Patti Smith, Commander of Arts on French Cultural influences

[L French <lrfrench>]

Here's a rough translation of the Commander Patti interview that appeared last week in Le Parisien. It's followed by Patti's introduction to the Anchor Anthology of French Poetry, which explains Patti's love for Gallic writers and poets... 

PATTI SMITH: "I WILL SING PIAF" 

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The rock chanteuse remains angry. However, it is in largely for the anger in her work that Patti Smith, 58 years old, will be decorated this evening at the Solidays festival, on the hippodrome of the Longchamps. The Minister for the Culture, Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres, will give Patti Smith the badge of Commander in the order of arts and letters. (There are 3 ranks in the Order: Knight (Chevalier), Officer, and Commander. Only foreigners and certain French members of the Legion of Honor can be named directly as a Commander - at the Culture Minister's discretion. Most recipients receive the rank of Knight, and must remain in each rank for at least five years and demonstrate new achievements before being eligible for promotion to the next rank. That Patti was named directly to the highest rank demonstrates the esteem France holds for her oeuvre and accomplishments. Its a distinction that goes to the heart of her love of France.   

 

 

What does this decoration mean to you? 

 

It rewards all my passion for French literature, poetry and cinema. Hardly a day goes by that Im not immersed in all of that. I read Nerval, Rimbaud, Baudelaire, Genet, Proust.  I adore Juliette Grico, Edith Piaf, Jeanne Moreau, Robert Bresson, Godard... I do not take this decoration lightly. I will work very hard to honor it. 

 

Why do you like French culture so much? 

 

It has always spoken to me. When I was growing up I lived in a very poor district in New Jersey, where there were no museums. Everyone worked in factory. I had my own culture by going to the library. Then when I was 15, I found a copy of Arthur Rimbauds "Illuminations." It was like a revelation and I kept the book near me like a bible, because I was a timid teenager, I did not have a boy friend. 

 

When did you first visit France? 

 

In 1969 I went to Paris. It is here that I sang the first time for money, with street musicians. I did many drawings at the time. Later, one of them was bought by the Pompidou Center. The same thing happened with a portrait of Rimbaud that I drew in 1973 at his birthplace in Charleville. It is now at the Rimbaud museum. 

 

Was it in Paris that you decided to become artist? 

 

Yes, in 1973, at the tomb of Jim Morrison in Pere-Lachaise cemetery. Many of the musicians who had made rock'n'roll a popular culture had died, like Morrison, Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin. So rock'n'roll was losing its original meaning, and money was starting to interfere. So at Pere-Lachaise I said to myself that all their work would not be in vain. On my return to New York, I organized a musical reading of poems I had writ about Rimbaud, and I sang the very first version of "Gloria" without any backing. From that seed was born "Horses", my first album. 

 

Is it a special concert for you to play at the Solidays festival against AIDS? 

 

Yes, of course. Several of my close friends died of AIDS, in particular my best friend, the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. I accompanied him towards the end, and now each evening, I dedicate a song to him, and all the other victims of AIDS.  

 

What will your next album be like? 

 

Its an album of cover songs. In the next year Ill be putting together songs of artists who influenced me. Like  Bob Dylan, Tim Buckley and The Grateful Dead. Its going to range from Puccini to Gene Clark.  I want to take music from all kinds of people and from all periods as sort of a thank you to all the people who gave us all these great songs. I am sure there will be a REM song and all kinds of songs. Every day I pick somebody, like in the last couple of days. Ive been listening to every Neil Young song. There will also be some surprises. I want to do an R&B song and a song from the 40s that my mom really liked and Edith Piaf. Id like to do Piafs "No, I do not regret anything" or "My God".  

 

Would you sing it in French?  

 

I would have to learn French! But one time I did write a French song for Jeanne Moreau to sing, without ever sending it to her. I was just dreaming that she might sing it.  

 

 

 

 

 

THE ANCHOR ANTHOLOGY OF FRENCH POETRY 

 

>From Nerval To Valery In English Translation (2000) 

Angel Flores, Editor. Introduction by Patti Smith.  Anchor Books, NY  

 



 

Patti's introduction: 

 

 

When I was sixteen, working in a non-union factory in a small South Jersey town, my salvation and respite from my dismal surrounding was a battered copy of Arthur Rimbauds Illuminations, which I kept in my back pocket. Though I did not comprehend all that I read, it drew me into a world of heightened poetical language where I was more at home than with the crude argot that spewed from my fellow workers. 

 

In the fall of 1964 I entered Glassboro State Teachers College in New Jersey. As an aspiring young artist, I felt estranged in the conventional setting of a teachers college. I sought kinship by attempting to sign up as a volunteer worker for the college literary journal, The Avant. I remember the excitement of opening the door to its office, only to find the room empty. But on an old wood table I spied a humble paperback, pink and gray in color, with a sketch of a dreamy young poet gazing into the distance: An Anthology of French Poetry from Nerval to Valiry. I opened randomly to the poem Shame a poem by my sole inspiration Arthur Rimbaud, that I had never read. 

 

The joy I felt in finding new poems by Rimbaud, as well as those written by poets he had so admiredBaudelaire, Verlaine, and Girard de Nervalwas incalculable. I must admit that I pocketed this book as my own and it became the bible in my life. Edited by the aptly named Angel Flores, this anthology introduced me to some the greatest poets in French Literature, translated by the likes of Louis Varese, Daisy Aldan, Richmond Lattimore, W. S. Mervwin, Vernon Watkins, and Muriel Kittel. 

 

I discovered Mallarmi, whose title alone A Throw of the Dice Never Will Abolish Chance, charged my hungry mind. Though Moon Solo by Jules Laforgue I was made privy o the roots of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Eliot. I was introduced to the dark beauty of Nerval and Verlaine and the lyric charm of Guillaume Apollinaire. 

 

Through the mid-sixties only the work of John Coltrane and Bob Dylan matched the importance of this anthology in my growth as an artist and my appreciation of the work of others. It is my pleasure now to reintroduce this humble yet significant volume, so long out of print, to you now. And may I use this as an opportunity to salute that unidentified soul who left this book upon a table in 1964.  

 

 Patti Smith 
                December, 1999 

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