Charles Aznavour: La Bohème
Theophile Steinlen,1896 Toulouse-Lautrec 1893
“La bohème” is a French noun that became popular during the 19th century. Originally, the word “bohèmien” referred to the Roma (gypsy) people who were thought to have originated in Slavic lands of Bohemia. As such, it carried a derogative connotation closely associated with nomadism.This geographic and administrative region encompassed much of what subsequently became Czechoslovakia.
During the 19th century, largely through literary incarnation (Victor Hugo, Honoré de Balzac, Henri Murger, Giacomo Puccini), the word "La bohème" acquired a romantic air that described a condition of life or state of mind that included penury, freedom, and unconventional mores. As captured in Henri Murger’s autobiographical stories (“Scènes de la vie de bohème,” 1851) and Arthur Rimbaud’s poem “Ma Bohème” (written in 1870 but published in 1889), “La Bohème” signified a romanticized lifestyle. Giacomo Puccini provided an apex depiction in his famous 1896 opera of the same name.
Over the years, this conceptualization of life on the fringes of society subsequently found expression in novel terms like “boho,” “beat,” and “hippie.” Following WWII, such notions and 19th century French poets were welcome as inspiration during the heyday of "chanson." In 1962, Serge Gainsbourg celebrated Charles Baudelaire's "Le serpent qui danse." In 1964, Léo Ferré set Rimbaud's poem and others to music in his album "Verlaine et Rimbaud," with which Aznavour was undoubtedly acquainted. By 1965 when Aznavour's own song appeared, however, Montmartre’s storied lifestyle of "La Bohème" was a sepia-tinged memory attenuated by tourist hordes:"La bohème, la bohème, ça ne veut plus rien dire du tout."
The song "La bohème" includes 8 stanzas, 4 of which are elegiac refrains beginning with “La bohème, la bohème…” and containing descriptors like "joli," "jeune," "heureux," and "fous." The four verses, on the other hand, deliver the real story in a more somber tone with rhyming sequences and descriptions like: "miséreux," "ventre creux," and "les nuits blanches." Life was not all a bed of roses.
Place du Tertre
Montmartre
Je vous parle d’un temps
Que les moins de vingt ans
Ne peuvent pas connaître
Montmartre en ce temps-là
Accrochait ses lilas
Jusque sous nos fenêtres
Et si l’humble garni
Qui nous servait de nid
Ne payait pas de mine
C’est là qu’on s’est connu
Moi qui criait famine
Et toi qui posais nue
La bohème, la bohème
Ça voulait dire
On est heureux
La bohème, la bohème
Nous ne mangions qu’un jour sur deux
Dans les cafés voisins
Nous étions quelques-uns
Qui attendions la gloire
Et bien que miséreux
Avec le ventre creux
Nous ne cessions d’y croire
Et quand quelque bistro
Contre un bon repas chaud
Nous prenait une toile
Nous récitions des vers
Groupés autour du poêle
En oubliant l’hiver
La bohème, la bohème
Ça voulait dire
Tu es jolie
La bohème, la bohème
Et nous avions tous du génie
Souvent il m’arrivait
Devant mon chevalet
De passer des nuits blanches
Retouchant le dessin
De la ligne d’un sein
du galbe d’une hanche
Et ce n’est qu’au matin
Qu’on s’asseyait enfin
Devant un café-crème
Épuisés mais ravis
Fallait-il que l’on s’aime
Et qu’on aime la vie
La bohème, la bohème
Ça voulait dire
On a vingt ans
La bohème, la bohème
Et nous vivions de l’air du temps
Quand au hasard des jours
Je m’en vais faire un tour
À mon ancienne adresse
Je ne reconnais plus
Ni les murs, ni les rues
Qui ont vu ma jeunesse
En haut d’un escalier
Je cherche l’atelier
Dont plus rien ne subsiste
Dans son nouveau décor
Montmartre semble triste
Et les lilas sont morts
La bohème, la bohème
On était jeunes
On était fous
La bohème, la bohème
Ça ne veut plus rien dire du tout
I tell you about a time
That people less than 20 years old
Cannot know--
Montmartre, in far-off days.
Its lilacs were hanging
Just under our windows.
And if the modest furnished rooms
That served us as nests
Were little to look at
It is there that we knew each other--
Me, who claimed famine
And you, who posed nude.
Bohemian days, bohemian days!
That meant
We are happy.
Bohemian days, bohemian days!
We ate only every other day
In neighboring cafés.
We were a few
Who expected glory,
And although poor
With empty stomachs
We did not stop believing.
And when some bistro,
In exchange for a hot meal,
Accepted a painting
We recited verses
Gathered around the stove,
Forgetting winter.
Bohemian days, bohemian days!
That meant
You are pretty
Bohemian days, bohemian days!
We all had some genius.
It often happened to me,
In front of my easel.
To spend sleepless nights
Touching up a drawing
Of the line of a breast
Of the curve of a hip.
And it’s only in morning
That we finally sat down
With a coffee-cream,
Exhausted but delighted.
We had to love each other
And we had to love life.
Bohemian days, bohemian days!
That meant
We are twenty years-old
Bohemian days, bohemian days!
And we lived the spirit of the times
When on random days
I go to visit
My former address
I no longer recognize
Neither walls, nor streets
That witnessed my youth.
Atop a staircase
I look for the studio
Of which nothing remains.
In its new decor
Montmartre seems sad,
And the lilacs are dead.
Bohemian days, bohemian days!
We were young,
We were crazy.
Bohemian days, bohemian days!
That no longer means anything at all.
- “Ne payait pas de mine:” something that doesn't look good but may have potential.
- “des nuits blanches:” sleepless (white) nights.
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