Léo Ferré (Monaco, 1916 – Castellina in Chianti (Tuscany), 1993), singer and poet. Viens… Autograph manuscript signed “Leo“, no place no date. [ca. 1982], with dedication : “A toi, Claude ” [Fléouter]. 5 pp. in-4. Written with a fine point-marker, adjoining leaves in laporello; some erasures and autograph corrections.
Among the most beautiful pieces of the artist, in which he speaks, with a wonderful poetic emotion, of his childhood, his teenage life, his may 68, disappointment, his love for the theater and women…
Viens…, published in Le Monde on 1st December 1983, page 20, with a few tiny variations, commissioned from the artist in the 80, on the occasion of the Bourges Spring, where the singer was one of the headliners in 1982, by Claude Fléouter, journalist for le Monde, producer and television director, founder of the Variety Music Victories in 1985 and The Victories of Classical Music in 1994.
Come over here, boy, I’ll tell you about it.
My life from beyond there when I went to perfumes
Weeping and in the meantime in serious smiles
Of these dark comets[.]reuses…Oh! not too…
When I was putting blood [in erased] at the heart of the workers
In these packed factories where adventure
Just had to stand in the spans
With abject glycerin waiting…
Time ! As a reminder of revenge
If you don’t understand, I’ll teach you the letters
Written from the front what you may know
L’improvising of Love with a deer down there
That sings all the storm of its woods and, believe me,
I had woods to hold on to you, kid ! //
. . . . . . .
I could see them., sometimes, on rails…
Roll, ride to no longer know where to put their teenage soul…
Hey, Leo, the teen soul ?
What does that mean ?
It’s the one who’s not thirsty yet
It’s the one that has nothing you can imagine
It’s the one you get out of there, very far, when the habit reserves the right to go elsewhere, in the bistros you invent to look at for a long time, in front of you, the nothing that makes you great and patient in front of virtue, the silence of others, the problems of this nothingness that we can’t talk about, of course, and that screeches in your teenage psychology.
̶ Like my soul, so… teenager…
̶ No. Like the vocabulary // that is loaned to you by 10. 000 years of signs, from 10. 000 of boredom… Of that boredom you’ve quantified, since 68, and that is still allowed to you. Boredom, boy, this is the last hostel before inanity. but… but…
68, 68… of course. There are numbers that mean … what ?
Nothing. A smile, maybe. The smile of the calendar when you tickle the soles of the feet, under a month of May attentive and looking at you.
When May looks at me, I really have nothing more to look forward to this spring ending and killed, soon, by a behious and fearful holiday. Summer 68. //
And this summer passed like a storm of reason.
Unions began to think, alas… and it all ends in the Order…
Me, I had disorder in my blood since those distant years and, when I turn around to look at them, they make eye to me as to let me know that I was in the negative good sense of this tumultuous life and circulating through forests invented by intelligent birds. I didn’t know anything.. [and I erased]. Birds, neither. I was six years old.. I was walking, in the street and thinking I was hurtling down galaxies that men couldn’t even name so much they were mine. The men kept me away from them. The women looked at me with this involuntary insistence that made them hooked [to my silence erased] at the end of me, over there, light years away… What a horror, evidence of charm ! It hasreally no longer anything charming and it’s dragging on [in erased] … it drags on for a long time [in front of erased] in a bathroom // counting seconds in front of an obscene mirror, so the loneliness of the eyes in front of the holes is unwatchable.
̶ How old were you in 68 ?
̶ Four years.
An artist’s lodge, in a theatre, somewhere, anywhere, in 1982. He was great. He was crying. I had become a reason for him to have grown up.
When I’ll be really young, I’ll talk to you properly, we’ll both go into fantastic thoughts like countries, you know ? These countries that we talk about when we know nothing more than few scrapps of happiness in irreverence and in the absolute heartbeat.
Leo.
3 500 €