of such magnitude, afraid that his talents were not equal to the task, B^ranger chose as the refrain to such a promising title, "Son nom jamais n'attristera mes vers." Veterans plead with him, in the song, to sing of their exploits during the fateful battle, and all he can manage in response is elevated conventional references to Athens and Phillip, multiple exclamation points, and his favorite image of $ fallen giant surrounded by rejoicing pygmies. Les Deux Grenadiers is dated April, 1814, but Touchard terms it "nettement post£rieure," and we must concur. Most likely it was composed in the late lS20fs when Bonapartism was in full bloom, then backdated to 1B14 as a show of solidarity with the cause. Moreover, it probably seemed entirely fitting to publish it in the same collection with Les Souvenirs du Peuple. which is very similar in tone and inspiration. Les Souvenirs du Peuple. according to Touchard, quite probably derives from a popular song Les pommes de terre de Napoleon.^ reflecting a quality for which BGranger was and is blamed, that of slyly following the popular mood and writing songs only on subjects already £ Touchard, La Gloire de B&ranger. vol. I, p. 244. 179 in vogue. It is a fact that the truly "Napoleonic11 songs of B6ranger date from relatively late in his career. Songs alluding to or criticizing or satirizing the Empire date, of course, from his early repertories, but the songs in praise of Napoleon himself, we may safely conclude, originated after the Legend was well established. It therefore becomes increasingly apparent that one cannot consider B6ranger an originator of the Napoleonic Legend. His role in its propagation is, of course, quite another matter. One is led to the conclusion that B£ranger was inspired by a pre-existing Legend, which he nonetheless proceeded to vulgarize and help to fix in the popular imagination. From the first, BerangerTs political program had been not so much a positive effort as a negative one; that is, he did not so much work for any doctrine, Bonapartist or liberal, as he worked against the party of the monarchists and collaborators. It was only after 1$30 that he allowed himself to indulge in party plat- forming and doctrinally-inclined songs such as the "socialist11 songs. Napoleon is treated sentimentally, not doctrinally, in the songs of Beranger. As a doctrine, anticlericalism far outweighs Bonapartism in the Resto ration songs. If the mention of Napoleon serves any real purpose at all it is a signe de ralliment. a galvanizer for opinion, a catalyst to attract attention, then bond 160 sentiment under the liberal banner. As he had said in Le Dieu des Bonnes Gens ("pour braver des maitres exigeants"), B6ranger chose Napoleon almost as a vehicle for his defiance, a means of gaining public sympathy and mocking the authorities at the same time. Perhaps this intention was understood by the illustrators of later editions, notably that of 1634, who chose to introduce this song with a drawing of a crowned Napoleon standing oh broken crowns, with no reference whatsoever to any religious object. An obscure song entitled Le Malade had summarized his plans: Pour mon pays que de chansons encore! D*un lSche oubli vengeons les trois couleurs. De nouveaux noms la France se d6core; A l ’aigle 6teint nous redevons des pleurs. Que de perils la tribune orageuse Offre aux vertus qui osent 1 Affronter! Reviens, raa voix, faible, mais courageuse, II est encore des gloires a chanter. La Bonne Vieille contains a similar reference: Vous, que j fai appris a pleurer sur la France, Dites surtout aux fils des nouveaux preux, Que j'ai chants la gloire et l fesp£rance, Pour consoler mon pays malheureux But even amid evocations of glory, the "moral lesson" or judgment on Napoleon is never completely pushed aside. In Mon Ami Bdranger again points up the fatal error of the Emperor: Vous avez vu tomber la gloire D*un Ilion trop insultd, Qui prit l*autel de la Victoire Pour l fautel de la Liberty Napoleonfs error (full etymological sense) in seeking peace and liberty through victory is a theme which recurs in various ways; in Le Champ d'Asile. for example, peace flees before the victorious eagles. Of course, this theme fits into a larger perspective. While it is true that the vanitas strain ran through most literature of the time as a convention, the theme seems particularly frequent in all of Bdranger’s works, from Glyc&re and the earliest poems all the way through the in£dits and posthumous works. We have seen the same lesson taught to conquerors before, and it recurs frequently, for one example in Le Prince de Navarre, where the would-be pretender to the throne is reminded: Quand tu combatterais avec gloire, Sache que plus d Tun conqu£rant Se voit arracher la victoire Par un g6n£ral ignorant. Un Anglais, aid6 d fun Tartare, Foule aux pieds de nobles drapeaux. The moral lesson is driven home even more sharply by the allusions to recent history which reveal as much about B^ranger’s attitude toward the events of 1S15 as any passage in Ma Biographie. The carpe diem and vanity themes are also evident, of course, in Les Deux Cousins (cf. cassette). Only in the posthumous Napoleonic songs is there a deeraphasis of the vanity of glory and a reemphasis of a positive, hopeful tone. What Napoleonic songs were published by 1&30 are superior artistically— and definitely musically— to those 132 written after 1333 and destined for posthumous publication. The late 1320*3 and early 1330*s represent indeed the watershed of B£rangerfs career, his literary apogee, the high-water mark after which everything recedes into obscurity, his image, his popularity, and especially his talent. Les Souvenirs du Peuple. which comes perhaps the closest to being B£ranger’s "masterpiece,” is the best of his songs to cite as reflecting his talent, the popular sentiment, and his method of painting his subject through the sympathetic eyes of common people. It was never to be surpassed. Songs written after it show much effort but little inspiration. Rebirth To avoid demonstrations the prison authorities released their charge one day early, on September 22, 1329. This time B6ranger had difficulty readjusting to freedom and his role as po&te national. He felt very old when his release failed to arouse in him any partic ular sense of joy, and he retired quietly to friends1 homes to consider his next course of action. To further complicate his readjustment, his former publisher Baudouin had gone bankrupt, obliging him to seek a new partner. It was thus he met Perrotin, a veteran of the 1312 campaign taken prisoner in Russia (and not repatriated until 1323) who had been eking out a marginal living working for booksellers and hawking bibeloterie napol^o- 133 nienne. In 1326 he decided to open his own bookshop and supplement his income by illustrating the songs of the great Beranger with his humble engravings. He wrote to Beranger, and thus began a long and faithful relationship. It was about this time that B6ranger first met Chateaubriand, long the subject of his respect and admiration because of Le Gdnie du Christianisme. Their relationship, although more stable, was to suffer ups and downs much like those experienced with Sainte-Beuve. A cynic would view Chateaubriand^ motive in lauding Beranger as a desire to renew his image by allying himself with a more popular or bourgeois audience, but there is certainly room for belief in at least some of his flat tering remarks to Beranger. The high-water mark Charles X*s appointment of Polignac as minister in August of 1329 was a sure provocation to the libero- Bonapartist party. Polignac, an emigrd plotter during the Empire and an opponent of the Charter, was named simultaneously with General de Bourmont, a former traitor to Napoleon rewarded with command of the army. Such choices were sure to arouse public wrath, and Bdranger secretly rejoiced along with the other liberals at this windfall of fortune which did more to rally flagging reform spirit than all their past efforts. Beyond simple revenge, he sought a regeneration of the cause. 1 #4 Events were to bear him out. In March 1830 the king broke openly with a recalcitrant parliament and dissolved it by decree, whereupon the bourgeois electors reelected it. Matters worsened steadily. When he heard that Polignac had instituted a number of severely repres sive measures against the press and parliament, Beranger hurried to help the liberal party organizers restrain public reaction, spreading the word that the time was not ripe for a republic. He knew that the Bourgeois, who held the political power, were not ready. He felt, according to Ma Biographie. that he could have supported the pretentions of Napoleon II, but fearing the civil strife which would surely have resulted, he chose instead to endorse the ”plank over the stream” regime of Louis- Philippe. His problematic assertion, ”Je suis bonapartiste comme le peuple, mais nullement imp&rialiste” is therefore somewhat clarified by his desire to avoid a street war: . . . dviter la guerre 6tait d&s longtemps l'idee Qui me dominait. Une revolution faite a la barbe de la Sainte-Alliance, la 16gitimit6 renvers^e au nom de la souverainete du peuple reconquise et point de guerre, c f£tait un immense triomphe.9 The July Monarchy represented for him a moderate compromise solution, a liberal, popular dynasty established by force of arms, under the ”vieux drapeau.” Beranger wrote several newspaper articles urging Louis-Philippe to accept the 9Ma Biographie. p. 235. 185 throne. When he at last accepted and the new regime was declared, Beranger was hailed generally as restorer of the tricolor. Homemade flags were common gifts to him, and his was the honor of hoisting one of them once more to the top of the Vendome column. Clearly, the public saw him as the evoker of the Petit Homme rouge who had sounded the knell for Charles X. He did not deny his role, but admitted his growing fatigue to friends. Correspondence from this period indicates feelings of uselessness, of having served his purpose and being able now to retire gracefully. One perceives traces of misgivings about his failure to seize the opportunity to support the reestablishment of the Republic, as in fact many of his supporters had come to blame him for a revolution aborted by monarchists who had duped even Beranger. The **plank over a stream’* excuse smacks more in many ways of hindsight than foresight. When he received word from the new king that his presence at the Palais-Royal would be welcomed, his reply was a terse refusal. Kings* palaces were not the place for him, he said. He began to mock the bourgeois court of the parvenu king and its pretentions to importance. He had been particularly annoyed by remarks concerning his use of the particule. and he was beginning to respond in kind by casting aspersions on the social rank of others. Indeed, Beranger seems extremely 166 sensitive to or conscious of the quality of being a parvenu. perhaps out of an awareness that he himself was one. He was relentless in his attacks on haughtiness of upstart ”grands seigneurs de fabrique imp£piale, pauvres lunes 6teintes depuis la chute du soleil” and he explained his feelings thus: Les infid£lit£s que ces nobles r£cents ont faites & leur origine pl£b6ienne m font rendu moins tolerant pour eux que pour ceux qui devaient leurs prejuggs au vieux sang et & 1 Education. Je crois que la nation enti&re en jugeait ainsi. Passant a Compi&gne, que l'Empereur et sa cour venaient de quitter; nous etions, je crois, en 1606; je rencontrai sur la route une vieille paysanne qui, d'une figure joyeuse, m'aborde et s f6crie: ’*An! monsieur, je l fai vu enfin! — Qui done? lui dis-je, feignant de ne pas le deviner. — L'Empereur! l TEmpereur! r^plique-t-elle. II m ’a salute. II salue tout le monde. Ce n fest pas comme ces seigneurs qui sont aupres de lui. On voit bien que ceux-la ne sont que des parvenus.” La pauvre femme ne voyait pas un parvenu dans l ^om me que la gloire avait dlevd si haut. Le peuple non plus . . .10 An antipathy toward upstarts seems strange on the part of a man who insisted on using a dubious particule before his name. The song Le Vilain sheds some light on the matter. His father traced the family name to a supposed Italian noble family, the Berengeri, although everyone in Pierre-Jean's family except his mother scoffed at the very idea. It should be noted that the ”de" is officially given as part of the name in the acte de naissance. Beranger claimed he had to start using it to 10lbid., pp. 237-236 167 differentiate between his own name and that of several other alleged B6rangers and Bdrengers supposedly writing in 1612, when he began to use it regularly. He continued to sign his name nde Beranger” all through the Restoration, out of fear, he claimed, that giving it up then would have seemed too demonstrative. Only after 1630 did he omit the particule. apparently because it did not fit well into his popular, republican image. Regardless of Berangerfs own social standing, one notes after 1630 the recurrence of the same charges he had made against the personages around Napoleon. B6ranger appeared suddenly zealous to maintain his uncompromised integrity by continuing in the role of self-appointed gadfly to the head of state and his agents, an independent critic beholden to no one and free to criticize any authority. This independent stance was not maintained without a price. Most of his friends had accepted functions or favors within the new government, and now felt uncomfortable with such a difficult person as Beranger, whose immense popularity called for official recognition, yet who flatly refused, often facetiously, all offers of awards or functions. He was obviously seeking not to involve himself with an administration which he might later need to attack. When complimented for his "good work" he was apt to respond with his famous "Ne me remerciez pas des chansons faites contre nos adversaires; remerciez-moi de celles que je ne fais pas contre vous.”11 Critics accused him of excessive "image cultivation" and calculation, and his refusal to commit himself began to cost him friends. He began to turn to morose comments: "En d£tr6nant Charles X, on me detrone" was his usual explanation for his new "low profile" (to use modern political jargon). His trips to P6ronne to visit relatives and old friends began to increase in frequency. Beranger began gradually to speak of himself as an old-timer, a tired old veteran ("Nous autres anciens, nous nous sommes us6s & trainer le boulet dans les galeres de la Restauration"^) and he renewed his old complaint that social obligations got in the way of his writing: "D£s que je revois le monde, toutes mes id6es s'envolent et ma musette se desenfle, et puis il faut huit jours pour la remplir de vent ou de po#sie."l3 His inspiration was beginning to fail him at the height of his glory, and he began to speak of the song as secondary to social questions: "La chanson ne convient qu’aux £poques ou les opinions sont clairement tranches: c ^ s t U Ma Biographie. p. 209. 12cited by Lucas-Dubreton, Beranger. p. 142. 13Ibid. 1i39 au tambour social a ouvrir la marche et marquer le pas; la musique ne vient qu’apres."1^ (note the usual military metaphor) In truth, Beranger*s creative flame seemed to be dying and his muse deserting him. He decided to collect his songs and launch his last recueil, than retire gracefully. To friends he confided, J Ty dirai mes adieux au public. J*ai cinquante-deux ans, je suis las du monde; ma petite mission est remplie et le public a bien assez de moi . . . On doit pardonner quelques mois de silence & un homme qui n*a jamais rien demand^ a son pays, jamais rien voulu de pouvoir et qui aujourd’hui n ’ambitionne q u ’un morceau de pain et le repos. Vox populi Although this collection contains a number of “Bonapartist'* pieces, including Le Vieux Caporal, which is something of a vestige from his Restoration collections, contrasting the virtue of an imperial veteran with the obtuseness and injustice of the emigres. the tone of the 1B33 recueil is largely ’‘socialist1* or sentimental, in the genre of the romance or ballade. The so-called chansons socialistes are perhaps best represented by Jacques. Jeanne la Rousse or Les Contrebandiers. and constitute a sympathetic treatment of the outcast and outlaw in society, a fundamentally Romantic theme, of course, Hibid, p. 143. 1i5lbid., p. 150. 190 and one which reveals his contacts at this time with Saint-Simon and Fourier. Most of the light gaiety of the earlier songs is gone. Beranger had become a ’♦committed’* writer, and his ’*utilitarian” chansons libgrales began to center around his newfound theme of social commitment. This would appear to be the fundamental novelty of the songs of 1B2B, 1&33 and after. Whereas earlier Napoleonic references had served a useful purpose (e.g., satire, favorable comparisons to current events, evocation of national history) and whatever Bonapartism to which he may have subscribed was involved directly in current events, from this point forward the Napoleonic songs (and it is now that one finds true Napoleonic songs centered around Napoleon instead of songs mentioning him in the course of developing another theme) become much more hermetic, sealed off from reality and on a higher poetic plane. It is almost as if Bdranger’s Napoleon were two different figures. The flesh-and-bone general of the Dieu des Bonnes Gens, the leader who had inspired the praises of Catin and the veterans of the Vieux Drapeau and the Champ d ’Asile seems to undergo a mythologizing transition, reaching his apotheosis around 1B2& in Les Souvenirs du Peuple and Les Deux Grenadiers. Then, almost as if aware of having reached the epitome of popular appeal and searching for a way to 191 "shift gears," as it were, Beranger proceeds to develop a new Napoleon, a glorified, transfigured Promethean Emperor no longer tiredly treading the earth encrusted with campaign mud and sharing wine with commoners, but rather enshrined on a volcanic rock and given to breaking his glaive as symbolic eagles approach, making great symbolic gestures and inhabiting all the great poetic antitheses: sea and sky, light and darkness, rising and falling. The transition to this stage was perhaps already developing in the Couplets sur la journ^e de Waterloo, which had hesitated to treat its very subject. In Les Tombeaux de Juillet. the tricolor, revered and feared by all monarchs, is shown flying to Saint Helena and Napoleon, who is here mentioned by name for the first time in any of B&ranger*s songs: Voit-on venir le drapeau tricolor? R6petent-ils, de souvenirs remplis. Et sur leur front ce drapeau semble encore Jeter d ’en haut les ombres de ses plis. En paix voguant de royaume en royaume, A Sainte-Hil£ne en sa course il atteint. Napoleon, gigantesque fantome, Parait debout sur ce volcan £teint. A son tombeau la main de Dieu l ’enleve. "Je t*attendais, mon drapeau glorieux. "Salut!" II dit, brise et jette son glaive Dans 1 ’ocean, et se perd dans les cieux. One notes in this song an increasingly Hugoesque, almost epic tone. As B£ranger*s poetic ambitions pushed him to more noble topics, it was only natural that he 192 would treat the subject of Napoleon more frequently, repeating the pattern mentioned earlier: the literature of his day found in Napoleon its ideal superman-hero, and so did Beranger. Whatever his personal feelings toward the Emperor may have been, Beranger found in the Legend a subject suited to both his undertakings: the popular side of the Legend assured his songs a grass-roots following, and at the same time its Romantic, flamboyant and transcendental aspects proved useful when he later decided to pursue a higher calling and write great poetry. As Napoleon the common soldier evolved everywhere into Napoleon the Prometheus on a volcanic rock, in Beranger?s songs as well the same pattern is perceptible,, The July Monarchy was for many of the major literary figures of the period a time of "libero-Bonapartism,” as the evolution of liberalism and that of interest in Napoleon seem to have gone together. It was around 1830 that Hugo turned from royalist-Catholic odes to liberalism and the 6pop4e napoldonienne. To a lesser extent, but just as importantly, Dumas and Balzac also showed this evolution in perspective. Nor must one forget the influence of Thiers, whose reserved outer trappings scarcely conceal the fire of his inspiration. Beranger was always a man of his day, in this respect just as much after 1830 as before. 