François Villon

François de Montcorbier or François de Loges, called François Villon (Paris, 1431 or 1432; died 1463), was a poet 15th century French. His most celebrated creation is The Ballad of the Hanged, written when he was waiting for his death. execution by hanging

The facts about the life of François Villon are uncertain. It is always said of him that he was a marginal. Those who have dedicated themselves to following his itinerary and studying his work paint him as the most illustrious and genuine precursor of cursed poetry. He was imprisoned on occasion, it is said that he was involved in robberies and murders.

"Balada of old ladies: Where is the prudent Eloïse / for whom they castrated and remained a monk / that Pedro Abelardo in Saint Denís? / Because of his love he had that sorrow. And Juana, the good of Lorraine that the English burned in Ruan? / Where, where are they, Virgin Serena? / And the snows of old, where are they?

A student at the University of Paris, a master of the Faculty of Arts since he was 21, he leads above all the joyful life of a rebellious student in the Latin Quarter. At 24, he kills a priest in a fight and flees Paris. Amnestied, he went into exile again, a year later, after the robbery of the "Colegio de Navarra". Received at Blois at the court of the poet Prince Charles of Orleans, he failed to make a career there. He then leads a wandering and miserable life. Imprisoned in Meung-sur-Loire and released after the accession of Louis XI, he returned to Paris after some six years of absence. Arrested again during a fight, he was sentenced to hang After the call, Parliament annuls the sentence but prohibits it for ten years; he's 31 years old. He then he totally loses track.

In the decades that followed Villon's death, his work was published and enjoyed great success. The Lais, a long schoolboy poem, and The Testament his masterpiece, were published in 1489; he would be 59 years old. Thirty-four successive editions until the middle of the XVI century. Soon enough, a "Villon legend" it took shape in different faces that ranged, depending on the time, from the scoundrel joker to the cursed poet.

Your work is not easily accessible: it requires notes and explanations. His language (some terms have disappeared or have changed their meaning) is not familiar to us, as well as his pronunciation is different from the current one, which makes certain rhymes curious in modern French translation. Allusions to the Paris of his time, largely vanished and subjected to archaeology, his art of double meanings and antiphrases often make him difficult to understand, even if contemporary research has cleared up many of his obscurities.

Her life

Born in April 1431 or 1432, it is known from the records of the Sorbonne University and from court archives that his real name was François de Montcorbier. His father, probably originally from a small town in Burgundy, left the province to settle in the capital. His mother, born in Berry or Anjou, was widowed when François was still very young. For unknown reasons, his mother entrusted the child to the teacher Guillaume de Villon, canon and chaplain of Saint-Benoît-le-Bétourné, whose last name he adopted as a token of gratitude.

He studied at art school, but after graduating with a degree, he neglected studying to run after adventure. From this time on, his life will be set against the backdrop of the Hundred Years War and its procession of brutalities, famine and epidemics. Accused of murdering the religious Philippe Sermoise, his rival in love with him, he is forced to flee Paris, but is pardoned in January 1456. Shortly afterwards he participates in the robbery of the College of Navarre. Between 1456 and 1461, he continued his adventures in the Loire Valley, was imprisoned in the summer of 1461, but released a few months later on the occasion of a visit by Louis XI. Returning to Paris, he wrote Le Testament and was arrested once more in 1462. He was tortured and sentenced to hang, but the trial was overturned on appeal in January 1463. The sentence was commuted to ten years of exile from Paris. He loses track of him after this last episode.

His work

Recorded by Villon, by Federico Cantu.

Villon did not renew the poetry of his time, but gave new life to motifs inherited from medieval culture that he knew perfectly well and animated them with his own original personality. Thus, he takes the polite ideal on the wrong foot, inverts the accepted values by celebrating the people destined for the gallows, willingly indulges in mocking description or off-color jokes, and multiplies the innovations in language. But the close relationship that Villon establishes between the events of his own life and his poetry leads him to also let sadness and melancholy take over his verses. Le Testament (1461), which is considered his capital work, is inscribed as an extension of & # 34; Legacy & # 34; (1456), which is commonly called the "little testament". This long poem of 2,023 lines is marked by the anguish of death to which Villon himself had just been condemned and resorts, with a singular ambiguity, to a mixture of reflections on time, bitter jokes, invective and religious fervor. This combination of tones helps to give Villon's work a pathetic sincerity that sets it apart from his predecessors.

Villon, ignored for its time, is rediscovered in the 16th century before Marot publishes it. His ballads were adapted by the Hungarian poet György Faludy in the 1930s, with great success.

Main works

• The Legacy (or Little Testament) (1456).
• The Testament (or Great Testament) (1461).
• La Balada de los ahorcados (1463).
• The Balance of Good Counsel
• Ballade des menus propos.
• The Balada de los Proverbios.

