If any of them are reading this: chaps, I love you dearly. You all have impeccable taste and discernment, as witnessed by the warm welcome you’ve extended to Penelope and me for over 20 years.
Your taste in matters artistic is also impeccable, most of the time. However, and I hope you don’t mind a good-natured generalisation, you tend to give a free pass to anything and anybody French.
Perhaps you only do so as a way of upholding your national honour when talking to foreigners like me. I don’t know, but I can only speak from my own foreign yet rather extensive experience.
Many a time have I almost had my head snapped off when opining that, say, Zola is a mediocre writer and Colette isn’t much of a writer at all, Erik Satie isn’t so much music as Musak (music d’ascenseur, as I imprudently put it) or that Renoir’s paintings belong on chocolate boxes, not in serious galleries.
Such passive-aggressive defensiveness is perfectly innocent and even laudable – I wish we felt as jealous about our culture as you do about yours. But even against that background I find the adulation of Jane Birkin, who died on 16 July, quite incomprehensible.
Thousands of Parisians came out to watch her funeral cortege, with the mourners looking genuinely aggrieved. One could get the impression that Miss Birkin’s demise impoverished French culture no end.
I do realise that most people would indeed become impoverished if they bought one of the Birkin handbags. These can cost upwards of £100,000, which is so steep that one would be tempted to think the price reflects the bag’s snob value more than any other.
On balance, I don’t think that paroxysm of collective sorrow was caused by the harrowing thought that henceforth Hermès may have to call their line of jumped-up carry-bags something else.
For Birkin was also known as an actress and singer, more of a celebrity really, if we use those job descriptions in their original meaning. Now, since she was as ethnically British as she was culturally French, I feel I can say what I think of Birkin as an artist without risking ostracism on the other side of the English [sic] Channel. I have a stock reply ready in case my French friends take exception: “She was English, so what’s your problem?”
Miss [sic] Birkin is best remembered for her 1969 hit Je t’aime… moi non plus, a duet sung with her then lover Serge Gainsbourg.
‘Sung’ is actually an overstatement, unless you think coital whispers can have a special mellifluous quality to them. The song’s two protagonists are, not to be too coy about it, shagging and, while on the job, exchanging hardcore running commentary and encouragements.
The title of the song is its first exchange: Je t’aime, whispers Jane (I love you) to which that cad Gainsbourg replies, Moi non plus (Me neither, whatever that means). That put-down doesn’t put him down, as it were.
He then compares his rampant libido to a vague irrésolue, meaning he is in two minds about climaxing. Je vais, je vais et je viens, continues Gainsbourg, “I’m going and coming at the same time”. That to me suggests the Nelson Rockefeller death, in flagrante delicto (in the saddle).
But Serge neither comes nor goes yet. In fact, lest his paramour may misunderstand, he specifies exactly where he’d like to come: Entre tes reins. That’s usually translated as ‘inside you’, but in fact the location is more specific than that (use your imagination).
Jane then waxes all poetic in good Gallic style: Tu es la vague, moi l’île nue, meaning Serge is the wave to Jane’s naked island. The metaphor strikes me as both strained and lame, even though it does convey relevant information: Jane isn’t wearing any clothes, following the recommendation of every reputable sex manual.
Serge then informs Jane that Je me retiens: he is holding back, with the implication that before long he won’t be able to.
Not a problem, as far as Jane is concerned: Tu vas, tu vas et tu viens: “You are going, you are going, and you are coming.” That strikes me as superfluous. If Serge is indeed coming, he doesn’t need Jane to tell him about it: trust me, when that happens, men tend to know it.
But in fact, Jane is telling him not to brag about his epic control: Go ahead et je te rejoins, and I’ll join you.
Then Jane, who clearly had mastered the French knack at doing to philosophy what Serge is doing to her, says in a sultry whisper that L’amour physique est sans issue – physical love is a dead end.
That being the case, Non, maintenant viens – now you can come. One has to assume Serge complies, although we are spared the sound accompaniment.
Don’t know about you, but I can’t escape the impression that artistic immortality is rather easy to come by in France. Just whisper a few sweet pornographic nothings, throw in some cracker-barrel philosophy and Bob est ton oncle, as they don’t say in France.
You are venerated in your lifetime, mourned by millions when you die and even have a £100,000 bag named after you. Let me tell you, moving to France at a young age was a smart move on Jane’s part.
Jane Birkin, RIP
I do not understand public grieving, especially for a person one has never met. I admit I am not familiar with Jane Birkin, and at the cost of £100,000 I would hazard a guess that none of these mourners were familiar with her handbags, or a song from 1969.
But perhaps I am the one being superficial here? Perhaps these mourners feel deeply the loss of any life? “…any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” Of course, offsetting the understated dignity of any bells, this funeral was broadcast into the streets on large screens (with that “impeccable taste and discernment” temporarily set aside).
I don’t understand it either, although I am familiar with the song. It’s terrible.
People are temporarily put in touch with their own mortality, perhaps, and are mourning that which has passed and cannot return. Celebrities as part of the collective unconscious. Or something like that!
Words like ‘lemmings’ and ‘herd’ spring to mind. Also, the parable of the swine.
You are selling the French short. Most are familiar with the bags, even though they can’t afford them. And the song is still well-known. In any case, Birkin’s songs, including this one, were being broadcast through the loudspeakers. What they don’t know is John Donne, a minor figure compared to Jane.