Aragon transi par le chant

Abstract

Aragon, more than any other French poet, has been interpreted in song some two hundred times. Why is music so important in his poetry? During the war (1939-1945), he himself encouraged the resistance fight with his poems, written as an inspiration to restore morale, and the memory of the nation’s voice; in the communist party as well, singing was a way to come together and maintain hope. Music, generally speaking, stands beyond truth and lies, the real and the imaginary. But this oral style, cultivated by the poet-novelist, mingles with orality in a darker sense, illustrated in psychoanalysis by the sufferings of primal love, including jealousy and self-destruction, which provides the framework for the novel La mise à mort (1965).