«Mourrons pour des idées, d'accord, mais de mort lente…» Let's die for ideas, but slowly...(1)
Brassens the poet had the courage to look the hero-mongers in the eyes and tell the incorrect truth.
When you had long run experience to judge, the real place and worth of great ideas you lose the excessive trust we, enthusiasts tend to have in them at first sight.
To think them, yes! To create them, to dream, to marvel and explore them, yes! To like them, develop them, to debate and apply them, yes! To try them, yes, with prudence and care for people. To fall in love with them and espouse them? Well, love happens and once married, you may have to live with them for long years. But to kill and die for them, isn't that too much? *
Life is the last good we own to enjoy and pass to our children if there is to be a humble place for us in the miraculous chain of being. Life perpetuated is the source of endless futures, of starting new things.
To let people live a future is the best promise for their better world.
Be then suspicious of prophets who engage you to give your life now and cut your chain with no future, depriving your possible inheritors from even being born.
Wait! Scores of noble and urgent visions proved false in History, or worse, went wild, turned to nightmare and opened the gates of Hell. That hell which is in the detail, in the application paving the road to heaven. Too many people embrace the new snake in haste only because it rises against the old, hateful snake.
Alas, the wasted dead cannot correct their error. Only among the living can you repair mistakes, some of them. A living dog is better than a dead lion (2) Prévert quot, martyrs rot: “Martyr, c ‘est pourrir un peu » (3) Therefore, the sage, reluctant, loiters round the grave...“Le sage, en hésitant, tourne autour du tombeau…” (1)
You are living one biographical time of so many years and no more, among a couple of generations and no more. You do not live in the house of the distant future, even your children will not live there; your life is a zero-sum end-game running now, as you read these lines; what a pity for it to turn out to be what happens while you prepare other things. Who you are and what you do and have and feel and achieve in some sixty more or less active years is your entire world, all you ever get and all you give.
Doctrinaires want you to confuse your ticking biographical time with “History”, “the future”, “the progress of humanity”, “the Planet”, The other world" or other abstract fictions of the like. That tragic comedy of errors is staged to sell a life of misery now on promise of heaven tomorrow or worse, to spend you cheaply for a slogan.
Your life is biography, not history.
Beware those who point their crooked finger at you and claim that you are living history. They are about to steal your life.
Do not be used.
------------------------------------
* Well, I know, I know, local good sense is needed here, there are exceptions when you want to chose; moreover, one thing is to think it another to say it loud, in dangerous occasions; armies, zealots, patriots, will gladly shoot you for such words.
(1) Georges Brassens, Mourrir pour des idees, 1972 © 1972 ED. MUSICALES. Take a moment to read this wise irony:
Mourir pour des idées, l´idée est excellente
Moi j´ai failli mourir de ne l´avoir pas eu
Car tous ceux qui l´avaient, multitude accablante
En hurlant à la mort me sont tombés dessus
Ils ont su me convaincre et ma muse insolente
Abjurant ses erreurs, se rallie à leur foi
Avec un soupçon de réserve toutefois
Mourrons pour des idées, d´accord, mais de mort lente,
D´accord, mais de mort lente
Jugeant qu´il n´y a pas péril en la demeure
Allons vers l´autre monde en flânant en chemin
Car, à forcer l´allure, il arrive qu´on meure
Pour des idées n´ayant plus cours le lendemain
Or, s´il est une chose amère, désolante
En rendant l´âme à Dieu c´est bien de constater
Qu´on a fait fausse route, qu´on s´est trompé d´idée
Mourrons pour des idées, d´accord, mais de mort lente
D´accord, mais de mort lente
Les saint jean bouche d´or qui prêchent le martyre
Le plus souvent, d´ailleurs, s´attardent ici-bas
Mourir pour des idées, c´est le cas de le dire
C´est leur raison de vivre, ils ne s´en privent pas
Dans presque tous les camps on en voit qui supplantent
Bientôt Mathusalem dans la longévité
J´en conclus qu´ils doivent se dire, en aparté
"Mourrons pour des idées, d´accord, mais de mort lente
D´accord, mais de mort lente"
Des idées réclamant le fameux sacrifice
Les sectes de tout poil en offrent des séquelles
Et la question se pose aux victimes novices
Mourir pour des idées, c´est bien beau mais lesquelles?
Et comme toutes sont entre elles ressemblantes
Quand il les voit venir, avec leur gros drapeau
Le sage, en hésitant, tourne autour du tombeau
Mourrons pour des idées, d´accord, mais de mort lente
D´accord, mais de mort lente
Encor s´il suffisait de quelques hécatombes
Pour qu´enfin tout changeât, qu´enfin tout s´arrangeât
Depuis tant de "grands soirs" que tant de têtes tombent
Au paradis sur terre on y serait déjà
Mais l´âge d´or sans cesse est remis aux calendes
Les dieux ont toujours soif, n´en ont jamais assez
Et c´est la mort, la mort toujours recommencée
Mourrons pour des idées, d´accord, mais de mort lente
D´accord, mais de mort lente
O vous, les boutefeux, ô vous les bons apôtres
Mourez donc les premiers, nous vous cédons le pas
Mais de grâce, morbleu! laissez vivre les autres!
La vie est à peu près leur seul luxe ici bas
Car, enfin, la Camarde est assez vigilante
Elle n´a pas besoin qu´on lui tienne la faux
Plus de danse macabre autour des échafauds!
Mourrons pour des idées, d´accord, mais de mort lente
D´accord, mais de mort lente
English translation at
http://www.projetbrassens.eclipse.co.uk/pages/lyricsandtranslations.html
(2) Ecclesiastes 9:4
(3) "Martyr, c'est pourrir un peu."
