Le mauvais sujet repenti

This poem is a morality tale- or perhaps more aptly an immorality tale- about prostitution.  The title suggests the traditional, inspiring story of the sinner who sees the light – the story of the bad character who repented.  However Brassens’ title is ironical.

The narrator of the poem was indeed by common judgment a bad character.  He was a pimp.  In contemporary Britain, it is politically correct to be kinder to prostitutes.  They are “sex workers”, but their pimps are still the lowest of the low.  However the moral issues here are shown to be complex.  If the man’s previous life was despicable, his act of repentance was even more despicable. He abandoned the woman with whom he had lived in a passionate relationship- although by mutual agreement shared with many others- , who had made his fortune and he left her to a grim fate.

His work may have been vile, but we note that he and his partner provided a service to pharmacists, church officials, civil servants and serving police officers.  We are aware that her pitch was close to the Chamber of Deputies. Brassens, the anarchist who rejected all outside interference in personal choice is pointing to the absurd contradictions in legislation which aims to prevent payment for sex.

 

Le mauvais sujet repenti

Elle avait la taill' faite au tour,(1)

She had a most shapely figure

Les hanches pleines,

Full in the hips,

Et chassait l' mâle aux alentours

And hunted the males, roundabout

De La Mad’leine...(2)

The Madelaine

À sa façon d' me dir' : "Mon rat,

From her way of saying : « Darling,

Est-c' que j' te tente ?"

D’you fancy me ? »

Je vis que j'avais affaire à

I saw that I was dealing with

Un' débutante...

A’ raw beginner.

 

L' avait l' don, c'est vrai, j'en conviens,

Sh’had the gift, it’s true, I quite agree,

L'avait l' génie

Sh’ had the genius,

Mais sans technique, un don n'est rien

But without technique a gift’s no more

Qu'un' sal' manie...

Than a dirty habit

Certes, on ne se fait pas putain

It’s true you don’t become a whore

Comme on s' fait nonne,

Like you do a’nun

C'est du moins c' qu'on prêche, en latin,

That’s at least what they preach, in Latin

À la Sorbonne...

At the Sorbonne…

 

 

Me sentant rempli de pitié

Feeling overwhelmed with pity

Pour la donzelle,

For the damsel

J' lui enseignai, de son métier,

I taught her the little secrets

Les p'tit's ficelles...

Of her profession

J' lui enseignai l' moyen d' bientôt

I taught her the real way to soon

Faire fortune,

Make her fortune

En bougeant l'endroit où le dos

By swaying the place where the back

R'ssemble à la lune...(3)

Looks very like the moon

Car, dans l'art de fair' le trottoir,

For, in the art of street walking,

Je le confesse,

I must confesse

Le difficile est d' bien savoir

What’s hard is to properly know how to

Jouer des fesses...

Exploit the bum

On n' tortill' pas son popotin

You do not wiggle your bottom

D' la mêm' manière,

In the same manner

Pour un droguiste, un sacristain,

For a chemist, a church warden

Un fonctionnaire...

A civil servant.

 

Rapidement instruite par

Rapidly instructed by

Mes bons offices,

My good offices

Elle m'investit d'une part

She invested in me a share

D' ses bénéfices...(4)

Of her profits

On s'aida mutuellement,

We helped each other mutu’lly

Comm' dit l' poète,(5)

As the poet says

Ell' était l' corps, naturell'ment,

She was the body, natur’lly

Puis moi la tête...

Then me the head..

 

Un soir, à la suite de

One evening after

Manoeuvres douteuses,

Doubtful manoeuvres

Ell' tomba victim' d'une

She fell the victim of

Maladie honteuse...

A shameful illness…

Lors, en tout bien, toute amitié,

Then, rightly, out of true friendship

En fille probe,

An upright girl,

Elle me passa la moitié

She passed on to me one half

De ses microbes...

Of her microbes

 

Après des injections aiguës

After sev’ral sharp injections

D'antiseptique,

Of antiseptic

J'abandonnai l' métier d' cocu

I gave up the career of cuckold

Systématique...

Systematic......

Elle eut beau pousser des sanglots,

It was in vain she gave deep sighs

Braire à tue-tête,

Brayed at full blast

Comme je n'étais qu'un salaud,

As I was nothing but a swine

J' me fis honnête...

I turned honest.

