Léo Ferré (1916 - 1993) was a musician constantly in search of the ideal poem and text. He admired French wordsmiths starting with Rutebeuf in the Middle Ages, read the poètes maudits.
In his songs he also used poems by the like-minded Louis Aragon, by his friend the singer-songwriter and actor Jean-Roger Caussimon, and his own prolific texts and poems. In the latter he sometimes reflected on the life and role of poets and poetry in society, our focus in the third section below.
1. Louis Aragon (1897 - 1982).
Louis Aragon was a prolific writer with surrealist roots. He served honorably in both world wars, wrote for the underground press during the second world war, and was a member of the Communist party from the 1920s on. Made aware of Stalin's repression by his Russian wife, Elsa Triolet, he became critical of the Russian regime, all the while remaining a member of the French Communist Party.
In 1961 Léo Ferré recorded an album Les Chansons d'Aragon. In the following videos we hear Aragon's lyrical style--ideal for musical setting, reflecting on World War I, its deaths and the aftermath in French-occupied Germany, the nature of man, and love. In a later post we will take a look at Ferré's anarchic and political songs which will include L'Affiche rouge (The red poster) adapted from Aragon's poem Strophes pour se souvenir (Verses to remember) which was first published in the French communist newspaper L'Humanité.
Tu n'en reviendras pas (You won't come back from it), a poem from Louis Aragon's Le roman inachevé (The unfinished roman (1)) (1955), a poetical autobiography and probably Aragon's post-war masterpiece. The poem is from the book's first section, in the group of poems about The War and its aftermath. (2)
Est-ce ainsi que les hommes vivent (Is this how man lives) was adapted from a poem titled Bierstube Magie allemande (Beer Hall German Magic) from the same group of War poems,
L'étrangère (The foreign woman) was set in 1959 and included in the albums Les Chansons d'Aragon (1961) and La mauvaise graine (2006, posth.).
The text is an excerpt from Après l'amour (After love) at the end of the second section of Le roman inachevé. It recalls a visit to a Roma caravan, fortune telling, a night of fun and dancing, and a Roma woman who follows him to his home. The following morning they say goodbye; it rains.
Ferré's setting is a fast romp picturing the exhilarating effect of the adventure.
Je chante pour passer le temps (I sing to pass time) is the opening poem of the roman's third section. It reminisces about past love, presents images from nature (lake, forest, etc.) and body (ears, knees, eyes, etc.). Aragon's objective is simply to "pass time." He compares past and present, recalls war. His life is an "adventure," and he even makes a couple of subtle political references (China has come together and for our palaces and statues). (5)
Elsa, an excerpt from the Mon Dieu jusqu'au dernier moment (My God until the last moment), and Il n'aurait fallu (It would have taken) are both from the group of poems titled L'amour qui n'est pas un mot (Love that's not just a word) from the third section of Le roman inachevé.
In 1928 Aragon published Le Con d'Irène (Irene) under a pseudonym. It described the life of a man and his inner thoughts after syphilis has made him speechless. This work was censured by the police, and Aragon denied being its author. Later that year, after the book's failure, he learned that his lover Nancy Cunard, heiress of the Cunard Line, had another affair, and he attempted suicide.
Two months later the Russian Elsa Triolet looked up Aragon in the bar La Coupole and tried to seduce him. With this Elsa entered Aragon's life and work. They married in 1939. They became a mythical and politically engaged couple (the resistance, communism, decolonization, feminism, literature, etc.).
In both songs Aragon describes tenderly how Elsa was his rescue.
2. Jean-Roger Caussimon (1918 – 1985)
Jean-Roger Caussimon grew up in Bordeaux and was sent off to Elsterhorst in 1940 as a prisoner of war. When he returned in 1942 he started singing and performing in Parisian cabarets, and made his movie debut as an actor. He met Léo Ferré in 1947 at the cabaret Lapin Agile. Ferré started setting music to Caussimon's poems--the first song was À la Seine, and the two became lifelong friends. Ferré continued to set Caussimon's texts for the rest of his life.
