Traité de civisme

by Boris Vian

C'est en 1950 que Boris Vian conçut le projet de ce Traité de civisme . Jusqu'à sa mort, il ne cessa plus d'accumuler les notes, les citations en vue de sa rédaction, qu'il n'eut pas le temps de mener à bien.

En dépit de son titre solennel, il ne s'agit nullement d'un de ces canulars dont se montrait friand l'auteur de J'irai cracher sur vos tombes et L'Equarissage pour tous . S'appuyant sur d'immenses lectures, Vian y traite des grands thèmes sociaux et politiques du siècle, progrès, travail, inégalités, guerre, totalitarismes... Ses valeurs sont celles qu'exprime son oeuvre de poète, de romancier, de compositeur ou de dramaturge : révolte devant l'exploitation et la violence, idéal d'égalité et de paix, goût du bonheur partagé.

Grâce au patient travail de Guy Laforêt, qui a réuni et commenté ces textes, c'est une véritable biographie intellectuelle de Boris Vian qui nous est aujourd'hui offerte.

Genres: Nonfiction

344 pages, Pocket Book

First published June 1, 1976

About the author

Boris Vian was a French polymath: writer, poet, musician, singer, translator, critic, actor, inventor and engineer. He is best remembered for novels such as L’Écume des jours and L'Arrache-cœur (translated into English as Froth on the Daydream and Heartsnatcher, respectively). He is also known for highly controversial "criminal" fiction released under the pseudonym Vernon Sullivan and some of his songs (particularly the anti-war Le Déserteur). Vian was also fascinated with jazz: he served as liaison for, among others, Duke Ellington and Miles Davis in Paris, wrote for several French jazz-reviews (Le Jazz Hot, Paris Jazz) and published numerous articles dealing with jazz both in the United States and in France.

Reviews

[Iamthesword · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is little that Boris Vian hasn't done in his short life. An engineer by trade, he became France's most important Jazz critique after the Second World War, an essayist and author, songwriter, chansionnier and Jazz trumpet player, painter and a philosopher who was friends friend of the likes of Jean-Paul Sartre, Jacques Prévost and Raymond Queneau. But where the others became institutions of French intellectual life during their lifetimes, Vian stayed a bit of an outsider. Especially his political statements often caused outrage, like his chanson LE DÉSERTEUR*, written during France's brutal colonial war in Algeria, which was banned in France for his antiwar and anticolonial message and harsh attack on the French president (in retrospect, an absolute boss move). All this - and the fact that I only knew his songs and Michel Gondry's film adaption of L'ÉCUME DES JOURS** - were reasons enough for me to pick this book up.

It's not a full fledged philosophical treaty due to Vian's early death, but more like a collection of thoughts, aphorisms and short essays spanning a wide array of topics. There are thoughts on politics, history, language, work, inequality and colonialism among to be found here. Vian looks at all this topics through the lense of how to create happiness for the individual. From his anarchist viewpoint (with some sprinkles of libertarian liberalism here and there), he mistrusts almost all forms of political organisation and talks about politicians with biting irony. He argues that there are no people, but only 2,5 billion individuals with individual needs that need to be taken into account. He beliefs in technical solutions and the statistical penetration of society - as it was very popular in the 1950s, especially in France. The goal has to be to get rid of (involuntary) work, for he sees it as the main hindrance to human happiness and an equivalent to pain, while creative and intellectual occupations might lead to fulfillment. There is also an essay where he condams colonialism comparing the settler (le colon) to the colon (le côlon) - it's a literal shitshow.

The text is very much a product of his time with individualism as a reaction to the radicalized masses of the 1930s and 1940s, the belief in progress and engineering etc. It's not easy to dig through that and I found myself disagreeing on quite a few things. What makes it still worthwhile is that you feel Vian's wittiness through the text. He's playing with language all the time and doesn't shy away from looking for new ideas in places where nobody looked before, producing many interesting little thoughts on a way. And while it didn't give me a coherent philosophy and I think that I still prefer his songs and (probably) his novels, I still liked it as a philosophical scrapbook.

*LE DÉSERTEUR with English subtitles: https://youtu.be/f0fxfog_ShY?si=C94Hq...

**Film adaptions of Vian's works are a touchy subject. In 1959, he went to see an unapproved film version of his crime story J'IRAI CRACHER SUR VOS TOMBES and died from an heart attack during the screening, aged 39.

[Elisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

génie mais dommage qu’il ait pas eu le temps de le terminer 🥲

[Terra · Rating 3 out of 5]

una raccolta di articoli, appunti, aforismi, pensieri sparsi. troppo sparsi per i miei gusti, francamente. Vian aveva in mente un'architettura, per questo materiale, che la sua morte ha impedito di completare: in questo modo si perde abbastanza il senso del tutto. comunque si coglie il pensiero progressista, pacifista, egualitario dell'autore, e anche il suo gusto per l'ironia e i giochi linguistici. "ce qui compte, ce n'est pas le bonheur de tout le monde; c'est le bonheur de chacun". e poi: " la fois soulève des montagnes, mais les laisse joyeusement retomber sur la tête de ceux qui ne l'ont pas". e per finire: "le travail c'est ce qu'on ne peut pas s'arrêter de faire quand on a envie de s'arrêter de le faire".