Is language political?
To this question, the poets have answered with various texts.
Words, verses, invectives often sarcastic but always poetic.
Diatribe or philippic, writers have written at length on the political class.
But rarely gently...
“
Politics, alas, here is our misery!
»
This verse, like the rest of the poem, reveals an incisive and disillusioned Alfred de Musset.
Published in 1850, the "
Sonnet to the reader
" in fourteen verses reveals the acerbity of the poet against the politics of his century.
A century described as a “bad time”.
While today discussions and encampment of positions are intertwined on the subject of a possible coalition, Musset himself wrote: “
Being red tonight, white tomorrow, my faith, no.
»
"
Because the Emperor is drunk from his twenty years of orgy!"
»
On several occasions in his poems, the young Rimbaud castigated the rigid and liberticidal authority figures of his time, whether these were his mother or the Emperor Louis-Napoleon.
In “
Rages de Césars
”, written at the end of 1870, Arthur Rimbaud accuses the Emperor of dandyism, but above all the casualness with which he granted or suppressed the freedoms of the people.
Rimbaud writes thus: “
He said to himself: ''I am going to blow out freedom // Very delicately, like a candle!'' // Freedom lives again!
He feels exhausted!
".
“
He is serious: he is mayor
”
In a sonnet entitled “
Monsieur Prudhomme
”, Paul Verlaine tackles the rigidity of the bourgeois of his time.
He depicts a moral stiffness (“
he is serious
”) specific to people involved in politics, underlined in the following verse by “
his false collar swallows his ear
”.
An ear which then becomes deaf to any other remark differing from the apparent rigor intransigence of its ideas, values and duties.
“
The tyrant is a man: but the people are an element
”
A great defender of the abolition of the death penalty, Alphonse de Lamartine deploys his pen in a long poem entitled "
Against the death penalty
", 1830. With these verses he defends the wish of the free people, "
element that no brake does not tame
", to put an end to the fatal condemnations.
Lamartine then takes his role as a conscience scout head on, vituperates against the reign of old inhuman laws, and against the pyramid of these executors.
The poet will still defend this cause, notably during a speech in the Chamber of Deputies in March 1838.
"
And the right to hope for all the innocent who hate evil
"
In a very Éluardian litany, the 20th century poet depicts a society devoid of humanity, but without failing to give hope to these readers.
Published in 1947, “
Dit de la force de l'amour
” instills a spirit of solidarity and exults a “
[resurgent] spring
” as well as a “
warmth [which] will overcome the selfish
”.
Paul Eluard is then the bearer of an unwavering optimism, a message that he sends in particular to the political class.
“
Industrialists, princes, senates, perish
”
We find in this poem (“
What for us, my heart
”, 1872) a more frenetic and troublemaker Arthur Rimbaud.
He rebels throughout this poem against the ruling class, the political class and asks to "
down
" the "
power, justice, history
".
Rimbaud delivers that year a poem of bubbling warmongering against society and its leaders.
“
The parliaments were filled with pomp
”
In "
J'accuse
" (1947), Pablo Neruda denounces the behavior of wealthy and corrupt politicians in his country.
He describes them as people "
[having] made themselves patriots
" and then "
[share] the land, the law, the prettiest streets
".
Neruda then waged a verbal battle against the politicians he loathed, in a free-verse poem.
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