Monsieur William was Ferré's second Caussimon setting. It came out as a solo record in 1950 and was included in the Paris Canaille album (1953). William is a model employee in New York City. He works hard and never does anything wrong. One day, turning 40, that all changes. He walks to 13th Avenue, sees a lovely woman and follows her to a hotel. Another man walks up to the girl. William starts a fight and is killed. Only a trombone is around with its soulful sounds.
This song was one of Ferré's early successes. It was subsequently recorded by many French singers.
Les Indifférentes (The indifferent ones) appeared in the album Léo Ferré à Bobino (1958). You can find a video here. The singer takes on the persona of the lugubrious Mack the Knife of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill's Three-Penny Opera, but he doesn't like the London fog and instead has an "unpleasant" open-air bar (a "guinguette"). There he holds captive the girls who mocked or snubbed him in the past and says they will never be able to leave.
Le Temps du tango (The time of the tango) was the first song of the Encore du Léo Ferré (Léo Ferré encore) album of 1958. Caussimon tells us he is from the "time of the tango." He used to dance in the basement of the Mikado. (6) But let everyone have a turn to go to the ball. He now doesn't even stop when he goes by the Mikado. It was "bath" ("fun"), the time of the tango!
Comme à Ostende (Like in Ostend) was written by Caussimon in 1959 and recorded by Léo Ferré in the album Paname (1960). We see a couple of North Sea fishing horses head first into the water in front of the Ostend Casino. Apparently, we're in a bar. The waitress is 18 years old, and the singer is "old as winter." Instead of drinking a glass, he loses himself in "the spring of her almond-shaped eyes...not gray or green, as in Ostend and any town with rain, where one wonders if it's useful, and above all if it's worth it..to live one's life." He goes on to have a beer after all with mussels and French fries in an establishment with a very loud clientele, and gets refills even before asking. He and his girl walk arm in arm through the red light street. They are greeted at the end of the street by a hurdy-gurdy which plays a powerful air and makes them cry.
Listeners familiar with Ostend, a great Belgian beach town, will recognize some of the scenery.
Nous deux (The two of us) appeared as a solo record in 1961 and was included in the posthumous album Les Chansons interdites... et autres (The forbidden songs... and others) (2003).
Caussimon here celebrates lasting love in the face of all oncoming debacles: the gypsies have left Paris, they have been replaced with concrete and stupidity, drugstores and strip-tease, buildings and underground. In this time of conquest of the moon, a general will follow you with binoculars and will say: "It's red with blood!" All this juggling of the bomb will make it fall one day.... Farewell Paris, Vienna, Rome and Monte-Carlo. But the couple, the "two of them" will go together.
Ne chantez pas la mort (Don't sing about Death) appeared on the album Il n'y a plus rien (Nothing is left) (1973). This is easily one of Ferré's most deeply felt songs.
We are told not to sing about death. It's bad show business. Nevertheless Caussimon (and Ferré) do sing about it, and--miracle of vowels--"La Mort" (Death) seems to be the sister of "L'Amour" (Love). The former awaits us, we call for the latter. If the latter doesn't come, the former always does. For Ferré Death will not be a skeleton in a shroud, scythe in hand. It will be a twenty-year old woman with red hair in a wedding veil, she will have what's needed: eyes big as an ocean, an innocent voice, the smile of a child on crimson lips. Softly, she will soothe Ferré's burned eyebrows and parched face on her naked chest.
But what happens to those on their way to meet Death?
In his songs he also used poems by the like-minded Louis Aragon, by his friend the singer-songwriter and actor Jean-Roger Caussimon, and his own prolific texts and poems. In the latter he sometimes reflected on the life and role of poets and poetry in society, our focus in the third section below.
1. Louis Aragon (1897 - 1982).
Louis Aragon was a prolific writer with surrealist roots. He served honorably in both world wars, wrote for the underground press during the second world war, and was a member of the Communist party from the 1920s on. Made aware of Stalin's repression by his Russian wife, Elsa Triolet, he became critical of the Russian regime, all the while remaining a member of the French Communist Party.
