Léo Ferré - 100 Years, 14. Nature, Sea, and Ports

Whereas Ferré lived in Paris early on in his career and, as we saw in my previous post, wrote many a song about that popular city, he always sought refuge in the countryside. In 1959 he purchased an island near Saint-Malo in Brittany where he developed love and respect for the Atlantic Ocean. In 1963 he purchased the Castle of Pechrigal in the Lot Department in the southwest of France. In 1969 he settled in Castellina in Chianti, in the Tuscan hills in Italy.

He wrote many songs about nature and its flow of seasons, and about the Sea and its ports. These songs, as Ferré so often does, use a mix of poetry, slang, and symbols in a language that by some experts has been called the 'Ferrémuche' language. One often has to reflect for a moment to determine whom or what Ferré is actually talking to or about: nature or a person--woman or man? Or is there a transition from one to the other, often in the last verse? Let's take a listen.

Ma vieille branche (My old branch) was included in the 1956 album Le Guinche (Dance). Ferré talks, very tenderly, to nature in its various seasons as if it were a woman. We go through auburn colors of dead leaves, cold blue and gray colors of fog and the North Sea, and straw colors of summer fields before autumn, and then winter, arrive. Butterflies die, we hear the nightingale, we see weather vanes and scarecrows, and a comparison with naked newborns--albeit with the distinction that nature has to work hard. Toward the end Ferré now talks to an old woman, and sees a pine chest or coffin nearby. ⁽¹⁾

You have hair like dead leaves
And sorrow in your veins ⁽²⁾
And the north wind lends a strong hand
To the sea, rain drenched with water
My old branch.

You have names as cold sores
A very grey azure in your rags
And the north wind and its seams
Where butterflies die peacefully
My old branch.

You're indebted to the nightingale
And have tender eyes in a stroke of fog
That old singer it's a weather vane
You just have to give him your old scarf
My old branch.

You have fields like a straw hat
When summer looks nice and smart
And clowns stuffed with straw
To chase away all birds
My old branch.

You have the naked butt of lovely babies
Born but a moment
But you my old dear you have to work
To reach spring
My old branch.

You have nothing to offer but a sweet little face ⁽³⁾
An old pine who gives you credit ⁽⁴⁾
Two three little flowers "neglected"⁽⁵⁾
And then winter at the end of your life...
My old branch of autumn.

Ferré sang Cannes-la-Braguette at his recital at the Alhambra in 1961. The song wasn't released on disc until 2003 with the entire recital.

   - The title of the song immediately draws attention. What is the meaning of "braguette" here? Is it the usual zipper or fly, does it have the more colloquial sense of 'hooker,' or is Ferré alluding to the English word 'brag'? ⁽⁶⁾ You be the judge. Ferré introduces the song thus in the video:

Last summer I was at the French Riviera, the entire coast. It was beautiful. The weather was beautiful. And I've brought back a mean song.

You have to see them cross ⁽⁷⁾
All those Parisians
Who like crusaders
Go drink a pint
You have to see them loaf about
Not far from the bowling alley
As in a brothel
Searching for spleen
You have to see them cross
At Cannes-la-Braguette
With their chops
And their tiny jerseys
You have to see them cross
Along the pebbles
Of this phony sea ⁽⁸⁾
Which has changed names
This sea so what...?
Mer-diterrannée ⁽⁹⁾

There are femmes fatales
They are plenty as milk
Who turn and make away
Only a look at them
And all that collapses
When it's time to come clean
And all that packs up
For a scotch or two
You must see them languish
At Cannes-la-Braguette
The town where a sigh
Plays roulette
You must see them badmouth
Or else meditate
At Cannes-la-Connerie ⁽¹⁰⁾
Capital of Thought
Meditate how.....?
Mer-ditativement ⁽¹¹⁾

There are billionaires
There are semi-sweet ones
Who do their business
At Cannes-the-tine ⁽¹²⁾
And all that happens
When the evening is blue
Of a strange happiness
For an hour or two
Must see them tan
At Cannes-la-Braguette
The town or the vacation
Is paid by the inch ⁽¹³⁾
Must see them suffer
Or else make happiness
In the frying pan
Of the sun of Cannes
And how does it fry.....?
Merveilleusement! ⁽¹⁴⁾

Ça s'lève à l'est (It rises in the East), a jazzy take on the role of the sun in our lives, was the eighth track on the 1962 album La langue française (The French Language).

