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Jehan Rictus was a French poet, born Gabriel Randon de Saint Amand.
After an unhappy childhood and poor beginnings in the life, Gabriel Randon, having taken the pseudonym of Jehan-Rictus, found success in 1896 with poems in popular language which it interpreted in Parisian cabarets. These Soliloques du Pauvre (Soliloquies of the Poor) were published the following year. Some other volumes of verse followed, until le Coeur populaire in 1914. At the time of World War I, he stopped publishing. He also forsook its anarchism for royalist opinions. He is also the author of an autobiographical novel, Fil-de-fer, in regular french, and of a vast diary, still unpublished. (from Wikipedia.org
Poèmes écrits en Français populaire qui font état de nombreux faits de société dans le Paris de la fin du XIXe siècle, encore malheureusement très actuels. Ça se lit vite et bien une fois que l'on se fait au style littéraire. Mon édition (Au diable vauvert) se finit par un des rares poèmes de l'auteur écrits ni en argot ni en langue populaire : et c'est magnifique.