Georges Charles Brassens (22 October (1921)‒29 October (1981)) was a French Auteur-Compositeur (singer and songwriter), and one of the most significant artists of his time. As a genuine poet, his work is remarkable for the beauty and depth of his prose, especially as he dips his pen in acrimony and the most bitter outrage and cold indignation. This is however softened by a fierce yet tender humour toward humanity and its torments. Although he relies on an argotic lexical field as well as crude if not vulgar expressions, he ties all this together with an elaborate grammar and sophisticated literary constructs. His ability to paint the world with the language of the slums while using the imperfect subjunctive gives his texts an universal reach.
He was an anarchist and freethinker. His most famous song—La Mauvaise Réputation—lists what seems right and natural to him but that clashes with the consensus in society, especially regarding nationalism, militarism, law and order. In his struggle to go with life in his own way, he systematically finds out that this raises the world against him:
(en)
Mais les braves gens n'aiment pas que
L'on suive une autre route qu'eux
This ostracization is with the exception of a few people, but only because those are in no capacity of manifesting their opposition, for various comical reasons that have little to do with empathy. This isolation of the individual in a conformist society is a recurrent theme:
(en)
Je suis de la mauvaise herbe, braves gens, braves gens
C'est pas moi qu'on rumine et c'est pas moi qu'on met en gerbe
La mort faucha les autres, braves gens, braves gens
Et me fit grâce à moi c'est immoral et c'est comme ça
Here we also seem him wonder «Et je me demande pourquoi, Bon Dieu, Ça vous dérange que je vive un peu?» (Why does it bother you so much that I live my life?)
The most touching of his songs are those that embrace human misery. When he laments about injustice and hardness, he reminds us of Victor Hugo's divine empathy for the small people (those that Hugo called Les Misérables). This is best illustrated in his beautiful commiseration for prostitutes, which he nevers calls in such an ugly way, referring to them instead in humble, dignified or even beautiful terms, such as «pauvre Vénus». He makes one exception, to insult those who despise them: «Fils de pécore et de minus, Il s'en fallait de peu mon cher, Que cette putain ne fût ta mère» (en). This is a striking use of the ignominy of the victim turned back onto her tormentor. In this daring text, each statement is repeated twice, to make it clear that what is being ascertained is nothing else but a deep truth:
(en)
Bien que ces vaches de bourgeois, bien que ces vaches de bourgeois
Les appellent des filles de joie, les appellent des filles de joie
C'est pas tous les jours qu'elles rigolent, parole, parole
C'est pas tous les jours qu'elles rigolent.
As all deep thinkers and artists, he celebrates the most pure and deepest values of human relationships, prominently friendship, with his famous Les copains d'abord. He also wrote soul-crushing songs to personal acquaintances, such as la Jeanne. He is of course noted for many songs on love, courtship, romance and, overall, the bittersweet feelings of engaging with women. Those include Les amoureux des bancs publics, J'ai rendez-vous avec vous, Marinette (which reminds of Brel's La Fanette) or Je suis un voyou.
One of my favourite song of Brassens is one which he did not write himself—and thus with a higher poetical charge as opposed to his usual more brutal and candid, popular poetry. This is an homage to women that one bumps into fleetingly and that change something in you despite the shallowness of the encounter:
(en)
À toutes les femmes qu'on aime
Pendant quelques instants secrets
À celles qu'on connait à peine
Qu'un destin différent entraîne
Et qu'on ne retrouve jamais.— Antoine Pol, Set to music and sung by Brassens.
The story behind this song is also a gripping one. I evoke it in my covid reading list. Interestingly, Brassens removed one strophe from the original poem, from the perspective of the woman:
(en)
À ces timides amoureuses
Qui restèrent silencieuses
Et portent encor votre deuil,
À celles qui s’en sont allées
Loin de vous, tristes esseulées,
Victimes d’un stupide orgueil.— Antoine Pol, Not retained by Brassens in the song.
Brassens sensed that what a woman thinks or feels is beyond the poet's reach, and should remain part of her mystery and of his melancholy.