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Song Of The French Partisan |
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Version française-
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- Here is a page devoted to a historical song covered by
Leonard Cohen in his album "Songs from a Room": "The Partisan",
sometimes called "The song of the French partisan".
This song is actually an adaptation from "La complainte
du partisan", written in London during 1943, by Emmanuel D'Astier de la Vigerie
(called "Bernard" in the French Resistance) and Anna Marly.
- I suggest our French visitors click on the following RA to
hear Claude Dauphin give his historical comments about this song's story.
Intro by Claude Dauphin, Real-Audio G2
From LP "L'encyclopédie sonore : Les
chants de la Résistance et de la Libération"; Librairie Hachette 320 E 847.
This song was really a survivor of the German bombing, and became a popular tune in the
50's in French-speaking countries.
It is now less famous than its almost
homonymous "Chant des partisans" by J. Kessel and M. Druon. This last one was
notably made "re-fashionable" by the André Malraux's speech during the transfer
of Jean Moulin' ashes in the Panthéon of Paris.
Finally, Leonard Cohen gave the
"complainte" a new life in 1969 with his "Partisan". Hy Zaret was the
first to apply for a copyright (via the editor Raoul Breton) for the d'Astier-Marly song.
- He heard the song on the BBC waves; maybe the radio
broadcast didn't give him the name of the lyric writer, but only Marly's name, who wrote
the music and gave the original performance. It's probably for this reason that only Zaret
(for the English adaptation) and Marly (for music and French lyrics) were credited.
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- Finally, and as it can be read in Anna Prucnal 's LP
"Avec Amour", the actual credit is:
Original : La complainte du Partisan
paroles: Emmanuel d'Astier de la Vigerie also undernamed "Bernard"
musique: Anna Marly
Leonard 's cover : The (song of the French) Partisan
paroles : E. d'Astier de la Vigerie, adaptation Hy Zaret
musique : Anna Marly
Ed. Raoul Breton.
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- More about Anna Marly
here.
- (thanks to Philip Buchanan)
We can also note that a stanza is missing in Zaret's version compared to the
original (see the bottom of this page for the complete lyrics of the two versions). - Here is the missing stanza:
Personne ne m'a demandé
D'où je viens et où je vais
Vous qui le savez
Effacez mon passage.
Joan Baez sings it in her performances:
No one ever asks me
Who I am or where I'm going
But those of you who know
You cover up my footprints.
- Leonard said that the song was often sung during the
youthcamps he participated in.
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- We learn in some biographies that Leonard knew this song by
reading The People's Songbook. in 1950 at Sunshine Camp.
- Later, Leonard said "Une idée curieuse s'est un jour formée en moi, je me suis dit
que les nazis ont été renversés par la musique
".
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Leonard's cover was a great success in the 70's and, as far as I know, two other
singers followed in the rebirth of this song: Isabelle Aubret (see section
"Reprises") and Esther Ofarim, winners of the "Eurovision contest".
Aubret's record claimed this strange legacy, forgetting history: "Isabelle
Aubret sings the international successful song of Leonard Cohen."
Esther Ofarim's version is the most beautiful I've heard, especially with regard
to the musical arrangements, which gave us back the "wind blowing through the
graves" and wartime sirens.
- Joan Baez gave us her version in 1972 ("Come From the Shadows", A&M
records AMLH 64339). The album title was picked from the last stanza of our song.
Joan's version is greatly modified, especially by reintroducing the missing stanza
No one ever asks me
Who i am or where i'm going
But those of you who know
You cover up my footprints.-
Leonard sung it during his Warsaw gig in 1985, the last verse in French
("effacez mon passage").
Joan also changed one verse, changing "I took my gun and vanished" to "Into
the hills I vanished"; it is not surprising that our "Peace struggle
passionnaria" threw that "gun" away.
- A stanza is added at the end of the song, in Greek, a hommage to Greek
democrates, and especially Mélina Mercouri. The song is in fact dedicated to her.
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Copyright : 1974
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Unrecorded album
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- Buffy Sainte-Marie's version (LP 30 cm Vanguard 519 034, "She Used to
Wanna Be a Ballerina") is more "native", wilder than Joan's. As in Marly's
original performance, listeners feel as if they are sitting in front a firecamp, with a
lonely partisan and her guitar. Buffy brings the whistle back to the beginning and the end
of the song, and also makes some changes in the
lyrics:
J'ai changé cent fois de nom
J'ai perdu femme et enfants
Mais j'ai tant d'amis
J'ai le ciel entier
- instead of "La France entière".
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- This is a mighty mystic vision of the partisan; thus, Buffy envisioned the whole
of humanity in the fight of the partisan's struggle, whether male or female.
I've changed my name so often
I've lost my man and children... instead of "my wife"....
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"Partisan" as a name has no gender, neither in French nor English. After all
this "complaint" is more a human song than a warrior song; and indeed, in all
countries oppressed, resistance is not a matter of sex, but includes both men and women.
And a woman was chosen to be the historical singer.
