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La Ravachole

From Wikisource
La Ravachole
by Sébastien Faure, translated by Mitch Abidor
1893. Translated by Mitch Abidor. Sung to the tune of the song of the French Revolution, la Carmagnole — the chorus of which ends : “Long live the sound of the cannon” — La Ravachole set the spirit of the anarchist Ravachol to music.
118104La RavacholeMitch AbidorSébastien Faure


In the great city of Paris,
There are well-fed bourgeois,
There are the poor,
Who have an empty stomach:
The former are greedy,
Long live the sound, long live the sound,
The former are greedy,
Long live the sound
Of the explosion!

Let’s dance the Ravachole
Long live the sound, long live the sound
Let’s dance the Ravachole
Of the explosion!

Ah ça ira ça ira ça ira
All the bourgeois will taste the bomb
Ah ça ira ça ira ça ira
We'll blow up all the bourgeois
We'll blow them up!

There are sell out magistrates,
There are big-bellied financiers,
There are cops,
But for all these scoundrels,
There’s dynamite,
Long live the sound, long live the sound,
There’s dynamite,
Long live the sound,
Of the explosion!

There are the feeble-minded senators,
There are the rotten deputies,
There are the generals,
Murderers and executioners,
Butchers in uniform,
Long live the sound, long live the sound,
Butchers in uniform,
Long live the sound
Of the explosion!

... ... ...

Ah, goddamit, it’s time to put an end to this,
We've moaned and suffered long enough,
No half-way war,
No more cowardly pity,
Death to the bourgeoisie!
Long live the sound, long live the sound
Death to the bourgeoisie!
Long live the sound
Of the explosion!

 This work is a translation and has a separate copyright status to the applicable copyright protections of the original content.

Original:

This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.


The longest-living author of this work died in 1942, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 81 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.

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Translation:

This work is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license, which allows free use, distribution, and creation of derivatives, so long as the license is unchanged and clearly noted, and the original author is attributed—and if you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same license as this one.

Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse