In the News ... Flu Infected Macaques and Land-Loving Sharks

As the ancient proverb says: 

Never let a monkey sneeze in your face, or a shark walk up behind you ...

 

I. 

 

Steven Salzberg published a very interesting piece in the American business magazine Forbes earlier this month [1], detailing how scientists in the United States and Canada involved in so-called gain-of-function research [2] have recreated the deadly 1918 flu virus (commonly known as Spanish flu). 

 

Yes, you read that correctly; scientists have genetically recreated (and enhanced) an extinct flu virus [3]; one that killed tens of millions of people around the world in what was the second deadliest pandemic in human history (topped only by the Black Death in the mid-14th century). And they are now busy infecting captive monkeys with it ...! 

 

I would have thought that was quite a controversial thing to do and would have therefore made for a big news story. But it's barely been reported in the mainstream media - despite all their hysteria over Covid-19 (and all we've learnt over the past few years about the very real risk of lab leaks).         

 

 

II.

 

A story which did get quite a lot of media coverage, however, was one concerning a small species of longtailed, slender-bodied carpet shark, that is found in shallow, tropical waters off Australia and New Guinea [4]. 

 

Known as the epaulette shark,  it has evolved to cope with the severe oxygen depletion in isolated tidal pools by increasing the blood supply to its brain and selectively shutting down non-essential functions. It can pretty much go without oxygen for up to two hours, without suffering any ill effects. 

 

Even more amazingly, epaulette sharks are also able to "walk" on dry land - again for a considerable period of time and covering a distance of up to 30 metres - by wriggling their bodies and pushing with their paddle-shaped fins. Researchers think this will radically improve their chances of survival in an increasingly challenging environment. 

 

For whereas their competitors for food and better oxygenated water can only rely on their swimming abilities - and must stay submerged in order to breathe - these little sharks can happily stroll from tidepool to tidepool.    

 

I love stories like this: for one thing, they present a serious challenge to creationists who deny evolution by natural selection; and, secondly, they also challenge the green doom-mongering of eco-fanatics who insist global warming will spell the end of life on earth: it won't. 

 

Indeed, it could even be that, one day, in a far-off future, any remaining human beings not killed by ALZ-113 in the catastrophic Simian Flu Pandemic [5], will be hunted as prey not just by gorillas on horseback, but land-loving sharks able not merely to walk but run.

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Steven Salzburg, 'Scientists Have Re-Created The Deadly 1918 Flu Virus. Why?', Forbes (Aug 15, 2022): click here to read the article online.

 

[2] Gain-of-function research is the genetic enhancement of an organism such as a virus, in order to increase its transmissibility, for example, it's host range, or its deadliness. It's a form of research that therefore excites the interest of medical professionals hoping to better predict the behaviour of infectious diseases and better able to develop vaccines, and military chiefs concerned about (or keen to experiment with) bioweapons. Whilst not all GoF research is inherently dangerous, work on certain pathogens does have extremely worrying biosafety and biosecurity risks; that's why the United States, for example, is thought to outsource much of this work to labs in China (such as the Wuhan Institute of Virology).  

 

[3] As Salzburg is at pains to point out: "The 1918 flu disappeared from the natural world long ago - or to be more precise, it evolved into a much, much milder form of influenza. The deadly form that was recently re-created in several labs does not exist in nature today." 

      The threat that it now poses is entirely due to the work carried out by scientists over the last twenty years or so, based upon the original research of a team led by Jeffery Taubenberger and Ann Reid, who, having recovered pieces of the 1918 flu virus from human samples that had been frozen for nearly a century, figured out how to sequence the genome. 

 

[4] See Richard Luscombe's article in The Guardian, for example; 'Epaulette sharks able to walk on land evolving to better survive climate crisis', (23 August, 2022): click here to read online. 

[5] I'm referring here, of course, to the fictional flu pandemic which resulted in the near extinction of humanity in the American sci-fi movie Rise of the Planet of the Apes (dir. by Rupert Wyatt, 2011).  

From a Eureka Moment to the Crack-Up

A 16th-century illustration showing Archimedes 

in his bathtub

 

 

I. 

 

Eureka! is a transliteration from the ancient Greek word εὕρηκα, meaning I've found it! or I've got it! It is related to the term heuristic (i.e. a practical technique for problem-solving or self-discovery). 

 

It is said to have been cried by Archimedes in his bathtub, when he finally realised how to measure with precision the volume of irregular objects and thus determine the purity of gold. Either that, or when he finally got hold of the soap; not all scholars are agreed on what actually happened. 

