"Come little girl in my comic strip, come blow bubbles, come do WIP, ...".
1968.
Comic Strip
hit the headlines.
The song marked memories, not only for its legendary duet, but also for its lyrics, punctuated by tacit onomatopoeia.
Gainsbourg, who was by turns painter, pianist in bars, poet, jazz and
reggae
singer
, was above all a man who loved words.
They sometimes evoke Mallarmean verses.
A great admirer of Baudelaire and Huysmans, his musical texts are famous for their unique construction and the poetry of their rhymes.
Anthology.
Anamour
The word has given English translators a hard time.
Absent from French dictionaries, this pretty neologism is a pure invention of the composer.
An-amour
?
Or
ana-mour
?
Some have tried to find a definition.
This is the charm of the Gainsbourian language.
You never really know.
Anamour
could mean "absence of love", since it is preceded by the words "none", "in vain", and followed by "I fear".
Would it not rather be a word which pays homage to licentious loves?
It is similar to the word "anathema", "sentence of curse against a (...) person judged heretic", we read in the Treasury of the French language.
The anathema is also an “offering made to a deity”.
The two definitions can easily agree ...
Sirocco from the dryer
We are in 1976. Gainsbourg's new album "The Man with the Head of Cabbage" did not meet with the expected success when it was released.
It was not until seven years later that he was awarded a gold record and was a hit with younger generations.
It is in "Chez Max hairdresser for men" that we find the expression "sirocco of the dryer".
The word intrigues.
According to the dictionary, sirocco is a "hot and dry southerly wind coming from the Sahara, which blows in North Africa and the Western Mediterranean".
Linked to the word “dryer” in the song, the “sirocco” evokes the intense heat that escapes from a hair dryer.
Surreptitiously
Variations sur Marilou
is undoubtedly one of Gainsbourg's creations with the most polysemous words.
Implicit, licentious, erotic, daring, ... This song has caused a lot of ink to flow through its very well understood undertones.
Let's take "surreptitiously".
The full sentence is “his iris absinthe surreptitiously gets tinted”.
As Le Trésor de la langue française points out, the word appeared in 1342 as “surreptitiously”, and changed to “surreptitiously” five years later.
It means "by surreptitious, disloyal manners".
Coca-glue
It is in this same song that we find this wonderful expression.
Is it a portmanteau word, formed from the word “coca” and the verb “to paste”?
The doubt persists.
Let's open the dictionary again.
The “coca” is an “Andean shrub, cultivated for its leaves from which cocaine is extracted”, specifies the thesaurus.
It designates by extension the “substance extracted from the leaves of this shrub”.
When we know the singer's appetite for plants, all species combined, the meaning of "coca-colle" is clear.
White kelp foam
"I am the man with the head of cabbage, half vegetable, half guy, for the beautiful eyes of Marilou".
Gainsbourg was not kind to his physique.
The expression "the man with the cabbage head" was his.
It is in the eponymous song that we find the phrase "in the white foam kelp".
The "kelp" is a "set of marine plants, in particular brown algae (...)", and collects on the shores at low tide, the "equinox evenings", indicates the CNTRL.
Gainsbourg was inspired by Birkin, wrote for France Gall, danced the Javanese with Gréco ... But he was also a mad admirer of Verlaine, Rimbaud, Prévert, Baudelaire.
Words were an unalterable source of inspiration for those who never stopped playing with the French language.