List of Brassens songs on my blogsite in album order

Each song title is a link to the Brassens song on my blog with English translation.

To access a selected song please click on its title

Album- La mauvaise réputation (1953)
La mauvaise réputation
Le gorille
Le petit cheval

Ballade des dames du temps jadis

La chasse aux papillons
Le parapluie
La Marine
Il suffit de passer le pont


Album-2 - Les amoureux des bancs publics (1954)

Les amoureux des bancs publics
Brave Margot
Pauvre Martin
La première fille
La cane de Jeanne
Je suis un voyou
J'ai rendez-vous avec vous
Le vent
Il n'y a pas d'amour heureux
La mauvaise herbe
Le mauvais sujet repenti
Putain de toi


Album-3 - Chanson pour l'auvergnat (1955)

Chanson pour l'Auvergnat
Les sabots d'Hélène
Marinette - j'avais l'air d'un con
Une jolie fleur
La légende de la nonne
Colombine
Auprès de mon arbre

Gastibelza, l'homme à la carabine
Le testament
La Prière 
Le nombril des femmes d'agent
Les Croquants


Album-4 - Je me suis fait tout petit (1957)

Je me suis fait tout petit
Oncle Archibald
La Marche Nuptiale
Au bois de mon coeur
Grandpere
Celui Qui A Mal Tourné
Les Philistins

Album-5 - Le pornographe (1958)

La ronde des jurons
A l'Ombre du Coeur de Ma Amie
Le Pornographe
La femme d'Hector
Bonhomme
Le Cocu

Album-6 - Le mécréant (1960)

La traîtresse

Le Bistro
L'enterrement de Verlaine
Pénélope
L'orage
Le mécréant
La fille a cent sous


Album-7 - Les trompettes de la renommée (1961)

Les trompettes de la renommée
Jeanne
Dans l'eau de la claire fontaine
La marguerite
Si le Bon Dieu l’avait voulu
La guerre de 14- 18
Les amours d'antan

Le temps ne fait rienà l'affaire

Marquise
L'Assassinat
La complainte des filles de joie

Album-8 - Les copains d'abord (1964)

Les copains d'abord

Le petitjoueur de flûtiau 

La tondue
Vénus callipyge
Saturne


Album-9 - Supplique pour être enterré à la plage de Sète (1966)

Supplique pour être enterré à la plage de Sète
LeFantôme
La fessée
La non-demande en mariage

L'Épave

Album-10 - La religieuse (1969)

Misogynie à part
Rien à jeter
La rose, la Bouteille et laPoignée de main
Pensées des morts

La Religieuse

Album-11 – Fernande (1972)

Fernande
La Princesse et le croque-notes
Mourir pour des idées
Quatre-vingt quinze pour cent

Les passantes

A l'ombre des maris

Album-12 - Don Juan (1976)

Trompe la Mort

Don Juan

Cupidon s'en fout

13 – Not in a Brassens album
Maman Papa

Heureux qui comme Ulysse 1970

Les châteaux de sable (1978)

Pauvre Martin - A touching song of a farm labourer who asked nothing from life and got it.

Brassens paints a touching portrait of an impoverished agricultural labourer, whose life is hard but who accepts his fate with total equanimity - Another of society’s outsiders for whom he felt great compassion.

Pauvre Martin Avec une bêche à l'épaule, Avec à la lèvre un doux chant, Avec à la lèvre un doux chant, Avec à l'âme (1) un grand courage, Il s'en allait trimer aux champs Pauvre Martin, pauvre misère,(2) Creuse la terre, creuse le temps Pour gagner le pain de sa vie, De l'aurore jusqu'au couchant, De l'aurore jusqu'au couchant, Il s'en allait bêcher la terre En tous les lieux, par tous les temps Pauvre Martin, pauvre misère, Creuse la terre, creuse le temps Sans laisser voir sur son visage Ni l'air jaloux ni l'air méchant, Ni l'air jaloux ni l'air méchant, Il retournait le champ des autres, Toujours bêchant, toujours bêchant Pauvre Martin, pauvre misère, Creuse la terre, creuse le temps Et quand la mort lui a fait signe De labourer son dernier champ, De labourer son dernier champ, Il creusa lui-même sa tombe En faisant vite, en se cachant Pauvre Martin, pauvre misère, Creuse la terre, creuse le temps Il creusa lui-même sa tombe En faisant vite, en se cachant En faisant vite, en se cachant, Et s'y étendit sans rien dire Pour ne pas déranger les gens Pauvre Martin, pauvre misère, Dors sous la terre, dors sous le temps!(3) Georges Brassens 1954 - Les amoureux des bancs publics