193 The celebrated preface of this collection contains nothing essentially new, except for a few slogan-forraulas such as ”Mes chansons, c ’est moi1' ”Le peuple, c ’est ma muse,” or ”Le bonheur de 1 ’humanity a 6t6 le songe de ma vie.1* Even his statement on his attitude toward Napoleon is full of ”d£ja lu.” He again speaks of . . . mon admiration enthousiaste et constante jaour le gdnie de l ’Empereur, ce qu'il inspirait d ’idolatrie au peuple, qui ne cessa de voir en lui le repr£sentant de l ’6galitl victorieuse; cette admiration, cette idolatrie, qui devaient faire un jour de Napoleon le plus noble objet de mes chants, ne m ’aveuglerent jamais sur le despotisme toujours croissant de 1*empire . . . Le retour de l ’Empereur vint partager la France en deux camps, et constituer 1 ’opposition qui a triomphe en 1330. II releva le drapeau national et lui rendit son avenir, en d£pifc de Waterloo et des desastres qui en furent la suite . . • Beranger goes on to give an autobiography and the "philosophy” of his songs, as summarized in Chapter Two. Even more than Ma Biographie. the preface of 1333 was intended to be his "official version,” his literary manifesto, the all-inclusive compendium of his life, thought and works. Followed almost immediately (in 1334) by the authoritative Oeuvres completes, it remained his final say until his death. Beranger reportedly spent a whole year writing this preface, and only upon its completion did he publish the Chansons nouvelles et dernieres. which were an instant success. The preface, a concoction of justifications bathed in a proud humility — Lucas-Dubreton terms it ”un chef-d’oeuvre de prudence 194 et d fhumility**--aroused considerable critical comment, although Lucien, to whom it was dedicated, was very slow and reserved in acknowledging it. B6rangerfs disappoint ment was even greater when none of the numerous newspaper articles devoted to the collection and preface even mentioned Lucien. The substance of Lucien's response, beyond the expected praise and literary amenities, was to inquire precisely what B&ranger had meant by saying in the preface that the current regime would last ten more years at the most. B6ranger answered that he had seen, before 1330, that the French, fundmentally an egalitarian people, were not suited for the English-style representative system, which depends on the support of a privileged caste. The Orleanists could do nothing more than "user la vieille machine monarchique," which would last no longer than the Restoration. The Republican party was also at fault in its hasty and immoderate demands, thus frightening away potential sympathisers. Nothing at all is said of Bonapartism. It must have been evident to Lucien that B6rangerfs political program had only one goal, that of the reestablishment of a republic. There was no allusion whatsoever to a Bonapartist revival. The "chantre de l ’Empereur" was not a supporter of the cause after all. It was well known to Lucien that he had 195 spoken to friends of the Bonapartist program as wesp£rances chimdriques” which should be abandonned. Ironically enough, although the press had not picked up on the allusions to Lucien in the preface, the censors and police had. Beranger was investigated as a possible conspirator for Lucien’s interests. Once more, he had lost friends among all factions. He was suspected by Bonapartists of betraying the cause, by the authorities of supporting it, by Republicans of ’’selling out” to Louis-Philippe, and by Orleanists of using the events of 1S30 to further his ambitions. A public figure in such a situation needed to withdraw and rethink his strategy. Passy Beranger accordingly moved to the outskirts of Paris, at Passy. It was here that he spent the period of his life dominated by friendships with such notables as Chateaubriand, Thiers, Lammenais and Sainte-Beuve. He became increasingly ascetic, and put a stop to several attempts to raise money by public subscription to help pay his living expenses; instead, he lowered his standard of living and moved to less costly lodgings, staying in 1&36 with friends at Fontainebleau, where boredom overtook him, so he decided to undertake a sort of Flaubertian ’’Dictionnaire des idees recjues” entitled 196 Dictionnaire (historique) des Contemporains in which he would inventory and comment on political and literary figures, but shortly into his project he decided to abandon it because of parti pris and fear of betraying confidences; moreover, one suspects that he had lost his taste for such demanding work and could not succeed in organizing his thoughts. He told visitors that he aspired now only to 1 !oubli. A Parisian rumor of his death reportedly did not upset him unduly, but rather engendered fatalistic remarks to the effect that the chanson politique had died and that he was too old to perform the miracle necessary to resurrect it. Beranger and the Academy Since 1833 friends had been urging Beranger to propose his candidacy to the Acad6mie franqaise. Although we may assume that he was tempted at first, he refused to do so, saying Si j ’avais fait autre chose que des chansons, je ne trouverais aucun obstacle, litt£rairement parlant? m ’inscrire parmi les aspirants au fauteuil. Mais . . . je tiens a ne pas enr^gimenter acad6miquement ce petit genre, qui cessera d'etre une arme pour 1 ’opposition le jour ou il deviendra un moyen de parvenir • • . Ceux qui disent aujourd'hui de mes chansons que ce sont des odes seraient les premiers & crier que je n fai fait que des chansons, que c ’est bien peu de chose que des chansons . . . Non, jamais l fAcad6mie fran<;aise ne voudra descendre ainsi de sa haute position devant un poete de guinguette. Comment ferait-elle pour moi ce qu'elle n Ta pas fait pour le divin Moli&re? Je ne suis qu ’un 1197 chansonnier, Messieurs; laissez-moi mourir chansonnier. The "hermit of Fontainebleau" proceeded to support Hugo’s candidacy for the Academy, but when Hugo lost, he angrily vented his fury on the Dictionnaire de l ’Acad&nie by finding fault with its pedantry and ridiculing it unmercifully, proclaiming its true purpose to be reflecting modern social needs, especially for mass public education. Uncertainty At the end of 1&36, in order to escape the frequent visitors at Fontainebleau, Beranger moved quietly to Touraine, at la Grenadiere, which Balzac had occupied in 1330. He felt somewhat awed by his surroundings at first, but he quickly settled into a rustic house and indulged in bonne chere and gardening until surfeited, then returned to his concept of a Dictionnaire des Contemporains and planned to do "man-in-the-street" interviews to be collected into an ancedotal index of public opinion on notable persons, events and topics: a Livre du Peuple. an "ouvrage de morale populaire en lettres," primed by repeated readings of Don Quixote. He envisioned himself as undertaking this project in the spirit of a "Franklin gaulois" and began to compare himself increas ingly to his "American counterpart." He wisely realized, 1'6 Letter to Lebrun, cited in Ibid., p. 137. t9S however, that the results were at best mediocre on paper, so he gave up the project after a few months, turning instead to composing, without any notable enthusiasm, the notice for an edition of La Fontainefs Contes. In 1&3S another rumor that Beranger was suffering in poverty ran through the streets of Paris. Another fund-raising campaign, directed by Chateaubriand, rose to the need, and again Beranger firmly refused any aid, amid accusations that he wanted to play martyr or saint* He continued to enjoy contact with literary ideas. Stendhal visited him, and shortly thereafter he contracted to write a history of Napoleon for the benefit of an indigent collaborator who soon defaulted on his part of the deal. Beranger gave up on his part in 1B40, after writing an outline and losing his investment. Soured by this experience, he stopped all correspondence, which caused more rumors in Paris, where friends had noted for some time his growing hypochondria* His sudden subse quent "disappearance" has been variously explained, the most plausible reasons seeming to be bitterness over the history of Napoleon fiasco, and a tempestuous love affair with a young English girl which almost drove him to madness. He reportedly wove a fabric of lies and excuses to friends to explain his frequent and lengthy absences. It would appear that he had in reality returned alone to Fontenay-sous-Bois, near Paris, in disguise and under the name of Berger, to try to calm his tor mented soul. Before long his long-time mistress and companion Judith Fr&re found and rejoined him there. Perhaps, however, his stability had really been impaired, for a certain recklessness and obsession with military grandeur seems to have overtaken him. On a stroll one day, for example, he suddenly decided to walk through a field in front of a regiment of soldiers shooting at targets. He ignored warnings from companions and advanced steadily through whistling bullets, murmuring "Un empire n ’est pas plus difficile d gouverner qu'un menage."^7 He was absorbed in Napoleonic subjects at the time, and was writing his long envisioned poetic version of the Legend, which was not to be published until the posthumous recueil, although he read his Napoleonic poeni-songs to circles of friends as he completed them. The late 1330ts saw several aborted attempts by Beranger to compose "l'epopSe de Napoldon," notably a history begun in 1#37 or 1&3& but abandonned out of fear that he would overembellish it. He told friends that he had changed his mind: "D’autres chanteront la vie de l fEmpereur, moi j'en raconterai les anecdotes." The only finished works extant from this period are the posthumous songs about Napoleon, which do largely represent, in effect, highly-poeticized anecdotes. 17Ibid., p. 211. 200 It was during this period that, despite his continu ing predilection for military metaphors and figures of speech (e.g., Ma Biographie. p. 19&: ” . . . ce coup de feu d fune sentinelle avanc£e pour r€veiller le camp liberal • . ."), Beranger began to emphasize pacifism. Ai-je besoin de rappeler que mon vieux patriotisme ne m ’a jamais empechg de faire des voeux pour le respect des droits de l ’humanitd et pour le raaintien honorable de la paix, qui peut bien mieux que la conquete assurer les progres du principe de notre Revolution. On m ’a souvent entendu rdpdter depuis 1330: "Quand on croise les baionnettes les id£es ne passent plus.”1° While it is true that in the earliest recueils one can find songs which condemn war (e.g., Les Orangs- outangs, Le Bon Dieu) as harmful to human progress, this strain of thought seems to take over Beranger1s view of military matters at the same time his songs begin to "demilitarize1* Napoleon from the general to the Prometheus who breaks his sword and casts it into the sea before rising to heaven. The parallel is remarkable, as is Beranger's consistency. His view of Napoleon and of human conflict and striving are simultaneously lifted to a higher, nonphysical plane. Passy again In 1641 Beranger returned to Passy and settled into a rural house which he enjoyed comparing to Rousseau’s t#Ma Biographie. p. 150* 201i Charmettes while he played the solliciteur universel role of Voltaire at Ferney. He became known locally as the "patriarch” and passed his time doing good turns and distributing sage advice. As a writer he had chosen to remain in retirement. Between the Oeuvres completes of 1#34 and the posthumous recueil, the only publications of his songs Beranger allowed were reeditions supple mented with illustrations. He signed over to Perrotin the ownership of all his works, past and future, and turned over to him his in^dits on the condition that everything would be kept hidden and nothing published until his death. In September of 1&42 he wrote his last preface to justify his retirement, claiming that: 1. he had retired because of public overexposure and lack of privacy 2. he did not wish to make enemies of his numerous friends who were now ministers or notables serving the "opposition" 3. he was disillusioned about the usefulness of chiding governments, which never learn from the past 4. he felt he had done his part for the cause, but was now tired and willing to let younger liberals take up the task 5. the public had become confused, even resigned and politically apathetic, a condition antipathetic to the genre of the political song, which needs crisis and controversy to thrive 6. the political revolution had given way to the social revolution, and therefore the chansonnier and poet had to become something of a Hugoesque mage, a "proph£te" 202 6. who went beyond literary concerns ("Le poete doit se r£fugier dans l Tavenir pour indiquer le but aux generations qui sont en marche.") and he praises Lamartine's Jocelyn in this respect. Beranger rarely involved himself in debates until the publication of Lamartine1s Histoire des Girondins. for which he found high praise, except on the point of its having ignored the greatness of Napoleon and "le plus grand po^me que le monde eut eu A admirer." Beranger complained that his friend was blind to Napoleonfs providential mission and his great contribution to the progress of democracy. Another rift occurred, this time with Chateaubriand, over the Bonapartism of Thiers* Histoire du Consulat et de 1*Empire: — (phateaubriancCJ Une reclame pour les Bonaparte. Ces gens-la ont beau faire toutes les sottises a Strasbourg, a Boulogne et partout, le nom est immense de ce po£te de la guerre. Les vieux ujiiformes de la Grande Arm6e defilent en apotheose le 5 mai au pied de la Colonne, sur un lit de violettes, et les Jerome sont dejli officiellement a Paris. Vous l'avez voulu, monsieur de Beranger! — (p&rangerj Moi, bon Dieu! Je n'ai rien voulu. J'ai fait des chansons pour §tre chante en France. C'est la France done qui les voulait. — Comme elle voudra tout, par saison, jusqu'ci la fin finale.19 It was in such an atmosphere that Beranger again moved, in 1346, to Paris proper, very close to-what was soon to be the center of events. t9Ibid., p. 219. CHAPTER FIVE BERANGER AND THE SECOND EMPIRE Non, mes amis; je ne veux rien §tre. — Biranger, Le Quarante et unieme fauteuil Honneur, honneur a Beranger, II n'a rien A sa boutonniere. . . — Clovis Michaux Bdranger and the retour des cendres Between 1833 and 1848 the most noteworthy political situation in which Beranger would have been able to reveal any Bonapartist sentiments was the bonne blague of December 1$, 1840, the return to French soil of the body of Napoleon. This was an event orchestrated and officially sanctioned by the bourgeois rdgime. so there would have been no reason not to write something on the occasion. One would have expected to find at least a pifece de circonstance by the pofete national. Hugo published a whole collection of appropriate poems under the title Le Retour de l^mpereur. Such an atmosphere makes all the more conspicuous the silence of Beranger, who was then living in quiet retirement at Fontenay. His reasons for remaining silent will perhaps never be known, but he was opposed to the return of the ashes, 203 204 writing for example, "Je n ’ai pas vu son transferrement avec joie."1' Perhaps his opposition was political, ^ a fear of making a show of sympathy with the Bonapartists; perhaps it was for literary reasons, Saint Helena being a much more poetic locale than the Invalides. Return to Paris In 1S46 Beranger left Passy and settled once more in the capital, where he continued receiving visitors and talking of public affairs, such as the accidental death of the due d 1Orleans in 1f$42 which had left Louis-Philippe with no heir. Providence, our poet said, was becoming more republican. The "enrichissez-vous" philosophy of Guizot's ministry and the subsequent general rush for office and favors had destroyed all his sympathies toward the administration, and he began to criticize openly the succession of incapable leaders (by faulting them with their "plebeian" origins): Voyez cette succession ininterrompue de ministres pl£bdiens. Ou auraient-ils appris a gouverner, ces professeurs, ces avocats? Ils arrivent d'ailleurs affam6s et suivis d'une meute de creatures 6galement fam&Liques. II faut rassasier tout cela, et la France leur est jetde en proie. Ne vaudrait-il pas mieux une aristocratie, une fois largement repue, instruite d£s le berceau dans les principes et les traditions du gouvernement et sachant diriger le vaisseau parmi les sables et les dcueils. L'aristo cratie n ’est pas incompatible avec la liberty. Le 1 Correspondence, vol. Ill, p. 2B4, cited by Touchard, La Gloire de Bdranger. vol. I, p. 37. 