I am still pretty much in “Break Week” mode and just back from La Belle France, so this post may not seem as well researched as some others have been. Anyway, as I was riding a train from Versailles to Paris last week, a short, white-haired gentleman walked through the cars with an accordion and tip jar playing “La Vie en Rose” for the tourists. “Ah,” I thought, “what could be better for a Song of the Week than the signature song of the renowned French chanteuse, Edith Piaf?”
Since then, my mind has been changed. “La Vie en Rose” was written 70 years ago, and Piaf has been dead for more than 50 years. The song was written at about the same time as the German occupation of Paris was ending. It is a song about rediscovered love and symbolized the hope and excitement of a nation that had regained its independence and identity.
Times are different now. The problems with the Nazis and World War II still impact some aspects of French thought, but they are mostly seen as just a “blip” in thousands of years of French history.
The song, itself, is also dated. The singer is able to see the world “through rose colored glasses,” with her own hope and excitement because she is in the arms of a man whom she loves, and whom she believes is a being superior to herself. When the song was published, Piaf was required to share composing credits with a man (Louis Guglielmi) because she did not have the qualifications necessary to copyright the work under the strict rules in force at the time. The sea change in the role of women in today’s society reinforces the realization that times are just different now.*
So, I have chosen a song that I heard several times while I was in France – making it contemporary. It is called “Mon Petit Pays” by Fréro Delavega.
Fréro Delavega is two guys named Jérémy Fréro and Flo Delavega who got together in 2014 to audition for the French version of the television musical competition, The Voice. It seems they were very popular, but were eliminated in the quarter final round in April of that year. They signed a recording contract and quickly released an album in July that became the number one album in the country the first week it was out.
“Mon Petit Pays” was on that album, and it was released as a single in October of 2014. The album contained a few original songs and several cover versions of a weird assortment of other people’s songs. I have been unable to determine who wrote “Mon Petit Pays.”
It is easy to see why the song is popular. It has a very “catchy” tune, is melodic and the lyrics are intriguing, if ambiguous. The title may be translated as “My Small Country.” The singer tells of being away from “you” and dreaming about “you” and learning what it is like to be “far from home.” I am not certain whether the song is really being sung to and about the singer’s homeland,or whether the “country” is a metaphor for a girlfriend or family or neighborhood or dog. It could be any of those things. I have included a rough translation of the lyrics at the end of this article; but since I don’t know what was originally intended, I think I have only added to the ambiguity.
I am going to go with assumption that it really is a song to the homeland; and it is nice (for me) to be back.
Mon Petit Pays
Un an de plus que je me caille
Je meurs de froid
Un an de plus et je me taille
Ouaip,
Je rêve de t’voir
Les nuits cent fois sans toi,
Moi j’espérais tout bas
Les nuits sans toi, sans foi,
Revenir sur mes pas
Ouais la vie nous sépare mais je te vois
oui, chaque fois plus proche de moi
Des heures, des jours, des mois
Je ne sais pas, si loin de moi
T’es toujours là
Ouais la vie nous sépare mais je te vois
oui, chaque fois plus proche de moi
Des heures, des jours, des mois
Loin de toi, t’es toujours là
Un an de plus et malgré moi
Je reste loin de toi
Un an de plus à user mes petits doigts
Ouais rien, rien que pour toi
Les nuits cent fois, sans toi
Moi j’espérais tout bas
Les nuits sans toi, cent fois
Revenir sur mes pas
Ouais la vie nous sépare mais je te vois
oui, chaque fois plus proche de moi
Des heures, des jours, des mois
Je ne sais pas, si loin de moi
T’es toujours là
Ouais la vie nous sépare mais je te vois
oui, chaque fois plus proche de moi
Des heures, des jours, des mois
Loin de toi, t’es toujours là
Toutes ces heures, à te chercher
Tête baissée les yeux fermés
Sur ma peau gravée à tout jamais
Toutes ces heures, à te chercher
Tête baissée les yeux fermés
Sur ma peau gravée à tout jamais
Plus le temps passe et plus je sens
En moi, ces choses là qu’on ne se dit pas, ouais
Plus j’avance, et plus je sens en moi
Ce qu’est d’être loin de chez soi