 

I suppose if he'd been French, he'd have exclaimed Voila! If he'd been English, on the other hand, he might simply have shouted Aha! or Bingo! 

 

The point being that people everywhere and throughout human history have experienced those moments of sudden illumination when all becomes clear at last; what some modern people like to describe as lightbulb moments.  

 

 

II. 

 

Interesting as all this is, however, what really concerns me here is the possibility of an anti-eureka moment; that is to say, can one feel as if a light has suddenly been extinguished, leaving one bereft of bright ideas and plunged into the darkness of an intellectual and emotional void?    

 

I think so: and probably the Greeks had a word for it; for that fatal moment when one knows that one has lost it ... [1]

 

F. Scott Fitzgerald suggested that this resulted from an internal blow; one that "you don't feel until it is too late [...], until you realise with finality that in some regard you will never be as good a man again" [2].

 

That's kind of how I feel at the moment and, trust me, it doesn't make you want to run naked through the streets shouting excitedly. Having said that, there are times when losing the self matters more than finding oneself and, as Fitzgerald also pointed out: life is a process of breaking down ...

 

Notes

 

[1] Unfortunately, I don't know (or can't remember) what that word is. In Latin, the term desiderium describes (amongst other things) this feeling of loss (and the sense of shock and grief that one feels as a result of this loss). As for what it is, well, that's debatable; as is the question of whether we can ever really possess it. 

 

[2] F. Scott Fitzgerald, 'The Crack-Up', in The Crack-Up, ed. Edmund Wilson, (New Directions, 1945). The essay was first published in Esquire magazine in 1936 and was made available to read online in 2017: click here.  

Pot-au-feu

Illustration by Severo Pozzati (1957) 

used to advertise Maggi pot-au-feu beef cubes

 

Venez à moi, vous dont l’estomac crie misère, et je vous restaurerai!

 

 

Although English people are likely to answer frog legs (cuisses de grenouille), snails (escargot), or coq-au-vin if asked to name the French national dish, it is actually pot-au-feu (or boiled beef and carrots, as Harry Champion would have it) [1]. 

 

This hearty stew, made with simple ingredients, seasoned with herbs and thickened with marrowbone, is thought to encapsulate all that is best about Gallic cuisine and, indeed, French culture; i.e., it taps into the same mythology which Roland Barthes discussed with reference to a good steak and a full-bodied red wine [2].

 

Pot-au-feu, in other words, is for the French what a Sunday roast is to the English, or a Big Mac is to an American; character building and identity reaffirming. It's perhaps not surprising, therefore, that the dish has often featured in French literature, with bourgeois novelists keen to promote pot-au-feu as a symbol of the traditional values they feared were being eroded by modernism and political radicalism. 

 

As one commentator reminds us, Flaubert mocks this in Le Château des cœurs (1863): 

 

"A fantasy, set in the 'Kingdom of the Pot-au-feu', its sixth tableau depicts a huge cauldron of the dish being worshipped by a host of adoring bourgeois. The source of all their happiness, it stands for all that the middle classes hold dear: social and political conservatism, base materialism and narrow self-interest. Its influence is also terrifying. When the play's hero, Paul, refuses to taste the stew, he is taken prisoner and thrown into jail. In a final, horrifying twist, the cauldron rises up into the sky, growing ever larger, until it eventually blots out the sun and plunges the city into darkness." [3]

 

In his novel L’Assommoir (1877), Emile Zola also gives a shout out to pot-au-feu as one of life's simplest pleasures; as does Guy de Maupassant in La Parue (1884). 

 

But for Michel Houellebecq [4], one of the best descriptions in French literature of this robust but delicate dish is given by Joris-Karl Huysmans in Là-Bas (1891), where Durtal, a man disgusted by the modern world, lovingly inhales the aroma of "a peppery pot-au-feu, perfumed with a symphony of vegetables, of which the keynote was celery" [5].

 

I suppose this just goes to show that even Satanists enjoy a good stew served with a simple salad and washed down with cider, followed by cheese and wine.     

 

 

Notes

 

[1] 'Boiled Beef and Carrots' is a popular music hall song composed by Charles Collins and Fred Murray (1909). The song was made famous by Harry Champion, who sang it as part of his act and later recorded it. The song extols the virtues of a typical Cockney dish over adopting a vegetarian diet and living on the kind of food they give to parrots: click here.  