205 despotisme au contraire s'accommode fort bien de la d&nocratie. Le suffrage universel que I 1on reclame insens6ment nous am&nera quelque tyran . . .2 This passage is interesting for what it reveals not only about his personal attitude toward those currently in power, but in a larger sense his attitude toward pre cisely the cause he professed to champion, that of republicanism and democracy. He reveals a fundamental distaste, despite all his rhetoric, for true popular sovereignty, and at times almost a contempt for what Voltaire called the canaille. Letters to friends and recorded conversations reveal a fear of popular tyranny; he was quoted, for example, as having said, wle peuple est comme les enfants; il ne faut pas lui laisser trop longtemps dans les mains un instrument dangereux."3 The passage above raises a number of questions. It may explain in retrospect his reluctance to support the republicans in 1&30. Did Beranger really believe that another republic would work at all? Had not the first one failed miserably and ended up in another tyranny? Despite his admiration for the man Napoleon, Beranger did attack the tyranny of the Empire, which offered ample proof that the people were willing to surrender liberty for equality 2 cited by Lucas-Dubreton, Beranger. p. 231. ^cited by Touchard, La Gloire de Bdranger vol. I, p. 46. 2 0 6 and security. There may be a very faint note of misan- thropism discernible here. Within the larger context of Beranger*s attitude toward the popular ability to govern itself, one might well ask whether his politics had fundamentally changed at all since 1615, when he had briefly flirted with royalism. In 1630 he preferred to entrust sovereignty to the Orleanists rather than to riff-raff who were not yet ready for self-rule, and it is conceivable that he could have chosen again later to abandon his pipe dream of a republic and support a '^strong man” candidate, given a situation in which his fears of popular excesses were aroused. In such a situation he could well have preferred limited freedom under an enlightened aristocracy to a despotically-ruled democracy. It was better, he reasoned, to establish a controlled system from the first, rather than to let an ambitious despot overthrow a poorly- founded, idealistic government. Parliaments were only transitional devices useful to nsaccader les trones, non & fonder un pouvoir fort. Le parlementarisme? une transition, une hotellerie ou la revolution s'abrite.1^ As he had indicated in his 1633 preface and after ward to Lucien, Beranger was convinced that the July Monarchyfs days were numbered. After a series of riots in A-cited by Lucas-Dubreton, Beranger. p. 233. 207 Lyon and Paris in 1&34, he gave his prognosis: ”Les accoucheurs ont beau s fy prendre mal, 1*accouchement aura lieu. Quand? Je ne sais, mais l fenfant verra le jour. Souhaitons que ce soit tout naturellement et sans forceps ou operation c6sarienne.”5 The questions to ask here are what sort of baby he envisioned and whether ”cdsarienne” is meant as double-entendre. The answers remain shrouded, for even if Bdranger had a certain "baby1* or ” Caesar" in mind, he professed ignorance, even as late as 1&47: Les vdritables prdparateurs de l ’avenir ne sont pas encore venus: tout au plus le nez de quelque petit prlcurseur s ’est montr£ a travers la toile . . . Qui sait? Le bon Dieu ya peut-etre bientot frapper les trois coups • . Surely he felt some malaise in predicting the downfall of a regime which he had helped to set up, but he said he felt even more responsible for having created numerous parvenu Horaces, ouvriers whom he had encouraged to write and involve themselves in public affairs. His ”good deeds” had backfired by swelling the ranks of ambitious would-be politicians. Practicing his ”ilotisrae politique,” Beranger turned down offers to preside over political banquets. Knowing that the liberal platform expounded at such dinners was basically for an extension of suffrage, he excused himself for reasons of age, health, and digestion. Yet it was at such a banquet that popular 5lbid., p. 231o ^Ibid. 203 acclamations of the absent pofete national disgusted Flaubert, who promptly condemned him as Mle bouilli de la podsie mediocre." On February 23, 134#, rioting broke out in Paris, and the national guard went over to the insurgents. The next day the July Monarchy fell and the Second Republic was proclaimed, with a provisional government headed by Lamartine. B&ranger observed all this in silence, saying to intimates that he could not believe what was happening and that he wanted to keep his name out of it, and offering his staircase-and-window analogy, which he was to develop further in a letter: Nous voulions descendre l fescalier marche it marche, on nous a fait sauter un £tage tout entier. A qui la faute? Au gouvernement d^funt, roi et ministres, conservateurs et opposants a la fois. Ces derniers dtaient peut-etre, en grande partie, ceux qui redoutaient le plus ce qui est arrivd et ce qu Tils ont rendu inevitable en convoquant le peuple en place publique, ou ils l 1ont abandonnd a son propre instinct.7 Three aspects of this passage are noteworthy. First, the staircase from the July Monarchy to popular rule is a down staircase, not an ascending one. Secondly, Bdranger is projecting his fear of public rule onto all the other opposants as well, yet the others wanted a republic enough to establish one. Thirdly, his denigrating reference to ‘‘instinct11 gaining the upper hand when a crowd is ?cited in Ibid., p. 234. 209 allowed to gather is strangely antidemocratic coming from the author of La Saint Alliance des Peuples. To show his personal support, however, for Lamartine, whom he had always judged to be a capable leader as well as ”le premier poete qui ait ete propre aux grandes choses," Beranger agreed to sit on a ‘’Commission scien- tifique” studying primary education, but he soon resigned, unhappy over his inability to disserter the way his coworkers could. He was also concerned about the large and growing number of socialists in the provisionary government, so he had decided to disassociate himself from whatever extreme measures it might choose to adopt. When he heard rumors that he was about to be proposed as a candidate in the forthcoming parliamentary elections, he responded: Quel terrible pays que celui ou l ‘on veut enr^gimenter tout le monde! Je vois q u ’on veut malgr£ moi me lancer dans le tourbillon politique, et cela suffit pour d&truire mon bonheur qui ne vivait que^d*ind£pendance. Ah! un petit coin paisible ou vivre inconnu serait le paradis! . . Such protests dissuaded very few of his supporters, however, and despite his warnings that he would be only wun pauvre vieux rimeur . . . inutile et ridicule au milieu d ’une assemble qui a besoin de jeunesse et de science,” he was nominated as a candidate for the general elections, whereupon he wrote his famous open letter to ^Ibid., p. 235. 2 1 0 his supporters pleading reasons of age (sixty-eight), health and cantankerous independence (uachet£e si ch&rement” ). . . . Dans les luttes politiques, le champ de bataille se couvre de morts et de blesses. Sans regarder au drapeau, en vrai soldat fran<;ais, j'ai toujours aid£ a enterrer les uns, a soigner les autres. Si je suis forc6 de prendre une part active^ ces luttes je deviendrai suspect a ceux-l=i memes & qui je tendrai une main fraternelle . . . Je ne suis pas de ceux qui ont besoin de crier en place publique: '*Je suis patriote! je suis rgpublicain!" . . . J*ai £t£ prophete, dites-vous. Eh bien done, au prophete le desert . ; . N Test-il pas sage qu*& une £poque ou tant de gens se prStendent propres a tout, quelques-uns donnent l*exemple de savoir n'Stre rien? Laissez-moi done achever de mourir comme j rai v^cu, et ne transformez pas en legislateur inutile votre ami, le bon et vieux chansonnier.9 The reference to prophecy was a commonplace at the time. He had gained a reputation as a political seer capable of predicting the fall of governments. This tradition seems to be based largely on the 1&2S recueil and the 16)33 preface in which he gave Louis-Philippe ten years at the most (the king lasted fifteen). It has been demonstrated that Beranger was certainly not much of a political leader or prophet under the Empire, and his repeated jeremiads under the Restoration would not qualify him much better. In his Bonapartism, we have seen, he was much more a follower than a maker of trends. His "anthology1* songs full of predictions of the doom of Charles X would not qualify him either, 9appendix of Ma Biographie. p. 270.. 211 unless one interprets his recurrent vanitas and carpe diem themes as a prophecy. Nonetheless, believers in his political clairvoyance continued to seek his views and predictions, which only irritated everyone involved, Beranger because he wanted only to be left alone, and his followers because of his obstinate and inexplicable refusal to yield to their wishes. It was widely assumed that his refusal to endorse the new republic meant he foresaw its failure, and there were, of course, those who would always believe that his entire life’s work had been devoted to advocating the restoration of the Bonapartes and, ipso facto, prophesying their return. All in all, none of these ’’prophecies” seems very con vincing, but the reputation remained. Beranger was elected by a wide margin, and he sadly resigned himself to do his duty. He was apprehensive that he would soon be put into a position in which he would have to make more enemies among various factions through his votes and pronouncements, thus compromising his pampered image as the personification of the popular will. He had come to hate violent arguments and petty partisan politics, and he began to skip sessions, even admitting to a colleague, * On m'a accus6 d ’avoir jetd la planche sur le ruisseau que Louis-Philippe avait a traverser pour entrer aux Tuileries, je voudrais pouvoir 2112 Stre le pont jet6 d'un bord a l'autre du ddtroit pour le ramener aujourd'hui. Certaineraent j'aimais la Rdpublique, ma'is non, certes! telle que nous l favons la.10 Seeing an impending conflict between the radical deputies in Paris and their conservative constituents in the provinces, he "prophesied” another crisis, then set in motion his self-fulfilling prophecy by resigning his seat. Just as quickly, his resignation was refused. Beranger sent an open letter to the Assembly, pleading for his independence, concluding "Pour la premiere fois je demande quelque chose a mon pays ...” This time he was granted his wish, and he returned home at peace. Despite financial hardship— Perrotin's new illustrated edition of his works was not selling well— he settled down again with Judith, and established a new friendship with Michelet, who shared his reverence for Jeanne d'Arc and the Revolution. Although he attended ceremonies inaugurating the Second Republic, Beranger remained aloof, and the people hardly knew what to make of a poet who had preached a republic, then twice fled its arrival. Public suspicions of his cleverness in avoiding any commitment which might compromise his image began to surface. Journalists turned against him. A series of scurrilous stories about Judith's marital status were denounced by Beranger with bad grace. ^cited by Lucas-Dubreton, Beranger. p. 237. 213 In early 1851 he suffered a slight stroke. During his convalescence he spent his time analyzing the political situation, coming to the cynical conclusion that no single party was capable of restoring order, especially the republicans, who had been steadily "sinking into corruption" since 1815. He professed only uncertainty concerning the nation’s future. He was acquainted with Louis-Napbldon Bonaparte, and he knew of his political agitation and plotting, the attempted coups and prison sentences. While it cannot be established, one may assume that he had read — especially during his "socialist" period— the exiled prince’s books, the treatise on the elimination of poverty and his political program works, Des Idees napoldoniennes and the Rgveries politiques. Louis-Napoldon had sent him from prison at Ham one of his republican-humanitarian brochures, and Beranger, feeling flattered, went the extra mile in responding with compliments. Bdranger was surely aware of Louis-Napoleon’s plans and dreams. Their professed social ideals were very similar, but Bdranger’s perpetual fear of compro mising himself kept him from showing any open sympathy. Perhaps the poet knew the prince well enough to sense that he was capable of another 18 Brumaire, which would explain his sudden coldness toward Louis-Napoleon when events became unsettled. On three separate occasions 214 the prince called at Beranger’s home at Passy only to find the door locked and ”no one at home.” Official emissaries fared hardly better. Beranger told friends during the electoral campaign of 1846 that he would not vote for Bonaparte, but rather for the moderate republican candidate Cavaignac, since his favorite, Lamartine, did not have a chance at the polls. Cavaignac, it should be noted, was the general who had repeated the 13 Vende- miaire by firing on insurgents during the June riots. Beranger had protested against the Continuing exile of the Bonaparte family, and the dedication to Lucien in 1833 may be seen as a reaffirmation of that protest. Touchard suggests further that his campaign on behalf of an exiled family was conducted at least partly for show, to cultivate Chateaubriand’s friendship; as the poet championed the Bourbons, the chansonnier would support the Bonapartes.^ What is particularly suggestive about BSranger’s stance (which remains sentimental, not ideol- gical) is that it coincides roughly with a progression of events significant to the Bonapartists, including the death of the Roi de Rome in 1$32, the subsequent reconciliation talks between Bonapartists and liberals, and the publication the same year of Louis-Napol6on's Reveries politiques. For Beranger to state immediately Touchard, La Gloire de Beranger. vol. II, p. 45. 215 afterward that the July Monarchy was doomed to a short life naturally led Lucien to ask for a clarification of his stand. Yet we have seen what Beranger had to say of such wesp6rances chimdriques.” He insisted on his adamant republicanism and resistance to any tyranny. Although ’’bonapartiste comme le peuple,” he was ’’nullement impdrialisteand he was busily writing strongly pacifist songs like La Guerre and Les Fourmis which, if we are to accept his dating of his posthumous songs, were written during the brief Bonapartist flowering aftfer 1#30. Despite mutually complimentary letters exchanged with the exile at Ham in 1&42, Beranger had expressed very reserved opinions on the exile’s intentions, and he had been careful to temper his compliments and wishes for amnesty with subtle cautions to avoid politics: Puissiez-vous un jour, prince, etre en position de consacrer a notre commune patrie le fruit des connais- sances que vous avez ddja acquises et que vous acquerrez encore. En attendant q u ’on vous rende, comme il serait juste de le faire, les droits de citoyen frantjais, ainsi qu’& tous les membres de votre illustre famille, croyez aux voeux ardents . . . , sfir que je suis que vous vous consacreriez ddsormais & des travaux littdraires et scientifiques qui ajouteraient un rayon & l ’immense aurdole du nom que vous portez.12 In a later letter of a particularly complimentary tone, B6ranger let himself imprudently praise his correspondent’s utopic socialist ideas, and he went so 12letter to Louis-Napoldon, dated October 14, 1£42, cited in Ibid., p. 46. 216 far as to suggest that their goals were the same. Had he known what lay in store for French politics, he surely would not have furnished later Bonapartist propagandists such open-ended material. We may assume that at the time he did not consider the prince a dangerous individual and felt it safe to compliment him freely. While his letters remain, by and large, prudent and subtle, when taken literally by unsophisticated or biased readers they definitely appear to show unqualified support for the candidacy of Louis-Napoldon Bonaparte. It has been shown that Bdranger had been evolving toward the concepts of order and authority, while breaking ties with the republican platform. We have seen his growing fears of the tyranny of the mob and his unspoken support after 1330 of a strong rdgime to end indecision and corruption. He appears to have lost faith in parliamentary rule, and was quoted as having said to friends toward the end, MSi j Tdtais roi je voudrais etre roi absolu, car roi constitutionnel, cela n*en vaut pas la peine.'^3 in this tendency he reflects the growth of the Napoleonic Legend as we have traced it, and one begins to wonder if in fact he was not capable after all of seeing in the return of a Bonaparte the salvation of ^cited by Lucas-Dubreton, Bdranger. p. 246. 217 France, just as he had seen the Consulate as salvation from a state of anarchy. The Bonapartist propagandists1 flagrant use of Bdranger's songs and reputation in 1848 was inevitable. By championing memories of the Empire during the July Monarchy, by corresponding in a flattering tone with the exiled pretender to the imperial throne, and by professing ideas and ideals seemingly in complete harmony with those of the exile, Beranger had set himself up for such a campaign, especially during the early phase when the Bonapartist "party line” was avowedly republican. The official party publications were literally filled with excerpts from Beranger, and often reproduced the chanson nier *s portrait alongside that of the two Napoleons. The title poete national, which had fallen from use since 1833, was restored— and overused— by the Bonapartist press. A few days before the June riots there even appeared a pamphlet entitled Histoire complete de l'empereur Napoleon et de la Grande Armde. avec les pensdes de Bgranger sur ce grand homme et sur la Rdpu- blique. suivie de la biographie de Louis-Napoldon et de ses cousins reprdsentants du peuple a l TAssemblde nationale. Such a title is entirely self-explanatory. The pamphlet itself contains in reality nothing but thumb- nail-sketch biographies of everyone mentioned, a portrait 21g of Beranger on the front cover, quotations from his songs, and attestations to the republicanism of Bonapartist deputies. Me. me adsum qui feci As political conflict finally came between Presi dent Bonaparte and his parliament, B6ranger watched gravely as events moved toward the inevitable crisis. He confided to Arnould, ”Je pense que jamais aucun homme n'6td mieux plac£ pour faire la revolution, s'il le veut.1* He did not seem at all surprised by the coup d ' etat when it came on December 2, the anniversary of the first coronation and Austerlitz. Lamartine was heard to remark, uCeci est une chanson de Beranger.” While Bdranger lamented the bloodshed of republican insurgents, he betrayed a barely perceptible note of glee at the news of December 2: Les impr6voyants sont tout £tourdis de 1 'Empire qui leur tombe sur la tete. C'est une affaire qui se bSche tr£s vite et qui laisse peu le temps de la reflexion ni&ne aux sages. Louis-Napoleon a dt£ bien servi par ses adversairesl Et la peur done! Elle a joud un bien grand role dans tout ceci. Je n'ai jamais vu plus d'epouvante chez les vaincus.'