In 1961 Léo Ferré recorded an album Les Chansons d'Aragon. In the following videos we hear Aragon's lyrical style--ideal for musical setting, reflecting on World War I, its deaths and the aftermath in French-occupied Germany, the nature of man, and love. In a later post we will take a look at Ferré's anarchic and political songs which will include L'Affiche rouge (The red poster) adapted from Aragon's poem Strophes pour se souvenir (Verses to remember) which was first published in the French communist newspaper L'Humanité.
Tu n'en reviendras pas (You won't come back from it), a poem from Louis Aragon's Le roman inachevé (The unfinished roman (1)) (1955), a poetical autobiography and probably Aragon's post-war masterpiece. The poem is from the book's first section, in the group of poems about The War and its aftermath. (2)
Aragon addresses World War I soldiers with the familiarity and affection of an old friend. "You won't come back, you who used to chase girls..." Aragon who carried stretchers at the front witnessed their deaths and injuries, and knew their destiny (thus the use of future tense). The verses evoke the violent deaths awaiting the soldiers: "Young man whose heartbeat I saw when naked,""cut in two by a shell." He also mentions the disfigured who were nicknamed "Broken Faces" at the end of the war: "You will survive for a long time without face without eyes."(3)
Est-ce ainsi que les hommes vivent (Is this how man lives) was adapted from a poem titled Bierstube Magie allemande (Beer Hall German Magic) from the same group of War poems,
We are in French-occupied Saarbrücken just after World War I right across from the Moselle department in France where Aragon stayed as a young Chief Warrant Officer and medecine student in the army before his demobilization ...a lover of women and brothels. The women from Saarbrücken were alone, defeated, and hungry... In this milieu Aragon learns about sadness and sex, eroticism and bad romantic taste, even real drama and death, big and small shocks to the soul, voyage and novelty, the usual loss of inhibition that comes along with it... (4)Let's hear how Catherine Sauvage sings this song. She was one of Ferré's truest interpreters. The piano accompaniment is at times very suggestive.
L'étrangère (The foreign woman) was set in 1959 and included in the albums Les Chansons d'Aragon (1961) and La mauvaise graine (2006, posth.).
The text is an excerpt from Après l'amour (After love) at the end of the second section of Le roman inachevé. It recalls a visit to a Roma caravan, fortune telling, a night of fun and dancing, and a Roma woman who follows him to his home. The following morning they say goodbye; it rains.
Ferré's setting is a fast romp picturing the exhilarating effect of the adventure.
Je chante pour passer le temps (I sing to pass time) is the opening poem of the roman's third section. It reminisces about past love, presents images from nature (lake, forest, etc.) and body (ears, knees, eyes, etc.). Aragon's objective is simply to "pass time." He compares past and present, recalls war. His life is an "adventure," and he even makes a couple of subtle political references (China has come together and for our palaces and statues). (5)
Elsa, an excerpt from the Mon Dieu jusqu'au dernier moment (My God until the last moment), and Il n'aurait fallu (It would have taken) are both from the group of poems titled L'amour qui n'est pas un mot (Love that's not just a word) from the third section of Le roman inachevé.
In 1928 Aragon published Le Con d'Irène (Irene) under a pseudonym. It described the life of a man and his inner thoughts after syphilis has made him speechless. This work was censured by the police, and Aragon denied being its author. Later that year, after the book's failure, he learned that his lover Nancy Cunard, heiress of the Cunard Line, had another affair, and he attempted suicide.
Two months later the Russian Elsa Triolet looked up Aragon in the bar La Coupole and tried to seduce him. With this Elsa entered Aragon's life and work. They married in 1939. They became a mythical and politically engaged couple (the resistance, communism, decolonization, feminism, literature, etc.).
In both songs Aragon describes tenderly how Elsa was his rescue.
2. Jean-Roger Caussimon (1918 – 1985)
Jean-Roger Caussimon grew up in Bordeaux and was sent off to Elsterhorst in 1940 as a prisoner of war. When he returned in 1942 he started singing and performing in Parisian cabarets, and made his movie debut as an actor. He met Léo Ferré in 1947 at the cabaret Lapin Agile. Ferré started setting music to Caussimon's poems--the first song was À la Seine, and the two became lifelong friends. Ferré continued to set Caussimon's texts for the rest of his life.