 

[2] See 'Wine and Milk' and 'Steak and Chips' in Roland Barthes, Mythologies, trans Annette Lavers, (The Noonday Press, 1991), pp. 58-61 and 62-64.

      In the first of these pieces, Barthes writes: "Wine is felt by the French nation to be a possession which is its very own, just like its three hundred and sixty types of cheese and its culture. It is a totem-drink ..." [58] And in the second: "Steak is a part of the same sanguine mythology as wine. It is the heart of meat, it is meat in its pure state; and whoever partakes of it assimilates a bull-like strength."[62]

 

[3] Alexander Lee, 'Pot-au-Feu, France's National Dish', History Today, Volume 68, Issue 10 (October 2018). This excellent piece can be read on line: click here. 

[4] See Michel Houellebecq, discussing pot-au-feu as a French ideal in an interview with Marin De Viry and Valérie Toranian. Originally published in the Revue des duex mondes (July, 2015), it can be found in Interventions 2020, trans. Andrew Brown, (Polity Press, 2022), pp. 172-195. 

      As Houellebecq rightly says: "No other dish can boast such a literary past; there's no equivalent for the boeuf bourguignon or the blanquette." [174]

 

[5] Joris-Karl Huysmans, Là-Bas (1891), Chapter V. I am quoting from the English translation by Keene Wallace (1928), which is available on line as an ebook thanks to Project Gutenberg: click here. 

      Food is a central concern throughout Huysmans's work; for a discussion of this, see the MA dissertation by Laura Shine, 'De la pitance indigeste au divin pot-au-feu: la quête du bon repas comme thème dans l’œuvre de Joris-Karl Huysmans', (Université de Montréal, 2013): click here. 

When Marlene Dietrich Met Marilyn Monroe

Blue Angel meets Blonde Bombshell

 

 

I.

 

In a fascinating series of photos taken at a New York party in 1955 [1] - four of which are reproduced above - there are no obvious signs of animosity between der blaue Engel Marlene Dietrich and American blonde bombshell Marilyn Monroe. 

 

However, if I may use a rather old-fashioned - some would say sexist - term to describe what amongst men might be regarded as healthy competitiveness, Dietrich had, prior to this meeting, been somewhat catty about Monroe, displaying the jealousy of an older woman who knows she is no longer queen of the silver screen [2].

 

As revealed in a snippet of gossip in the June '73 issue of Andy Warhol's Interview magazine, Dietrich had attended a screening of one of Monroe's earlier films and rudely talked throughout her scenes, at one point sneering in her distinctive German accent: 'So this is what they want now; this is what they call sexy!' [3]    

 

One rather wishes that someone had had the courage to turn and shush Dietrich, or to tell her: 

 

'Yes, this is what we want now and this is what we call sexy: a woman who is proud of her curves and femininity and has no interest in appearing androgynous; a woman who looks like she has stepped out of the pages of Playboy, rather than off stage from the Berlin cabaret in the 1920s.'

 

 

II. 

 

Funny enough, a couple of years after the photos taken in New York, Monroe was offered the lead in a proposed remake of The Blue Angel - i.e., the film which had made Dietrich an international star almost thirty years earlier [4]. 

 

Sadly, the project was abandoned. However, in 1958 Monroe would recreate the character of naughty Lola, striking her classic pose reclining on a barrel with her one leg elevated, in an astonishing photo by Richard Avedon [5].

 

 

 

I don't know what Dietrich made of this photo - or indeed if she ever saw it (Monroe asked Avedon not to use the image and it remained unpublished for many years after her death in 1962). 

 

It's worth noting in closing, however, that Dietrich did acknowledge in her autobiography that Monroe was an authentic sex symbol, not only by nature, but by inclination; i.e., she liked being an object of desire and it showed in everything she did [6]. 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] The party followed a press conference called by Marilyn's business partner, the photographer Milton Greene, to announce the formation of their new company Marilyn Monroe Productions. It was Greene, who had worked with Dietrich in the past, who invited the latter to attend and to meet Monroe. 

 

[2] Of course, Monroe was no angel and could also be catty when she wanted. Thus it was that the photographer Eve Arnold remembered Marilyn once telling her how much she loved some pictures taken of Dietrich for Esquire magazine in 1952, before then adding: 'If you could do that well with Marlene, just imagine what you could do with me.'   

      Arnold would in fact photograph Monroe on several occasions and produce thousands of images. The best of these can be found in her book, Marilyn Monroe: An Appreciation, (Alfred A. Knopf, 1987). 