^ Bdranger seems to have rejoiced at the shaming of his ineffectual colleagues, but not necessarily at the reestablishment of the Empire. With an air of self- satisfaction he watched as the voters overwhelmingly ^Ibid., p. 251. 219 approved the Empire, commenting, MNous avions encore besoin de cette le<;on. Les sept millions de voix en sont la preuve. Aucune constitution plus ou moins r^publicaine, plus ou moins liberale, n*aura de dur£e que lorsqu’on sera par venu a organiser la d£mocratie.w In an attempt to reconcile his wounded republican comrades and the victo rious Bonapartists, he prodded them with Convenez-en, vous qui m^connaissez trop les services reels rendus a la France par Napoleon, tous les partis ont fait des fautes, mais celles dont nous devons le plus g^mir, ce sont les fautes enormes commises par les r^publicains. Je le*S avais pr^vues: aussi aurais-je voulu que la Rgpublique nous vint .. un peu plus tard. L§ Providence en a decide autrement. 5 The question of blame or responsibility for the events of 1 #51-52 reduces to one of "good faith,11 or whom one chooses to believe. BGranger had maintained the popular Legend and kept the name Bonaparte alive until the return of Louis-Napoleon. As the Empire wore on and alienated increasing numbers of adherents, those who in 1i#52 had credited B6ranger ..for his role in reestablishing the Bonapartes, were by 1#70 blaming him for it. B6ranger was, it cannot be denied, satisfied right after the proclamation of the Empire, and reassured doubtful friends of its value: MNe voyez-vous pas que nous sommes & jamais deiivrds du drapeau blanc? Ne voyez-vous pas ici le triomphe de la Revolution et la portae des evenements?" To those who questioned the lack 1^Ibid.9 Po 252. 2 2 0 of democratic liberty, he scoffed, "Bah! elle reviendra." He apparently saw Napoleon III as an enlightened social theorist and strong man figure who could at last rule in the interests of everyone— in short, the Legend incarnate. Nonetheless, he strongly disliked being called a Bonapartist and repeatedly stressed that he had had nothing to do with Louis-Napol6on. Malgr6 mes chansons, je n'ai pas m§me et£ partisan de 1*autre qui avait cependant une certaine grandeur pretant a la po£sie. Je ne l fai point lou£ en 1B10, mais je l ’ai chants apr&s sa mort? c*est vrai. II me semblait cjue ce role me revenait. Je sais bien que c*est grace au Code civil que nous avons vu l ’ennemi entrer en France chapeau bas. Mais j# suis et serai toujours r^publicain. Du reste, il suffirait de me lire pour savoir la v£rite, si on voulait la savoir . . .*'6 But the accusation stuck, and his enemies continued to say that he had betrayed the Republic in 1B4S and liberty in 1S52, the Empire being commonly referred to as "le ch£timent de B6ranger." Reacting to a rumor that Dumas was about to repeat this accusation in print from Brussels, he vigorously protested to his friend that his entire life was a denial of such a hateful, "immoral1* course of action. He concluded by announcing that the new regime had just deprived him of his political rights as a citoyen indigne by reason of his two convictions ^conversation with Arnould, cited in BSranger. ses amis, vol. I, p. 129. 2 2 1i since 1314, and observing that he hardly had reason therefore to owe allegiance to the Empire. Dumas did apologize and tone down his article. The final phase BSranger spent the last years of his life, in varying states of health, attending funerals of friends. The winter of 1356 marked the definitive break in his constitution; for the rest of his life he was under medication for coronary problems. He ignored songs and articles calling upon him to speak out on issues, or at least explain his stand in relation to the Empire* Victor Hugo tells of a meeting shortly after the election between iPierre Bonaparte (Lucien's son) and B£ranger, who was hardly cordial, Pierre asked simply, — Que conseillez-vous & mon cousin? — D 1observer la Constitution. — Et que faut-il qu^l £vite? — De violer la Constitution. B&ranger n'est pas sorti de la. Quand le prince a parti, B4ranger a dit a sa servante: — uC Test que je suis r6publicain.M^7 At the same time the Emperor decided to honor "quelqu'un qui m'a beaucoup aid6'* by awarding B£ranger a pension. He had the Empress, who he thought would be better received, arrange the offer. Her secretary, under the guise of inquiring after B6ranger*s health, discussed ^Victor Hugo, Souvenirs personnels, p. 137, cited by Touchard, La Gloire de B&ranger. vol. II. p. 233. 222 with Perrotin (who had appointed himself watchdog over B6ranger’s finances and who loyally kept him from starving) the possibility of secretly depositing annually in B6rangerfs account a sum of money to be determined by Perrotin and kept in his name. When B6ranger caught wind of their plans, he reacted furiously, writing to Perrotin that he was to dismiss summarily any further such visitors and repeating his desire for absolute independence, yet concluding his instructions with "Ajoutez n6anmoins qu’il m fa toujours et£ infiniment agrdable de recevoir des offres de service ou d*appui, que, si jamais la pauvret£ revenait vers moi, ce serait de pr6fdrence a Sa Majesty que je m fadresserais pour en obtenir le terme."^ This incident passed unnoticed by the press until January 1657, when a Brussels newspaper printed a story that B€ranger had asked the imperial family for a pension. All denials were futile, and it became "general knowledge" that B6ranger had "sold out" to Napoleon III and was receiving a pension from him. B£ranger soon afterward drew up his will, leaving Perrotin in charge of all his affairs. Perrotin was to burn all letters and keep everything from autograph hunters, publishing nothing but his 1640 biography frojn Tours (Ma Biographie) and his last songs. As to his Incited by Lucas-Dubreton, Bgranger. p. 269. 223 funeral, he was adamant: 11 Je veux qu'on me jette dans la fosse commune. Si vous me bStissez un tombeau, je me rel&verai; a coups de pied, A coups de poing, je le d6molirai.n Above all, he wanted no funeral orations, having recently endured so many himself. Burial was to be in the nearest convenient cemetery, with no public announcements in the papers until the day after burial. His fatalism increased after Judithfs death in April, and he spoke of joining her. He spent his last months often incoherent and lost in memories, yet frequently quite lucid, receiving visitors and joking. He began to speak of religion, pray and profess faith, which surprised those around him. His sister Sophie, who had lived since 1&09 as Soeur Marie des Anges in a Paris convent, came to discuss such matters, but he cut her off saying that his own cur 6 had already taken care of that. He died July 16, 1B57. His house became overnight a sort of popular shrine. Fearful of public manifestations but eager to capitalize on the event, Napoleon III ordered the entire 50,000-man Paris garrison on alert to act as guards for the funeral, and the prefect of police Pi6tri posted his announcement that, in effect, the government had taken possession of the body and all arrangements: La France vient de perdre son po£te national. Le gouvernement de l ’Empereur a voulu que des honneurs publics fussent rendus . . . au polte dont les chants, 224 consacrds au culte de la patrie, ont aidd a perpdtuer dans le coeur du peuple le souvenir des gloires impdriales. . , . J fapprends que des hommes de parti ne voient dans cette triste solennitd qu’une occasion de renouveler des ddsordres. Le gouvernement ne souffrira pas quTune manifestation tumultueuse se substitue au deuil . . . Le cortege se composera uniquement de deputations officielles et des personnes munies de lettres de convocation . . .'9 Hastily a procession was thrown together, and at noon on July 1 7 a huge parade of military guards and government officials, preceded by imperial paraphernalia and grenadier drummers and passing under laurel leaves, palms and crowns, escorted the ancien refractaire to his grave amid restless ouvriers and bourgeois crying "Vive Bdranger! Honneur a BdrangerI" It has well been observed, by Louis Veuillot2® among others, that the pomp and pageantry of what was supposed to be a simple funeral went against the solemnity of the occasion, tempting the esprit gaulois of observers. Had Bdranger been able to witness the whole affair, one can imagine the fun he would have had with the dramatic irony of the situation. The route of the cortege was deliberately altered occasionally to avoid quartiers ouvriers or emotional crowds, who were firmly restrained by soldiers and police. There was a very brief pause at a small church for a simple ^^Le Moniteur universel. 1i7 July 1&57, cited by Ibid., p. 342. 2®see Arnould, Bdranger. ses amis, vol. I, p. 17S. service accompanied by the plaintive strains of Les Souvenirs du Peuple played on an old organ. The ceremony in the P&re-Lachaise was very brief, Sainte-Beuve wrote the official notice for the next dayfs Moniteur; . . . L*Empereur, en se chargeant de la celebration des funerailles de Beranger et en voulant y prdsider, en quelque sorte par la pensee, a montr6 qu'ici comme en toute chose il sentait comme la France . . . Nul n Ta mieux (que Beranger) donne a pres- sentir combien le reveil et le jour de reparation pour ces deux gloires. la gloire de la France et celle du nom napoieonien, etaient unis et comme solidaires, et ne faisaient naturellement qu’une m§rae cause.2 '1 Thus Beranger died, willingly or not, under the shadow of the imperial eagle, the new Emperor having made him one way or the other an accomplice in the eyes of his contemporaries and of posterity. cited by Arnould, Beranger. ses amis, vol. I, p. 1 CHAPTER SIX BERANGER AND POSTERITY ■ Ce n^est certes pas raoi qui aurais devind ce qu'on appelle aujourd’hui la littdrature facile, ennemie mortelle de cette autre littdrature qui fit le charme de ma vie et fut si longteraps l ’orgueil de la France. — preface to Dernidres Chansons Etre mis en chanson ou en tabatidre avilit . . • sans les colporteurs de Bdranger, Napoleon n ’exi st erait pas ou, du moins, sa ldgende qui est le triomphe de la vulgaritd. — Anatole France Dernieres Chansons The recueil published after Bdranger’s death contains almost all of what might be termed his ’’pure” Napoleonic songs, songs which move from the concrete to the abstract, convert popular reverence into poetic apotheosis, and take an earthly hero and turn him into a Legend. Yet these are the least appealing of Bdranger’s works. They do not ring quite true. They betray ambition and forced effort, they generally lack the charming popular inspiration and naive appeal which made Bdranger’s fame, and, perhaps worst of all, they cannot be termed true songs, as they were not destined to be sung. 226 Three fourths of the Chansons Dernieres show no tune"*1 and seem much more like poetry than songs. Many lack the usual refrain. Caveau-type and political songs (excluding the Napoleonics) and even socialist songs are almost entirely lacking. In their place are very ambitious scenes de genre and heavy allegorical pieces. Only very rarely does the reader find references to specific events or persons or problems; clearly this is a very different and new brand of poetry for Bdranger, no longer engagee but rather abstract and'vague. It lacks the vigor and topicality which had always characterized his songs inspired by righteous anger. His conscience and impassioned crusader spirit had always enlivened his bourgeois, classical form, seasoning an otherwise prosaic verse with sparkling wit and gauloiseries there was always something between and under the lines and even in the margin. Once this native verve was removed, however, once the spark of a cause went out, once the seasoning was removed the dish was unappetizing. One is left with podsie a la surface, not the podsie mise en dessous that he himself had preached. Bdranger was proof that a chansonnier without a banner is a chansonnier without a lyre. ^And those which do were not necessarily assigned a tune by Bdranger. cf.^Perrotin’s note to the preface: ’•Les airs marques en tete de la plupart des chansons qui en comportent ne l ’ont pas tous dtd par I 1 auteur.1* 223 Yet these songs are not completely without merit. There are some very appealing and memorable passages, notably in Adieu a la France, the two "drum” songs, and a few of the Napoleonic pieces to be discussed below. Stylistically, there are two main varieties of the posthumous Napoleonic songs, the sentimental and popular pieces which present tableaux resembling images dSpinal, such as Le Cheval Arabe or La Lecon d'Histoire. and the poetically ambitious songs like Sainte-H61fene or L'Aigle et l fEtoile. It is noteworthy that these songs treat either the youthful Bonaparte or the exiled conqu6rant. never the ruling Emperor Napoleon. This is probably because potential greatness, prophecy and tragic downfall are more ’'poetic11 than greatness itself, but it remains nonetheless interesting that Bdranger*s greatest success, Les Souvenirs du Peuple. had dared to treat the reigning Emperor. The posthumous songs add another dimension to Bdranger’s Napoleon: the •'armed Messiah" is shown practicing bourgeois domestic virtues as a loyal and sacrificing son, loving father and brother, and overall worthy object of motherly love. i In these songs the glorification of Napoleon is no longer rooted in politics at all, but rather based on a philosophical viewpoint, a deliberate concentration on Napoleon as Napoleon, the Legend as pure Legend, no 22.9 longer arising from a political situation. This is the Legend uprooted, set free to rise like a vapor, independent from its political utility. One notes a remarkable change in tone and poetic intention when one compares these works with the earlier, more naive and popular songs on the cassette. The new preponderance of exclamations, apostrophes to muses and abstractions, and self-conscious devices such as well- placed enjambments are a far cry from Yvetot, although echoes of certain earlier works remain, such as references to the feet of Napoleon leaving imprints in History. The songs of 1357 are the children of Bdranger's long retirement, composed between 1334 and 1351<. There is no reason to group the non-Napoleonic songs together except their chronology, and there appears to be no evidence of any order intended by their author. Perrotin undertook their arrangement and publication as he pleased. Thirteen of the songs, however, share a common character. Bdranger delivers himself over in these songs to his career-long leitmotif. Napoleon. Whatever other themes may run through his works, social, political, or moral, allusions to Napoldon 1er can be traced the entire length of his creative life. Perhaps this collection was a fitting finale after all. Touchard concludes that almost all these Napoleonic songs were written in 1334 or 1335, and that all of 2 3 0 them predate 1636, citing as evidence mention of them in letters dating from 1635 and 1636. And, in fact, in the recueil itself most of the Napoleonics are classified "De 1634 A 1636,1* and they do form a homogeneous series culminating in their last piece, Madame Mdre. Either Bdranger had planned the sequence this way or Perrotin organized it wisely. The rest of the songs are later "stragglers’* and show a different tone and feeling. We may conclude that the period 1634-1636 was Beranger*s "pure Legend” period, during which he came closest to living his reputation. This period coincides precisely with the Bonapartist flowering described in Chapter One, the period of the omnipresence of.Napoleon in the theater and the home, the completion of the Arc de Triomphe and Louis-Napoldon’s first attempted coup. Dated 1642, the preface to this collection repeats Bdrangerfs justification for his recent silence ("La chanson politique est, sans doute, une arme redoutable, mais la pointe s*en dmousse vite et ne se retrempe que dans le repos."), his usual scolding of his fellow repub licans for neglecting the cause of democracy, and his insistence that the song is a rigorous genre deserving of respect. He remarks that his noticeable abandonment of the refrain and accustomed rhythmic forms was an adap tation to current public tastes, which he had always sought to please. Bdranger goes on to explain that he had 231 destroyed a number of enigmatic manuscripts which might have tarnished his reputation, for, after all, "dStruifce sans n6cessite et au jour le jour les admirations du peuple, c ’est travailler & sa demoralisation." Such a revelation pushing through his usual modesty is rendered even more notable by his newfound self-importance in the role of Hugoesque mage and prophet to mankind: "le poete doit se r&fugier dans l ’avenir pour indiquer aux genera tions qui sont en marche. Le role de proph£te est assez beau ..." The songs The first of these songs is Le BaptSme. a tuneless dialogue, much after the fashion of Les Deux Grenadiers, between two Corsicans on Napoleon’s birthdate (August 15, 1769). Picking up on RousseauTs prediction in the Contrat social (book II, chapter six) that Corsica would someday "astonish Europe," Bdranger plays on the theme of political prophecy as one of the voices fortells the Bonaparte child’s greatness, repeatedly using the name Napoleon in place of the usual periphrastic constructions. Fatalism dominates: "Le nom semble fait pour l'histoire." Despite concern as to whether exchanging one tyranny (Genoa’s) for another (that of France) will improve the Corsican lot (might one see here a vague allusion to the later tyranny of the Empire, or are we to assume complete 232 worship of the Emperor?), the interlocutors conclude that God has willed this birth, and the "song" ends with a clap of thunder. The other pseudoprophetic piece, L fEgyptienne. also without a tune, tells the story of an old Egyptian seeress (note the "prophetic” choice of nationality) who asks to read the palm of young artillery lieutenant Buonaparte. She is astonished at her findings: Que vois-je! o signes de puissance! 