The Role Model
After the Second World War, Boris Vian sang a hymn of praise to the deserter, freeing him from the stigma of being a cowardly runaway.
The second song that Ulrike Guérot insisted on including among the peace songs is „Le Déserteur“ by Boris Vian. This chanson is a French cult song from 1954, in which the writer describes the horrors of war in simple words. Many famous singers have interpreted it, for example Joan Baez too, who is featured here with another peace song. It is the song with which the wooden silence of the postwar generation in France about the absurd events of the Second World War was broken.
When the chanson was broadcast for the first time on French radio, Paul Faber, a member of the French broadcasting council in the Seine department, was so shocked that he demanded it be censored. Boris Vian answered him with an open letter.
The song remained banned on French radio stations until the end of the Algerian War in 1962. That is exactly 60 years ago. So fragile, then, is the European narrative of peace that deserters – then as now in the Ukraine war – may not be spoken of: at present around 1,000 Ukrainian soldiers are dying every day, in some battalions desertion set in long ago because of the military senselessness of this war, which leaps to the eye of every observer, but instead of demanding an immediate ceasefire and negotiations, for months there was only talk of heavy weapons, and now it looks as if NATO might soon even intervene actively in the fighting. On top of that, the British foreign secretary has let it be known that she would have no problem pressing the „Nuclear Button“.
Instead of flooding all of Europe’s streets with a peace movement, as back in 2003 on the occasion of the American invasion of Iraq, most Europeans today are proud of their Ukrainian buttons on their lapels. „Imagine there is a war and no one goes“ was the spontaneous slogan of the Greens in the 1980s. Does Annalena Baerbock even know it?
Boris Vian’s song is a hymn of praise to the deserter, to the one courageous man who simply refuses to take part in the warlike nonsense, the senseless shooting or killing. Who will not let himself be charged up with propaganda, with slogans for which it is supposedly worth going to war.
His text captivates precisely because it builds a bridge from the war slogans to the people on whom war inflicts the greatest suffering. He sings of how he watched his father and his brothers go off and never return:
J’ai vu partir mon père,
J’ai vu partir mes frères,
of how he watched his children weep:
J’ai vu pleurer mes enfants,
of how his mother suffered so greatly that she vanished into her grave:
Ma mère a tant souffert qu’elle est dedans sa tombe.
He describes in plain words the whole misery of war, which always falls upon the simple people – not the rulers or the generals.
That is why the most striking line of the song comes right at the beginning, where he addresses the president directly:
Original
„Monsieur le Président
Je ne suis pas sur terre
Pour tuer des pauvres gens
(…)
S’il faut donner son sang
Allez donner le vôtre
Vous êtes bon apôtre
Monsieur le Président!“
Übersetzung
„Mister President,
I am not on this earth
to kill innocent people.
(…)
If blood must be given,
then go and give your own,
you are the fine apostle for that,
Mister President!“
Boris Vian sings the song slowly and quite calmly. Today it should play on every radio station. Annalena Baerbock, Ralf Fücks or Ms. Strack-Zimmermann and many others, who for months have been in a kind of war frenzy, should hear it especially often!