It rises in the East each morning
It vegges out, it goes through the daily grind
From top to bottom of the Milky Way
It makes society grow

When it doesn't want to, well, it doesn't come out
It does its nails or else it freezes over
Just come down on the coast
With azure in your trench coat

It takes months to make the year
It's like eggs, you must count
A few or only today's, some are from when again
By the dozen, some are good

Behind the sky, there's also something amiss
Then we take our umbrellas
We're wet like bottles
Where there's embarrassment, there's no sun

It charms a hooker
Who has her customers in a notebook
That my postman sells me each year 
So he can cook spinach in butter

It draws a border to the West
In the mimosa or in the Far West
When it tinkers at the horizon
It blushes like a young schmuck

When it's not there, it has a life
It takes itself for Noon at Midnight
It fools the dark brown girls
It's very dark but not all over

It fools glasses in Hong Kong
Everyone resembles Louis Armstrong
In America, it doesn't really matter
Glasses can see in negative

It rises in the East each morning
It gets off to work, it works the streets
From top to bottom in the galaxy
For a big-shot among his friends

It makes the field flowers grow
And those of girls of some years
Who have two suns in the window
Where a rose grows without a thorn

It lights up everything, even prisons
Where butterflies are stuck
Who take in nonsense near the bars
Like a girl on her stove

There are corners they don't often see
It's the bottom of the heart and people's soul
It's not night but it's similar
For scumbags, there's no sun.

C'est le printemps (It's Spring) was part of the album Ferré 64 when Ferré was 'not only at the height of his career but also at the height of his artistic inspiration. This extremely mature album (which includes the famous "Franco la muerte", "Sans façon" and "Mon piano") expressed the soul of a lifelong rebel, combining subtle poetry with fervently anarchic lyrics. (Although Ferré certainly recognized the comforts that his new-found wealth could buy, he never lost the communist/anarchist leanings of his early days)'. ⁽¹⁵⁾ This particular song is a whirly French waltz accompanied by accordion and orchestra.

There is nature all in a sweat
In the hectares ⁽¹⁶⁾ there is happiness

It's Spring

There are lilacs running out of time
To make themselves purple or else white

It's Spring

There's wheat that's worried stiff
The birds, they don't say no

It's Spring

There are our sorrows full of color
There's even Spring in misery

There's the sea that takes itself for Monet
Or for Gauguin or for Manet⁽¹⁷⁾

It's Spring

There are clouds that no longer have enough
One would say of cotton candy

It's Spring

There's the north wind that's taken on an accent
He spent time with Mistral

It's Spring

There's the rain that stopped by Dior
To buy the model Golden Sun

There's the road that makes itself National
And ants packing their bags

It's Spring

There's alfalfa in the seed-beds
And then the reaper who smiles

It's Spring

There are mice getting their teeth
Into cats as a result

It's Spring

There are golden voices in one lonely cry
It's the Sistine Chapel that goes out at night...

There's nature having a bowl
To the health of the nightingale

It's Spring

There's the Beaujolais that brings her back
And Mimi who thinks she's Carmen⁽¹⁸⁾

It's Spring

There's the Ile Saint-Louis that returns to the Seine
And Paris who takes a walk there

It's Spring

There's Summer that turns up in the street
And nerds who didn't notice

That it was Spring...

Les gares et les ports (Stations and Ports) was included in the 1967 album Cette Chanson (This Song). Ferré ponders the hustle and bustle of stations and ports and reflects that he prefers quiet, a flower, a star, voyages evoked in a book. At the end the lyrics become, as so often happens, personal.

Stations it's a shame
Except for the view
In the smoke
Of lost towns
And tissues
Holding their noses
For goodbyes
Along the quays

Stations it's a shame
S.N.C.F.
I prefer the trains
Of the N.R.F.⁽¹⁹⁾
And books
Without schedule
That roll under a
Familiar lamp

Stations it's a shame
They're disgusting
They smell like wagons
And get away with it
And all those guys
And their tickets
With a whole
On top of it

Stations it's a shame
Except at night
Sometimes
Some cry
One would say
Orphans
Who roll the dice for
Their entire shebang

To sleep
In the sorrow of the wind
To sleep
Until the new Spring
And in the fields
Set sail
And for a flower
To sell a star
Very simply
Without moving a cent
In the car of window-dressing

Ports it's a shame
Stations too
As to the Orly's ⁽²⁰⁾
Let's not talk about it
I like my place
And my books
I travel quietly
It doesn't cost me anything