0 labeurs du g£nie humain: Muses, pour vous quelle 6pop6e! L6gislateurs, qu’il sera grand! France, a l foeuvre! forge une £p6e Pour cette main de conqu^rant. Rois, pleurez vos orgueils de race; Suivez-le, peuples haletants. Moi, ^e tombe aux pieds dont le temps Doit a jamais garder la trace. J fai vu ta main. 0 noble enfant, crois-moi, Quand je te dis: Tu seras plus qu Tun roi. Corsican doubts concerning the future figure prominently in this piece as well; the seeress comments, "point de Corse qui ne vienne / M ’interroger sur l Tavenir." The use of the prophetic theme, running back to Le Petit Homme rouge, represents perhaps only a convenient device to help inspire a tired poet, or perhaps, in an effort to bolster his flagging image, Bdranger was consciously seeking to revive public interest in his reputation as a prophet. Once more he slips into abuse of conventional "poetic" props: ruined palaces of marble columns, earth- 2 3 3 quakes, ominous sky and thunderclaps, although these are secondary to his subjects, legends and anecdotes concerning Napoleon’s formative period. Recalling another such legend, Le Cheval Arabe (set to two different tunes au choix. neither of which has survived) renders dramatically the scenario of Bonaparte selling his horse in 1793 in order to pay his mother’s expenses incurred during her flight to Marseilles. The vignette is well drawn; one can almost visualize the rag-tag young soldier bidding a fond farewell to his faithful companion: Mon bel arabe, adieu! Sans toi, demain, Ma noble m£re irait tendre la main. Prophecy again plays its role: En te montant, que j ’ai l ’Sme saisie Du grand projet qui m ’occupe toujours! . . • Que Dieu me donne un monde par la guerre, J ’en ferai part &. mes fr^res ch£ris; Sous mon soleil, ton pied fera de terre Surgir des rois a mes soeurs pour maris, Je veux un r£gne a faire oublier Rome, Dut-il finir par d'6clatants malheurs. Ah! je suis sur q u’en me donnaht des pleurs, Le peuple alors s f6crierait: Le pauvre homme! This is exoticized, Hugoesque-style poetry, rendered colorful and somehow universal in scope by the evocative power of the place names and words used: Nil, Levantin, Mamelouks, cheiks, chameaux, Pyramides, Bagdad, Babylone, these serve Beranger well as richly suggestive, exotic words suited to contemporary taste, and laden with connotations. In the context of the Napoleonic Legend, any mention of Pyramids, camels 234 maraelouks and the Nile takes on, of course, further suggestive meanings. His choice of the all-too-famous Arabian horse as a subject is especially noteworthy in that it coincides with the great boom in Napoleonic art (described in Chapter One) which almost universally portrayed Napoleon on a white horse, despite the fact that he rode mounts of all colors. One suspects that Bdranger is once again following popular tastes in imagery and more or less exploiting the Legend. What more suitable subject, in this light, than the clichd white horse? Another noteworthy detail is Bdranger1s resorting, for the sake of poetry, to speaking of Alexander selling Bucephalus, after he had himself ridiculed the same figure of speech in his Caveau days and preferred his "beaten ass" comparison! But oneTs views change in twenty years, especially when one is seeking to write great poetry. Despite its weaknesses, however, this song succeeds better than its companion pieces in its intention, that of rendering a mood within the framework of a popular historical anecdote, and, on balance, it is one of the best songs of the recueil. L TAigle et l TEtoile. also without a tune, uses another facile poetic vehicle, the Eagle— and the Star, for that matter— in acting out the well-known "flight from tower to tower all the way to Paris." Prosaically 235 complaining of suffocation ("On manque d ’air ici!"), the eagle recalls memories of glory: Lorsque le ciel n ’dcoutait que ma voix; Lorsqu'un grand peuple, ivre de mon ivresse, Riait vainqueur au nez de tous les rois* whereupon Napoleon’s star rekindles, and the eagle soars (repeating an unbelievably prosaic "Bonjour, bontfour") to the wild acclaim of all of France drying its tears, putting an end to the celebrations at the Congress of Vienna and expelling "le vieux Louis." But a hundred days later, the star is extinguished by the hand of God, and the eagle plummets to earth. Here finally is the poem which Bdranger had aborted in Couplets sur la .journde de Waterloo. But even now he chooses not to write directly on the fall of Napoleon. He poeticizes it by transposing it from the realm of gunpowder and bloodshed to an ethereal sphere. Sainte-Hdldne is perhaps the most ambitiously "poetic" of these pieces; Bdranger himself called it "ce que j'ai invente de plus podtique." Again in the form of a dialogue, Bdranger treats Napoleon in the absent third person, destined to arrive but not yet present. Here, an angel descends on Saint Helena before the dawn of history to extinguish its volcano and prepare it as a tomb. The demon of the volcano (later to become Hudson Lowe, of course) asks what great personage is destined to lie there: Alexander, Caesar or Christ? To 236 which the angel replies ”un conqu^rant, empereur des Gaulois,” who is to be punished for the sin of ” . . . d'attarder dans sa route / L*humanity, q u ’eblouit son drapeau.” By putting Napoleon into the same class as Alexander, Caesar and Christ our poet has already betrayed his intentions. NapoleonTs crime, having dazzled humanity (emphasized by the enjambment) and held it up for a time on its way toward the light of liberalism, is to be justified by the atonement outlined by the angel: Trouble ses nuits, resserre ses entraves: Tiens de ses maux la coupe sous ses yeux. Cet homme ainsi, purifiant sa gloire, Pour l ’avenir redevient un flambeau, Sur 1 ’infortune acheve sa victoire • Et des rois triomphe au tombeau This is the Legend as seen through the eyes of Beranger. The poem evolves from ”un conquerant” to the direct mention of Napoleonfs name at the very end: ”Dieu joint sa main aux mains qui vont descendre / Napoleon dans son tombeau.” Napoleon is emphasized by an enjambment, just as humanity had been; B&ranger appears to have been studying the techniques of his fellow poets. Through suffering, Napoleon has been purified and made worthy of adoration; he triumphs through and after death over his enemies. In La Lecon d THistoire Napoleon in exile gives a lesson in French history to Bertrand^ young son. Beginning with the Gauls and Franks, he inventories great 237 figures, pausing for Jeanne d ’Arc, who, wFille du peuple, a fait l ’ouvrage / Ou succombaient noblds et rois . . . Que le ciel chStie en notre 5ge / Les Anglais, tes laches bourreaux.** It does not take much imagination to see a parallel developing (Bdranger was wont to draw the usual comparisons between Joan and Napoleon): nAlors, oubliant qui l ’£coute, / II s ’dcrie: 1Anglais inhumains, / Comme elle, ici, bientot je sortirai de vos mains.I?* The boy begins to cry, and Napoleon sends him to his father for comforting, then ends the song lamenting that he will never be able to dry his own son’s tears, thereby echoing BerangerTs common exile theme. Leaving behind prophecies, allegories and biograph ical anecdotes, Beranger returns to the parlez-nous de lui theme in the song of Le Matelot Breton, who, rescued from a shipwreck by the English and taken to Saint Helena, returns hope to find respectful peasants asking news of Him and how soon He will return. The sailor tells of the ’’venimous monster*1 Hudson Lowe and the deplorable place of exile, where, after waiting two days, he managed to seeNapoleon on a stroll: Dieu soit b6ni! car, sur la route, Dans un groupe aussitdt il parait Un homme. Lui! c ’est lui, sans doute, Ou n fai-je pas vu son portrait? Napoleon chats amicably with him and sends him off with a purse of money for his mother. The popular reverence 23 3 for the memory of Napoleon is restated: "Plus que les grands de son empire / Le peuple a souvenir de lui." Prophecies, enjambments, hero worship and tribute to motherhood have found a common dwelling place. The aging Bdranger was to dwell increasingly on motherly tenderness. Madame-M^re. (i.e., Napoleon*s mother) laments the fate of her grandson, "victime de la gloire paternelle," as well as that of her son, "messie arme" and "vrai sage" whose genius had astounded the universe, but whom she had always waited to welcome home when he fell. Sans cette gloire, ah! le pere lui-m§me Vivrait encor, soleil de mes vieux jours . . , Dieu l f61eva si haut, q u Tun noir prisage Saisit mon coeur pour ce fils bien-aiml. She wishes he had stayed safely at home with his family, and that at the very least his son will be repatriated: Et s !il se peut, fils et Frangais fiddle, Sans §tre roi, ni vengeur ni vengg, Que dans Paris un jour 1 ’enfant rentre chargd De la d£pouille paternelle. But a weeping messenger from Vienna stops her soliloquy, and she concludes, *?Ah! tout mon fils est mort. / H£las! et je n!ai plus de larmes." Bdranger was not able to assign a tune to this piece. But he did feel a need to add an envoi at this point. Speaking in the first person, he gives an epitaph to his Napoleonic muse: Dans simples chants que ton grand nom m 1inspire, Napoleon, c ’est ici le dernier, R6publicain, s'il a blam£ l 1empire Sur ta chute et tes fers pleura le chansonnier. 239 Pour rSveiller notre France abattue, J Texaltai l'homme, et non le souverain. Laisse la main du peuple incruster dans l'airain Mon nom au pied de ta statue! II n 1est pas mort!. still happily in the popular inspiration of Les Souvenirs du Peuple. echoes the popular refusal to believe the news in 1S40. A vieux grognard enacts the essence of the Legend by telling of having broken bread with Him and received the cross from His own hand, letting slip Anglophobic phrases and nourishing hopes of an escape from exile and concludes by praying, **C!est lui qu ’on veut: rends-le vite & la France, / Mon Dieu, sans lui je ne peux croire en toi.n line Idee presents the immortality of the memory of Napoleon, despite Waterloo, persecution and denigration. Le Tambour-Major is intended to mock the osten tatious new litterateurs and politicians by comparing them to the plumed, gilded drum majors of the Empire, yet Beranger slips into favorable commentary on Napoleon, who is contrasted in his virtuous simplicity to the over decorated, upstart figures around him at Austerlitz: **Cet homme-lA, c Test la pensee, / Sans vains ornements, sans grands mots.1* The tuneless piece promisingly entitled Saint Napoleon is nothing more than the usual indictment of imperial lfeche-bottes turned adulators of the Bourbons. A few barbed allusions to contemporary figures suffice to 240 spice up the otherwise uninteresting text, enriched only by Hugoesque grotesqueries. such as "Notre empereur, cr^ateur au galop, / Quand son crachat fecondait la poussi&re ..." The last of these songs, entitled Les Tambours and dated "1 #47-1 # 5 1 dwells on the excesses of Napoleon*s tyranny and expresses fears that the unthinking populace will turn its new Republic and its destiny over to some unnamed new "drum major." His familiarity with military music and cadences is manifest in his choice of rythm and alliteration, especially in the refrain: Terreur des nuits, trouble des jours, Tambours, tambours, tambours, tambours, M !<§tourdirez-vous done toujours, Tambours, tambours, maudits tambours? Sous 1 !empire, ils ont fait merveille. J fai vu ces racoleurs puissants Du genie assourdir l^reille, Etouffer la voix du bon sens. Nous, peuple gpris en politique Du tapage et des galons d ’or, Pour prdsider la Republique, Faisons choix d ’un tambour-major. The question raised by the last stanza is one of dating, specifically whether it was written before or after Louis- Napoleon’s election. Touchard believes it predates 1&4&, but this cannot be proved. If it predated the election, this stanza shows cynical resignation and loss of confi dence in the electorate; if it follows, there is no more devastating condemnation of Louis-Napol6on by Bdranger. 241 The question of "Romantic irony” One notes increasing condemnation or ridicule of war in the Derni&res Chansons, Les Fourmis is a mock epic account of two opposing armies of ants waging a glorious battle to the stirring refrain of "Gloire immortelle aux fourmis!" Each side claims, "Dieu combat sous nos banni&res," and references to Hercules and Pindare orient the tone as a barde celebrates their immortal exploits. After this buildup, the final stanza gives Bdranger’s view: Tandis que I 1auteur bravache Vole aux Titans leurs projets, Dans son urine une vache Noie auteur, prince et sujets . . * Gloire immortelle aux fourmis! Assuming that Bdranger intended to put his personal opinions into this song, one is surprised by its character, which is strongly reminiscent of VoltaireTs Micromdgas and the war scenes from Candide. He seems to‘ be almost mocking his own success as chantre de la gloire; this song could, given a considerable stretch of the imagination, constitute an example of what was later to be called "Romantic irony." If we understand a writer to be indulging in Romantic irony when he self-consciously mocks his own excesses, then we could point to this almost Stendhalian glee in mocking what he had so assiduously built up, as well as his later dwelling so heavily on the prophecy theme, as presenting a mildly ironic view of his own reputation as a political seer. He surely did not sincerely see himself as a prophet and knew that he was following events rather than leading or foretelling them. If one is willing to credit Bdranger with such lucidity and honest self-criticism, then there might be a trace of Romantic irony in his posthumous songs. Ma Biographie and the Correspondence Not long after the Derni&res Chansons (1&57 and 1859), Perrotin produced the hastily-assembled four volume collected Correspondence. edited by Paul Boiteau (1fS60), and the final version of Ma Biographie (1B62). The timing, in retrospect, may seem bad; these books, published so soon after BGranger*s death and so close together, were too much for readers, many of whom were already disillusioned with the former pofete national. Yet one hesitates to accuse Perrotin of a cynical profit motive, a desire to Mcash inw quickly on a controversial subject before public interest cooled. Perrotin could surely see that the very memory of Bdranger was in danger of disappearing, and he may well have intended only to put into circulation everything that he could to fight public apathy and journalistic attacks on B6ranger*s merits. Boiteau*s Correspondence de B&ranger cannot by any means pretend to be comprehensive. He had trouble getting cooperation from suspicious correspondents who were afraid 243 of revealing letters favorable or unfavorable (depending on the correspondents politics) to the Empire. Other letters had been confiscated by the police, and many contributors sent Boiteau only copies or excerpts, keeping from him the original letters. In sum, Boiteau’s correspondence may well be misleading in what it omits and includes. Subsequent publications of ingdits do not seem to have remedied the situation. Unwieldy and at times boring to "wade through," these volumes of letters served to further confuse friend and foe alike, since each side chose to quote from it, selectively and fre quently out of context, during the six-year quarrel over Bdranger’s literary merits and politics. Ma Biographie proved disappointing, both to light readers looking for safely-posthumous r6vdlations piquantes and to serious readers seeking insight into the problem of Bdranger^ politics. The book dwells very heavily on the formative years, neglects the Empire period, and stops essentially at 1S30, although it is dated 1$40. While interesting reading, it was biased obviously to shape an image for posterity. The quarrel: 1358-1864 There soon appeared a veritable flood of articles, memoires and journalistic anecdotes, each purporting to represent the true interpretation of Bdranger written by an intimate friend possessing a unique understanding of 244 his intentions. These conflicting views, of varying degrees of unprovability, touched off a posthumous literary, political and even religious quarrel, which we shall attempt to summarize very schematically. B&ranger's detractors, led by Renan, Eugene Pelletan, Louis Veuillot and the Figaro, attacked him on every ground. Legitimists attacked his anti-Bourbon stance, the Church his anticlericalism and libertinism, the bourgeois his "socialism,'1 literary critics his faults and outmoded style, and, perhaps most serious, the republicans attacked his lack of commitment. Sainte-Beuve summed up the charge of Bonapartism: B€ranger est mort en communion parfaite avec le rdgime imperial qu’il n'avait pas appeld mais qu'il avait certainement prdpar6. II avait mis les autres en train, c'6tait bien le moins qu'il les suivit. II fit done comme le peuple et fit bien.2 Pelletan spoke on behalf of critics of Beranger's character in a pamphlet entitled Une dtoile filante: Fils, il d6chire la robe de sa m£re en public; pSre, il deporte son fils a l'lle Bourbon; cdlibataire, il vit en mdnage; conscrit rdfractaire, il chante la gloire du coup de canon; rSpublicain une premiere fois, il applaudit au 1# brumaire; liberal, il fredonne un hymne au pouvoir absolu; republicain une seconde fois, il renie la Rdpublique; voltairien, il demande a l'Eglise une goutte d ’eau b^nite pour son cercueil,3 ^1&57 article, cited by Arnould, Bgranger, ses amis vol. I., p„ 12B. ^article in the Figaro, cited in Ibid., p. 337, 245 Emile Montegutfs verdict is perhaps the most memorable, Berangerfs fairy godmother, he concluded, laid on his tomb not a lyre or flute, but a shrill whistle, trumpet and drum. The m£n6trier national whom Lamartine had praised was in reality only , . , un pauvre petit moineau parisien, familier, effarouche, libertin, ayant pour toute nature les jardins des faubourgs, faisant l*amour sur les gouttieres des toits et chantant avec un petit filet de voix perqante et railleuse le plaisir facile,4 The religious attack was led by Renan, who in 1#53 published a sort of "theology of Beranger" which denounced the old anticleric turned penitent and devout at the end, Protestants took up the good fight and condemned his libertinism and corruption of popular morals through the pernicious influence of his songs. Despite his admiration for the charms of Les Souvenirs du Peuple, Proudhon classified B4ranger among the "fem- melins,’* weak authors. His worst fault, said Proudhon, was ignorance of History and a facile habit of using familiar, simple tunes to set thoughtlessly into motion reckless and dangerous revolutionary trends. La Revolution est demeurde pour lui un mythe, l ’Empereur une idole, et les Bourbons l Tennemi; il n fa cesse de ressasser contre ceux-ci de stupides calomnies et s*est cru pour cela un grand citoyen. Sous tous les rapports sa pens£e est courte, ddfec- 4-Revue des Deux-Mondes. cited in Ibid,, vol. II, p, 9, 246 tueuse, arri6r6e, contradictoire . . . II a servi la Revolution, raais il a fait baisser le sens moral et deroute le sens politique,5 It is interesting to note that Proudhon agrees here with Guizot*s judgment that Beranger was **plus honnete et plus sense que ses chansons.1* Guizot was never to forgive Beranger his inaction in 1B4S, and he accused him of literary demagoguery, that is, wildly attacking whatever he thought public opinion opposed, unconcerned about the long-range effects of his songs. Beranger*s defenders were led by Boiteau, George Sand, Arnould, whose two-volume Beranger. ses amis, ses ennemis et ses critiques (1&64) was to become the definitive work on Beranger for over a century, and Jules Janin, whose Beranger et son temps was not published, however, until after the quarrel had subsided (1S66). Their various viewpoints all converge essentially into Arnould*s thesis, that Beranger had never compromised himself politically or morally, that he had not supported Louis-Napoieon, and that he continued to merit the respect of democrats, republicans and all patriots. We shall therefore let Arnould speak for the other defenders. The major accusations made against Beranger were that: 1. He put equality above liberty, which reduces essentially ^cited in Ibid., vol. I, p. 2#3. 