The following pages list some singular terms in a love dictionary: terms representative of his thought, improbable phrases, allegorical and mythological invocations, an illustrated primer of the Brassens dialect..
The author of The Pornographe
(1958) wrote in this song:
Aujourd’hui que mon gagne-pain
C’est d’parler comme unturlupin,
Je n’pense plus « merde », pardi !
Mais je le dis.
In the Middle Ages, Turlupin
was the name given to members of a community that spread through France, Germany and the Netherlands, self-proclaimed brothers and sisters of the free spirit. Their rebellion against the established church and their ways of life (nudity, free love, opposition to established ecclesiastical powers) advocated an ideal of poverty. According to this doctrine of the Free Spirit, it is by freeing oneself from all obstacles and from the superfluous that one could know bliss from earthly life. A spiritual licentiousness where charity merges with carnal love, and which was consumed without restriction within the brotherhood.
A few centuries later, the word turlupin
has evolved and no longer concerns anyone whose writings or words are of dubious, grotesque taste. But in our Sète poet, we find this old form of free spirit carried over the shoulder. And his livelihood, which he offers us as an inheritance, lights us up like a lightship.
The jabs, which he unleashes in bursts, well deserved a glossary, an arsenal of benevolent glosses. And to clarify a turn or an obscure image, a few comments highlighted, mirroring the excerpts of songs from which they come, rather than exiled, repressed at the end of the book.
Song was the very first form of poetry and literature. The Iliad and the Odyssey, dear to the prank of the song, are moreover divided into songs and not into chapters. Thus, poetry is born from orality. As Paul Valéry, the other great poet from Sète, writes, "for a long time, the human voice was the basis and condition of literature".
The script writing used in this collection comes from Brassens' own handwriting. Drawn from the manuscripts of his poems, this typography wishes to revive this voice of which his friend René Fallet wrote that
“it pierces the croaking of all these frogs from the record and elsewhere. A voice in the form of a black flag, a dress drying in the sun, a punch on the kepi, a voice that goes to strawberries, to a fight and… to the hunt for butterflies…”
Jean-Renaud Cuaz
Various flatteries from our readers
Un excellent livre qui sort des sentiers battus, des poncifs et des images toutes faites. Une analyse amusante du vocabulaire, du génie et de la poésie de Brassens par un amoureux du verbe et des sons.
Il fallait y penser et il fallait oser décrypter tous les textes pour y trouver les références les plus secrètes de l'auteur. Jean-Renaud Cuaz s'y emploie de façon ludique, comme s'il faisait une simple promenade à travers les mots, les moins usités et les plus imagés de la langue française, ceux qui déclenchaient, en les employant, sous sa moustache en broussaille, le fameux sourire complice et coquin de celui qui vient de faire un bon tour...
YVES MARCHAND, ancien Député-Maire de Sète
Compagnons de la réjouissance,
Frappez-vous d’allégresse la panse,
De cajoler un ouvrage bien tanné,
Qui revigore le langage suranné.
Gagnez sans plus tarder l’habitacle,
Chaussez, ajustez vos bésicles,
Foulez aux pieds les pâles écrans,
Nourrissez-vous de ce jargon d’antan
Par la confrérie des gueux regroupé
Et gardez-vous bien des cachots épais.
FRANÇOIS VILLON (1431 – 1463 ?)
Amis lecteurs, qui ce livre lisez,
Dépouillez-vous de toute affection ;
Et le lisant ne vous scandalisez.
Il ne contient mal ni infection.
Vrai est qu’ici peu de perfection
Vous apprendrez, si non en cas de rire :
Autre argument ne peut mon coeur élire.
Voyant le deuil qui vous mine et consomme,
Mieux est de ris que de larmes écrire :
Pour ce que rire est le propre de l’homme.
FRANÇOIS RABELAIS (1483 ou 1494 – 1553)