With a spade upon his shoulder With, on his lips, a little song With, on his lips, a little song With, deep within, spirit unbroken He would go to the fields to toil Poor old Martin, mis'rably poor Digs at the earth, digs away time. To earn enough bread to live off From crack of dawn ‘til setting sun From crack of dawn ‘til setting sun He would go off to work the land Off anywhere in all weather Poor old Martin, mis'rably poor Digs at the earth, digs away time. He let appear upon his face No look of envy or of spite No look of envy or of spite Tilling fields belonging to others Digging nonstop, digging nonstop Poor old Martin, mis'rably poor Digs at the earth, digs away time And when death gave him the signal To begin work on his last field To begin work on his last field He dug for himself his own grave Getting done quick, keeping hidden Poor old Martin, mis'rably poor Digs at the earth, digs away time. He dug for himself his own grave Getting done quick, keeping hidden Getting done quick, keeping hidden And laid him there with no word said So as not to trouble people. Poor old Martin, mis'rably poor Sleep neath the earth, sleep under time

TRANSLATION NOTES

1) Avec à l'âme = Literally  - With, in his soul, ...

2) We French teachers bore or perhaps amuse people by talking about "faux amis". The word "misère" is one of these - it looks like the English word "misery" but it means extreme poverty (Of course the two ideas are not unrelated).

3) Brassens often talks of death and the ravages of time in his songs.

Barbara sings this song:

Click here to return to the Index of Brassens songs

SI LE BON DIEU AVAIT VOULU -Paul Fort's simple love song

Brassens puts to music Paul Fort’s simple and sincere love poem to his wife,the woman who meant everything in his life.


(I cannot find now a Brassens recording of this song, but the Spanish singer Eva Denia is a brilliant performer of Brassens' music,

SI LE BON DIEU L'AVAIT VOULU

Based on the poem of Paul Fort --

Si le bon Dieu l'avait voulu, Lanturlurette, lanturlu J'aurais connu la Cléopâtre(1) Et je ne t'aurais pas connue. J'aurais connu la Cléopâtre, Et je ne t'aurais pas connue. Sans ton amour que j'idolâtre Las ! que fussé-je devenu ? Si le bon Dieu l'avait voulu, J'aurais connu la Messaline,(2) Agnès(3), Odette(4) et Mélusine(5)... Et je ne t'aurais pas connue. J'aurais connu la Pompadour(6), Noémi(7), Sarah(8), Rebecca(9), La Fille du Royal-Tambour!(10), Et la Mogador(11) et Clara(12). Mais le bon Dieu n'a pas voulu Que je connaisse leurs amours. Je t'ai connue, tu m'as connu. Gloire à Dieu au plus haut des nues ! Las ! que fussé-je devenu sans toi la nuit, sans toi le jour ? Je t'ai connue, tu m'as connu. Gloire à Dieu au plus haut des nues ! 1961 Les trompettes de la renommée

If the Good Lord had wished it so Dum dee dum dum, dum dee dum dee I would have known yon Cle’patre I would not have got to know you. I would have known yon Cle’patre I would not have got to know you. Without your love that I worship Alas! What might I have become? If the Good Lord had wished it so I would have known yon Mess’lina Agnes, Odette and Mel’sina I would not have got to know you I would have known yon Pompadour Naomi, Sarah, Rebecca, The girl of the Royal Tambour, And yon Mogador and Clara. But the Good Lord did not wish it That I should know their loving charms I got to know you and you - me Praise to God in highest heaven. Alas! what would I have become Without you by me night and day I got to know you and you - me Praise to God in highest heaven!

Translation notes

THE WOMEN PAUL FORT CHOOSES TO ILLUSTRATE HIS POEM

Paul Fort makes a list of a number of ladies whom he could have got to know, instead of the lady who became the love of his life. In fact these are among the most illustrious women in world history, famous some for their legendary beauty, some for the intensity of the passion they showed or the passion they aroused, famous some for their momentous effect on world history.  By putting “la” in front of their names, he is pretending personal familiarity with them as if they were girls in the next street.