247 to a charge of Bonapartism. Arnould indulges in some sophistry to resolve this by saying that Bdranger had preached liberty in equality, synthesizing them into "fraternity.11 2. He had brought about, through his songs, an exag gerated popular reverence for the memory of Napoleon which was conducive to the restoration of Bonapartism and tyranny. Sainte-Beuve held that Beranger had realized this consequence of his actions too late to do anything but retire gracefully into silence. Arnould combats this assertion by citing all the usual and appropriate passages of disavowal. 3. He was inconsistent, fickle, insincere and opportunist in his loyalties, tending to follow the tides of public opinion. To this, Arnould was to protest, "Reprocher a un homme d'avoir suivi le courant des id6es de son 6poque, c'est tout simplement reconnaitre qu'il a marchg avec son siecle, qu'il a progress^ quand tout progressait autout de lui.''^ 4. He preened his "image" excessively and would never commit himself to the causes he advocated in his songs. Arnould terms Beranger's lack of involvement wise moderation. 5. An ancien conscrit rgfractaire had no right to the title of chantre de la gloire. to which Arnould replied that ^Ibid., vol. I, p. 319. 24S Beranger had served his country better as a poet than as a soldier, that he was not suited for military service, and that "on peut faire des couplets sur Waterloo sans avoir portd le plumet de voltigeur dans la garde imperiale."? 6. His literary style was archaic and his works trivial. Arnould dismisses this as wholly a matter of taste. Mock ing a heavily-caricatured Romanticism, he opposes to recent "foreign’1 and extreme literary movements the healthy, indigenous strain of esprit gaulois. tracing it through Rabelais, Moliere and Voltaire to Beranger, whom he terms a "descendant du XVIIIe siecle, egar£ au milieu du XIXe." Besides, he concludes, the people approved of his works, and popular taste is the ultimate arbitrator. 7. Overall, Beranger was at best a philistine and at worst a vulgar and pernicious influence in the public affairs of his day. To this Arnould could react only with counteraccusations of snobbery and hypocrisy,, Arnould concludes that II n ’est.pas logique que l ’on condamne a la fois chez un m§me homme son hypocrisie et sa licence, sa haine des rois et son m6pris de la liberte, son impi£t£ et son deisme aboutissant a une conversion; qufon 1 ’accuse d ’avoir mis perfidement un immense talent au service des plus mauvaises passions et d ’etre un pietre rimeur de chansons sans portee; qu'on lui reproche, r£publicain, de r§ver l'empire, Igolste, de rester pauvre, ambitieux, de refuser tous les honneurs, et cela a la seule fin de se montrer d^sagreable a ses 7Ibid., vol. I, p. 350. 249 conteraporains et de conserver une popularity dont sa ruse et son habilety n*ont su, d ’ailleurs, tirer bien claireraent aucun profit personnel.8 Addressing himself to Sainte-Beuve*s famous obser vation that Beranger was "plus patriote que liberal, plus d^mocrate que rypublicain, plus bonaparttiste qu'impy- rialiste, plus dvangelique que chrytien,"9 Arnould responds in kind: Voila ce qui est fort clair . . . socialiste en 1#50, Bdranger se trouve en 1B61, patriote, liberal, dymocrate, republicain, bonapartiste et impyrialiste. II cesse tout a fait d'etre un homme pour devenir une sorte de synthese nationale, ou l ’on retrouve r^unies et d faccord les opinions des divers partis qui se disputent 1*opinion et le pouvoir depuis quelques soixante ans.'° Since the Quarrel Le Beranger des Families and Le Beranger des Ecoles were widespread in use as inspirational reading matter and primers, presenting a purified, rarified Beranger, a model of character and virtue, compared repeatedly with Jean- Jacques Rousseau. These primers are interesting to peruse if only for an occasional smile provoked by their immod erate praise throughout: Quel po^te a jamais m£rity mieux l'amour et le respect de ses concitoyens? . . . La moitiy de ses chants sont ^Arnould, Byranger, ses amis, vol. I, p. 5. ^Nouveaux Lundis. vol. II, p. 207, cited by Touchard, La Gloi're de Byranger.’ vol. II, p. 460. 1'OArnould, Byranger, ses amis, vol. II, p. 144. 250 de l ’histoire de France accoraplie par nos p&res; l ’autre moiti£, c fest l ’histoire de l ’avenir c£16br6e d favance. A toutes les pages de ce livre unique et incomparable il y a une id£e sereine ou un souvenir glorieux. On chante, et l fon est console; on chante et l ’on n ’a plus au coeur que l 1amour de la France, et de l ’humanite, dont la France est le guide . . . Ce n ’est pas seulement un grand poete, c ’est le patriarche de la France nouvelle. II nous a 16gu£, en m§me temps que ses vers, l ’exemple de son caractere et l ’ensei- gnement de ses vertus . . . Bdranger sera pour la post£rit£ quelque chose de plus qu’un 6crivain illustre . . . II est bien que, de bonne heure, en France et partout, les enfants qui seront un jour des homines et des citoyens puisent dans les Merits de Beranger les leqons du plus sage patriotisme et du plus pur amour de l ’humanite . . . Aucun homme n ’a exerce plus d ’influence sur les destins de la patrie; aucun poete n fa conquis une semblable renommee . . . C ’est la chanson r£g£n£ree, couronn£e, arm6e par le g£nie des temps nouveaux . . .11 Stories of Beranger's unpublicized philanthropism, his homilies about self-sacrifice, and his dicta about social concern and the progress of humanity, were amplified into an nEvangile selon Beranger,” epitomized by the enterprising Boiteau who founded in 1£62 a short-lived annual Almanach de Beranger intended to be ”une biblio- th£que de science pratique, d ’histoire et de morale” in the spirit of Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanach. It is noteworthy that Lebrun was .at that time calling Beranger ”le Franklin de la France.” Indeed, the similarities between the two men are interesting to ponder, although Beranger denied it: ”11 dirigea la foudre et moi j ’en 11 Ernest Legouv£, Le Beranger des Families (Paris: Garnier, n. d.), pp. v-vT7 251 fus frapp6.”12 He betrayed some deliberate imitation, however, by giving as autographs and handwriting specimens transcribed passages from Franklin, especially the account of his printer’s apprenticeship. It would appear that Beranger did indeed wish to be associated with Franklin. By 1B70 Beranger had succumbed to public indifference. Several public subscriptions to raise the funds to erect a statue of the pofete national, beginning in 1$65, failed, but such a statue was at last unveiled in the Square du Temple, Paris, in 1$$0, on the centennial of his birth, in a poorly-attended ceremony presided over by Hugo and finally paid for by benefit theater performances. With the exceptions already noted in the present study, well-known literary critics since then have either ignored him or used his name pejoratively. The Garnier edition of the Oeuvres completes de Beranger (1$75-1$7 6 ) was the last edition published in France, although he has fared far better abroad. Dickens, for example, is reputed to have admired him, and the occupying German troops in 1$71 were said to have sung Beranger from memory. Almost every European nation has seen the publication of translations of and studies on Beranger.^ Even in America, Beranger’s "lyrical poems” were rather well-known. 12Lucas-Dubreton, Bgranger, p. 2$2. ^ S e e Touchard, La Gloire de Beranger. for a biblio graphy and analysis of Beranger's fortunes abroad. 252 One of the better translators, William Young, wrote of Beranger, "It is impossible to exaggerate his popularity in France: in its universality, we believe that it never has been equaled by that of any other poet, ancient or modern."^ Occasional ingdits go generally unnoticed. The only widespread resurgence of interest in Beranger has been at the hands of Marxists, who concentrate on his "socialist song" period and perceive in his work the roots of the Commune. The turn-of-the-century nationalist stirrings and subsequent renaissance of interest in Napoleon did stimulate some indirect interest in Beranger, but only as a footnote to the Legend, and almost always assuming that he had advocated and at least tacitly supported the restoration of the Empire. Beranger had become either an early Marxist or the "chansonnier de la 16gende," nothing more or in between. Jules Garsou's Beranger et la legende napoleonienne (1S97) contributed nothing new, and school edition revivals of Beranger such as Mansion's, while definitely more objective and reliable than the Beranger des Ecoles. restricted themselves to biography and commentary on the songs as poetry, all the while suggesting unrepentent Bonapartism on the part of Beranger., ^Sfilliam Young, Beranger: Two Hundred of his Lyrical Poems, done into English verse (New York: Putnam, 1850), p. 9. 253 Beranger and the critique universitaire Overall, the official critical view of Beranger’s songs was not as negative as one might have expected, considering his sudden and complete fall from favor after his death. The majority opinion would seem to be that Bdranger was overrated in his day, but has been underrated since then. Bruneti&re dismissed Beranger as a false "popular" poet, saying there was nothing at all in the songs which brought to mind the normal ’’melancholy, frankness and naive generosity” of the people; he concluded that Beranger represented "ce qu’il y a de plus bourgeois dans 1 ’esprit franqais."1 5 One can counter this observation by reminding the reader that Beranger never pretended to be writing Volkslieder. a genre of which he was knowingly ignorant. He knew he was composing "art songs’* and that his songs were "popular" only in the sense that everyone sang them. Lanson terms Beranger’s form "admirablement populaire," but shows only contempt for his fond, which is termed "irr^mddiablement vulgaire," and possessed of "le don de rapetisser, d ’enniaiser tous les grands sujets." En un mot, la mesure de Bdranger, c ’est cette moyenne assez vulgaire de 1*esprit franqais qu’on appelle 1 ’esprit bourgeois: esprit positif, ^Ferdinand BrunetiSre, Manuel de l ’Histoire de la litterature francaise (Paris’: Delagrave, 1925), p. i+03. 254 jouisseur, gausseur. II expriraait de son mieux les iddes du bourgeois de son temps, de la son succds,’° This criticism, comments Mansion,**‘7 attacks not so much Beranger as overzealous admirers who sought to make odes of his songs. One recalls Dupin’s summation from the 1B21 trial: ‘‘que ce ne sont que des chansons, et que rien ne peut faire que ce n ’en soit pas.tt Petit de Julevillefs Histoire contains under the rubric nLes Derniers Classiques” an interesting and sympathetic treatment of Beranger by Henri Chantavoine, himself a poet, who calls Beranger's verse wces guepes aildes, dont chaque couplet pique et s'enfonce, au bourdonnement du refrain.11 Although the songs assuredly cannot be labeled nodes,M they are certainly worth saving: On peut tout de meme l ’appeler un podte, un poete lyrique. Ses chansons ne sont pas des odes: on l ’a mis, autrefois, & cStd d ’Horace; il faut, pour dtre juste, en rabattre de ce premier engouement. II y aurait d ’autre part injustice & meconnaitre ce q u fil y a en lui d ’aimable, de vivant et d ’inspird. Bdranger . . . a 1 ’imagination et la sensibilitd d ’un vrai poete dans quelques-unes de ses meilleures pidces . . . Ce n ’est pas a coup sur un grand dcrivain, ni meme un trds bon dcrivain^ attentif et pur; il est plein de ndgligences ou d ’a-peu-prds; mais ceux qui le condamnent trop durement ne l ’ont pas lu.^o ^Gustave Lanson, Histoire de la littdrature francaise (Paris: Hachette, 193°), p. 9&9. ^Mansion, Chansons Choisies. p. xlvi. ^Histoire de la littdrature francaise des origines 4 1900. pubiide sous la direction deL. Petit de Juleville TlParis: Colin, 1899) tome vii, p. 313. 255 In order to appreciate the works as a whole, readers are cautioned Mde le chanter & rai-voix, au lieu de le lire et surtout au lieu de l'^plucher.11^ Faguet contended that many of Berangerfs best songs are better read than sung, for Beranger was wun homme d'esprit merveilleusement dou£ pour n f£tre pas compris des imbeciles.” Ce n'est pas la verve entrainante qui est leur marque. C'est la sournoiserie maligne et le trait qui se d£robe a moitiy, tout en portant. Elies veulent done etre lues attentivement, de trds pr^s, par un lecteur tr£s capable d'attention et spirituel lui- meme, et passent au-dessous du champ visuel d fun homme habituy au lyrisme a grand fracas.20 Faguet credits Beranger with several songs worthy of the name ode, notably Le Cinq Mai and Les Souvenirs du Peuple. Lanson attempted to state the reason for lasting interest in Beranger: . . . l Tart qu'il deploie dans le choix des refrains, qui presque toujours expriment en un vers 1 intention de la chanson entiere, et dans la raani&re dont les chansons sont compos^es, comme autant de tableaux de genre, qui parlent d'abord aux yeux, et qui appellent l fillustration . . . Et surtout de lection, toujours de 1 'action. La chanson de B&ranger est r6cit ou drame; et chaque couplet met en lumi£re un des moments princi^aux de 1 'action . . . Elle est populaire par le meme m^rite qui a fait la popularity de La Fontaine: parce qu'elle est toute action.2 ' 1,9lbid. 20Emile Faguet, Histoire gyn&rale publi^e sous la direction de E. Lavisse et A. Ramboud (Parfs: Lec§ne et Oudin, 1#90) tome X, p. 483. 21Lanson, Histoire de la literature francaise. p. 970. 256 Put somewhat differently, this judgment reappears in the 1951 edition (p. 9 7 0 ): . . . ses chansons, tr&s platement 6crites mais tres bien rythm^es, ytaient tout action; chaque couplet met en lumidre un moment du r£cit, ou du drame; c'est pr6cis6ment ce qui avait fait la popularity des fabliaux au Moyen Age, puis des fables de La Fontaine. Byranger se rattachait ainsi It une trfes ancienne et trls puissante tradition. This comparison to La Fontaine is important, for it points up the way Byranger was viewed by his contemporaries. Mentions of La Fontaine in connection with Byranger and his art are strikingly frequent in contemporary critical commentaries. Byranger encouraged this comparison, and it is true that there are indeed certain basic similar ities in the manner of presenting action in brief dramatic scenarios. One of the most common character izations of Byrangerfs oeuvre is to describe it as "un ample drame a cent actes divers," which echoes La Fontaine's description of his Fables as "une ample comydie H cent actes divers." Just as each of Byranger's songs was seen by his contemporaries as a tightly- structured "crescendo continu, un tout logique et complete parfois ra£me comme la miniature d'un poSme ypique," likewise the whole of Byranger's songs was viewed as a "longue suite de petits poemes, au nogbre de plus de trois cents, et qui, placys bout & bout, forraeraient une esp£ce d'ypopye."22 Both writers show signs of being a 22Arnould, Byranger, ses amis, vol.I, pp. 270-271. 257 dramaturge manqu6. The rythms of both the song and fables are quite varied and well adapted to the subject or sentiment; the language is usually vigorous and simple. Beyond this, however, comparisons seem somewhat superficial. Perhaps the most notable of more recent critical views is Thibaudet’s verdict that Berangerfs song can be nclass6e comrae monument historique," namely as wla colonne de Juillet de la po6sie franqaise."2^ In the twentieth century, Beranger*s Bonapartism has been progressively deemphasized by scholars, whose renewed interest seems to be in an historic phenomenon or curi osity, his songs as expressions of their time. As interest in Napoleon and the Legend has increased, so has interest in its corollaries., including Beranger. It is hardly an accident that Fisher*s study of Bonapartism (1914) was roughly concurrent with Strowski's 1913 reexamination of Beranger, nor that Lucas-Dubreton*s biography of Beranger (1934) fell in with a series of studies of the Legend (e.g., Dechamps, 1931, Charpentier, 1935). Quite recently, in the midst of a flurry of new studies on Napoleon, Beranger has again surfaced, as a percursor of Marxism for Pierre Bronchon (1956), as a hard-core Bonapartist for Lucas- Dubreton (1960), and finally as a complex and problematic figure for the late Jean Touchard (196B). 