 

Sitôt privé' de ma tutelle,

Straight off, stripped of my protection

Ma pauvre amie

My poor girlfriend

Courut essuyer du bordel

Ran to endure life in brothels

Les infamies...

The shame of it…

Paraît qu'ell' s' vend même à des flics,

Seems she sells herself to coppers

Quell' décadence !

What decadence !

Y'a plus d' moralité publiqu'

There’s no public morality now

Dans notre France...

In our France……

1953 - Les amoureux des bancs publics

TRANSLATION NOTES

1)      fait au tour – le tour is the lathe and so a part of the body that is « fait au tour » is well-turned, shapely.

2)      La Madeleine – The area around the historic building of the Madelaine has long been regarded as a hunting ground for prostitutes.  As their clientele in this area was from a better class, the women would be a better class of prostitute.

3)      Brassens was a great admirer of a rounded female bottom and uses the moon analogy frequently.  See Vénus Callipyge

4)      N.B.The irony of his squalid arrangement  being presented as a standard business contract.

5)      Brassens lived with his book of La Fontaine’s fables.  In La Fontaine’s « L’Aveugle et le Paralytique », there are the lines :

Aidons-nous mutuellement,

La charge des malheurs en sera plus légère

 

La marche nuptiale -The wedding march

 

This is a very touching, very personal song, because Brassens is describing the wedding day of his parents.  Although the title of the song is “Wedding March” and Brassens speaks of the day as a memory that he will never forget, the sombre music of the song is more suitable for a “marche funèbre”-  a funeral march.  This is appropriate because their wedding appears to have had a prevailing mood of pathos, marked by embarrassment, disappointment and deep emotional distress on the part of the bride.  The families of bride and groom were so poor that their bridal carriage, to the amazement of the onlookers was an ox cart propelled by the wedding guests. 

It is an unconventional wedding, because the couple have already been together for a long time and their son is accompanying them with music on his harmonica.  We are told that they are on the way to the Town Hall and so they would seem to be on their way to a civil ceremony, not a church marriage. The crisis for the bride comes, when heaven manifests its disapproval by striking the procession with a mighty wind and soaking the participants with a heavy downpour of rain.

The account in the song does not tally with Brassens’ biography and this question will be discussed in the following translation notes.

 

 

Mariage d'amour, mariage d'argent,

Marriages for love, marriages  for money
J'ai vu se marier toutes sortes de gens
I have seen all sorts of people getting married :
Des gens de basse source et des grands de la terre,
Folk of humble stock and great figures in the land,
Des prétendus coiffeurs, des soi-disant notaires.
Supposed hairdressers and self-styled notaries.
Quand même je vivrais jusqu'à la fin des temps,
Even if I should live  until the end of time
Je garderai toujours le souvenir content
It’s with satisfaction that I’ll keep  the mem’ry
Du jour de pauvre noce où mon père et ma mère
Of the poor wedding day my father and mother
S'allèrent épouser devant Monsieur le Maire.(1)
Went to get themselves wed before Monsieur the Mayor

 

C'est dans un char à boeufs, s'il faut parler bien franc,
It was, if  full truth need be told, in an ox cart
Tiré par les amis, poussé par les parents,
Pulled at the front by friends, pushed behind by relatives
Que les vieux amoureux firent leurs épousailles (2)
That the long-time lovers rode to their nuptials
Après long temps d'amour, long temps de fiançailles (3)
After long time in love,  long time as fiancés.

 

Cortège nuptial hors de l'ordre courant,
A marriage cortège most unconventional,
La foule nous couvait d'un oeil protubérant
The crowd thronged around us,  eyes wide with amazement
Nous étions contemplés par le monde futile
We were being observed by folk of no avail
Qui n'avait jamais vu de noces de ce style.
Who hadn’t ever seen a wedding in this style

 

Voici le vent qui souffle emportant, crève-coeur !
Here comes the wind, which blows away, oh the heartbreak ! 
Le chapeau de mon père et les enfants de choeur..
The hats of my father and children in the choir.
Voilà la plui' qui tombe en pesant bien ses gouttes,
Then there’s the rain which falls, its drops weighing heavy
Comme pour empêcher la noc', coûte que coûte.
As if to stop them getting wed at any price
Je n'oublierai jamais la mariée en pleurs (4)
I shall never forget the bride, sitting weeping,
Berçant comme un' poupé' son gros bouquet de fleurs
As she cradled  like a doll her big bunch of flowers.