 

[3] See Evalena Labayen, 'That Time Marlene Dietrich Threw Shade at Marilyn Monroe', Interview (8 October, 2019): click here.

 

[4] The Blue Angel - or, in German, Der blaue Engel - is a 1930 musical comedy-drama, dir. Josef von Sternberg, and starring Marlene Dietrich as Lola. As well as bringing her global fame, it also gave Dietrich what would become her signature song; Friedrich Hollaender's 'Ich bin von Kopf bis Fuß auf Liebe eingestellt' - or, as it is known in English, 'Falling in Love Again' - click here.      

 

[5] As one commentator also reminds us:  

      "Marilyn would take a leaf out of Marlene's playbook again in 1962, asking costumer Jean Louis to recreate the beaded 'nude' dress he had made for Dietrich to wear during nightclub performances. Monroe's version became immortalised that May, when she sang 'Happy Birthday Mr President' to John F. Kennedy at Madison Square Garden." 

      See Marina72, 'When Marilyn Met Marlene', on the Everlasting Star blog (11 Oct 2019): click here.

 

[6] See Marlene Dietrich, Marlene, (Grove Press, 1987). Note that a more recent edition was published in 2018. 

 

 

For a sister post to this one - Marlene meets ... Edith Piaf - click here.

 

 

When Marlene Dietrich Met Édith Piaf

Der blaue Engel embracing la Môme Piaf

 

 

German-born actress and singer Marlene Dietrich first met French chanteuse Édith Piaf in the ladies' bathroom of a New York nightclub, in the 1940s. 

 

The latter had just come off stage and was upset by the cool and somewhat bemused reaction of the audience. Dietrich - already a huge star in America - was quick to reassure the Little Sparrow and decided to take her under her angel's wing. 

 

With Dietrich's encouragement, Piaf quickly established herself in the US (despite her reluctance to sing in English) and although separated by a fourteen-year age gap and wildly contrasting personalities [1], it was the beginning of a long and beautiful friendship between the two women.

 

Indeed, there is textual evidence to suggest that, in the early years at least, it was perhaps rather more than simply a friendship in the platonic sense and that Dietrich regarded Piaf as an honorary member of what she termed the Sewing Circle [2].  

 

I read somewhere that this claim often upsets or irritates some fans of Piaf. For whilst they are pleased that she has iconic status within the queer and lesbian community, they insist that Piaf warrants such purely on the basis of her unique talent as a performer and strength as a woman - and not because she (allegedly) had secret bisexual tendencies.

 

Fans of Dietrich, on the other hand, are delighted by the story of a romance between Marlene and Édith; it simply adds to her image as someone who wilfully defied sexual norms and gender roles; someone who, in the early 1930s, for example, had an affair with the notorious lesbian Mercedes de Acosta, who openly boasted of her sapphic power to seduce any woman away from any man (including Rudolf Sieber).       

 

Notes

 

[1] Although sharing the same birth month of December, Dietrich and Piaf had different star signs: the latter, born on December 19th, was Sagittarius (emotional, impetuous, fearless, etc.); the former, born on December 27th, was Capricorn (haughty and erudite; the sort of woman able to elevate style to an art form, yet remain practical and down to earth).

 

[2] The Sewing Circle was a secret group of Hollywood women from which Dietrich allegedly drew several of her lesbian lovers. Members included Tallulah Bankhead, Claudette Colbert, Joan Crawford, Lili Damita, Greta Garbo, Myrna Loy, Agnes Moorehead, and Dolores del Río (the latter considered by Dietrich to be the most beautiful woman in Hollywood).

      See Axel Madsen, The Sewing Circle: Hollywood's Greatest Secret - Female Stars Who Loved Other Women, (Citadel Press, 1996). 

 

 

For a sister post to this one - Marlene meets ... Marilyn Monroe - click here.

 

 

Maria Tănase: The Nightingale of Bucharest

Maria Tănase (1913-1963)

 

"He who betrays love will be punished by God ..."

 

 

Whenever the Little Greek travels to Romania, her name always causes a bit of a stir, reminding the natives as it does of the still much-loved singer and actress Maria Tănase, the so-called nightingale of Bucharest ... [1]  

 

Performing both traditional folk songs and more modern numbers, Maria Tănase was as significant a cultural icon in her homeland as Édith Piaf in France and during her thirty-year career she was admired for her talent, her beauty, and her unique charisma [2].  

 

Rising to fame in the mid-1930s, she represented Romania at the World's Fair in New York in 1939, and things seemed to be going swell.  

