Special issue. After the death of Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir published La Cérémonie des adieux (Gallimard, 1 981), where she recounted the last ten years of the philosopher’s life. Léo Ferré, who once had lunch at La Coupole with this couple “with contingent loves”, liked neither the title nor the content of this intimate and raw story.
The composer, who until the end had a concern for his freedom and the pride of standing upright, refused to see death in this way. To whom he rather attributed the features of Marilyn Monroe and whom he thought, every day, of seeing through the window of a small shack while surveying the Tuscan countryside. “I go over there and look. Marilyn who wants to see me. The death ! That’s it. It’s extraordinary ! » He also imagined having received a call: “Hello! Mr. Ferré? Here, death. I really like what you do, sir. » And replied: “Me too, ma’am, I really like what you do. »
Ferré despised ceremonies, just as he despised farewells. So you might as well avoid both. Thirty years have passed since his death, which is the opportunity to republish “Léo Ferré, l’indigné”, a special edition of Le Monde (collection “Une vie une oeuvre”, 126 pages, 10.50 euros). As he gave us an appointment in ten thousand years and set a date (There is nothing left), there is no need to worry about his posterity.
The art of sketching
In the documentary by Jorge Amat and Robert Belleret, Génération Ferré, in the reference biography written by the same Robert Belleret or the sensitive essay by Ludovic Perrin, no more than in the recent discographic box sets devoted to the complete works of his work, there was never any question of building a mausoleum around a “monument” of French song. Ferré is not an idol. He is a permanent insurgent. Without God. Without a master. Without a word of gospel. Without rosette. But with style. Always excelling in the art of sketching. A street. A girl. A marauding taxi. And it’s already a song, which rocks.
This special issue attempts to take the same side roads, in search of the lost tempo of the man who first played like a suburban marlou, then put on the leather pants of rockers, before being familiar with Beethoven. And through the contributions of the poet-novelist Louis Aragon, the philosopher Gaston Bachelard, the actor Michel Bouquet, the photographer Patrick Ullmann, the singers Catherine Ribeiro and Bernard Lavilliers, his son, Mathieu, as well as a rare interview of the mother of his children, Marie-Christine Ferré, collected in their house in Tuscany.
“It’s by seeing people too much in their true light that one day or another we feel the urge to abandon them. Lucidity is a constructed exile, an emergency door, the locker room of intelligence. It is also an illness that leads us to solitude,” wrote the artist.