 

Moi, pour la consoler, moi, de toute ma morgue,
I to console her, with all of my bravura
Sur mon harmonica, jouant les grandes orgues.
On my harmonica, played great organ pieces
Tous les garçons d'honneur, montrant le poing aux nues,
And all the groomsmen, shaking their fists at the clouds
Criaient : "Par Jupiter, la noce continue !" (5)
Were shouting « By Jupiter, the wedding goes on !
Par les homm's décriée, par les dieux contrariée,
Though by humans decried, by the gods obstructed
La noce continue et viv' la mariée !
Still the wedding  goes on and long life to the bride !

 In Barbara’s version she adds this repeat verse at the end

Quand même je vivrais jusqu'à la fin des temps,
Even if I should live  until the end of time
Je garderai toujours le souvenir content
It’s with satisfaction that I’ll keep  the mem’ry
Du jour de pauvre noce où mon père et ma mère
Of the poor wedding day my father and mother
S'allèrent épouser devant Monsieur le Maire.(1)
Went to get themselves wed before Monsieur the Mayor

 1957 - Je me suis fait tout petit

TRANSLATION NOTES

 

1)      devant Monsieur le Maire- I thought of putting « Before his Worship the Mayor » as that is the Mayor’s (odd) title in Britain, but that would have changed the cultural setting.

2)      firent leurs épousailles – Brassens says that his parents celebrated their wedding in an ox cart.  Surely the mayor did not marry them in it.  I have taken the liberty of changing it !

3)      Après long temps d'amour, long temps de fiançailles – According to the story in the song, the parents had been in love for a long time and had had a long engagement.  Obviously they must have been living in sin, to use the English terminology of those days, and she had given birth to the son who was playing the harmonica and telling the story.  In fact, Georges Brassens mother, Elvira Dagrossa, who came from an Italian family, had been married previously and had had a daughter, Simone, in 1912.  Her husband had been called up during the 1914- 1918 war and he had been killed in 1919.  As she married Jean-Louis Brassens in 1920 after having been a widow for only one year, it is difficult to see how they could have been lovers and fianc’s for a long time.  As Georges Brassens was born, their legitimate son in 1921, it was impossible for him to have been at his parents’ wedding –except in the womb perhaps !

4)      Je n'oublierai jamais la mariée en pleurs- It is understandable that this would have been a very emotional day for Elvira. Just a year ago, she had been married to a different man, the father of her nine year old daughter – until the ominous telegram was delivered at her house.  As a devout Catholic, she would be afraid of the wrath of God and the anger of the skies would seem to confirm this.  She was getting married in a civil ceremony to a man who had little respect for her religion and her Catholic education would have convinced  her that she was jeopardising her immortal soul.

5) In turning their eyes to the heavens, the sceptical Brassens menfolk, do not address the god of the bride, capable of oppressing a poor and vulnerable woman who has already suffered much, but challenge the heroic god of the Ancients.

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Barbara sings this song with a lot of verve and feeling

 

 

 

Celui Qui A Mal Tourné

 

I find this a touching poem and very personal to Brassens, as the experiences and emotions of the man in the story closely parallel those of Brassens.

 Brassens never found himself accused of murder of course, but in his youth, Brassens had become involved in unworthy criminality, which diminished his self-respect and gave him a great sense of guilt. He too had been condemned by the harsh verdict of the courts, which made no allowances.  He had been painfully conscious of the disgust and anger he had aroused in the ordinary people around him and had gone into long exile. Even when he became a successful performer, his self-image was of an outsider estranged from the society of “respectable” people.

Paradoxically, the audiences who thronged to listen to him were in the majority from this “respectable” class and, who knows, might have included some members who were over-weight, over- wealthy and devoted to sensual pleasure, like the ageing fun seeker, whom the man in the story had accidentally snuffed out. Nevertheless, the audiences reacted to the social outsider on the stage with appreciation, sympathy and love. 

It is possible therefore that the enlightenment of the man seen in the last verse of the song describes Brassens own realisation in the closing years of his career.  One can imagine that on some nights at the end of his performances, when stage-fright habitually tore his nerves to shreds, Brassens returned to the privacy of his dressing room and overwhelmed by the warmth of his reception, drowned by the invasive sense of human kindness, sank to the floor and wept uncontrollably.  The final two lines of the song are the song.