Monsieur William was Ferré's second Caussimon setting. It came out as a solo record in 1950 and was included in the Paris Canaille album (1953). William is a model employee in New York City. He works hard and never does anything wrong. One day, turning 40, that all changes. He walks to 13th Avenue, sees a lovely woman and follows her to a hotel. Another man walks up to the girl. William starts a fight and is killed. Only a trombone is around with its soulful sounds.
This song was one of Ferré's early successes. It was subsequently recorded by many French singers.
Les Indifférentes (The indifferent ones) appeared in the album Léo Ferré à Bobino (1958). You can find a video here. The singer takes on the persona of the lugubrious Mack the Knife of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill's Three-Penny Opera, but he doesn't like the London fog and instead has an "unpleasant" open-air bar (a "guinguette"). There he holds captive the girls who mocked or snubbed him in the past and says they will never be able to leave.
Le Temps du tango (The time of the tango) was the first song of the Encore du Léo Ferré (Léo Ferré encore) album of 1958. Caussimon tells us he is from the "time of the tango." He used to dance in the basement of the Mikado. (6) But let everyone have a turn to go to the ball. He now doesn't even stop when he goes by the Mikado. It was "bath" ("fun"), the time of the tango!
Comme à Ostende (Like in Ostend) was written by Caussimon in 1959 and recorded by Léo Ferré in the album Paname (1960). We see a couple of North Sea fishing horses head first into the water in front of the Ostend Casino. Apparently, we're in a bar. The waitress is 18 years old, and the singer is "old as winter." Instead of drinking a glass, he loses himself in "the spring of her almond-shaped eyes...not gray or green, as in Ostend and any town with rain, where one wonders if it's useful, and above all if it's worth it..to live one's life." He goes on to have a beer after all with mussels and French fries in an establishment with a very loud clientele, and gets refills even before asking. He and his girl walk arm in arm through the red light street. They are greeted at the end of the street by a hurdy-gurdy which plays a powerful air and makes them cry.
Listeners familiar with Ostend, a great Belgian beach town, will recognize some of the scenery.
Nous deux (The two of us) appeared as a solo record in 1961 and was included in the posthumous album Les Chansons interdites... et autres (The forbidden songs... and others) (2003).
Caussimon here celebrates lasting love in the face of all oncoming debacles: the gypsies have left Paris, they have been replaced with concrete and stupidity, drugstores and strip-tease, buildings and underground. In this time of conquest of the moon, a general will follow you with binoculars and will say: "It's red with blood!" All this juggling of the bomb will make it fall one day.... Farewell Paris, Vienna, Rome and Monte-Carlo. But the couple, the "two of them" will go together.
Ne chantez pas la mort (Don't sing about Death) appeared on the album Il n'y a plus rien (Nothing is left) (1973). This is easily one of Ferré's most deeply felt songs.
We are told not to sing about death. It's bad show business. Nevertheless Caussimon (and Ferré) do sing about it, and--miracle of vowels--"La Mort" (Death) seems to be the sister of "L'Amour" (Love). The former awaits us, we call for the latter. If the latter doesn't come, the former always does. For Ferré Death will not be a skeleton in a shroud, scythe in hand. It will be a twenty-year old woman with red hair in a wedding veil, she will have what's needed: eyes big as an ocean, an innocent voice, the smile of a child on crimson lips. Softly, she will soothe Ferré's burned eyebrows and parched face on her naked chest.
Mozart's Requiem, not the Danse MacabreDeath is rescue. It knows that time takes something away every day: a handful of hairs, the ivory of our teeth. Death is euthanasia, the ultimate nurse. It comes in time to end the game, that of the wounded soldier in the muddy rice fields, and that of the old man frozen in a cold room. Time is the monstrous ticking of the clock. Death is infinity forever.
A poor valse-musette at the museum of Saint-Saëns.
But what happens to those on their way to meet Death?
As we make a living, do we also need to earn Death?
Les spécialistes (The specialists) appeared in the late album Les Loubards (The Hooligans) (1985), entirely devoted to poems of Ferré's friend Jean-Roger Caussimon. The songs, composed and orchestrated by Ferré, are accompanied by the RAI Symphony Orchestra of Milan, Ferré conducting--and also singing, of course.