(1) Cléopâtre is well known, of course, as the beautiful queen of Egypt, with whom Julius Caesar and Anthony fell in love, with important consequences in history.

(2) La Messalina was the wife Emperor Claudius, famous for the ruthlessness of her political intrigues and the excesses of her sexual adventures.

(3) Agnès is perhaps Agnès Sorel, favourite mistress of Charles VII (1422-1450), who was known as the "Dame de Beauté". Her portrait in "La Vierge à l'Enfant" byJean Fouquet is famous.

(4) Odette – There is an Odette, with whom Charles Swann falls obsessively in love in "Un Amour de Swann", a book of Marcel Proust’s « A la Recherche du Temps Perdu ?

(5) Mélusine – A character in French fables, who was the daughter of a fairy, but could transform herself into a snake.

(6) La Pompadour – La Marquise de Pompadour (1721-1764) was the official mistress of Louis XV. She was a very influential personality in the royal court and an active patroness of the arts.

(7) Noémie, - These next three are three famous biblical characters.  Naomi was the mother-in-law of Ruth. It was she who persuaded Ruth to seduce the rich old man, Booz, in order to perpetuate her lineage which had been broken by the deaths of her two sons. The son born of this union was Obed, the ancestor of Joseph, the stepfather of Jesus. Victor Hugo gives a poetic account of Ruth’s night of love in his famous poem "Booz endormi".

(8) Sarah, - We are told that Sarah, the wife of Abraham gave him a son, Isaac, when she was ninety years old!

(9) Rébecca - the wife of Isaac, was the mother of Esau and of Jacob. She ranks among the ruthless women who changed the course of history. She cheated her dying husband into giving the birthright of their elder son Esau to her favourite son Jacob instead. She did this by putting goat skins on his hands and neck to deceive the blind old man into believing that his hands rested on the hairy skin of Esau. Jacob, who, according to the legend, was renamed “Israel” some years later by an angel of God, became one of the great fathers of the Jewish nation.

(10) La Fille du Royal Tambour – I am unsure who this female can be. There is a famous theatre in Paris called the Royal Tambour. There was also a soldier’s song of the 18th century with this title of the daughter of the Royal Drummer.

(11) Mogador – I am grateful to this poem for acquainting me for the first time with Céleste Mogador, 1824-1909, comtesse Céleste de Chabrillan. She was the illegitimate daughter of Anne-Victoire Vénard and had a deprived and unhappy childhood. At 15 she was imprisoned for vagrancy and at 16 she became a prostitute. After six months she took the name of Céleste Mogador when she became a successful dancer and the toast of Paris. Later she had success as an actress and wrote her memoirs. 

She had become the mistress of Lionel, Comte de Chabrillan, whom she married in January 1854. When he was appointed French consul-general in Australia, she went with him, to the anger of his family.  She lived a somewhat lonely life in Australia, ostracised by the respectable. However she formed a love of the country and wrote three novels set in Australia. During these years she re-educated herself completely, teaching herself correct French to make up for the deficiencies of her education and learning English. 

Her Mémoires were now selling well in France and from her earnings she was able to pay off her husband’s debts. Unfortunately, Lionel died from dysentery in December 1858. Céleste had a prodigious literary output on her return to Paris. In total, she wrote twelve novels, twenty-six plays, seven operettas, poems and songs. 

She was the friend of writers , politicians and many public figures. Her friendship with the Count of Naurois gave her financial security until her death in 1909. I intend to read her Mémoires soon.- "Les mémoires de Céleste de Chabrillan."

(12) Clara – Looking for a famous love story, we might suggest Clara Schumann (1819- 1896).Her skills as a musician had gained for Clara Wieck a Europe wide reputation as a child prodigy. Robert Schumann, the composer, met her in Leipzig when she was just sixteen and began to court her. Her father tried to prevent any contact between the couple and when Schumann made a request to marry her in 1837, her father refused. He continued to block the wishes of the couple for the next three years. In 1839, the couple submitted a petition to the Court of Appeals to marry without the consent of Friedrich Wieck. This was granted in 1840 and they married on September 12, one day before Clara’s 21st birthday.