2^Albert Thibaudet, Histoire de la littfeature fran caise de 1759 a nos jours (Paris: Stock, 1936), p. 96. CONCLUSION Vous pr^tendez que Napoleon me doit toute sa popularity. Au rebours c ’est raoi qui dois A son nom une partie de la mienne. — Bdranger to the dying Chateaubriand Byranger in retrospect It is possible to admire, someone’s work while not liking him, and Byranger, viewed with hindsight, is a difficult person to like. Our judgment of him must ultimately depend upon our perception of his motives and "sincerity." If one accepts Byranger’s statements and justifications regarding his conduct, then our chansonnier becomes an heroic figure, a brave little David, complete with lyre, doing combat with his Goliaths. On the other hand, if one examines critically Byranger*s conduct, weighing it against his words, it becomes apparent that he was somewhat too elusive. While it is true that his era demanded flexibility, Byranger seems to be guilty of at least some demogoguery and opportunism. He swam with the tide and seems never to hatre been able to bring himself to complete support of the causes he wrote about. His faults were usually errors of omission rather than commission, absence rather than presence. He was, and 258 259 can still be, blamed for not being republican enough or Orleanist enough or Bonapartist enough. Pierre-Jean de Beranger was surely a man of confusing contradictions, yet he knew how to present an uncomplicated exterior to his public. In his prime he was considered a sage paragon of modesty and moderation, an equal of the Ancients, capable of great epic poetry but committed to practicing a "lower** genre for the sake of public enlightenment, being all things to all men, "un Anacreon pour les amants, un Aristophane pour les malveillants, un Tyrt6e pour les escouades, un Th6ocrite pour les paysans."^ As Sainte-Beuve observed, there are two B6rangers: the "literary demagogue" who capitalized on bon pauvre vieux elements, and "le B6rqnger vieille France," representative of the gaulois tradition in literature. The latter BGranger has been forgotten in favor of the former. Yet, as a literary figure, B6ranger merits a place in the history of letters for three main reasons. He did contribute significantly to a literary, social and political legend, he left some "types" to French literature (e.g., the Roi d*Yvetot and perhaps Lisette), and, most important, he was an 6cho sonore— and sonorous indeed— of his era. His songs are documents, reflections of an age. ^Arnould, Beranger. ses amis, vol. II, p. 106. 260 This study has examined the songs of BGranger in their musical and literary context, and has pointed up their historical, social, literary and political impor tance. We have seen that the genre which he intended to found was not really new, but that it was indeed regen erated by him and has survived until today. It was proposed in the Introduction that this study examine three general assumptions. The first was the belief that Bdranger was a political Bonapartist. It has been demonstrated that Beranger was an adherent to the apolitical Legend, but did not support either Empire. He praised the man Napoleon I and his positive accom plishments, while blaming his excesses and lamenting the subsequent sufferings of France. He indulged in hero worship while criticizing his heroTs party and regime. The second assumption to be examined was the idea that Berangerfs view of Napoleon did not evolve. The intention of this dissertation has been to disprove this idea. We have seen Beranger*s Napoleon evolve markedly. From the periphrastic allusions to "un homme" or "un conqu&rant," through "le ggant des batailles" and "le faiseur des rois," the Emperor becomes during the 1820's "le grand homme," then "le bon Empereur" in Le Petit Homme rouge. By 1#33 he had become the libero-Bona- partists’ Napoleon, the very Legend incarnate in Les Souvenirs du Peuole. The preface of 1#33 terms him "le plus grand des po&tes des temps modernes et peut-Stre de tous les temps,” which compares interestingly with the line in Couplets sur la journde de Waterloo (132&): "le plus grand pofete des temps modernes et peut-etre de tous les soldats," and with that of Le Cinq Mai: "le plus grand homme des temps modernes et peut-etre des temps anciens." From a conqueror admired at a distance, an historical figure worthy of Plutarch, Napoleon advances to the status of the greatest poet of modern times, preparing the way for the new Promethean Napoleon who was to shatter his sword and rise to the stars from his volcano. Beranger1s Napoleon became the Napoleon of the Legend, the little corporal who made himself an Emperor, the champion of the Revolution. All the superficial . elements of the Legend are to be found in Beranger*s songs the caricatures, the petit chapeau and redingote grise. the anecdotes of encounters under a thatched roof, the white horse, the eagle, and reminiscenses of vieux grognards. citizens and peasants. But what of the less superficial aspects? What, for example, of the legislator Napoleon, or of the restorer of the Faith? The fact is that such subjects do not lend themselves readily to popular songs; to write a "catchy," hummable ditty about the Concordat or the Code civil was not so easy. The songs of BGranger allude to 262 the Code, but very rarely and obliquely, as in the Roi dJYvetot, which mocks it. Later footnotes mention the Code, but almost as an afterthought. Only Le Dieu des Bonnes Gens attempts to mix religion with the Legend; elsewhere Beranger!s anticlericalism takes over after the early conventional R6tablissement du Culte. As liberator of oppressed peoples and champion of nationalism, Napoleon fares hardly better in the songs. He is champion of a Revolution which somehow remains almost exclusively French* Poniatowski is a possible exception, as it associates gratitude for Polish aid to the French with a renewed plea for French aid in freeing Poland, a vague association with the idea of Napoleon as champion of national self-deter mination. Le Cinq Mai brings the Spaniards into Napoleon^ fold, but its enjoinder to forget their grudge can hardly be construed as a statement of a doctrine of national self-determination. We must conclude that Berangerfs use of the Legend was superficial, choosing those carica- turable aspects which best lent themselves to treatment in popular songs and neglecting the more abstract, ideological aspects. Beranger approached and saw Napoleon through the eyes of common people, and he described his subject through the words of bonnes vieilles. vivandiferes. old veterans, rag merchants, and finally an old seeress. His popular frame of reference remained consistent to the end; he ignores 263 parvenu marshals and general officers and tells the Legend in the common man’s terms. In his treatment of Napoleon himself, the same tendency holds true. BGranger paints a man rather than a sovereign, a soldier of ’93 under the tricolor rather than an Emperor. In this deliberate portrayal of Napoleon’s democratic side lies BGranger’s greatest link to the Legend, his demonstration of ”combien la gloire est roturi&re."^ The final assumption, that BGranger shaped and propagated a Legend rather than reacting to a preexisting one, must be tempered. Neither extreme is true. B6ranger gave much to the Legend, just as he took much from it. Their mutual relationship was not so much one of causality as one of symbiosis. Beranger did not create the Legend. But he did elaborate its facile, popular side. He amplified its resonance among the common people, and spread it more efficiently through song than through the written word. He began by singing the praises of the little heroes, painting picturesque types with a pen he had sharpened on caricatures of marquis and chameleons. Only late in his career was he to attempt to write ’’great poetry1* about Napoleon, even to the extent of neglecting music. But by then it was too late, and his muse’s fount had dried ^Le Vieux Draneau. 264 up just when he was focusing his attention on Napoleon as a purely literary subject. Beranger as Bonapartist In Chapter One we attempted to establish a definition of a Bonapartist, specifically a literary Bonapartist. It is now time to review this definition in the light of what we know of Beranger, his songs, his words and his actions. To be a "pure1* Bonapartist, we concluded, a person must revere the Napoleonic Legend, support Bonapartist political doctrine and accept the four principles of Las Cases, namely, that Napoleon had embodied the Revolution, defended nationalism and self-determination, loved peace over war, and restored religion in society. He must further give primacy to equality over liberty and support the concept of autocracy supported by the General Will, A reexamination of what we have revealed in this study surely demonstrates that Beranger eould not be considered a Mpurett Bonapartist. He was without doubt an avid adherent to the emotive Legend, even one of its makers, but he consistently disavowed any political allegiance to either Empire. Regardless of whatever evidence one may present to suggest that he toyed with imperialist ideas or that he may have privately felt sympathetic toward efficiency and order, despite conflicting and puzzling passages which do leave a residue of doubt as to his true 265 loyalties, the fact nonetheless remains that Beranger devoted a considerable proportion of his prefaces and notes to disavowing Bonapartism. From the start, he did indeed praise Napoleon but criticize the Empire. Concerning the question of Bdranger’s support of Napoleon III, there exists very slight and inconclusive evidence, mostly conjectural and second-hand, suggesting that he could have supported the December 2 coup, as opposed to concrete, documented evidence, including his actions (which proverbially speak louder than words) and repeated public criticism of both Empires. He described the BonapartistsT plans as ”chim6riques,tt even to Lucien. He voted for Louis-Napol6on*s opponent in 1&4&, he encouraged and befriended political exiles, and he refused all offers of aid or pensions. While his ’’Bonapartist’1 songs undoubtedly did contribute to maintaining the presence of Napoleon in the popular imagination, thereby aiding and abetting the political Bonapartists, his best- known Napoleonic pieces date from the Restoration, and even the posthumous songs were composed shortly after 1#30, almost twenty years before the accession of Napoleon III. Had he wished to support the new pretender, he would surely have written something timely in an appropriate vein. The weight of the evidence forces us to conclude that Bdranger was only an emotive, not a political, 2 6 6 "Bonapartistand therefore not a Bonapartist at all, in the proper sense of the word. In his allegiance to the four affirmations he!6- noises as well, we find inconsistencies, yet a definite bias away from political Bonapartism, Napoleon was the embodiment of *B9 for Bdranger, it is true, but nationalism and self-determination were most likely of secondary importance to a xenophobic chansonnier whose early jingoistic songs had mocked foreigners; the only firm evidence against this would be Poniatowski. in addition to some lip service paid to the struggle of the Greek freedom fighters, and his reconciling remarks in his note to Le Cinq Mai, yet somehow these banner-waving examples seem strangely de rigueur, part of the expected pose of socialist/podte national. As to Bdranger’s belief in Napoleon’s fundamentally peace-loving nature, we have seen repeatedly his admon ishments to an overly-ambitious Emperor, his criticism of politiques de conquete and his later pacifistic songs. Beranger was all too aware of the Emperor’s warlike propensities. Paradoxically, the same Beranger must plead no contest, if not guilty, to the last criterion, that of militarism. We have seen and heard his joy and pride in recalling the glorious feats of French arms. But, on balance, his pacifism wins out in the end. Even if their Emperor loved war too much, Beranger has the 267 veterans in Le Champ d fAsile explain why they fought: nNous courions conqu£rir la Paix / Qui fuyait devant la Victoire." This is in keeping with the Legend, and may well represent a transition from the warlike early Napoleon toward the unarmed transfigured Napoleon of the posthumous songs who, having done penance in exile for his excessive love of power and glory, is permitted to leave his rock. The religious question seems irrelevant to the anticlerical Beranger, who would not in any case have considered restoration of the institutionalized Church's influence in society a positive contribution, so on this point as well we must definitely disqualify B&ranger as a Bonapartist. The whole question of liberty vs. equality vs. fraternity remains unresolved. Arnould*s reconciliation notwithstanding, one cannot state with certainty to which of these Beranger gave priority. But we have witnessed his support of Bonapartism's basic principle, that of a strong government supported by the General Will, and we have seen his tendency, under threat of civil commotion, toward sympathy with autocratic measures. The potential makings of a Bonapartist are there, but they never formalized, and Beranger's politics remain elusive. He would not have become a Bonapartist by political persuasion so much as by temperament and mental makeup. A democrat 2 6 3 by nature, he liked both equality and order. Labeled a republican, he brandished liberal slogans, but when chaos threatened he revealed Bonapartist thinking. Perhaps one would do best to agree with Sainte-Beuve that B&ranger was more patriotic than liberal, more a democrat than a republican, and more an (emotive) Bonapartist than a (political) imperialist. The chansonnier de la 16gende. in sum, was not a true Bonapartist according to our definition. He participated in forming the Napoleonic Legend, which served him both as an inspiration and as a vehicle for reaching popular taste. He admired, even revered, Napoleon for his positive contributions to a greater cause, that of patriotic liberalism, which went beyond partisan politics and reached a level appropriate to the works of a pbfete national. Napoleon proved to be an excellent subject for his chosen genre, affording him ready access to popular sympathies. Beranger’s songs were a welcome consolation to the France of 1315-1330; it is only natural that this period would be his prime. His Bonapartism was the natural expression of his patriotism, and his message of cheer, hope and patriotism found a responsive audience, ready to agree that Napoleon’s triumphs had been France’s triumphs, his glory her glory. Beyond this affective level, however, it can be seriously doubted that Bdrangeir envisioned a restoration of doctrinary Bonapartism, much less worked actively or intended his songs to support such a restoration, although Bonapartists did muster him, willingly or not, into their ranks and assured that, whether or not he adhered to their doctrines, he served the cause of Bonapartism, APPENDIX A THE RECORDING The music on the cassette accompanying this disserta tion was arranged and recorded by a specialist in popular music of the period, Mr. Charles Fothergill, and is based on the versions in the Nouveau Recueil. Mr. Fothergill is the accompanist. The singer is the present writer. As the piano was the most commonly-found salon instrument at the time and therefore the most likely to serve as accompaniment, the instrument heard is a standard piano adjusted to approximate the tonality of a mid-nineteenth- century instrument. The original recording was executed in stereo with a dual-microphone system to balance the vocal and instrumental parts; in transferring the music to mono phonic cassette, unfortunately, the sound characteristics were altered so that the piano dominates the vocal part, especially in the first few pieces. Should it prove difficult to follow these songs, the listener is referred to Appendix C for the texts of the selected stanzas sung. The reader/listener is encouraged to note carefully in these colorful songs the range of tone and style, from 270 light badinage to piety. Hearing the music reveals facets of the songs completely imperceptible to the reader. Especially noteworthy are the subtle mockery of the tune of the Marseillaise in the Traits de Politique, the "catchiness" and typical playfulness of all the lighter pieces and the typically French harmonic scheme of Les Souvenirs du Peuple. As in all popular music there are occasional ironies between tunes and their titles, or between tunes and lyrics, weighty or daring statements being disguised by light or inappropriate tunes. One is reminded of the Encyclop^die and its device of hiding bold statements under innocent titles. Especially notable are the transformation of a vaudeville air into a serious, even pious, hymn-like tune for both Le Dieu des Bonnes Gens and La Sainte Alliance des Peuples. Le Vieux Drapeau played on the gay air of "Elle airae a rire, elle aime a boire," and Les Deux Grenadiers, based on a popular hymn, ttGuide mes pas." The decision to record these particular pieces, out of the three hundred or so possibilities, was influenced by a number of factors. First, they are among the best- known pieces by B6ranger, and they represent a sort of tthit parade" or "B&ranger's greatest hits." Secondly, it was felt that they represent the best recordable examples of the Napoleonic songs. Thirdly, they were chosen to represent a variety of tones, types of music, and artistic 272 intentions. Moreover, these were the songs familiar to the people, not the more learned songs published after B6rangerfs death, which were often unsingable or even tuneless. All of the songs recorded were written prior to or during B£ranger*s apogee, and all proved to be fun to sing and therefore popular and, of course, effective and lasting in influence, just as music from the earliest times has increased the "mental sticking power" and emotional effect of verse. It was felt that they merited "resurrection" and recording in the twentieth century. APPENDIX B THE MUSIC The basic musical resources for this dissertation are Le Nouveau Recueil. contenant tous les airs des chansons de B^ranger (Paris: Meissonnier-Heugel, 1&4?) and Frdd^ric BdratTs Musique des chansons de Bdranger (Paris: Garnier, 1£6£). Unfortunately, only scarcely- legible fragments of the latter could be located. What tunes Beranger assigned to any of the posthumous "songs” were incomplete or unusable for this study. Without works such as these, many of the tunes would have been forgotten and lost forever. In only a few instances are timbres popular in BerangerTs day still familiar; probably the best example is the "air du roi Dagobert," to which Bdranger set his Marquis de Carabas. A few others have survived, interestingly enough, in a simplified form renamed after Beranger’s version. One finds references to "l’air du Dieu de Bonnes Gens,” or ”l ’air du Roi d ’Yvetot,” the original titles having apparently been replaced by Beranger's. The present arrangements are based on material gleaned from the Nouveau Recueil. Copies of the music 273 of B4rangerfs songs are rare, difficult and expensive to find, and when available they offer