Les Spécialistes is a song that exposes the trust one is expected to have in rulemaking authorities who are supposed to be "Specialists" and to know what's best for everyone. There is no need for rallies, for throwing stones at posh stores. The old guys from the SAC will break the ice, but you will be caught. (7)
As a "marginal" you say "no" to nuclear power, you're worried stiff for those who come after us on this earth. You have a penchant for scientists with pessimist airs. Don't listen to Tazieff, listen to the E.D.F. (Électricité de France, the French electric company) which slices and dices, believes in borrowing and the adage "Après nous le déluge (After us the deluge)." What's important are the profits.
You make your opinions known, you announce your colors, you shout from rooftops, you're fed up with the laws and the capitalist yoke. Don't do it! We don't know who, but they know how to denounce your life, your thoughts, everything is documented. It works electronically at the French police.
One finds jealous people everywhere. Here too. Announce, if you will, that you're going to direct a large orchestra. Right away there will be venomous echoes from the pen of journalists who will tell you: Don't do it, friend, let the Specialists do it!(8)
One is at easeAnd then we hear the beautiful sounds of Mozart's Symphony No. 40, the Great G minor, and the last verse of the song:
When it's Boulez
Who grabs the baton
But...it's unfortunate
When it's someone
Who "dabbles" in little songs
Not even in "show-business"!
But it's Mozart
He was not a specialist ...!
3. Léo Ferré reflects on life and role of a poet and shows his skills as a writer
In Les poètes (The poets) from the album Paname (1960) Ferré describes poets as:
Weird fellows who live from their pen, or don't live, according to the season; they wade through fog with steps of birds under the wing of songs.
Their souls are in a carafe under the bridges of the Seine, their money is in books they've never sold, their wife is somewhere at the end of a refrain that speaks of love and forbidden fruit.
They add colors to gray cobblestones and, when walking on them, believe they're at sea. They put ribbons around the alphabet, and take their words to the streets to get some fresh air.
They sometimes have dogs, companions in misery, who lick their writer's hands in friendship, with the true light in their muzzle which leads to the country of absurdity.
These are weird guys who look at flowers and see in their petals the smiles of a woman, singing misery on pianos of the heart and violins of the soul.
Their plucked arms remind of the wings literature will later hang on them, on their frozen spectrum above the trash where their verses will die anew as an effect of Art.
They walk in the blue sky, their head in towns and know to stop to bless the horses, they walk in horror, their head on islands where executioners never land.
They have paradisiacal places made of fireworks, one says, and their stanzas of ten pennies are locked up, as if one put a building in chains under the pretext that the bourgeois are in the gutter...
Le Marché du poète (The poet's market) appeared on the album Ferré 64 (1964). It is a fast-paced, funny song. Ferré sends his wife to the market to buy all kinds of foods and things that will inspire him. He sends her to the salon to come back smelling great and make-up on her eyes. He asks for postcards from Tahiti and Malaysia. She brings him stimulating magazines..., neck ties also, and two or three dumb things for their foxhole: a Giotto, a Corot, a Pablo and a Picasso. She buys in sterling, dollars, kopeks, and florins. Then she says:
You're not finished writing nonsense? I know Isou, and the zazous, and writing also. In the land of Descartes made-up stories are told with cards, or at the Quai de Conti(9) You're not allowed to go there, to the Academy, OK, my little guy!
In the Preface track of the album Il n'y a plus rien (There is nothing left) (1973) Ferré decries the current state of poetry. Written in a militant tone and declamed--not sung--with orchestral accompaniment he tells us what's wrong with contemporary poetry, and what it ought to be and do instead:
Contemporary poetry no longer sings ... it crawls.
But it has the privilege of superior status... it does not resort to
indecent words... it ignores them.
One only touches words with gloves: to "menstrual" one prefers
"periodic," and one reiterates that some medical terms
should not leave the laboratory or the Codex.
Academic snobbery which, in poetry, consists of only certain
predetermined words, to deprive it from other words, technical,
medical, popular or slang, makes me think of our appreciation for the finger-
bowl or the kiss on the hand.
It's not the finger-bowl that cleans hands or the hand kiss that
makes tenderness.
