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"Brassens, anti-modern poet and fierce contemptuous of the aberrations of his time"

2021-11-12T15:50:47.521Z


FIGAROVOX / INTERVIEW - In a captivating essay, the journalist Théophane Leroux paints a portrait of Georges Brassens: a good friend, a cheerful singer and anarchist reluctant to the cult of progress.


Théophane Leroux is a journalist and author of

Brassens, against the grain of

Première Partie editions.

FIGAROVOX.

- You wrote this book during the health crisis.

Would Brassens have endured this isolation that we experienced during repeated confinements?

Théophane LEROUX. -

It's not necessarily easy to imagine Brassens confined. The character is complex, sometimes contradictory and his reaction would undoubtedly have been in his image: ambivalent. On the one hand, Brassens liked having his peace of mind and seeing his home respected: this is why he has never cohabited with the woman of his life, so as not to have to share - or rather to suffer - the thousand little worries of everyday life. One can imagine that he could have rejoiced, at first glance, to be able to take advantage of the forced tranquility, the imposed silence and the time given by the confinement.

We readily imagine Brassens as an author of light or cheerful songs, but also committed - and always in tune with the times, isn't it?

He didn't really like to define himself as a poet, but it is obvious that he is one, perhaps one of the best of the second half of the 20th century.

Theophane Leroux

But Brassens is perhaps first and foremost the best friend, the one who left the door open to his various circles of friends.

It is difficult, in this case, to imagine that he would have appreciated this forced separation.

Otherwise, what's the point of singing

Friends first

or

Au bois de mon coeur

 ?

I was very struck while writing my book about the growing gap between what I lived in my apartment and what Brassens described in his songs: whether he sings a funeral, a fickle woman or a tree, there are always people , mixing, movement, humans.

Brassens is an incarnate singer, a man of flesh and blood: I am not sure that a society of contactless, sanitary distances, masks and visors, hasty and plastic burials would have suited him .

As it does not suit anyone, for that matter.

If in the collective imagination the singer mainly hums drinking songs, would you say that he is a poet?

We readily imagine Brassens as an author of light or cheerful songs, but also committed - and always in tune with the times, isn't it?

He didn't really like to define himself as a poet, but it is obvious that he is one, perhaps one of the best of the second half of the 20th century.

The man with the mustache, before achieving success, read and reread the great classics of French poetry, from Villon to Hugo, including Apollinaire and Aragon.

He has put a lot of poetry into song, and helped bring some of it out of oblivion, such as Richepin, of whom he sings

The Birds of Passage,

or Antoine Pol

,

whom he sublimated by singing

Les passantes.

To read also Serge Hureau: "Brassens was the opposite of a cursed artist"

Beyond these filiations, the text of Brassens is searched, stuffed with more or less implicit references to classical literature. Even in his most cheerful songs: "

I am haunted: the rut, the rut, the rut, the rut!"

"In

Le Bulletin de santé

is an obvious parody of Mallarmée:"

I am haunted! Azure! Azure! Azure! Azure!

»But Brassens is not just a kind imitator: his texts are sumptuous, polished by years of work -

Plea to be buried on the beach of Sète

took him seven years to write - and some will undoubtedly cross the centuries, like those of Villon, his model.

And Brassens is not just a great text writer either: he is also an excellent musician, whose music is worked hard to appear simple.

Can we define this man with the pipe and the mustache as an anti-modern?

It all depends on what you mean by anti-modern: if he is someone who is reluctant to any form of innovation, a kind of reactionary bear, he is not.

Brassens adored the new technologies of his time, he collected the recorders and the cameras - and the weapons too - of which he was fascinated.

That said, all of his texts and his statements tend to prove in him a real love for the past, which is sometimes tinged with a certain nostalgia.

We could make a long list of Brassens songs that praise a more or less fantasized past: the

Middle Ages

, in which he says he regrets only one thing: not having been born in the Middle Ages to the

Sand castles

where he sings the nostalgia of his childhood, there is a whole palette of French history that is revealed before our eyes.

Many of his songs mock noisy protests and riots.

Brassens hated the May 68 period, much to the chagrin of many of his admirers, who admired his freedom only when it flattered their ideas.

Theophane Leroux

But Brassens is also the fierce contemptor of the aberrations of his time: he regrets that his birthplace, Cette, was renamed Sète so as not to be confused with the pronoun. He scoffs at the frenzied progress and the concreteization that he sees every day: “

Thank God! Concrete, the Romans ignored. / Their ruins are so beautiful you could eat them! / Slum dwellings. Concrete is a con!

He wrote in his notebook. He regrets the disenchantment of the world in

Le grand pan

, he is indignant with Bruant of the gentrification of Paris by taking over

La place Maubert…

Descending before Greta, he creates an ephemeral Prehistoric Party and conchs progress in a song,

Le Progrès

, where he takes offense at the loss of the charm and poetry of small everyday things ... In this, Brassens is very anti-modern.

What was his relationship to politics?

Brassens went from a militant anarchism to a more tempered, and more individualistic position.

Le Brassens, who died at the age of sixty, was no longer capable of shouting "

death to the cows!"

"Or"

down with the skullcap!

»: He met people who made him think about his ideas.

He remains nonetheless faithful to an anarchist ideal that can be summed up in the words of

Don Juan

: "

Glory to those who have no sacrosanct ideal / limit themselves to not pissing off their neighbors too much

" .

Read alsoIn the privacy of Georges Brassens

The singer often said that he had no

"collective solution"

to offer to others, and that he was therefore content - rather successfully, in view of the many testimonies - to be as sympathetic as possible with his neighbor. He hated groups, masses, crowds, indoctrinators and brainwashers. Brassens is aware that each ideology can contain the germ of a dictatorship, and that, very often, the political struggle is only to take power from the hands of the other. Many of his songs mock noisy protests and riots. Brassens hated the May 68 period, much to the chagrin of many of his admirers, who applauded his freedom only when it flattered their ideas. When asked what he had done during that famous month of May, he replied: "kidney stones".

I take the liberty of using the title of one of your chapters ...

"

And God in all of this

"

?

Judging the relationship between a man and God is always a delicate thing, in any case I did not have access to the archives that Saint Peter must keep in the firmament, and not being Pope, it is impossible for me to '' register Georges Brassens in the canon of the Catholic Church.

We always have in mind the image of an anticlerical Georges Brassens and militant atheist. It will be understood, the reality is much more complex than the caricature that the brassensists "historic channel" are willing to peddle. The study of the texts, notebooks and statements of Brassens shows that he was not at all categorical on the question of the existence of God. His songs are riddled with biblical references, references to God - the famous “Eternal Father” of the

Song for the Auvergne -

and he said without any complex that his favorite poem was the Bible and his favorite poet, Christ.

He spent his time blowing hot and cold on it. One day, he said "

God, if he existed, how I would love him!"

", And another, he wrote in his notebook:"

I believe in God, but as I am a liar, I say the opposite

". While mocking bigots and hypocrites, he confessed to believing in a "presence", instilled by his mother, a bigot of Italian origin.

If he had not succeeded in deciding this question, he still felt - and no doubt rightly so - that he was living in a sufficiently honest and benevolent manner to be considered a Christian.

He once said: “

I am a Christian in what is essential because I really love people.

I tell myself that, if God exists, he will not welcome Brassens too badly

”.

We have every reason to think like him.

Brassens, against the grain

, Théophane Leroux, First Part editions, 142 p., € 16.

First Part Editions

Source: lefigaro

All news articles on 2021-11-12

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