Brel and Chanson: A Critical Appreciation (review)

Sara Poole's study of the Belgian auteur-compositeur-interprète, Jacques Brel, which follows her evaluation of the work of his French contemporary, Georges Brassens (see FS, LVII (2003), 111–12), quite rightly emphasizes the 'three-dimensional' nature of Brel's output by stressing the importance of watching videos of his concerts and television appearances. Having acknowledged in her Introduction that his texts are susceptible to different performances and interpretations, Poole asserts — justifiably — that his œuvre is predominantly autobiographical and that it focuses extensively on childhood and 'bêtise', creating portraits which attain 'an immortalising universality' (p. xviii). The opening chapter concentrates on Brel's literary preferences and the significant influence on his work of the Belgian symbolist poet, Verhaeren, but also of other poets from Rimbaud and Verlaine to Desnos and Prévert. This leads to an illuminating analysis of Brel's syntactical idiosyncrasies and predilection for unusual stylistic devices. The second chapter examines Brel's portrayal of the couple and of women, underscoring the enduring nature of his misogyny. After a chapter which concentrates on recurring symbols (rain, forms of transport and those associated with Brel's bestiary in particular), Poole focuses on childhood, which is initially treated as symbolic of progression and creativity before being associated with nostalgia and idealization. The remaining three chapters examine ambiguity (and in particular 'aural polysemy'), the sense of fraternity generated by many songs (his 'semblable' and 'frère' identifies with Brel's anti-militaristic narrator, for example) and finally the autobiographical aspects of so many of the songs (whose narrator is 'je', an outsider or enigmatic hero). Despite a number of gallicisms and orthographical and typographical errors, this is a welcome addition to the growing body of critical analysis in English which engages with la chanson française. The study is by no means exhaustive — and does not set out to be so — and its shortness precludes greater comparison and contextualization (for example, what did Brel, Ferré and Brassens have in common and how did they differ?). The only significant omission, given the book's scope and length, is a discography which would have reinforced some of the critical assertions in the text and offered the reader chronological guidance to the recorded output of an artist who still sells 250,000 albums per year, some twenty-seven years after his death.