only a rudimentary— and frequently almost illegible— -notation of the melody, usually devoid of harmony and taxing to decipher. Working from his experience in and familiarity with the music of the era, Mr. Fothergill was able to reconstruct t with the present writer the versions heard on the cassette. APPENDIX C THE TEXTS The following texts of the representative songs on the cassette are presented here to facilitate listening, and are in no way intended as complete versions of the songs. The reader is referred to any edition of B6ranger’s works for the complete texts. Space limitations obviously do not permit inclusion of all the songs discussed in the dissertation, nor of all the stanzas of the songs on the cassette, which are represented by selections which, it is hoped, provide a ’’feeling” for the song and an understanding of it. The exception is the final song, Les Souvenirs du Peuple. which is sung and presented here in its entirety, as it was felt that anything less would destroy the unity of the song’s effect. LE ROI D ’YVETOT II 6tait un roi d ’Yvetot Peu connu dans l ’histoire, Se levant tard, se couchant t8t, Dormant fort bien sans gloire, Et couronn6 par Jeanneton D ’un simple bonnet de coton, Dit-on. Oh! oh! oh! oh! ah! ah! ah! ah! Quel bon petit roi c ’Stait la! La, la. 275 II faisait ses quatre repas Dans son palais de chaume, Et sur un Sne, pas & pas, Parcourait son royaume. Joyeux, simple et croyant le bien, Pour toute garde il n Tavait rien Qu'un chien. Oh! oh! oh! oht ah! ah! ah! ah! Quel bon petit roi c !6tait 1&! La, la. II n ’agrandit point ses Etats, Fut un voisin commode, Et, module des potentats, Prit le plaisir pour code. Ce n ’est que lorsqufil expira Que le' peuple qui l*enterra Ploursi Oh! oh! oh! oh! ah! ah! ah! ah! Quel bon petit roi c 1£tait la! La, la. TRAITE DE POLITIQUE A L*USAGE DE LISE Lise, qui rSgnes par la grace Du Dieu qui nous rend tous 6gaux Ta beaut4, que rien ne surpasse, Enchaine un peuple de rivaux. (bis) Mais, si grand que soit ton empire Lise, tes amants sont Frangais; De tes erreurs permets de rire, *1 ... . Pour le bonheur de tes sujets. J vDia; Combien les belles et les princes Aiment l'abus d Tun grand pouvoir! Combien d famants et de provinces Pousses enfin au d^sespoir! (bis) Crains que la r6volte ennemie Dans ton boudoir ne trouve accfes; Lise, abjure la tyrannie, -t #, . » Pour le bonheur de tes sujets. J ' D 1 S ' Par exc&s de coquetterie Femme ressemble aux conqu^rants, Qui vont bien loin de leur patrie Dorapter cent peuples diffbrents. (bis) Ce sont de terribles coquettes!' N*imite pas leurs vains projets. Lise, ne fais plus de conquetes, -j ... . Pous le bonheur de tes sujets. J I1313) LES GAULOIS ET LES FRANCS Gai! gail serrons nos rangs, EspArance De la France (refrain) Gai! gai! serrons nos rangs; En avant, Gaulois et Francs! D*Attila suivant la voix, Le barbare, Q u elle Agare, Vient une seconde fois PArir dans les champs gaulois. (refrain) Renonqant a ses marais, Le Cosaque Qui bivaque, Croit, sur la foi des Anglais, Se loger dans nos palais. (refrain) Ces vins que nous amassons Pour las -boire „ A la victoire, Seraient bus par des Saxons!. Plus de vin, plus de chansons! (refrain) Quoit ces monuments chdris, Histoire De notre gloire, S fAcrouleraient en ddbris! Quoi! les Prussiens A Paris! (refrain) V1EUX HABITS! VIEUX GALONS! Tout marchands d Thabits que nous sommes, Messieurs, nous observons les hommes: D run bout du monde A l Tautre bout, L fhabit fait tout. Dans les changements qui surviennent, Les dApouilles nous appartiennent: Toujours en grand nous calculons. Vieux habits! vieux galons! 27$ Parfois en lisant la gazette, Comme tant d'autres, je regrette Que tout Frangais n*ait pas gard6 L Thabit brod£. Mais, j*en crois ceux qui s ’y connaissent, Les anciens pr6jug6s renaissent. On va quitter les pantalons. Vieux habitsI vieux galons! Un temps fameux par cent batailles Mit du galon sur bien des tailles; De galon m§me 6taient couverts Les habits verts. Mais sans le bonheur point de gloire! Nous seuls, apr&s chaque victoire, Nous avions ce que nous voulons. Vieux habits! vieux galons! Nous trouvons aussi notre compte Avec tous les gens qui sans honte Savent, dans un- retour subit, Changer d*habit. Les valets, troupe chamarr6e, Troquant aujourd*hui leur livr^e, Que d fhhbits bleus nous <§talonsI Vieux habits! vieux galons! LA VIVANDIERE Vivandidre du regiment, C fest Catin q u fon me nomme. Je vends, je donne et bois galment Mon vin et mon rogomme. J*ai le pied leste et l ?oeil mutin, Tintin, tintin, tintin, r'lin tintin; J*ai le pied leste et l foeil mutin: Soldats, voila Catin! Je fus chdre A tous nos h£ros; H&Las! combien j fen pleurel Aussi soldats et g6n6raux Me comblaient, & toute heure, D*amour, de gloire, et de butin, Tintin, tintin, tintin, r ’lin tintin; D*araour, de gloire, et de butin: Soldats, voil& Catin! J Tai pris part A tous vos exploits En vous versant & boire. Songez combien j ’ai fait de fois Rafratchir la Victoire. Ca grossissait son bulletin, Tintin, tintin, tintin, r !lin tintin; Ca grossissait son bulletin: Soldats, voilA Catin! Si je vois de nos vieux guerriers PSlis par la souffrance, Qui n*ont plus^ malgr6 leurs lauriers, De quoi boire a la France, Je refleuris encor leur teint, Tintin, tintin, tintin, r'lin tintin; Je refleuris encor leur teint: Soldats, voilA Catin! Mais nos ennemis, gorges d ’or, Pairont encore A boire. Oui, pour vous doit briller encor Le jour de la victoire. J*en serai le r^veil-matin, Tintin, tintin, tintin, r ’lin tintin; J Ten serai le r^veil-matin: Soldats, voila Catin! LE CHAMP D♦ASILE Un chef de bannis courageux, Implorant un lointain asile, A des sauvages ombrageux Disait: "LfEurope nous exile. "Heureux enfants de ces forSts, "De nos raaux apprenez l fhistoire: "Sauvages! nous somraes Franeais; "1 * ~ . » "Prenez piti£ de notre gloire. 're;£rainJ "Elle 6pouvante encor les rois, "Et nous bannit des humbles chaumes "Dfoii, sortis pour venger nos droits, "Nous avons dompt4 vingt royaumes. "Nous courions conqu^rir la Paix "Qui fuyait devant la Victoire. (refrain) "Dans l*Inde, Albion a tremble "Quand de nos soldats intr^pides "Les chants d Tall6gresse ont trouble "Les vieux 6chos des Pyramides. "Les si&cles pour tant de hauts faits "N'auront point assez de mdmoire. (refrain) 2 SO LES DEUX COUSINS Salut! petit cousin germain; D ’un lieu d ’exil j*ose t ’^crire. La Fortune te tend la main; Ta naissance 1 fa fait sourire. Mon premier jour aussi fut beau, Point de Franqais qui n fen convienne: Les rois m'adoraient au berceau; Et cependant je suis a Vienne! Je fus berc£ par tes faiseurs De vers, de chansons, de poemes; Ils sont, comme les confiseurs, Partisans de tous les baptemes. Les eaux d'un fleuve bien mondain Vont laver ton £me chrdtienne: On m ’offrit de l*eau du Jourdain; Et cependant je suis & Vienne! Ces juges, ces pairs avilis, Qui te predisent des merveillesf De mon temps juraient que les lis Seraient le butin des abeilles. Parmi les nobles d^tracteurs De toute vertu pldb6ienne, Ma nourrice avait des flatteurs; Et cependant je suis a Vienne! Sur des lauriers je me couchais; La pourpre seule t fenvironne. Des sceptres dtaient mes hochets; Mon bourlet fut une couronne. Mdchant bourlet. puisqufun faux pas M§me au saint-pere 6tait la sienne. Mais j*avais pour moi nos prelats; Et cependant je suis & Vienne! Pres du trSne si tu grandis, Si je v6g§te sans puissance, Confonds ces courtisans inaudits, En leur rappelant ma naissance. Dis-leur: *Je puis avoir mon tour; De mon cousin quTil vous souvienne. Vous lui promettiez votre amour; Et cependant il est & Vienne!T LE CINQ MAI Des Espagnols m ’ont pris sur leur navire, Aux bords lointains ou tristement j ’errais. Humble ddbris d ’un hdrolque empire, J ’avais dans l ’Inde exili mes regrets. Mais loin du Cap, apr&s cinq ans d ’absence Sous le soleil je vogue plus joyeux. Pauvre soldat, je reverrai la France:- La main d ’un fils me fermera les yeux. (bis) Dieux! le pilote a crid: Sainte-Hel&ne! Et voilA done ou languit le hdros! Bons Espagnols, la s ’dteint votre haine; • Nous maudissons ses fers et ses bourreaux. Je ne puis rien, rien pour sa ddlivrance: Le temps n ’est plus des tr6pas glorieux! Pauvre soldat, je reverrai la France: La main d Tun fils me fermera les yeux. (bis) II fatiguait la Victoire a le suivre; Elle etait lasse: il ne l ’attendit pas. Trahi deux fois, ce grand homrae a su vivre. Mais quels serpents enveloppent ses pas! De tout laurier un poison est l 1essence; La mort couronne un front victorieux. Pauvre soldat, je reverrai la France: La main d ’un fils me fermera les yeux. (bis) Grand de gdnie et grand de caractSre, Pourquoi du sceptre arma-t-il son orgueil? Bien au-dessus des trSnes de la terre II apparait brillant sur cet dcueil. Sa gloire est la comme le phare immense: D ’un nouveau monde et d ’un monde trop vieux. Pauvre soldat, je reverrai la France:- La main d ’un fils me fermera les yeux. (bis) Bons Espagnols, que voit-on au rivage? Un drapeau noir! ah! grands dieux! je fr£mis! Quoil lui mourir! 6 gloireI quel veuvage! Autour de moi pleurent ses ennemis. Loin de ce roc nous fuyons en silence; L ’astre du jour abandonne les cieux. Pauvre soldat, je reverrai la France: La main d ’un fils me fermera les yeux. (bis) 232 LE DIEU DES BONNES GENS II est un Dieu; devant lui je m*incline, * Pauvre et content, sans lui demander rien. De l funivers observant la machine, J Ty vois du mal, et n ’aime que le bien. Mais le plaisir a ma philosophie Revile assez des cieux intelligents. Le verre en main, gaieraent je me confie Au Dieu des bonnes gens. Un conqu^rant, dans sa fortune alti&re, Se fit un jeu des sceptres et des lois. Et de ses pieds on peut voir la poussiere Empreinte encor sur le bandeau des rois. Vous rampiez tous, 8 rois q u ’on ddifie! Moi, pour braver des maitres exigeants, Le verre en main, gaiement je me confie Au Dieu des bonnes gens. Dans nos palais, ou, pr£s de la Victoire, Brillaient les arts, doux fruits des beaux climats, J'ai vu du Nord les peuplades sans gloire De leurs manteaux secouer les frimas. Sur nos debris Albion nous d£fie; Mais les destins et les flots sont changeants: Le verre en main, gaiement je me confie Au Dieu des bonnes gens. LE PETIT HOMME ROUGE Foin des m^contentsl Comme balayeuse on me loge, Depuis quarante anst Dans le chateau, pres de lihorloge. Or, mes enfants, sachez Que la, pour mes pdch<§s, Du coin d ’ou le soir je ne bouge, J ’ai vu le petit homme rouge. Saints du paradis, Priez pour Charles dix. Vous figurez-vous Ce diable habilld d*6carlate? Bossu, louche et roux, Un serpent lui sert de eravate. II a le nez crochu; II a le pied fourchu; Sa voix rauque, en chantant, presage Au chateau grand remue-mdnage. Saints du paradis, Priez pour Charles dix. Je le vis, h^las! En quatre-vingt-douze apparaitre. Nobles et prdlats Abandonnaient no'tre bon maitre. L^omme rouge venait En sabots, en bonnet. M tendormais-je un peu sur ma chaise, II entonnait la Marseillaise. Saints du paradis, Priez pour Charles dix. Depuis la terreur Plus n Ty pensais, lorsque sa vue Du bon Empereur M fannon9a la chute imprdvue. En toque il avait mis Vingt plumets ennemis, Et chantait au son d ’une vielle Vive Henri quatre et Gabriellel Saints du paradis, Priez pour Charles dix. LES DEUX GRENADIERS PREMIER GRENADIER A notre poste on nous oublie. Richard, minuit sonne au chateau. DEUXIEME GRENADIER Nous allons revoir l'ltalie. Demain, adieu Fontainebleau! PREMIER GRENADIER Par le ciel! que jten remercie, L*ile d*Elbe est un beau climat. DEUXIEME GRENADIER Ffit-elle au fond de la Russie, Vieux grenadiers, suivons un vieux soldat ENSEMBLE Vieux grenadiers, suivons un vieux soldat Suivons un vieux soldat. DEUXIEME GRENADIER Q u ’elles sont proraptes les d^faites! Ou sont Moscou, Wilna, Berlin? Je crois voir sur nos balonnettes Luire encor les feux du Kremlin, Et, livr6 par quelques perfides, Paris coute a peine un combat I Nos gibernes n*6taient pas vides, Vieux grenadiers, suivons un vieux soldat, PREMIER GRENADIER Chacun nous rdpete: II abdique. Quel est ce mot? Apprends-le-moi. Rdtablit-on la rdpublique? DEUXIEME GRENADIER Non, puisqu’on nous ram£ne un roi, L ’empereur aurait cent couronnes, Je concevrais q u ’il les c6d£t: Sa main en faisait des aumSnes. Vieux grenadiers, suivons un vieux soldat, PREMIER GRENADIER Une lumi&re? A ces fenetres, Brille a peine dans le chSteau, DEUXIEME GRENADIER Les valets & nobles ancetres Ont fui, le nez dans leur manteau Tous, d^galonnant leurs costumes, Vont au nouveau chef de l fEtat De l ’aigle mort vendre les plumes, Vieux grenadiers, suivons un vieux soldat, PREMIER GRENADIER Des mardchaux, nos camarades, D£sertent aussi, gorgds d for. DEUXIEME GRENADIER Notre sang paya tous leurs grades; Heureux qu’il nous en reste encor! Quoi! la Gloire fut en personne Leur marraine un jour de combat, Et le parrain, on l ’abandonnel Vieux grenadiers, suivons un vieux soldat. LES SOUVENIRS DU PEUPLE On parlera de sa gloire Sous le chaume bien longtemps. L ’humble toit, dans cinquante ans, Ne connaitra plus d ’autre histoire. La viendront les villageois Dire alors a quelque vieille: Par des r6cits d ’autrefois, Mere, abr^gez notre veille. Bien, dit-on, qu ’il nous ait nui, Le peuple encor le r6vdre, Oui, le r£v£re. Parlez-nous de lui, grand’m&re; Parlez-nous de lui. Mes enfants, dans ce village, Suivi de rois, il passa. Voila bien longtemps de qa: Je venais d ’entrer en manage. A pied grimpant le coteau Ou pour voir je m ’dtais mise, II avait petit chapeau Avec redingote grise. Pr£s de lui je me troublai: II me dit: Bonjour, ma chere, Bonjour, ma chere. — II vous a parld, grand’m£re! II vous a pari6! L'an d ’apr&s, moi, pauvre femme, A Paris £tant un jour, Je le vis avec sa cour: II se rendait A Notre-Dame. Tous les coeurs dtaient contents; On admirait son cortege. Chacun disait: Quel beau temps! Le ciel toujours le protege. Son sourire 6tait bien doux: D ’un fils Dieu le rendait pere, Le rendait p£re. — Quel beau jour pour vous, grand’m&re! Quel beau jour pour vous! Mais, quand la pauvre Champagne Fut en proie aux Strangers, Lui, bravant tous les dangers, Semblait seul tenir la campagne. Un soir, tout comme aujourd’hui, J ’entends frapper & la porte; J*ouvre: bon Dieu! c*6tait lui, Suivi d*une faible escorte. II s*assoit ou me voilA, S*6criant: Oh! quelle guerre! Oh! quelle guerre! — II s Test assis 1&, grand'm&re! II s*est assis la! J*ai faim, dit-il; et bien vite Je sers piquette et pain bis; Puis il s£che ses habits, Meme a dormir le feu l 1invite. Au r£veil, voyant jtses pleurs, II me dit: Bonne esp^rance! Je cours de tous ses malheurs Sous Paris venger la France. II part; et, comme un trSsor, J*ai depuis gard€ son verre, Gard6 son verre. — Vous l*avez encor, grand1mere! Vous l Tavez encor! Le voici. Mais a sa perte Le H€ros fut entrain^. Lui, qu*un pape a couronn6, Est mort dans une ile deserte. Longtemps aucun ne l'a cru; On disait: II va paraitre. Par mer il est accouru; L fStranger va voir son maitre. Quand d ferreur on nous tira, Ma douleur fut bien am&re! Fut bien amere! — Dieu vous b£nira, grand*m^re, Dieu vous b^nira. SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY Books Arnould, Arthur. Bferanger, ses amis, ses ennemis et ses critiques! 2vols! Paris: Cherbuliez,T 864. Avenel, Henri. Chansons et Chansonniers. Paris: Flammari on, 1890. Bferanger, Pierre-Jean de. Bgranger: Two Hundred of his Lyrical Poems, done into English verse. Translated by William Young. New York: Putnam, 1350. ______. Chansons ferotiques. Paris: Cres, 1924. ______• Chansons nouvelles. Paris: Marchands de Nouveaut 4s, 182 5. ______. Chansons nouvelles et derniferes. Paris: Perrotin, 1833. ______• Derniferes chansons. Paris: Perrotin, 1859. ______• Ma Biographie. Paris: Perrotin, 1362. ______• Oeuvres complfetes de Bferanger. 9 vols. Paris'! Garni er, 1875-1876. . Oeuvres complfetes de Bferanger. 4 vols. Parisi Perrotin, 1834. ______• Songs of Bferanger in English. Philadelphia: Carey and Hart, 1844* Bferat, Frfedferic. 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Paris: LecSne et Oudin, 1890. Fisher, H. A. L. Bonapartism, six lectures delivered in the University of London. Oxiord: Clarendon, 1i914. Garsou, Jules. Bgranger et la ldgende napoleonienne. Brussels: P. Weissenbruch, 1897. Geyl, Pieter. Napoleon: for and against. Translated by Olive Renier. New Haven: YaleUniversity Press, 1949. Gonnard, Philippe. Les Origines de la lggende napoleonienne. Paris: Calmann-levy, 1906. Guedalla, Philip. The Second Empire. New York: Putnam, 1922. Gu^rard, Albert. Reflections on the Napoleonic Legend. New York: Scribner, 1924. Healy, F. G. The Literary Culture of Napoleon. Paris: Minard, 1959. Herold, J. Christopher. The Age of Napoleon. New York: American Heritage, 1963. Janin, Jules. Bgranger et son temps. Paris: Pincebourde, 1s66. Juleville, L. Petit de. Hlstoire de la litt&rature . francaise des origines a 1900. publiSe sous la direction de L. Petit de Juleville. 8 vols. IParis: Colin, 1899. Lanson, Gustave. Histoire de la littdrature francaise. Paris: Hachette, 195S. jjiegouvS, ErnestLe Beranger des Ecoles. Paris: Garnier, n.d. £______.J Le Bgranger des Families. Paris: Garnier, n. Lucas-Dubreton, Jean. Bdranger. la chanson, la politique. la socidtd. Parish Hachette, 1934. ______. Le Culte de Napoleon. 1815-1343. Paris: ETbin-Michel, 1960. ______• I.a France de Napoldon. Paris: Hachette, 1947. ______• Les Soldats de Napoleon. Paris: Flaramarion, T?43. Macartney, Clarence E. and Dorrance, Gordon. The Bonapartes in America. Philadelphia: Dorrance. T9397 Mansion, Jean, ed. Chansons choisies de Bdranger. Oxford: Clarendon, 190&. Mistier, Jean, ed. Napoleon et l 1Empire. 2 vols. Paris: Hachette, 1963, Nouveau recueil. contenant tous les airs des chansons de Bgranger. Paris: Meissonnier et Heugel, 184-. Piggott, Henry. Songs that Made History. London: Dent, 1937." Robiquet, Jean. La Vie quotidienne au temps de Napoldon. Paris: Hachette, 1942. Romains, Jules, et al. Napoleon. Paris: Hachette, 1961, 2 9 0 Soubiran, Andr€. Napoldon et un million de morts. Paris: Kent-Segep, 19&9. Stevens, Denis, ed. A History of Song. New York: Norton, I960. Strowski, Stdphane. BGranger. Paris: Plon-Nourrit, 1913# Thibaudet, Albert. Histoire de la littdrature francaise de 1769 £ nos iours. Paris: Stock, 1936. Touchard, Jean. La Gloire de Bdranger. 2 vols. Paris: Colin, 196#. General reference works consulted The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. 1^70. S.v. "song.** The Oxford Companion to Music. 1970 ed. S.v. broadside.11 Petit Larousse. 1959 ed. S.v. “chanson.** Periodical Rozelaar, Louis. “Le Memorial de Sainte Hdldne et le Romantisme.“ Revue des Etudes Napoldoniennes 29 (October 192971