Jacques Prévert
(1900-1977)

Some call Prévert a children's poet, a harmless eccentric, an author of pretty songs, a sentimental soul. We flatter him for not being an "intellectual", to have embodied, in this France where art is seemingly always "elitist" (and those who chose this adjective refuse --strangely--to use it as a compliment), the myth of the "popular" poet, thus simple, reduced to common words (and by that to thoughts). Under the barrage of compliments that weigh down his name, how does the real Prévert surface? How difficult it is to survive as an artist--a great artist--when one is smothered by honor (albeit posthumously, as Prévert would have never tolerated such a stature).

And yet...still read almost twenty years after his death, at a time when, in the midst of a world-wide lull in aesthetic production, we are finally beginning to see a global reevaluation of the most powerful movement that marked our time, surrealism; it is undoubtedly the authentically surrealist Prévert who reveals, through the abundant multiplicity of his productions (screenplay writer; world-renowned lyricist of sad romances put to music by Joseph Kosma; theater man; writer; creator of the "collage"), the profound unity and nonconformity of his art.

The fact remains: Prévert is a petulant sweetheart, always ready to battle the innumerable forms of human wickedness. Yet he feels no pity for that which he disdains, and he knows, when necessary, how to settle the score with his intimate enemies: the priest, the judge, the soldier, the wealthy, all those who do not share the motto "Freedom or Death" and "Nor God nor master." Indeed, this lover of women, of children, of birds, of cats, bears no resemblance to the amiable class clown or court jester. His verve is as violent as it is persevering. He has, like Rabelais, the taste for hilarity, like Hugo, that of scathing puns and biting colloquialisms. His humor strikes hard and sure.

A cigarette permanently affixed to his mouth, his face visibly lined by bitterness, blue eyes faded by impenitent alcoholism, the delicious Prévert wore a tragic mask. And his inimitable banter consists of a subtle mix of scorn and derision, of hopelessness and laughter, as can attest his rare successors, or poet-troubadors, like Léo Ferré, Boris Vian, Bobby Lapointe, Georges Brassens, Jean-Roger Caussimon, Serge Gainsbourg, all of whom, in various forms, paid tribute to Prévert without imitating him.

Is it even possible to imitate Prévert? He is misleadingly transparent. His vocabulary, his use of free rhyme, his pseudo-rhymes, the assonance, all seem so simple. But just try it and see! The rhythm (even the voice of the poet, broken, asthmatic, anguished and comical at the same time), the concision, the abruptness of the stanzas: the poetry is bad rather than simple. And the poetry of Prévert, which bore no Schools, is, more often than not, good. That is to say, profoundly knowing.

Maurice Mourier
Translation by Lori Crawford-Dixon, Saint Joseph High School, Lakewood

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