French Presidents: Boris Vian’s “Le déserteur” – The election anthem

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The anthem the patriots feared

Boris Vian (right) in his stage play Boris Vian (right) in his stage play

Boris Vian (right) in his stage play “I will spit on your graves”

What: Roger Viollet via Getty Images

Whoever will rule the republic as the next president after the election: “Le déserteur” by Boris Vian is also aimed at him – or at her. When the chanson was banned during the war, a man was already involved whose name is more important than ever in France today.

Dhe president Boris Vian addressed in the winter of 1954 was called René Coty. Coty does not yet have the power of the presidents who will succeed him, from his Prime Minister Charles de Gaulle to Emmanuel Macron, who is standing for re-election this Sunday in Paris.

When René Coty rules the republic, France wages colonial wars in Indochina and Algeria. At the end of his term, the people approve a constitution for the Fifth Republic that empowers the president. Since 1958 is President also responsible for foreign policy and the army.

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With his chanson “Le déserteur”, Boris Vian was four years ahead of his time. But should the poet have addressed his message to the generals? After the defeat at the Battle of Diên Biên Phu, Southeast Asia was no longer part of France. The war began in Algeria. Vian refused service in his song: “Monsieur le Président/ Je vous fais une lettre/ Que vous lirez peut-être/ Si vous avez le temps.”

We owe the most beautiful German translation to Wolf Biermann, the founder of the profession of “songwriter”: “Monsieur le Président/ Do you take it easy/ Do you take the time/ And read my letter:/ It got me, I got/ The draft papers/ I have to march to war/ It’s already happening on Wednesday./ Monsieur, I’m not going/ I don’t want this Merde/ I don’t live on earth/ So that I can be a murderer.”

Not this Merde!

When Biermann published the sung letter in 1983, “Monsieur le Président” was already a representative of all the warlords of the world. Joan Baez had already made the “Deserteur” world famous in the 1960s. And Boris Vian had declared before his untimely death that it was actually not an anti-war song at all, but a peace song for committed civilians in twelve stanzas.

Dass „Le déserteur“ vom Klassiker des Committed song The fact that it became a current classic of pacifist protest songs was also due to his enemies. In 1955 Vian undertook a tour of France. At the concert in Nantes, he had to interrupt his lecture because World War II veterans chanted “To Russia!” because of his first name.

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Patriots everywhere roared him down and demanded that he be put up against the wall as an anarchist, existentialist, revolutionary, pacifist, socialist or “Russian”. The riots against Boris Vian were fueled by the Poujadists: As the “Union for the Defense of Merchants and Craftsmen”, the Poujadists entered Parliament in Paris in 1956, with the 28-year-old Jean-Marie Le Pen as MP and later co-founder of the Front National. This Sunday, Marine Le Pen, the daughter, wants to become France’s first female president.

Boris Vian’s “Le déserteur” was banned by the state and boycotted by the radio when it was released on records. It was not allowed to be sung in public again until 1962, after the end of the Algerian War. As Biermann says in German: “Monsieur le Président/ You are for bloodshed?/ Allez! Let yours flow!”

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