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This is recent a recording of the song by Yves Uzureau, who is accompanied by Pierre Debiesme.  The vdeo gives us good illustrations of the fabled beauty, whom Paul Fort would not consider in comparison with the love of his wife.  Other photos of Georges Brassens with Joha Heiman suggest that when Brassens put the song to music, he might have had his relationship with his Püppchen in mind.

 

 Click here to return to the Index of Brassens songs

The Times tells the story of the original eminence grise.

The Times tells the story of the original eminence grise

The most famous painting of the original éminence grise, by Jean-Léon Gérôme, depicts the French monk in his habit, descending the stairs of the Palais Cardinal, the magnificent Paris residence that Cardinal Richelieu had had built for himself. The courtiers bow and scrape in obeisance to  Father Joseph's veiled authority, but he appears to be buried in his Bible, oblivious to the fawning.

Ben MacIntyre, a Times columnist sought to keep the Lord Ashcroft affair still simmering by comparing him to the original “Eminence Grise” of history. It is a far-fetched analogy, but, as a French specialist, I am grateful to him for filling a gap in my historical knowledge

Ben MacIntyre tells us that the name of the original éminence grise was François Leclerc du Tremblay, who was more familiarly called Father Joseph. He was the shadowy adviser to Cardinal Richelieu, and he died nearly 400 years ago. Father Joseph was, in theory, one of the lowlier minions of Louis XIII’s court, a mere secretary to Richelieu, the king’s chief minister. In reality, he was a figure of immense prestige and considerable menace, Richelieu’s confessor, confidant and secret agent, de facto foreign minister, warmonger and scourge of those whom he deemed heretics.

The inconspicuous friar dreamt of launching another crusade against the Turks and also of forcing all of Europe’s Protestants back into the Catholic fold. He had a profound impact on the course of European history and his ruthlessness helped to prolong the bloody Thirty Years War

Father Joseph came to be seen as the most powerful politician in France, his influence eclipsing that of his patron Richelieu. As with squirrels, the grey can drive out the red.

In spite of his power, he remained all but invisible, his grey eminence in sharp contrast to the flaming scarlet cardinal’s robes of Richelieu himself, the red eminence. His power was great, but cloaked and secretive. He was trusted by a powerful few, feared by his rivals, and a mystery to everyone else: the three essential characteristics of the Eminence Grise.

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The ruthless, intolerant dictatorship of Church and State achieved in 17th century France had been the ideal of the eminence Grise.  In a later article, Ben McIntyre vividly describes the character of this political system, when he compares it with the contemporary regime in North Korea:

North Korea’s leader is more like Louis XIV than a modern tyrant and will burn out like all absolute monarchs

Article by BEN MACINTYRE  April 14 2017, 6:00pm, in “The Times”

Kim Jong-un styles himself “The Sun of the 21st Century”. Supreme Leader, Marshal of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Commander of the Army, Chairman of the Workers’ Party, the chain-smoking, podgy potentate with the bad haircut and the nuclear arsenal is both a joke and a menace. He is widely seen as the last truly dangerous dictator.

But Kim is not a dictator in the modern sense. Though not formally crowned, he is really King Kim III, a hereditary absolute monarch in the 17th-century mould, unconstrained by written laws, customs, or legislative bodies. In the vast prison camp that is North Korea, he is the sole focus of judicial, executive and military authority. He exercises the power of life and death over his people, to whom he is a living god. He rules not by election or acclamation, but by inherited divine right.

To understand Kim Jong-un we should look not to examples of modern tyranny but to King Louis XIV of France. North Korea’s Sun of the 21st Century, like France’s Sun King, can declare: “L’état, c’est moi” (“I am the nation”).

The North Korean regime has all the strengths of an absolute monarchy, but also some of its weaknesses. For Kim is a historical anomaly, a throwback to an earlier age of monarchical power and the cult of kingship: once that is understood he becomes less preposterous, perhaps more containable, and more vulnerable.

Absolute monarchy is a delicate balancing act, as Louis XIV knew, and his descendant,Louis XVI, did not, to his cost. He was guillotined in 1793 under the French Revolution.

Another monarch also, Charles I of England,  had believed he ruled by divine right, until parliament demonstrated his mortality.  Charles had been beheaded in 1649.