 

However, the following year saw the establishment of the National Legionary State in her native Romania; a fascist regime mostly composed of members of the ultra-nationist, anti-communist and anti-Semitic Iron Guard. Maria was banned from performing and her radio recordings were marked for destruction (she was seen as too cosmopolitan and liberal in her outlook). 

 

Fortunately, these idiots only ruled for several months and Maria was soon back on stage entertaining the troops and government bigwigs. Post-War, she developed her career as an actress and toured widely, making many trips to the United States. 

 

Sadly, in 1963, three months shy her 50th birthday, she died of lung cancer and was buried at the Bellu Cemetery in Bucharest. Hundreds of thousands of people filled the streets for her funeral and she received many posthumous awards, including the honorary title Artistă Emerită for her contribution to Romanian life and culture.       

 

Her legacy lives on: in 2013, for example, Pink Martini named Maria Tănase one of their major inspirations and Google Romania marked what would have been her 100th birthday (25 September) with a doodle of her on their home page. Despite this, I must confess I remain almost entirely ignorant of the nearly 400 songs that comprise her musical repertoire. 

 

Fortunately, however, my next door neighbours are from Moldova and they tell me that the following six songs are particularly well-known and loved by her fans: Am iubit și-am să iubesc, Aseară ți-am luat basma, Cine iubește și lasă, Ciuleandra, Mărie și Mărioară, and Până când nu te iubeam [2].

 

Notes

 

[1] The surname Tănase is common in Romania and derives from the ancient Greek name Athanasios. The Little Greek's surname, Thanassa, would seem to be related, though whereas the former means immortality, the latter spells death.   

 

[2] To listen to one of these songs - Ciuleandra (a folk dance song from Muntenia, which starts slowly but picks up pace and seems crazy enough that it might have appealed to Malcolm McLaren in his Duck Rock period) - click here. 

B is for ... Baudelaire, Bataille, Barthes, and Baudrillard

B is for ... 

Baudelaire, Bataille, Barthes, and Baudrillard

 

 

There are many French things that I love beginning with the letter B - from a big bowl of bouillabaisse served with crusty baguette slices, to Brigitte Bardot on the beach in her bikini [1]. 

 

Even four of my favourite French writers have surnames beginning with the letter B - Messrs. Baudelaire, Bataille, Barthes and Baudrillard - and this perhaps explains why it is that I can never think of one without also thinking of the others [2].  

Obviously, as a 19th century poet and critic, Baudelaire knew nothing of those who came a century after him. But it might be interesting to briefly recall what Bataille, Barthes, and Baudrillard said about the author of Les Fleurs du mal ... 

 

 

Bataille on Baudelaire (Désirer l'impossible) 

 

In his essay on Baudelaire in La Littérature et la Mal (1957), Bataille says that the former desired the impossible as a response to the utilitarian demand that we be reasonable as well as make ourselves useful. It is in this desire for the impossible and a useless expenditure of energy, that man discovers his authenticity and poetry locates its task. 

 

This, of course, is a Romantic vision; but it is one that Bataille in his own quest for the impossible - i.e., a simultaneity of contrary experiences - continues and yet exceeds. 

 

 

Barthes on Baudelaire (La Vérité emphatique du geste)

 

Whilst it's true that he only produced one sustained piece of writing on Baudelaire - and this on a relatively marginal aspect of the latter's work, namely, his failed theatrical projects - Baudelaire nevertheless remains a point of reference throughout Barthes's oeuvre. 

 

Indeed, as one commentator has recently pointed out, the phrase quoted from Baudelaire's Exposition Universelle (1855) concerning 'the emphatic truth of the gesture in the important moments of life' is one that "punctuates Barthes's published work throughout, from one of his earliest essays to his very last book on photography, and is closely associated with another persistently recurring motif: the concept of numen, a term used to designate a static gesture expressing divine authority" [3]. 

 

Baudrillard on Baudelaire (L'Objectivation absolue de l'art)

 

By his own admission, Baudrillard's relationship with the world of art has always been one marked by a certain ambivalence: "I come from a moralist, metaphysical tradition, a political and ideological tradition that has always been wary of art and culture in general [...]" [4]

Nevertheless, he is obviously interested in how art from Baudelaire to Warhol has been involved in staging its own disappearance and meeting the challenge posed to it not only by an age of mechanical reproduction, but by consumer capitalism which turns everything into merchandise (i.e., objectifying everything in terms of market value).

