Something to Declare: Essays on France and French Culture by Julian Barnes
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Authors: Julian Barnes
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gazed through the windowed doors at the pallid, bespectacled figure lying on his back.
Upstairs I listened to Brel satirically discussing his own death in “Tango Funèbre” and in “Le Moribond”:
Et je veux qu'on rie
Je veux qu'on danse
Je veux qu'on s'amuse comme des fous
Je veux qu'on rie
Je veux qu'on danse
Quand c'est qu'on me mettra dans mon trou *
As for Brassens, the album that he brought out during my year in Rennes— Georges Brassens IX —began with an enormous departure for this established master of the two-, three-, or if you were very lucky four-minute ballad. “Supplique pour être enterré sur la plage de Sète” (“Petition to Be Buried on the Beach at Sète”) weighs in at a marathon seven minutes and eighteen seconds. It is a grand, lilting, jocular codicil to his earlier testamentary songs, and contains specific instruction for the disposal of his body. He wants it transported “dans un sleeping du Paris-Mediterranée” to the “minuscule” station at Sète (where the station-master would probably have the delicacy to give himself the day off), and thence to the beach for burial. The eternal estivant is to lie in the sun between sky and sea, spending his death on holiday. He hopes that girls will undress behind his tomb; perhaps one of them will even stretch out on the sand in the shadow of his cross—thus affording his spirit “un petit bonheur posthume.” And just as Brel in Altuona was to have Gauguin for company, at Sète Brassens would be close to Paul Valéry, delineator and occupant of Le Cimetière marin. The singer, a humble troubadour beside the great poet, would at least be able to congratulate himself that “Mon cimetière soit plus marin que le sien” (“My graveyard is nearer the sea than his”).
In the event, he didn't quite make the beach. Instead, on the first weekend of November 1981, he was added to the family vault in the Corniche cemetery: this despite complaining in the “Supplique” that the vault was already stuffed to bursting point and he didn't want to be reduced to shouting “Move along inside there please”— “Place aux jeunes en quelque sorte.” (The sea is barely visible from here, and his grave after all less “marin” than Valéry's.) The ending of his life contained the symmetry he desired and feared: born in Sète in 1921, the naturalized Parisian returned to die there sixty years later. In that shortened span he never travelled well himself, being allergic to aeroplanes and abroad; while his songs, with their compacted, allusive, slangy texts and spare music, have travelled less successfully than those of Brel. But he was France's greatest and wisest singer, and we should visit him— spending his death on holiday—in whatever way we can.
* When Paul Valéry met the correct English poet W. E. Henley in 1896, he was shocked to find the Englishman expressed himself with much idiomatic and perfectly accented obscenity. It turned out that Henley had learnt French from Rimbaud and Verlaine.
* “And if I were God / I don't think I'd be too proud / I know, you can only do what you can / But it's the way you do it that counts.”
* A note on the social penetration of Brassens's work. Three decades and more later, Jacques Fouroux was preparing the French rugby team to face the New Zealanders in the ritual encounter between flair and structured method. The coach reminded his men that, “to quote Brassens, le talent sans technique nest qu'une sale manie.”
* “I want you to laugh / I want you to dance / I want you to have a bloody good time … when they put me into my hole.”
(3)
The Promises of Their
Ordination
Jean Seberg kisses Jean-Paul Belmondo to advertise A bout de souffle
Near the start of Truffaut's Tirez sur le pianiste there is a deft moment of authorial cheek. Charlie (Charles Aznavour) returns from the piano bar to his rented room and climbs wearily into bed, cuddling an ashtray the size of a salad bowl. Clarisse
Upstairs I listened to Brel satirically discussing his own death in “Tango Funèbre” and in “Le Moribond”:
Et je veux qu'on rie
Je veux qu'on danse
Je veux qu'on s'amuse comme des fous
Je veux qu'on rie
Je veux qu'on danse
Quand c'est qu'on me mettra dans mon trou *
As for Brassens, the album that he brought out during my year in Rennes— Georges Brassens IX —began with an enormous departure for this established master of the two-, three-, or if you were very lucky four-minute ballad. “Supplique pour être enterré sur la plage de Sète” (“Petition to Be Buried on the Beach at Sète”) weighs in at a marathon seven minutes and eighteen seconds. It is a grand, lilting, jocular codicil to his earlier testamentary songs, and contains specific instruction for the disposal of his body. He wants it transported “dans un sleeping du Paris-Mediterranée” to the “minuscule” station at Sète (where the station-master would probably have the delicacy to give himself the day off), and thence to the beach for burial. The eternal estivant is to lie in the sun between sky and sea, spending his death on holiday. He hopes that girls will undress behind his tomb; perhaps one of them will even stretch out on the sand in the shadow of his cross—thus affording his spirit “un petit bonheur posthume.” And just as Brel in Altuona was to have Gauguin for company, at Sète Brassens would be close to Paul Valéry, delineator and occupant of Le Cimetière marin. The singer, a humble troubadour beside the great poet, would at least be able to congratulate himself that “Mon cimetière soit plus marin que le sien” (“My graveyard is nearer the sea than his”).
In the event, he didn't quite make the beach. Instead, on the first weekend of November 1981, he was added to the family vault in the Corniche cemetery: this despite complaining in the “Supplique” that the vault was already stuffed to bursting point and he didn't want to be reduced to shouting “Move along inside there please”— “Place aux jeunes en quelque sorte.” (The sea is barely visible from here, and his grave after all less “marin” than Valéry's.) The ending of his life contained the symmetry he desired and feared: born in Sète in 1921, the naturalized Parisian returned to die there sixty years later. In that shortened span he never travelled well himself, being allergic to aeroplanes and abroad; while his songs, with their compacted, allusive, slangy texts and spare music, have travelled less successfully than those of Brel. But he was France's greatest and wisest singer, and we should visit him— spending his death on holiday—in whatever way we can.
* When Paul Valéry met the correct English poet W. E. Henley in 1896, he was shocked to find the Englishman expressed himself with much idiomatic and perfectly accented obscenity. It turned out that Henley had learnt French from Rimbaud and Verlaine.
* “And if I were God / I don't think I'd be too proud / I know, you can only do what you can / But it's the way you do it that counts.”
* A note on the social penetration of Brassens's work. Three decades and more later, Jacques Fouroux was preparing the French rugby team to face the New Zealanders in the ritual encounter between flair and structured method. The coach reminded his men that, “to quote Brassens, le talent sans technique nest qu'une sale manie.”
* “I want you to laugh / I want you to dance / I want you to have a bloody good time … when they put me into my hole.”
(3)
The Promises of Their
Ordination
Jean Seberg kisses Jean-Paul Belmondo to advertise A bout de souffle
Near the start of Truffaut's Tirez sur le pianiste there is a deft moment of authorial cheek. Charlie (Charles Aznavour) returns from the piano bar to his rented room and climbs wearily into bed, cuddling an ashtray the size of a salad bowl. Clarisse
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