Jehan Rictus was a French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 poet

Poet

A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...

, born Gabriel Randon in Boulogne-sur-Mer

Boulogne-sur-Mer

-Road:* Metropolitan bus services are operated by the TCRB* Coach services to Calais and Dunkerque* A16 motorway-Rail:* The main railway station is Gare de Boulogne-Ville and located in the south of the city....

 (in the 1900s, he legally changed his name to his mother's, 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 1895 with poems in popular language which he interpreted in Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

ian cabarets. These Soliloques du Pauvre (Soliloquies of the Poor) were published in 1897. Some other volumes of verse followed, until le Coeur populaire in 1914. At the time of World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

, 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

Diary

A diary is a record with discrete entries arranged by date reporting on what has happened over the course of a day or other period. A personal diary may include a person's experiences, and/or thoughts or feelings, including comment on current events outside the writer's direct experience. Someone...

, still unpublished.

Céline

Louis-Ferdinand Céline

Louis-Ferdinand Céline was the pen name of French writer and physician Louis-Ferdinand Destouches . Céline was chosen after his grandmother's first name. He is considered one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century, developing a new style of writing that modernized both French and...

's slang

Slang

Slang is the use of informal words and expressions that are not considered standard in the speaker's language or dialect but are considered more acceptable when used socially. Slang is often to be found in areas of the lexicon that refer to things considered taboo...

probably owes much to Jehan Rictus' language.

Works

• Les Soliloques du Pauvre (1897)
• Doléances (1900)
• Les Cantilènes du malheur (1902)
• Les Soliloques du Pauvre (1903)
• Fil de Fer (1906)
• le Coeur populaire (1914)

External links

• Works and documents (in french)