Ports it's a shame
Even when it's there
In the blue ink
Of a postcard
And when I want
To have the 'THERE'
I cut myself in two
And rush about

Ports it's a shame
Even in the past
When tuna vessels
Held out their arms
To the bride
In linen dress
With their blood
Sun of the sails

Ports it's a shame
In the bars
And their folklore
Of the sailors
And the whorish
Tide
Which comes and goes
Without giving anything

To leave
In a paper bird
To leave
In the sleeping [car] of the fields
And in your arms
A stopover
And in your eyes
To pack my bag
Only the two of us
Without compass or sail
With you for a star

Ferré first sang Rotterdam during his recital at the 1969 Bobino Theater in Paris. It was included in the 1970 double album Amour Anarchie (Love Anarchy).

There was only one left
And it was that one
A Northern port it pleases
Especially when one isn't there
It makes you want to be there
It makes you not know well
If you need to dig into a poet
Or hit on a whore... in Rotterdam

Where there are not just whores
Where there are not just sailors
Where there are lost dogs
And children in the streets
Where there are not just merchants
Where there not just barges
Where there are old horses
Who play bridge with death ⁽²¹⁾
Where there are Chinese cops
Who think they're the queen
Where there are girls in silk
Who drop their girdle
On the curb
Like one more sorrow
That will drag tonight
All along the street
If only it could
Resemble Rotterdam

Where there are dead rats
Like in Paris
Where there are cats crossed
With old mice
Where there isn't only import

Where there are far away from the port
Lovers made
And parted
Where there are not just bank notes
On the doorstep of miniskirts
And guys who are busy
Display their junk
Where unhappy people
Would give their ass
If you gave yours
It would be bliss
If only it could
Resemble Rotterdam

Where murderers
Holed up in their whiskey
And crazy people
Who won't make it through the night
Where there's not only tobacco
With caramel flavor
Where there are poor soldiers
Who would take a Carmelite

Where a Christ stands up
Behind a night bar
Who talks with the end
With the end of the night
Where there are exiles
Leaving their exile
Into the barbed sky
Of a stupid advertisement
If only it could
Resemble Rotterdam

Where I'll never go
Because I'm going to the sun
Where you will never go
Because it's the same everywhere
I take the train to the South
You take the train to the South
He takes the train to the South
Through the night
If only it could
Resemble ITALY

La Memoire et la mer (Memory and the Sea) was also included in the Amour Anarchie album. It is one of Ferré's most powerful, most poetic, one of his very best, and was a great success. Ferré himself declared it 'eminently personal and that nobody was supposed to understand it'.  He succeeded.  The song was written in the Summer of 1968 when Ferré was hiding in Brittany following his break-up with Madeleine and had started a lifelong relationship with Maria Cristina, daughter of a Spanish refugee family.  The relationship was illicit as long as the marriage with Madeleine was not dissolved. Maria Cristina who would become his third wife, gave Ferré enduring love and happiness.

   - As the song with its simple, descending melody and suggestive accompaniment develops, a succession of chimeras appear in front of our eyes, drawn from Ferré's life:  the sea, a Jersey ghost, fishing nets, fish, seaweed, a vision of a sea wolf, horses, a green girl from the fjords, and then Spain with its seashells and castanets, but also blood and knives, and the final image when all rumbling stops, the sea--as ultimate shepherdess.

   - The text was drawn from a project Ferré started in the early 1960s.  It was never published, but Ferré later came back to the text and used excerpts in several songs.  The text of this song is considered one of his most poetic, even by his those who don't consider all of his texts true poetry.

The tide it's in my heart
It cheers me up like a sign
I die of my little sister
Of my child and my swan
A ship it depends how
It's docked at the port of justice
Years of light come down in tears
From my firmament and I let it go
I am the phantom of Jersey
That who comes on nights of showings
To throw you a fog of kisses
And to take you away in his rhymes
Like a fishnet in July
Where the lonely wolf lurked
The one I saw shine
In the fingers of the sand of the earth

Remember that dogfish
We freed on parole
And who screams in the desert
Seaweed of a necropolis
I'm sure life is there
With its flannel lungs
When it cries for those times
Cold all grey that calls us
I remember those nights there
And sprints won over foam
That drool of short-haired horses
A notch above the smoldering rocks

Oh angel of lost pleasures
O rumors of another habit
My desires from then on are only
Grief for my loneliness ⁽²²⁾