It's not the word that makes poetry, it's poetry that illustrates the word.
Writers who look at their fingers to see whether they have their
count of feet, are not poets, they're dactylographers.
Today's poet must belong to a caste,
to a party,
or to all of Paris.
The poet who does not not surrender, is a mutilated man.
Poetry is clamor. It must be heard as music.
Any poetry only destined to be read and to be enclosed in its typography
is unfinished. It only takes shape with a vocal chord, just
as a violin takes its shape when touched by a bow.
Indoctrination is a sign of the times. Of our time.
People who think in circles have twisted ideas.
Literary societies are still Society.
Shared thought is common thought.
Mozart died alone, accompanied to the public pit by a dog and
ghosts.
Renoir had fingers crippled by rheumatism.
Ravel had a brain tumor which all at once sucked all music out of him.
Beethoven was deaf.
One had to beg to bury Bela Bartok.
Rutebeuf was hungry.
Villon stole to eat.
Nobody cares. Art is not an anthropometric office.
Light only shines on graves.
We live in an epic time, and we no longer have anything epic.
Music sells like shaving cream.
In order to sell despair itself, one only needs to find the
formula.
Everything is ready: capital,
Marketing,
Customers.
Who then will invent despair?
With our airplanes which upstage the sun. With our tape recorders
which remember "those voices who became silent," with our souls
stranded in the middle of the streets, we are at the brink of emptiness, tied up in our
meat packets, watching revolutions go by.
Never forget that what's cumbersome in Morality, it's that
it's always the Morality of others.
The most beautiful songs are songs of vengeance.
A verse must create love in people's mind.
AT THE SCHOOL OF POETRY AND MUSIC ONE DOES NOT LEARN
ONE FIGHTS!
___________________________________________________________
(1) The word roman is here used in its medieval French meaning of narrative poem.
(2) John Fraser, "A new book of verse, Preamble." Online
anthology. (http://www.jottings.ca/john/voices/newbk_notes.html#Aragon (08/25/2016))
(3) Free translation, "Tu n'en reviendras pas, de Louis Aragon." Text and synthesis, Collège Vieux Port website. (http://www.clg-vieuxport.ac-aix-marseille.fr/spip/sites/www.clg-vieuxport/spip/IMG/pdf/Tu_n_en_reviendras_pas_-_Aragon_Francais_3o1-3o2.pdf (08/26/2016))
(4) Free translation, Arthur Syel, "Louis Aragon, poème "Bierstube Magie allemande" (1956)." Arthur Syel, poet, website, 11/04/2013. (http://www.arthursyel.com/MUSIC/Aragon_Bierstube/Aragon_Bierstube.htm (08/25/2016))
(5)"Aragon, Je chante pour passer le temps, étude bac." Prepabac.org website. (http://www.prepabac.org/pages/content/aragon-je-chante-pour-passer-le-temps-etude-bac.html#2oTCcq662Y1XEAh2.99 (08/27/2016))
(6) The Mikado was one of many Argentinian tango places that existed in Paris in the 1920s and 30s.
(8) This paragraph refers to Léo Ferré's conducting efforts in 1975. 'He conducted the Orchestra of Montreux, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra of Liège, and the Pasdeloup Orchestra in Paris when he recorded his only instrumental album Ferré muet dirige… (A silent Ferré conducts...). Ferré conducted and sang at the same time. He mixed Ravel and Beethoven with his own compositions, and changed the placement of the orchestra. 140 musicians and choristers were on the stage. Once again an experience of an untested spectacle, breaking conventions and removing barriers. Ferré fills the halls for five weeks, but critics from the classical music world reject this hybrid affair. Ferré is deeply hurt and despite numerous attempts continues to have great difficulties repeating this sort of spectacle. Short of being accompanied by a grand orchestra and rather than performing with a small ensemble, Léo Ferré now choses to either accompany himself on the piano, as in his early years, or to sing to his orchestral tapes in his studio recordings.' (Free translation, "Léo Ferré." French Wikipedia entry. (https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9o_Ferr%C3%A9 (08/28/2016))
(9) The Quai de Conti is home to the French Institute. The Académie Française, the pre-eminent authority on the French language, is one of its subdivisions.