May 10, 1981: for François Mitterrand, "the important thing (the annoyance), it was the rose"

Singers and chansonniers participated in the gesture of François Mitterrand.

Forty years ago, on May 10, 1981, the national secretary of the Socialist Party finally came to power after two failures in 1965 (against de Gaulle) and in 1974 (against Giscard d'Estaing).

To read also: Nicolas Baverez: "François Mitterrand or the quiet decline"

With hearts tilting to the left, the acrobats, Leny Escudero and Barbara in the lead, sang songs of hope.

Then after the praise of the Mitterrandian gesture came the contemptors and the disappointed.

The turning point of austerity has happened there.

He killed hope.

In this France which had devoted itself to song under the aegis of Jack Lang and Pascal Sevran, the apostles of the now fourth president, the first on the left, of the Fifth Republic, they were numerous, like Renaud , Thierry Le Luron, François Béranger or even, much later, Alex Beaupain, to make their politician lyre vibrate and then soon see, especially those who had believed in it, tomorrows which would be disillusioned.

Read also: Leny Escudero, five songs by a committed composer

On this commemorative day,

Le Figaro

has drawn up the anthology of songs dedicated, for better or for worse, to François Mitterrand.

The hope of Leny Escudero and Barbara

Leny Escudero: Mitterrand, a love affair that will only last a spring?

The troubadour, son of Spanish Republicans, anti-Franco from the start, believed hard as iron in the victory of the union of the left.

The poet inspired by

Pour une amourette

, will sign in 1977, a real ode to François Mitterrand and to the symbol he represented: “

Because we want, because we want the freedom that makes us want.

And we will take, and we will take, and we will take to change life the fist and the rose, the rose and the fist, the fist and the rose, the rose and the fist ...

"

Barbara: ecstatic joy

Like Dalida and an overwhelming majority of artists, Barbara believed that a new dawn was dawning.

And she sang

Regarde

in 1981 with her usual humanistic faith but without the genius that inhabited

Göttingen

and

The Black Eagle

: “

Under this torn sky, everything became sunny.

It is indefinable.

A man, a rose in his hand, opened the way to another tomorrow.

"

The rose fades

François Béranger: the first disappointed with Mitterrandism

The former union activist, champion of freedom was among the first to sing about his disappointment with

The Change

in 1982. For this, he was inspired by Jean de La Fontaine:

"Master François the rose on his perched tree ... "

Thierry Le Luron writes the drolatic requiem of the mitterrandie

In the purest tradition of chansonniers, Thierry Le Luron will divert Gilbert Bécaud's sublime song in 1984 to transform it into an implacable pamphlet: "

The boring, it's the boring rose, it's the boring rose , it's the rose believe me

...

"

Renaud freezes, with

Tonton

, Mitterrand in his statue

The poet of the suburbs very quickly left the socialist president concrete and from 1991 swapped his left-wing tropism for a more anarchist fiber:

"The time which, however, takes away ideas, men and dead loves."

The time that remains for him in the same jacket, before being nothing more than a statue, a street name. ”

Alex Beaupain: François Mitterrand as a furtive love

He was only seven years old when François Mitterrand came to power.

Alex Beaupain therefore has no nostalgia.

Or at least he recomposes it.

Wondering about his generation and what socialism was able to do with it, he metaphorizes socialist victory as a love story that ends badly.

“

At the start, at the start, you know it's like the two of us, I believed in it without really believing it.

At the start, it's always better.

And then the rigor and then the words that hurt, the tensions, me it's me, him it's him and cohabitation "...