 

It was Baudelaire, says Baudrillard, who first came up with a radical solution to this problem. Instead of offering a defence of the traditional status of the work of art based on aesthetic value and seeking art's salvation in and on its own terms - art for art's sake - Baudelaire calls for an acceleration of the processes unfolding within modernity and for art's absolue objectification:

 

"Since aes­thetic value risks alienation from commodity, instead of avoiding alienation, art had to go farther in alienation and fight commodity with its own weapons. Art had to follow the inescapable paths of commodity indifference and equivalence to make the work of art an absolute commodity." [5]

      

This, says Baudrillard, is what a work of art should be; "it should take on the characteristics of shock, strangeness, surprise, anxiety, liquidity and even self-destruction, instantaneity and unreality that are found in commodities" [6]. 

 

The reason Baudelaire still interests and seems so relevant today is not because of his poetry, but because via his ironic logic the work of art was able to sparkle in its own venality and become "a pure object of marvellous commutability" [7].   

 

 

Notes

[1] Readers may recall that I wrote about the history and politics of the bikini in a post published in August 2016, which was illustrated with a photo of 19-year-old Bardot wearing her two-piece swimsuit on the beach at Cannes in 1953: click here.

[2] Of course, there are other reasons apart from an onomatological coincidence as to why these four writers are closely related and it would make for an interesting philosophical and literary study to trace out their shared ideas and concerns.   

 

[3] Douglas Smith, '"La Vérité emphatique du geste dans les grandes circonstances de la vie": Baudelaire, Barthes and the Hysterical Gesture', Irish Journal of French Studies, Vol. 21 (2021), pp. 99-121.  

      In this essay, Smith examines the significance of Baudelaire for Barthes and attempts to answer the question of what that might tell us in turn about the former. He does this by tracing out the manner in which Barthes deploys the quotation from Exposition Universelle and by paying particular attention "on the value to be attributed to exaggeration or excess in the communication of meaning through gesture and language, a phenomenon that both Barthes and Baudelaire associate with hysteria, as either something to be ironically assumed (Baudelaire) or ambivalently exorcized (Barthes)". 

 

[4-6] Jean Baudrillard, 'Simulation and Transaesthetics: Towards the Vanishing Point of Art', International Journal of Baudrillard Studies, Volume 5, Number 2 (July, 2008): click here to read online. 

      This paper was given as a lecture at the Whitney Museum (New York) in 1987. It also appears in Jean Baudrillard, The Conspiracy of Art: Manifestos, Interviews, Essays, ed. Sylvère Lotringer, (Semiotext(e) / MIT Press, 2005), pp. 98-110.

 

Yves Montand and the Drowned Woman (La Noyée)

Yves Montand and Edith Piaf in Étoile sans lumière 

(dir. Marcel Blistène, 1946) 

 

Tu t'en vas à la dérive / Sur la rivière du souvenir 

Et moi, courant sur la rive / Je te crie de revenir

 

 

I.

 

Although the singer and actor Yves Montand grew up in a poor suburb of Marseille, he was actually Italian by birth (his father - a committed communist - and his mother - a devout Catholic - decided to abandon their homeland in 1923, rather than live under Mussolini).

After working at a pasta factory, then in his sister's beauty salon, and then on the docks, the young man decided to try and build a professional career as a chanteur in the music halls of Paris where, in 1944, he had the good fortune to be spotted by Édith Piaf, who, charmed by his voice and good looks, invited him to become her protégé - and her lover. 

 

 

II. 

 

Six years older than Montand, Mme. Piaf knew a thing or two about life and how to succeed in showbiz. She it was who convinced Montand to drop his cowboy image and adopt a more romantic repertoire of songs. Critics responded enthusiastically and he was soon being hailed as a new star of the French music scene.

 

Sadly, Montand's romantic relationship with the little sparrow was relatively short-lived, Piaf ending the affair by letter:

 

Yves, we both knew it had to end one day between us and I had known for a long time that we were not made for each other. Forgive the pain I caused you. But be reassured that mine is even greater.  

 

Despite the break-up, however, Piaf continued to support Montand professionally. 

 

In 1946, for example, she helped him land his first screen role, appearing alongside her in Étoile sans lumiere [1] and, the following year, she wrote the lyrics to the amusing love song 'Mais qu'est-ce que j'ai?' in memory of their time together: click here [2]. 

  

'Mais qu'est-ce que j'ai?' is not the only song inspired by the Montand-Piaf relationship, however. There's another, equally beautiful - but much, much darker - song written by Serge Gainsbourg many years later, entitled 'La noyée'. 