(Jacques Prévert / 1900-1977 / Paroles)
Brassens the poet had the courage to look the hero-mongers in the eyes and tell the incorrect truth.
When you had long run experience to judge, the real place and worth of great ideas you lose the excessive trust we, enthusiasts tend to have in them at first sight.
To think them, yes! To create them, to dream, to marvel and explore them, yes! To like them, develop them, to debate and apply them, yes! To try them, yes, with prudence and care for people. To fall in love with them and espouse them? Well, love happens and once married, you may have to live with them for long years. But to kill and die for them, isn't that too much? *
Life is the last good we own to enjoy and pass to our children if there is to be a humble place for us in the miraculous chain of being. Life perpetuated is the source of endless futures, of starting new things.
To let people live a future is the best promise for their better world.
Be then suspicious of prophets who engage you to give your life now and cut your chain with no future, depriving your possible inheritors from even being born.
Wait! Scores of noble and urgent visions proved false in History, or worse, went wild, turned to nightmare and opened the gates of Hell. That hell which is in the detail, in the application paving the road to heaven. Too many people embrace the new snake in haste only because it rises against the old, hateful snake.
Alas, the wasted dead cannot correct their error. Only among the living can you repair mistakes, some of them. A living dog is better than a dead lion (2) Prévert quot, martyrs rot: “Martyr, c ‘est pourrir un peu » (3) Therefore, the sage, reluctant, loiters round the grave...“Le sage, en hésitant, tourne autour du tombeau…” (1)
You are living one biographical time of so many years and no more, among a couple of generations and no more. You do not live in the house of the distant future, even your children will not live there; your life is a zero-sum end-game running now, as you read these lines; what a pity for it to turn out to be what happens while you prepare other things. Who you are and what you do and have and feel and achieve in some sixty more or less active years is your entire world, all you ever get and all you give.
Doctrinaires want you to confuse your ticking biographical time with “History”, “the future”, “the progress of humanity”, “the Planet”, The other world" or other abstract fictions of the like. That tragic comedy of errors is staged to sell a life of misery now on promise of heaven tomorrow or worse, to spend you cheaply for a slogan.
Your life is biography, not history.
Beware those who point their crooked finger at you and claim that you are living history. They are about to steal your life.
Do not be used.
------------------------------------
* Well, I know, I know, local good sense is needed here, there are exceptions when you want to chose; moreover, one thing is to think it another to say it loud, in dangerous occasions; armies, zealots, patriots, will gladly shoot you for such words.
(1) Georges Brassens, Mourrir pour des idees, 1972 © 1972 ED. MUSICALES. Take a moment to read this wise irony:
Mourir pour des idées, l´idée est excellente
Moi j´ai failli mourir de ne l´avoir pas eu
Car tous ceux qui l´avaient, multitude accablante
En hurlant à la mort me sont tombés dessus
Ils ont su me convaincre et ma muse insolente
Abjurant ses erreurs, se rallie à leur foi
Avec un soupçon de réserve toutefois
Mourrons pour des idées, d´accord, mais de mort lente,
D´accord, mais de mort lente
Jugeant qu´il n´y a pas péril en la demeure
Allons vers l´autre monde en flânant en chemin
Car, à forcer l´allure, il arrive qu´on meure
Pour des idées n´ayant plus cours le lendemain
Or, s´il est une chose amère, désolante
En rendant l´âme à Dieu c´est bien de constater
Qu´on a fait fausse route, qu´on s´est trompé d´idée
Mourrons pour des idées, d´accord, mais de mort lente
D´accord, mais de mort lente
Les saint jean bouche d´or qui prêchent le martyre
Le plus souvent, d´ailleurs, s´attardent ici-bas
Mourir pour des idées, c´est le cas de le dire
C´est leur raison de vivre, ils ne s´en privent pas
Dans presque tous les camps on en voit qui supplantent
Bientôt Mathusalem dans la longévité
J´en conclus qu´ils doivent se dire, en aparté
"Mourrons pour des idées, d´accord, mais de mort lente
D´accord, mais de mort lente"
Des idées réclamant le fameux sacrifice
Les sectes de tout poil en offrent des séquelles
Et la question se pose aux victimes novices
Mourir pour des idées, c´est bien beau mais lesquelles?
Et comme toutes sont entre elles ressemblantes
Quand il les voit venir, avec leur gros drapeau
Le sage, en hésitant, tourne autour du tombeau
Mourrons pour des idées, d´accord, mais de mort lente
D´accord, mais de mort lente
Encor s´il suffisait de quelques hécatombes
Pour qu´enfin tout changeât, qu´enfin tout s´arrangeât
Depuis tant de "grands soirs" que tant de têtes tombent
Au paradis sur terre on y serait déjà
Mais l´âge d´or sans cesse est remis aux calendes
Les dieux ont toujours soif, n´en ont jamais assez
Et c´est la mort, la mort toujours recommencée
Mourrons pour des idées, d´accord, mais de mort lente
D´accord, mais de mort lente
O vous, les boutefeux, ô vous les bons apôtres
Mourez donc les premiers, nous vous cédons le pas
Mais de grâce, morbleu! laissez vivre les autres!
La vie est à peu près leur seul luxe ici bas
Car, enfin, la Camarde est assez vigilante
Elle n´a pas besoin qu´on lui tienne la faux
Plus de danse macabre autour des échafauds!
Mourrons pour des idées, d´accord, mais de mort lente
D´accord, mais de mort lente
English translation at
http://www.projetbrassens.eclipse.co.uk/pages/lyricsandtranslations.html
(2) Ecclesiastes 9:4
(3) "Martyr, c'est pourrir un peu."
(Jacques Prévert / 1900-1977 / Paroles)
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