En trente ans de chansons, Georges Brassens a légué à ses millions d'admirateurs un monde poétique tour à tour drôle et émouvant, truculent et pittoresque, plein de personnages inoubliables - l'oncle Archibald, Jeanne, Pauvre Martin - et de couplets aussi célèbres que les plus belles pages de La Fontaine ou de Villon : « Le Parapluie », « La Non-Demande en mariage », « Le Grand Chêne »... Voici réunie l' intégrale de cette oeuvre : plus de cent soixante chansons, y compris celles qui furent écrites pour d'autres interprètes (Marcel Amont, Patachou...), et les dernières compositions, enregistrées après la mort du poète par son ami Jean Bertola. à retrouver, à savourer, à découvrir peut-être, un des plus authentiques trésors de la chanson et de la poésie françaises. Edition établie par Pierre Saka .
Georges Charles Brassens was a French singer-songwriter and poet.
As an iconic figure in France, he achieved fame through his elegant songs with their harmonically complex music for voice and guitar and articulate, diverse lyrics. He is considered one of France's most accomplished postwar poets. He has also set to music poems by both well-known and relatively obscure poets, including Louis Aragon (Il n'y a pas d'amour heureux [fr]), Victor Hugo (La Légende de la Nonne, Gastibelza), Paul Verlaine, Jean Richepin, François Villon (La Ballade des Dames du Temps Jadis), and Antoine Pol (Les Passantes). He a huge influence on several european songwriters as Fabrizio De Andrè, who reprised some of his songs.
During World War II, he was forced by the Germans to work in a labor camp at a BMW aircraft engine plant in Basdorf near Berlin in Germany (March 1943). Here Brassens met some of his future friends, such as Pierre Onténiente, whom he called Gibraltar because he was "steady as a rock." They would later become close friends.
After being given ten days' leave in France, he decided not to return to the labor camp. Brassens took refuge in a small cul-de-sac called "Impasse Florimont," in the 14th arrondissement of Paris, a popular district, where he lived for several years with its owner, Jeanne Planche, a friend of his aunt. Planche lived with her husband Marcel in relative poverty: without gas, running water, or electricity. Brassens remained hidden there until the end of the war five months later, but ended up staying for 22 years. Planche was the inspiration for Brassens's song Jeanne.
He wrote and sang, with his guitar, more than a hundred of his poems. Between 1952 and 1976, he recorded fourteen albums that include several popular French songs such as Les copains d'abord, Chanson pour l'Auvergnat, La mauvaise réputation, and Mourir pour des idées. Most of his texts are tinged with black humour and are often anarchist-minded.
In 1967, he received the Grand Prix de Poésie of the Académie française.
I adored Brassens songs when I was 20, but have rarely listen to or read him since. Now I had a chance to discover many more of his 200 or so poems, which are just amazing, in every respect. He is certainly one of my 5 or so favorite poets, along with Пушкин, Есенин, Христо Ботев, Prevert, E.A.Poe