 Celui Qui A Mal Tourné

Il y avait des temps et des temps
It had been a very long while
Qu'je n'm'étais pas servi d'mes dents,
Since I’d last made use of my teeth.
Qu'je n' mettais plus d'vin dans mon eau (1)
Since I’d put wine in my water
Ni de charbon dans mon fourneau.
Nor any coal into my stove

 

Tous les croque-morts, silencieux,
All morticians on the quiet
Me dévoraient déjà des yeux:
Were already eyeing me up
Ma dernière heure allait sonner
My last hour was going to chime
C'est alors que j'ai mal tourné(2)
That was when I went badly wrong.

 

N'y allant pas par quatre chemins,
To tell just the unvarnished fact
J'estourbis(3) en un tournemain,
I killed in the blink of an eye,
En un coup de bûche(4) excessif,
Clobbering with excessive force
Un noctambule en or massif.
A portly, rich, night-club Johnnie

 

Les chats fourrés,(5) quand ils l'ont su
The ermined judges,  finding out
M'ont posé la patte dessus
Came down very hard upon me
Pour m'envoyer à la Santé(6)
Sending me to Santé prison
Me refaire une honnêteté.
To mend my sense of decency.

 

Machin, Chose, Un tel, Une telle,(7)
Lots of folk whose names I forget
Tous ceux du commun des mortels
All of ordin'ry human stock,
Furent d'avis que j'aurais dû
Were of a mind, I ought to have
En bonn' justice être pendu.
In all fairness gone to be hanged.

 

À la lanterne! et sur-le-champ!

Strung up on high and straight away !
Y s'voyaient déjà partageant
While they saw themselves already
Ma corde, en tout bien tout honneur,
Slicing my rope good and proper,
En guise de porte-bonheur.(8)
 To be shared out as good luck charms.

 

Au bout d'un siècle, on m'a jeté

A century on, they threw me out
À la porte de la Santé.
From the gate of Santé Prison
Comme je suis sentimental,
As I’m a sentimental guy,
Je retourne au quartier natal,
I go back to where I was born.

 

Baissant le nez, rasant les murs,
Keeping head down, hugging the walls,
Mal à l'aise sur mes fémurs,(9)
Uncomfortable on my pins,
M'attendant à voir les humains
Expecting to see the humans
Se détourner de mon chemin.
Veer off, to keep out of my way.

 

Y' en a un qui m'a dit: " Salut !
There’s one who said to me : Hello
Te revoir, on n'y comptait plus..."
Never counted on seeing you..
Y' en a un qui m'a demandé
There’s one who enquired news of me -
Des nouvelles de ma santé.
My « Santé » - my health and prison.

 

Lors, j'ai vu qu'il restait encor
Then I saw that there remained still
Du monde et du beau mond' sur terre,
People and fine people on earth
Et j'ai pleuré, le cul par terre,
I flopped on my backside and wept
Toutes les larmes de mon corps.
All the tears  my body stored.

 Georges Brassens

1957 - Je me suis fait tout petit,

 

TRANSLATION NOTES

(1)   Qu'je n' mettais plus d'vin dans mon eau – The normal practice of putting water in wine is reversed. To avoid sentiment, the poet does not want to tell us too directly that the man was desperately short of food and shelter.

(2)   C'est alors que j'ai mal tourné.  There is probably some irony here, as, the state that the was in, makes clear that things had gone badly wrong for him long before.

(3)   J'estourbis = I killed.  The poet says he does not wish to beat about the bush but he uses a less usual verb for “to kill.”

(4)   un coup de bûche = a blow with a lump of wood.

(5)   Les chats fourrés, A slang expression meaning “judges”, descriptive of their robes.

(6)   La Santé – The proper noun denotes the Prison in the 13^th arrondissement of Paris.  The common noun of course means “health” and this permits puns in the poem.

(7)   Machin, Chose, Un tel, Une telle – In English, when we want to quote some-one whose name we forget , we say « Thingummy says…. ».  In French they say « Machin dit….. » or they could use the other devices on this line.

(8)   En guise de porte-bonheur. There is an old superstition that a piece of hangman’s rope already used in an execution, brings good luck.

(9)   fémurs, are the thighbones