Influence

The Dance of Death, the Great Subject of XV, symbol of equality before death, is on the wall of the 1425 Innocent Cemetery.

I know that poor and rich
Tastes and fools, priests and lais
"Noble, villain, wide and cheap..."
Death takes over without exception (approximate translation).

"The Danse macabre of Villon, c'est le Testament tout entier." (“Villon’s Death Dance is the entire ‘Testamento’ (Jean Favier) (in French)

A work by Villon was first printed in 1489, an edition followed by several others. The last almost contemporary edition is the one given by Clément Marot in 1533. By this time, the Villonian legend was already well established. It fades towards the end of the Renaissance, so that Boileau, who mentions Villon in his "Art poétique", seems to know him only by hearsay. Only in the 18th century did we begin to take an interest in the poet again. He was rediscovered at the time of Romanticism, when he acquired his status as the first "cursed poet". From then on, his notoriety no longer weakens. It inspired the poets of German Expressionism in particular and was translated into many languages (German, English, Russian, Esperanto, Spanish, Japanese, Czech, Hungarian, which gave it a worldwide reputation as its concerns are universal and transcend barriers. of time and cultures.

In literature

François Villon illustrated by the illustrator Job and Georges Montorgueil
(Illustration of a book for youth, 1905).

• François Villon became the hero of the compilation Repues franches, text that tells the perpetues, sometimes obscene, that happened to notable people provoked by Villon and his companions, and that helped enrich the legend about Villon.
• François Rabelais made Villon a total character in his works Pantagruel and Gargantúawhere he looks like a comedian and imagines his life in 1462.
• Although it was not known by the first romantics such as Chateaubriand or Nodier, Villon inspired, from around 1830, all the other authors of this movement. Some claim in particular their influence. It is the case of Victor Hugo, Théophile Gautier, Théodore de Banville, and the following Arthur Rimbaud (one of whose first works is a letter from Charles d'Orléans to Louis XI to ask for grace for Villon), Charles Baudelaire, Paul Verlaine, of course Gérard de Nerval, Jean Richepin and his Chanson des gueuxMarcel Schwob and many others.
• Robert Louis Stevenson turned François Villon into the hero of one of his short stories: "A night accommodation - A story by Francis Villon."
• Francis Carco wrote a fictional biography of Villon: Le Roman de François Villonin 1926, and his friend Pierre Mac Orlan the script of a film by André Zwoboda entitled François Villon (1945), in which the last days of the poet's life are related, as Mac Orlan imagined them.
• Tristan Tzara wanted to see Testament as a codified work based entirely on anagrams.
• Leo Perutz, in The Judas de Leonardo, he inspired François Villon for one of his characters, Mancino: this one is not dead, but, amnesian, lives in Milan at the time of Leonardo da Vinci.
• Lucius Shepard wrote a short story called The last testament in Aztechs. The protagonist is beaten by the curse of Villon.
• Jean Teulé gets on Villon's skin in his novel I, François Villon, published in 2006.
• Gerald Messadié wrote a trilogy of novels entitled Jeanne de L'Estoille (La rose et le lys, Le jugement des loups, The fleur d'Amérique). The protagonist, Jeanne, knows the fictitious character of François Villon. This relationship begins with the rape of Jeanne, followed by the birth of a son (François) and then encounters, along the three volumes, mixed with contradictory feelings towards Jeanne. The novel runs well all of François Villon's life (romantized, of course) and the climate of the time (chanting, war, epidemic).
• Osamu Dazai, Japanese writer of the centuryXX., wrote a novel entitled The Femme of Villon.
• Ossip Mandelstam, a great Villon reader, meditated a lot on the poet's work. His books reveal many poems and strokes.
• Boulat Okoudjava (named the "Soviet Brassens"), author and Russian composer, dedicated a song to him, (François Villon Prayer)in which the poet asks God to help others (the cowards, the poor, etc.) and not forget him.
• Valentyn Sokolovsky. Night in the city of cherries or waiting for François tells the life of François Villon in the form of memories of a person who knows the poet and whose name is found in the lines of the Great Testament (in Russian, 112 p., Kiev, Ukraine, 2013).
• He is a minor but important character (about 400 years old) in Tim Powers' fantasy novel, which usually refers to him as "Des Loges" in the novel.
• Raphaël Jerusalmy makes him an important character in his novel Confrérie des chasseurs de livres (Actes Sud 2013). Louis XI commissioned Villon to bring ancient manuscripts from Palestine.

