Lyrics: The committed work of Jacques Prévert
Paroles is a poetic work, a collection of 95 poems (written between 1930 and 1944) published in 1946, and finally late enough since most of its texts were exchanged, recited, among friends and initiated for years.
It is the best-selling collection of poems to date (more than two million copies) whose original edition with an urban graffiti photographed by Brassaï marks the passion of Jacques Prévert throughout his life for the arts, and all the new processes of expressions and creation, including Surrealism.
This movement of artistic contestation of which he made part before breaking with André Breton greatly influenced his work, as much by the syntactic and stylistic diversity of his poems as by the themes he denounced, among which we find the violence, war, bourgeois politics, religion ...
Barbara
What bullshit war
What have you become now
In this rain of iron
Blood Steel Fire
And the one who hugged you
lovingly
Is he dead or still alive
The dunce : Jacques Prévert a popular poet
A large part of his poetic work, in prose or free verse, is accessible to the youngest, with texts full of humor and humanity, small daily sketches in the form of poems that all French students have at least learned once in their life.
In the movement of folk art, Jacques Prévert, like photographer Robert Doisneau, exudes with humor and tenderness the everyday scenes. It is said that he "braches the unexpected, the dream ..." and is moved in his texts by the simple beauty of the world, a child, a bird ... Universal popular poems for children and adults.
The dunce
And despite the master's threats
Under the boos of the prodigious children
With chalks of all colors
On the blackboard of misfortune
He draws the face of happiness
I am like me : Jacques Prévert loves women
he may even be the most feminist of the poets of his time. In his poem "I am like I am" as in his scenarios (co-writer Marcel Aymé) he sees women with amazing freedom for the time: they often had lovers before meeting the one they love, dare to express their desire, do not want to be caged and oppose family and social oppression.
I am what I am
I am made to please
And can not change anything
My lips are too red
My teeth too tidy
My complexion is much too bright
My hair too dark
And then after?
What can it do to you?
I am what I am
I like who I like
I am what I am
I'm made like this
The dead leaves : Jacques Prévert chansonnier
Some of Prevert's poems will be transformed into music - among the most beautiful songs in the French repertoire - which explains in part his extreme popularity ...
On returning from an Eastern European trip, he met Joseph Kosma, a poor musician from Budapest:
"He puts music on the exclamation points," Prévert writes.
At St Germain des Prés, which bubbles in the 1950s, the texts of Prévert are indeed in fashion. Interpreters such as Mouloudji, Les Frères Jacques, Juliette Gréco, Yves Montand and many others will take the Leaves dead ...
Dead leaves
The dead leaves are picked up by the shovel,
You see I have not forgotten.
The dead leaves are picked up by the shovel,
Memories and regrets too ...
Jacques Prévert who deserted the Flora and fauna of Saint Germain des Prés to settle in Saint-Paul de Vence (in 1945), was an artist in a boil, always ready to explore other forms of artistic expression, such as the cinema, the collage ...
Picasso, who had a particular admiration for these collages, said to his friend: "You do not know how to draw, you can not paint, but you are a painter!"