Kim’s repressive techniques are Stalinist, but his style of despotism is from an earlier age. Like Louis XIV and every other absolutist ruler, Kim uses symbolic display and the icons and hereditary semi-religious rituals to cow and impress his subjects: parades of weaponry, synchronised waving and joyful weeping, and orchestrated demonstrations of public affection.

Where Louis built Versailles, Kim has the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun, a £700 million edifice that has become a mausoleum to his father. 

He cultivates the mystique of kingship, deliberately concealing his personality, surrounding himself with "Eminences grises" — faceless, fawning men in identical uniforms, the better to stand out as the supreme being.

Kim claims descent from the nation’s mythical founder, Tangun, just as European kings once rested their authority on a God-given ancestral lineage. Ruler-worship is embedded in Korean culture: before the country was annexed by imperial Japan in 1910 Koreans lived under a monarchy.

However,  like most absolute sovereigns, Kim is also exceptionally isolated.  He has no advisers or confidants, let alone critics, merely dispensable yes-men and courtiers and thus remains friendless and alone on his throne.  No modern ruler is quite so absolute as Kim. Even the monarchs of Saudi Arabia are constrained by Sharia.

Stand too close to the Sun and you get burned — or in North Korea, it is said, fed to wild dogs or tied to an artillery gun and blown to shreds. His uncle and brother have both been liquidated. The humiliation and execution of an enemy, rival or relative was always a favoured technique of absolute monarchy.

Kim is also spoilt, as only a pampered princeling risen to the throne can be. Brought up in the artificial, paranoid atmosphere of the court, most absolute monarchs have little concept of the real world. While ordinary people comprehend, from the age of about five, that they are not the centre of the universe, the absolute ruler never does.

He briefly attended two Swiss schools, where he was known as “Un Pak”, the son of a North Korean diplomat, but since he spoke little English and German, and seldom interacted with classmates, the outer world had little impact on him, save to instill a taste for video games, Disney and pornography.

Otherwise, he has grown up within the weird confines of the North Korean court, schooled only in his own inherited supremacy, confined in a series of vast palaces, surrounded by bodyguards. The only people Kim meets are there to serve him and execute his will. The only language he hears is flattery. Immune to criticism inside his country, he is almost certainly unaware of the mockery that swirls around him outside it. In some ways he is as divorced from the rest of the planet as his people.

Kim is not mad but deformed by his experience. It is even possible to feel slightly sorry for the dauphin who has had the crown thrust upon him. The life he has led, the society he has grown up in and now rules, has produced exactly the sort of person one might expect: paranoid, ignorant, self-indulgent and entirely believing the myth on which his supremacy rests.

Kim Jong-un is not just absolute but a pure product of absolutism: supremely powerful, but absolutely isolated from reality — brutal and insecure. 

If absolute monarchy is the key to understanding how North Korea works, it may also offer a clue to its future. Absolute monarchies crumble when the Sun King ceases to dazzle, when education undermines the myth, when hunger becomes more pressing than reverence. For Louis XVI, the beginning of the end came when the women of Paris marched on Versailles demanding bread, and laughing at the king.

One day the citizens of North Korea, like Europeans in the past, will look on the glittering apparel of Kim’s absolute rule and see that the emperor has no clothes.

Links to David Yendley’s French Culture Websites

Anatole France – Les Dieux ont Soif – Summary and Historical Background

Balzac – Le Père Goriot – Summary -  Author’s Biography and Complete Student Notes

Bazin (Hervé)  Vipère au Poing -  Summary – Author’s Biography and Essay Topics

Camus – L’étranger - Summary and Author’s Biography – Essay Topics

Camus – La Chute - Summary - Author’s Biography and Essay Topics

Duhamel- Le Notaire du Havre – Summary -  Author’s Biography and Essay Topics

Mme de Lafayette – La Princesse de Clèves - Summary and Essay Topics

Voltaire – Candide – Summary -  Author’s Biography and Complete Student Notes

Pagnol -Le Château de ma mère Summary - Background –Marcel Pagnol's Biography

Links to my Blogsites for Two of my favourite French Singers

Brassens – 80+ songs with English translations and commentary With videos from YouTube

Carla Bruni – Most of her songs with English translations and commentary - With videos from YouTube