At the theater

• Théodore de Banville was inspired by her for her work Gringoire.
• Bertolt Brecht was inspired by her The three-cent opera.
• His life inspired the play of theatre in four acts "If I were king", by Justin Huntly McCarthy, premiered in 1901 at Broadway theater; the author wrote a novel, If I were kingin 1902.
• The vagabond king, a musical created in 1925 by Rudolf Friml, is based on Justin Huntly McCarthy's work.
• Kinski spricht Villon, actions by Klaus Kinski.

In song and music

Fresco de la Iglesia de Sant' Anastasia en Verona

The rain has degraded us and washed
And the sun is red and black.
"The rags and the ravens have taken our eyes
And they ripped our beard and eyebrows..

• In 1910, Claude Debussy composed "Three Ballads of François Villon."
• In 1929, Jean Cartan composed "Trois poèmes de François Villon".
• In 1951, Léo Ferré put music to the first quartet of the Ballade des pendus in his work De sac et de cordes. The text was sung by the choir Raymond Saint-Paul.
• In 1953, Georges Brassens put music to the Ballade des Dames du temps jadis'extracted from the Testament.
• In 1957, Jacques Douai was the first to put music to the whole Ballade des pendus.
• In 1959, Léo Ferré wrote the song Poésie fout l'camp, Villon! in which the poet goes fraternally to deplore the stupidity of his own time. Catherine Sauvage recorded a version in 1961 and Jean Vasca in 1993.
• That same year, Felix Leclerc put music to extracts of the little will of François Villon (album Félix Leclerc et sa guitare Vol. 3).
• In 1960, Serge Reggiani sang the Ballade des Dames du temps jadis, the Ballade des femmes de Paris, Le Lais, the song Au retour de dure prison? In 1968, he sang "La Ballade des pendus" with music by Jean-Jacques Robert.
• That same year, Monique Morelli sang "La Ballade des pendus" with music by Lino Léonardi.
• In 1964, Bob Dylan, in several interviews, admitted the influence of François Villon, and in particular released the album. The Times They Are a-Changin' where in the back of the album there is a poem 11 OUTLINED EPITAPHS, considered as the first work of the album (which has only ten songs), where there is a paraphrase "ah where are the forces of old? " of the commonly accepted English translation of the "Old Snows" of the Balada of the dead ladies of Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
• In 1967, Boulat Okoudjava, a Russian poet, put music to his poem La prière de François Villon.
• In 1974, Monique Morelli published an entire album dedicated to the poems of François Villon.
• In 1978, Daniel Balavoine quoted Villon in his song Le Français est une langue qui résonne ("Moi qui m' crois bon Français je sens que je déconne, / De mes mots censurés que Villon me pardonne...")
• In 1980, Léo Ferré again put music to the Ballade des pendus, this time in its entirety, under the title La Violence et l'Ennui-Frères humains, l'amour n'a pas d'âge. He intertwines one of his poems with Villon's. This song is used by Jean-Luc Godard in his 1982 film Passion.
• In 1983, Stephan Eicher quoted the Ballade des pendus (puis ça, puis là, comme le vent varie) in its first solo single The Chanson bleue.
• In 1987, the Little Nemo band published the song Ballade des pendus in his album Past and Future.
• In 1995, La Tordue was inspired by the Balance of good doctrine to those of bad life in his song The Great Arms versioning the chorus All to taverns and girls(album Les Choses de rien).
• In 1997, the composer Arthur Oldham wrote The Testament of Villon for soloists, choir and orchestra.
• In 1998, Richard Desjardins was inspired by the work of Villon and more specifically in the Ballade des pendus' for your song Lomer (Frenchie Villon) (album) Boom Boom).
• In 1999, Le Weepers Circus was inspired by the Ballade des menus propos for the song Ô Prince (album) L'épouvantail).
• In 2002, Renaud paid tribute to him in his song Mon bistrot préféré (album) Boucan d'enfer).
• In the same year, Corvus Corax, a German band of medieval music, put music to his Ballade de Mercy (album) Seikilos).
• In 2009, the Black Death group began to sing Ballade contre les ennemis de la France under the name of Ballade cuntre les anemis de la France (album) Ballade cuntre lo Anemi francr).
• That same year, the Eiffel group versioned the Villon text from the collection Le Testament in his song Mort j'appelle (album) À tout moment).
• In 2013, Lucio Bukowski quoted one of Villon's most famous verses in the chorus of Psaumes métropolitains: Je meurs de soif auprès de la fontaine.
• In 2014, the group La Souris Déglinguée sang a song entitled François Villon.
• In 2016, Rêve en scène produced Jean-Bruno Chantraine in Corsica for a Villon, coupable d'idéal', with numerous musical poems, on stage proposals and musical association of Jean-Louis Lascoux.
• In 2019, rapper Nekfeu refers to Villon in the song Hire d'As (album) Poison ou Antidote) in which Dadju participates, with the line J'ai planté personne, je suis pas Villon.