So, "The Partisan", in an humbler way than "Le chant des partisans",
finally comes to us via a road full of the stuff legendary songs are made of. After
surviving the fate of an oral tradition tune (thanks to RAF agility), the song then had to
survive an orphanage, recovering its first authors, not always credited and still
obscured.
- It has a nature less martial, less bloody than "Le chant des
partisans". The title itself shows the difference: "Le chant des partisans"
is a song for a corpse, an army, a song of emulation (a remix song based on it had
great success in 1998 in France "Motivés,Motivés") which was created to help
in the unification of the many French Resistance networks (explaining the choice of this
song as a hommage to Jean Moulin, the leading of National Council of Resistance).
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- "La Complainte du Partisan" is on the contrary a song of a human being
confronted with his own pain, hope and certitudes; it's a song that poets and singers want
to appropriate for they find in it a breathe that might in a way justify their work. And
they don't miss this opportunity, you read and heard it! Joan, Buffy, and many other
folksingers, got out of it what they put in it in the first place.
Daiano, the Italian coverist, used in the same
way the song, singing "The whole Italy is beside me" instead of "The
whole France is beside me".
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- I'm quite disturbed by this fact: the last verse of the original version ("Nous
rentrerons dans l'ombre" which means "We'll get into the shadow")
has been translated to "Then we'll come from the shadows", which is
exactly the opposite of the original sense. If we assimilate the resistant people's
situation as fighting in the shadow, it's true that the original version is strange: one
awaits more the end of the shadow, when victory is theirs as suggested in Zaret's
translation.
In fact, I believe there is some degree of resignation in fighting in the
"Complainte", resignation in being chosen for a cyclic struggle. When the
liberation is obtained, the fighters will be drowned in the advancing joy, and these same
fighters freely chose to return to the shadow, the anonymity, to polish their weapons for
the next liberation struggle. The Partisan lives in the shadow and is a part of it.
He has become there a vigilante man, accepting his anonymity to be part of the people
ready to fight.
We can also understand this duel return to victory and to shadow as the result of
an unbearable amount of suffering for the fighters: who can hear their suffering now when
eveyone wants to feast, and for what purpose anyway?
Fights remembered, physical sequels, death visions...will surely be maintained in
"the shadow" for those who were subjected to these sufferings because they are
now too aware of what mankind can do.
Somehow a warrior's syndrome is to lose his fighting spirit when everyone around
revives his feasting spirit. Peacetime allows sad records to invade interior life, and
returning to the shadow is a protection, a way to give one's suffering some space to
dilute there.
I really don't understand Zaret's choice of this unfaithful translation for this
last verse.
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- Marc Gaffié.
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COMPLAINTE DU PARTISAN
Les Allemands étaient chez moi
On m'a dit résigne toi
Mais je n'ai pas pu
Et j'ai repris mon arme. -
- Personne ne m'a demandé
D'où je viens et où je vais
Vous qui le savez
Effacez mon passage.
J'ai changé cent fois de nom
J'ai perdu femme et enfants
Mais j'ai tant d'amis
Et j'ai la France entière.
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- Un vieil homme dans un grenier
Pour la nuit nous a cachés
L¹ennemi l'a su (Les Allemands l'ont pris)
Il est mort sans surprise.
Hier encore nous étions trois
Il ne reste plus que moi
Et je tourne en rond
Dans la prison des frontières.
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- Le vent souffle sur les tombes
La liberté reviendra
On nous oubliera
Nous rentrerons dans l'ombre
Paroles : Emmanuel d'Astier de La Vigerie dit "Bernard".
Musique : Anna Marly
écrit en 1943, à Londres.
- THE PARTISAN
When they poured across the border
I was cautioned to surrender
This I could not do
I took my gun and vanished.
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- I have changed my name so often
I've lost my wife and children
But I have many friends
And some of them are with me
An old woman gave us shelter
Kept us hidden in the garret
Then the soldiers came
She died without a whisper.
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- There were three of us this morning
I'm the only one this evening
But I must go on
The frontiers are my prison.
Oh, the wind, the wind is blowing
Through the graves the wind is blowing
Freedom soon will come
Then we'll come from the shadows.
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- Les Allemands étaient chez moi
Ils me dirent "résigne toi"
Mais je n'ai pas pu
J'ai repris mon arme.
J'ai changé cent fois de nom
J'ai perdu femme et enfants
Mais j'ai tant d'amis
J'ai la France entiere.
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- Un vieil homme dans un grenier
Pour la nuit nous a cachés
Les Allemands l'ont pris
Il est mort sans surprise.
Oh, the wind, the wind is blowing
Through the graves the wind is blowing
Freedom soon will come
Then we'll come from the shadows.
Paroles : Hy Zaret, adapté d¹Emmanuel d¹Astier de la Vigerie (a.k.a.
"Bernard").
Musique : Anna Marly
- Copyright : Marc Gaffié, France, 1999.
- Translation : Marc Gaffié and Marie Mazur.
- Any other use prohibited
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