Ouais la vie nous sépare mais je te vois
oui, chaque fois plus proche de moi
Des heures, des jours, des mois
Je ne sais pas, si loin de moi
T’es toujours là
Ouais la vie nous sépare mais je te vois
oui, chaque fois plus proche de moi
Des heures, des jours, des mois
Loin de toi, t’es toujours là
Ouais la vie nous sépare mais je te vois
oui, chaque fois plus proche de moi
Des heures, des jours, des mois
Je ne sais pas, si loin de moi
T’es toujours là
Ouais la vie nous sépare mais je te vois
oui, chaque fois plus proche de moi
Des heures, des jours, des mois
Loin de toi, t’es toujours là
Whoninanana ouh oh oh whoninanana
Whoninanana ouh oh oh whoninanana
Whoninanana ouh oh oh whoninanana
Whoninanana ouh oh oh whoninanana
My tiny country
One more year that i’m so cold
I’m dying of cold
One more year and I’m creating myself
yeah,
I dream of seeing you
through a hundred nights without you,
I hope to whisper
through the nights without you, without faith
to retrace my steps
CHORUS:
Yeah, life separates us, but i see you
yes, each time closer to me,
hours, days, months
I don’t know, if far away from me
You are still there
Yeah life, separates us, but i see you
yes, each time closer to me,
hours, days, months
far from you, you are still there
One more year and despite myself
I stay far from you
One more year to use my little fingers
yeah only, only for you
through a hundred nights without you,
I hope to whisper
through the nights without you, without faith
to retrace my steps
(Chorus)
All these hours, looking for you
my head bowed, my eyes closed
engraved on my skin forever.
All these hours, looking for you
my head bowed, my eyes closed
engraved on my skin forever.
The more time passes, the more I feel in myself
those things that we can’t say, yeah
the more i move on, the more i feel in myself
what means to be far from home
(Chorus)
Whoninanana ouh oh oh whoninanana
Whoninanana ouh oh oh whoninanana
Whoninanana ouh oh oh whoninanana
Whoninanana ouh oh oh whoninanana
(As noted previously, I have not been able to find information about the songwriter(s) or copyright)
_______________________
* Of course, it is still pleasant to listen to Edith Piaf. You can do that here. Grab your significant other, if you are so inclined, and just dance for a few moments while it is still 1945.
Welcome back. I missed you, and hope to hear more about your adventure.
The contrast of “La Vie en Rose” and “Mon Petit Pays” is very interesting. The sentiments of both songs reflect the human experience. When we are young, as “Mon Petit Pays” expresses, we are seekers, experiencing separation and driven by nearly inchoate desires to discover our connections to life, to others. Youth learns more about that with experience; encountering it, gaining it, losing it again as the path of youth ranges wide and far.
When youth has traveled far enough and gained enough experience and exposure, and has experienced enough pain and joy to inform them of what and where and in whom separation and connection are present, they find what they have been searching for. They transcend seeking and are stricken wonderfully with the fullness of life, inexplicably filled with the rushing flush of passion for life itself, often embodied in the presence of another.
I hear that in Piaf’s song. I don’t regard the reference to rose-colored glasses to be in any way related to the prevalent, current meaning of the phrase. The song is about love for another, without reservations. It is not about a moment when, temporarily, love tints our perspective with a passing joy. It is about that timeless, eternal experience of connection with the true meaning of life which is found in the presence of mutual love. Life glows, the blood flushes, filled with life itself, infused with that “first vision that set fire to the stars.” (Dylan Thomas, “Love in the Asylum”)
Your comments also reminded me of a conversation in William Gibson’s “Pattern Recognition,” where two of the characters are discussing what the past looks like. The sentiment there was that when we look at the past and try to make sense of it, the past will often become lost in our version of it.
The contemporary view of Piaf’s art and expression can become occluded by our own perspective, if we let it. Yes, it was a time we see pervaded with societal notions of gender-based dominance and submission, of heartless ideas which maintained an entire smothering social fabric over the freedom of women. But I don’t think Edith Piaf was addressing those issues in this song, and I don’t think those conditions interfered in any way with what she did express.
