October 20, 1854. Little Alphonse was born in Honfleur, under the eaves of the Allais pharmacy.
His parents are "French, but honest," in his own words.
The tone is set.
Who could then suspect that this toddler would become the precursor of the language games in vogue in the twentieth century?
To discover
Passionate about word games?
Discover the Figaro games app
“Poet-humorist” and loyal frequenter of the famous Chat Noir cabaret, Alphonse Allais has greatly influenced Jacques Prévert, Jean Tardieu, but also Raymond Queneau and the OuLiPo, as well as the mythical Papuans in the head on France Culture.
On the occasion of his birthday, I would like to recall the finesse of his verve, without forgetting his incredible talent for exploiting the creative resources of the French language.
A facetious writer, Alphonse Allais quickly became a master in the art of the word game.
Let us recall some of his puns:
"HAMLET: What did you do with the bottle of gin?"
BITCHER: I drank it all.
HAMLET: Tout bu or not to bu? "
The joking spirit of such lines goes hand in hand with the names of the characters he invents: Tom Hatt, Father Trave, Tony Truant ... but let us not forget to mention his colorful poems, full of double meanings:
"By the woods of the jinn where dread is piled up,
Talk and drink some gin, or a hundred cups of cold milk. ”
“Ah! Look at the Loing Bridge: from there sails in the Dante Sea.
Hâve bird spawned far from the boring vogue. "
No one will regret, I think, the absence of rich rhymes in the second couplet ...
Willingly teasing, Allais did not hesitate to mock the convoluted character of certain verbal tenses, as evidenced by his famous
Complainte amoureuse
:
“(…) Ah! Did I have to screw you,
Did you have to tell me,
That ingenuously I tell you,
How proud you should be silent!
Did I have to love you,
That you made me despair,
And that in vain I persisted,
And that I idolize you,
For you to assassinate me! ”
The excessively learned content of the imperfect subjunctive, and the excessively sustained register of these octosyllables are to be taken lightly.
The poem becomes deliberately awkward, and this is how Allais sketches his satire of a French language which is sometimes too sophisticated (I realize that this sentence contains an alliteration in s. No doubt Allais would have pointed it out to me. , he who exclaimed about the word Suissesses: “(…) I am appalled by the quantity of s absorbed by this simple word - 6 s for 10 letters”).
In this regard, precisely, had the poet not thought of reforming the spelling?
“The kestion of the lortograf reform is on the lurking.
(…) Koi kil in itself, this reform project has been very popular to be adopted, if not today, at least in little tan.
We will write as we speak, no one will find it wrong.
Ki tells us ke no little nephew not to laugh at our mani imposed such form on such word rather than such ôtr?
(…) Middle de zespri, de zoportunist com on di en politic, shy propozman of respected le non propr. Why don’t that?
Kan we fé a reform, he fo the radical iron or not to mix it up, here is my advice! "
It makes you wonder why some spelling reform projects end up falling into oblivion.
Especially since Alphonse Allais is clearly in favor of preserving our accents, details essential to the charm of the language of Molière.
Ah, I forgot: October 20, 1854 was also born a certain Arthur.
Later, he will become a poet… A good day and year!