And the devil of evenings conquered
With their pallor of rescue
And the shark of heavens
In the surroundings drenched with foam
Come back green girl of fjords
Come back violin of violin fests
Horns fanfare at port
For returning comrades
Oh rare perfume of salt flats
In the burning pepper of chapped skin
When I went geometrically
My soul deep into your wound
In the disorder of your bottom
Nabbed in sheets of fine dawn
I saw a stained-glass window also
And you green girl my spleen

Seashells appearing
Under broken fluid sun lights
Playing the castanet so much
That one would call Spain mad
God of granites have mercy
Of their vocation for finery
When a knife comes to intrude
In their castanet figure
And I saw what one anticipates
When expecting what one detects
Between blinds of blood
And blood cells display
A mathematical blue
In this never calm sea
From which emerges bit by bit
That memory of stars

This rumor that comes from there
Under the friendly arc where I'm blinded
Those hands all talk and bluster
Those ruminant hands mooing
That rumor that follows me a long time
Like a beggar shunned
Like a shadow wasting time
To design my theorem
And over my red make-up
Comes to bat like a door
That rumor which gets up
In the street of dead music
It's over the sea it's over
On the beach sand bleats
Like sheep of infinity
When the shepherdess sea calls

__________________________________________________________
⁽¹⁾ Jacques Layani, "À propos de Ma vieille branche." Blog entry, Léo Ferré Etudes et Propos, 04/26/2007. (http://leoferre.hautetfort.com/archive/2007/04/26/a-propos-de-ma-vieille-branche.html (12/04/2016))
⁽²⁾'Ruisseaux' means 'streams.' However, the imagery here is that of a sorrowful woman.
⁽³⁾ Nowadays the term 'frimousse' is used to describe emoticon faces.
⁽⁴⁾ The 'sapin,' i.e. the pine chest or coffin is giving the woman credit, the credit of time, i.e. it is willing to wait.
⁽⁵⁾ The expression 'A la va-comme-je-te-pousse' means 'neglected,' but at the same time the term 'pousser' means 'to grow,' enforcing the image of small, neglected flowers growing above the coffin.
⁽⁶⁾ Of course, knowing Ferré's usual jargon, the second suggestion seems reasonable, but to bolster the franglais case, the song contains a couple of other English words: bowling, spleen, jerseys.
⁽⁷⁾ The word 'croiser' ('cross') may be a wordplay on La Croisette, a boulevard and set of beaches in Cannes, mostly for the rich and famous.
⁽⁸⁾ Ferré here seems to emphasize the presence of 'galets' ('pebbles') in the Mediterranean Sea which he calls a phony sea. As we have seen previously in his Letter to the Sea, he had more respect for the Atlantic Ocean and the North Sea even though he was born in Monaco on the Mediterranean.
⁽⁹⁾'Mer' ('Sea') followed by a 'd' alludes to 'Merde' ('crap').
⁽¹⁰⁾'Connerie' means 'bullshit'.
⁽¹¹⁾ Again we have the allusion to 'merde' ('crap'), but the original word is here 'méditativement' ('meditatingly').
⁽¹²⁾ This is an allusion to homosexual activity in Cannes. On Ferré's attitude towards homosexuality and how it changed over time, see here.
⁽¹³⁾ Ferré, of course, uses the metric 'centimeter'.
⁽¹⁴⁾'Wonderfully'.
⁽¹⁵⁾"Ferré 64." French Wikipedia entry. (https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferr%C3%A9_64 (12/08/2016))
⁽¹⁶⁾ The French term 'hectares' more readily evokes rural farms than 'acres', the English equivalent.
⁽¹⁷⁾ Interesting how Ferré turns around perception and describes the sea as imitating impressionist and post-impressionist paintings.
⁽¹⁸⁾ Ferré here draws from two big female opera characters, Mimi from Puccini's La bohème and Carmen from the popular Bizet opera, to describe how in Spring gentle women turn into seductresses.
⁽¹⁹⁾ Here Ferré prefers to read books describing voyages rather than going to actual train stations. S.N.C.F. sands for Société nationale des chemins de fer français (French National Railroad Company); N.R.F. stands for La Nouvelle Revue française (New French Review), a critical literary review, monthly and influential in Ferré's time.
⁽²⁰⁾ Ferré seems to think here about the hassle to get to Orly Airport by train.
⁽²¹⁾'Qui bridgent ave la mort,' makes one think of the then very popular bridge game. However, old horses could also be crossing a 'bridge' to death.
⁽²²⁾ For a possible meaning of this paragraph see here.