 

Apparently, Gainsbourg offered the song to Montand, but the latter turned it down: I don't know why. Perhaps there are some songs that are just too painful to record ... 

 

Indeed, it might be noted that even Gainsbourg's version of 'La noyée' - which he performed live on TV in November 1972, accompanied by Jean-Claude Vannier on piano - was only released posthumously as a single in 1994 [3].    

 

 

Notes

 

[1] In this same year, 1946, Montand also starred in the musical Les Portes de la nuit (dir. Marcel Carné) which, although a box office flop, provided him with the song with which he is still associated today; Jacques Prévert's 'Les feuilles mortes': click here.    

 

[2] Known in English as 'But What Do I Have?' this 1947 chanson by Yves Montand (composed by Henri Betti, with lyrics by Édith Piaf) arguably anticipates the classic punk single written by Pete Shelly of the Buzzcocks and released thirty years later, 'What Do I Get?': click here.

 

[3] To watch Serge Gainsbourg's performance of 'La noyée' on Samedi Loisirs (4 Nov. 1972), click here.

      I'm told by someone who knows this kind of thing, that the song was used in the film Romance of a Horsethief (dir. Abraham Polonsky, 1971), but was not included on the film's official soundtrack. The same person also tells me that the star of the film, Yul Brynner, would later become godfather to the daughter - Charlotte - of his co-stars Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin.  

 

 

Για τη Μαρία στην ονομαστική της εορτή

Requiem pour un con (Was Jacques Prévert a Jerk?)

Jacques Prévert: Je ne suis pas un con!

 

 

I. 

 

One of the idiomatic expressions that I hate most is: It takes one to know one. 

 

Used by someone who wishes to point out that what they're accused of being is something which also characterises the accuser, it seems a particularly lame form of comeback; the sort of childish retort that only an individual lacking in wit or intelligence would say.    

 

However, I have to admit that when I first read the title of Michel Houellebecq's short piece 'Jacques Prévert is a jerk' [a] this was the first thing that came to mind, and, having now read the text, I'm still not convinced this is a fair thing to call one of France's most celebrated poets and screenwriters. 

 

 

II. 

 

Just to be clear: I'm not a devoted reader of M. Prévert, nor particularly knowledgeable about his life. But I do like some of the verses in Paroles (1946), particularly 'Déjeuner du matin' - Il a mis le café / Dans la tasse ...etc. [b] 

 

That certain intellectuals often looked down on Prévert (and his sentimentalité as they saw it) only makes me admire him a little bit more. As does the fact that he infuriated André Breton, by describing him as the high priest or pope of Surrealism after the latter expelled him from the group for not taking art seriously enough.    

 

Further, Prévert should be admired for writing against the collaborationist Vichy government during the War years, helping Jewish friends, and relaying messages for members of the Resistance, whilst never belonging to any political party himself, or feeling the need to posture like some of his contemporaries who trumpeted their own activities and commitments.    

 

 

III.

 

So, what exactly is Houllebecq's problem with Prévert? 

 

Well, in a nutshell, he seems to resent the latter's enormous success and blame him for the "repulsive poetic realism" which "continues to wreak havoc" upon French cinema. 

 

Houellebecq writes:

 

"Jacques Prévert is someone whose poems you learn at school. It turns out that he loved flowers, birds, the neighbourhoods of old Paris, etc. He felt that love blossomed in an atmosphere of freedom [...] He wore a cap and smoked Gauloises [...] Also, he was the one who wrote the screenplay for Quai des brumes, Portes de la nuit, etc. He also wrote the screenplay for Les Enfants du paradis, considered to be his masterpiece. All of these are so many good reasons for hating Jacques Prévert - especially if you read the scripts that Antonin Artaud was writing at the same time, which were never filmed."       

 

Nor does Houellebecq care for the optimism which Prévert displays in his work; "faith in the future, and a certain amount of bullshit" which is, he says, boundlessly stupid and nauseating at times. Better off, he suggests, embracing Emil Cioran's pessimism. 

 

Push comes to shove, I don't disagree with this, but that needn't prevent one from listening to Yves Montand sing 'Les Feuilles mortes'. For as even Houellebecq concedes, we all need something to relax to ...    

 

And if Prévert's lyrics are a bit sickly sweet and his pun-ridden poetry mediocre - "so much so that one sometimes feels a sort of shame when reading it" - surely that just makes him a bad writer, not necessarily un con as Houellebecq says. However, the latter is insistent on this point and so I shall give him the last word:     

"If Prévert is a bad poet, this is mainly because his vision of the world is commonplace, superficial and false. It was already false in his own time; today its inanity is so glaring that the entire work seems to be the expansion of one gigantic cliché. On the philosophical and political level, Jacques Prévert is above all a libertarian; in other words, basically an idiot."

