Verses For The Portrait Of M Honore Daumier - Analysis

A portrait that doubles as a moral claim

The poem looks like a polite presentation piece, but it’s really an argument: Daumier’s satire is proof of his kindness, not his cruelty. The speaker begins by offering the artist to us—He whose portrait we offer you—and immediately frames his gift as instruction. Daumier, we’re told, Teaches us to laugh at ourselves, which is not merely entertainment but a kind of ethical education: a way of lowering the ego without humiliation. The address to the gentle reader matters here; the poem wants a reader capable of receiving laughter as medicine rather than insult.

There’s also a telling insistence on subtlety—art subtler than all others, or more subtle than the rest—as if the poet anticipates the usual suspicion that caricature is blunt or mean. This subtlety is moral as well as artistic: the laughter may be sharp, but it is not sadistic.

The central contradiction: painting Evil, proving goodness

The poem’s key tension is stated almost paradoxically. Daumier is a satirist, even a scoffer, and he paints Evil and his retinue with unmatched force. Yet that very force Attests the beauty of his heart and proves the beauty of his heart. The poem refuses the common equation of satire with bitterness; instead it claims that to see evil clearly—and to render it powerfully—can come from moral energy rather than moral contamination.

That’s why the poem emphasizes not just what he depicts, but how. His mockery stands apart because it doesn’t depend on contempt for ordinary people. His work targets evil’s retinue and sequel—the entourage and aftereffects—suggesting a social vision: vice is not isolated, it spreads and recruits. The poet praises Daumier for confronting that spread without becoming part of it.

Two kinds of laughter: warm radiance versus freezing torchlight

The poem sharpens its case by staging a contest between laughters. Daumier’s laughter is described as hearty and free, frank, and radiating; it’s almost physical warmth, a glow. Against this, the poem sets a theatrical, infernal laughter: not genuine joy, but the grimace of figures like Melmoth and Mephisto. Their laughter happens under Alecto's torch, a light that burns them while it makes us freeze. That image is a neat moral diagnosis: demonic laughter is self-tormenting and contagious in the worst way—it chills the witness.

Daumier’s laugh, by contrast, spreads a different contagion. It invites the public into self-recognition—to chuckle at our own expense—without turning recognition into despair. The poem’s tone here is admiring but also protective: it wants to rescue satire from the accusation that it must be cruel.

The poem’s turn: from depicting darkness to declaring character

Midway, the poem pivots from describing Daumier’s subject matter to defending his inner life. The earlier lines acknowledge the danger—satire’s proximity to Evil—but the later lines insist that his laughter functions as evidence. It is Like a symbol of his goodness; it Declares him to be good and true. This is the poem’s real movement: from art as representation to art as moral signature.

Even the repeated presentation—first in one English version, then again in Roy Campbell’s translation—creates a kind of echo effect: the poem keeps reintroducing Daumier as if the claim needs reiteration. The repetition feels less redundant than insistent, as though the poet knows how easily a satirist gets misread.

A sharper question the poem leaves hanging

If Daumier Teaches us to laugh at ourselves, the poem quietly asks what kind of student we are. Do we accept satire as a generous invitation, or do we only recognize laughter when it is cruel enough to sound like Mephisto? The poem’s praise contains a challenge: the warmth of his frank radiating smile depends on a public willing to be corrected without demanding blood.