“La Vie en Rose” is a song about the soul, about the heart of humanity. It’s about love. And if the social context of the time imprinted the expressions she used in the song, I don’t think that in any way they compromised what she was expressing. Her words may be dated by language and social context, but her song, her voice, her hymn to life and love – that is very clear. The times may be different now, but the human heart is still the same as it ever was.
Piaf’s generation endured a terrible season of pain and grief and darkness in the war years, and found the light in love for another. That’s an eternal song, unchanged throughout the ages.
–**–
““La Vie en Rose, Revisited”
“When she takes me in her arms,
when she speaks to me in a low voice,
Life glows like a rose.
“She whispers words, declares to me her love
in words every day,
And that does something to me.
“She is in my heart,
a happiness
I know full well.
“It’s her for me, me for her,
in life.
Forever.
“When I see her
I feel her heart.
It beats in me.
“May the nights on which we make love never end,
may that great joy remain
which takes the place of trouble and grief.
May we remain, now and forever
content,
content to die of it.
“When she takes me in her arms,
when she speaks to me in a low voice,
Life glows like a rose.”
Bob, what you say is essentially correct. “La Vie en Rose” is a song about eternal feelings that happened to have been written at a certain time in history. I think that for many decades it was the song that symbolized Paris, even to those of us who had never been there. When I finally did get there (just days ago), the feeling I got from the city was not the feeling I get from listening to the song. That does not in any way detract from the song. It is still great.
As I mentioned in the main post, “La Vie en Rose” was written at just about the same time as the liberation of Paris, and it certainly represents that time in French history. When Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman recognized, in Casablanca, that they would “always have Paris,” what they had were the memories of the city before World War II. “La Vie en Rose” can’t help but evoke thoughts or images of the city at the end of the War to those with a knowledge of history.
“La vie en rose” is literally translated as “life in pink.” The phrase does not make much sense to us Americans. I think “seeing the world through rose colored glasses” is about as close as any of our idioms come. However, that phrase carries an implication of a naive, unrealistic way of perceiving things. Piaf’s song is rather referring to a warmth and sense of hope that is felt in times of happiness and love.
Edith Piaf certainly led a tragic life – abandoned by her parents, raised in a brothel, deaf for several years, the death of her child, the death of her lover in a plane crash, accused of murder, addiction to alcohol and drugs, serious injuries in an automobile accident, terminal cancer, etc. I didn’t mean to add to her tragedies by saying she was also a victim of gender discrimination. I simply meant to say that times have changed.
Despite those tragedies, Edith Piaf was an amazing singer who could write and deliver lyrics that touched the soul of the listener. Hers is a case where her personal tragedies formed a base for her art that most of us will never know (or would want to know). Another of her best known songs is “Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien” (“No, I regret nothing”). She sings: “Non, rien de rien/Non, je ne regrette rien/Ni le bien qu’on m’a fait/Ni le mal; tout ça m’est bien égal!/…Car ma vie, car mes joies/Aujourd’hui, ça commence avec toi (essentially saying, No, absolutely nothing; I regret nothing; neither the good nor the bad that has been done to me. It is all equal. I regret nothing because my life and my joys begin today, anew, with you.) In my mind, that sums up her life and her art. She would most certainly not dwell on the fact that she had to share a copyright with some guy who happened to have more formal “qualifications.”
Well said, and as always – some great background information as well. Thanks, Louis.
Yes, I imagine the Paris of today is a place where it is difficult to find the Paris of the war years and the 1940’s.
I’m sure I see the Paris of the past from my place here in the future through rose-colored glasses for sure. In my own mind I’ve created a Paris that never was, consisting of literary and historical mental snapshots of the left bank culture of the 20’s in Paris and the Paris of the 40’s and 50’s. I enjoy that illusion, but illusion it is, no doubt about it.
The art and architecture and landscape and history of Paris is no illusion, as you know. Hope you got a chance to experience the richness of that history while you were there. Great to have your voice back here!
Beautiful and insightful commentary!
Marcet, there are too many things posted or said that seem intended to be mean and divisive. Your comment is uplifting and unifying. We all need that. Thank you.