(Albert Camus on Jehan Rictus' "Soliloques du Pauvre". The poetry in italics is from a translation of Rictus' work, that Camus elaborates on)
"The poor among the poor..he doesn't dream of money. He dreams of love. But he dreams of a love more maternal than sensual, of a love warm and protective, a soft shelter in which to rest his aching, weary limbs, and the limbs of a wandering creature of wretchedness. He dreams of a woman, white and beautiful, a dream poignant in its naive purity -
who is she? I don't know but she is beautiful,
rising in me like a summer moon,
she is posted like a sentinel,
like a torch, like a gleaming light.
who is she? I don't know she's so far away,
so pale is she as the night falls
one would swear she was emerging from her tomb,
where we could marry one another with no one looking on
Now the poor man is deep in his golden dream, a pure dream in which he joyously rediscovers the precious lost soul of his childhood. He lives his dream. He forgets his fate, his condition, his hunger. "Perhaps I'll pass out when we kiss," he thinks. If he returns then to reality, to misery, a touching cry of stubborn illumination will issue forth spontaneously:
Well, my word, if there's no way
That won't keep me from loving her.
Come on, at it again, back to lazy ways,
Let's keep on dreaming, it doesn't cost a thing.
A moving cry, like that of a child who doesn't want to believe his toy is broken! Ah! To meet this dream woman. She would welcome him and, caressing him, take him to bed. And he would sleep, a sleep tender and naive, the sleep of a guiltless child:
Yes! To sleep, never to open
My bleeding eyes on life again
And from then on to know nothing any more
Of hope or of despair,
Whether it is night or morning,
Whether my destiny looks less dark,
To sleep for a long time... to sleep...to sleep.
He too would like to love; He, too, would know how to speak of stars and flowers. No, it is not a complicated love he needs, but a love that will be content with bunches of violets at forty cents each."