Notes

 

[a] This text by Michel Houellebecq was first published as 'Jacques Prévert est un con' in Lettres françaises, No. 22 (July 1992). I am using the English translation by Andrew Brown that appears in Interventions 2020, (Polity Press, 2022), pp. 1-3, even though I'm not entirely happy with the translation of the French term con with the (American-sounding) word jerk. 

 

[b] The English version of this poem, 'Breakfast', can be found in Jacques Prévert, Paroles, trans. Lawrence Ferlinghetti, (City Lights Publishers, 2001). Or click here to read on hellopoetry.com 

 

 

Musical bonus number one: Serge Gainsbourg, 'La Chanson de Prévert', from the album L'Étonnant Serge Gainsbourg (1961).       One of Gainsbourg's most popular songs, it was inspired by 'Les Feuilles mortes', written by Jacques Prévert and Joseph Kosma, for the film Les Portes de la nuit (dir. Marcel Carné, 1946). Click here for the 2014 remastered version.

 

Musical bonus number two: Serge Gainsbourg, 'Requiem pour un con', released as a single in 1968 from the soundtrack to the film Le Pacha (dir. Georges Lautner, 1968), it caused a good deal of fuss at the time, with censors judging the lyrics obscene and scandalous. 

      There's no reason to imagine that the track was inspired by Jacques Prévert, but the title of Michel Houellebecq's critique of the latter obvioulsy makes one think of this song. Click here for the original '68 version and/or here for the 1991 remix.    

 

 

Ce billet a été écrit avec l'aide de Sophie Stas à qui je suis reconnaissant. 

 

 

Les filles sucettes

Les filles sucettes: 

Barbie Gaye, Millie Small, and France Gall

I. 

 

My Boy Lollipop is a somewhat irritating song first recorded in 1956 by 14-year-old American singer Barbie Gaye, as a kind of R&B shuffle: click here.

 

The version that is better known today, however, was the one released in 1964 by 16-year-old Jamaican singer Millie Small, and which has a bluebeat ska rhythm: click here. 

 

Whereas Barbie Gaye's single was only a minor hit, Millie's reached number two in the charts in both the UK and US and sold over seven million copies worldwide.   

 

 

II. 

 

Whether Serge Gainsbourg was inspired by the above to compose his own paean to the lollipop and the girls who like to suck them, I don't know. But Les sucettes, famously recorded by France Gall in 1966 - a year after she'd won the Eurovision Song Contest with another Gainsbourg ditty (Poupée de cire, poupée de son) - was a far superior - and far more sexually suggestive - number.

 

For although Les sucettes was seemingly just a simple yé-yé style song about a young girl, Annie, who likes aniseed flavoured lollipops, Gainsbourg makes it fairly obvious via his lyrical inventiveness that the song is about fellatio; that's not barley sugar she's swallowing. 

 

Mlle. Gall, despite being eighteen at the time - so somewhat older than either Barbie Gaye or Millie Small - insisted that she was entirely unaware of this fact. She had sung it, she said, avec une innocence dont je suis fier, and later confessed to feeling betrayed by those around her who had been complicit in her humiliation. 

 

However, although she refused to sing Les sucettes after discovering its (not so) secret meaning, she continued to work with Gainsbourg, who wrote several of her most memorable - if increasingly odd - songs, including Teenie Weenie Boppie, which was about a deadly LSD trip involving Mick Jagger.   

 

Readers who click here can enjoy a music video for Les sucettes directed by Jean-Christophe Averty for the TV show Au risque de vous plaire, which features phallic-shaped lollipops, intercut with various young women suggestively sucking on them [1].

 

Alternatively, readers who click here can watch the song being performed as a touching - if slightly pervy - duet by an angelic France Gall and a diabolic Serge Gainsbourg [2].

 

 

Notes

 

[1] A remastered version of the video for Les sucettes was made in 2017. The following year, HMGS created a short looped film with material edited from this video, emphasising the oral-erotic aspect of the song, and uploaded it to coup.com: click here.

 

[2] Gainsbourg later recorded his own version of Les sucettes with a slightly psychedelic arrangement (by Arthur Greenslade), which can be found on the album Jane Birkin / Serge Gainsbourg (1969): click here.