Boris Vian (March 10th 1920, City-with Avray (Hauts-de-Seine) - June 23rd 1959, Paris) is a writer French, engineer of the central, inventor, Poète, Parolier, Chanteur, critical École and musician of Jazz (trumpet player). For these multiple talents, it is advisable to add those of lecturer, scenario writer and translator (Anglo-American). It also published under the Pseudonyme S of Vernon Sullivan or Delighted Bison , Baron Visi or Brisavion (Anagramme S of its name).

Biography

Child, Boris Vian was brooded by his father, Paul Vian, and especially by his mother. Indeed, it was victim, at 12 years, of an acute rheumatoid arthritis which caused an aortic insufficiency to him. This cardiac disorder, whose its works will carry the trace, will make of it the target of the affection too much choking of his/her mother. Besides he will speak about it in red Grass , and more still, in the Tear off-heart .

After the College Condorcet, to Paris, it enters to the Central École in 1939, then works as engineer with the French Association of standardization (AFNOR), until 1946, where it benefits from his moments of freedom to write and play of the music Jazz.

He attends the coffees of Saint-Germain-of-Meadows, Café of Flora or the Two Nest eggs at the time where those gather intellectual and artists of left bank: Jean-Paul Sartre (the Jean-Ground Partre of the Scum of the days), Raymond Queneau, Simone de Beauvoir, Juliette Gréco, Marcel Mouloudji, or Miles Davis.

Its first famous novel (under the Hétéronyme of Vernon Sullivan) is I will spit on your tombs , written in 1946. The novel is very discussed, in particular because it is found on the spot of a crime passionnel. Boris Vian is condemned in 1950 for insult to good the manners. Follow of the novels quite as black and sarcastic: deaths have all the same skin , And one will kill all the dreadful , They do not realize .

If the success of signed works Vernon Sullivan enabled him to live, they also occulted other more important works with the eyes of Vian: signed novels of its name. Indeed, only the latter, according to him, had a true literary value. After the failure of the Tear off-heart , Boris Vian thus decides to give up the literature.

Impassioned jazz, he plays of the trumpet of pocket (renamed “trompinette”) to the Tabou , celebrates club of Saint-Germain-of-Meadows. He is also artistic director at Philips and chronicler in Jazz Hot of December 1947 in July 1958, where he holds a “press review” explosive and extravagant. Henri Salvador said of him: “it was in love with the jazz, lived only for the jazz, did not hear, was expressed only in jazz”.

Years 1951-1952 will be dark years for Boris Vian. It has just left his wife Michelle Léglise, of which he had two children, Patrick in 1942 and Carole in 1948, and he saw with difficulty translations in a Chambre of good with 8 boulevard de Clichy. It does not have any more one penny but the tax department is baited to tap old taxes to him which it cannot pay. Its fertile spirit however leads it to collaborate in the college of 'Pataphysique (the science of the imaginary solutions), founded in 1948. It finds Raymond Queneau there, and it is named Équarrisseur first classifies in 1952 then satrap in May 1953. In this pleasant corporation, it gives free course to its imagination to provide communications and inventions baroques such as the gidouillographe or the pianocktail. In 1954, he marries Ursula Kübler.

He makes some appearances on scene, with the theater and in some films. He plays for example the Cardinal of Paris in Notre-Dame de Paris of Jean Delannoy.

The morning of the June 23rd 1959, Boris Vian is with the first of I will spit on your tombs , film inspired of its novel. It already fought the producers, sure of their interpretation of his work, and publicly denounced film, announcing that it wished to make remove its name of the credits. A few minutes after the beginning of film, it crumbles in its seat and dies of a heart attack on the way towards the hospital. The College of Pataphysique announces the apparent death of the “Transcendent Satrap”.

Its work was an immense posthumous public success in the Années 1960 and 1970, in particular during the events of 68. The young people of the new generation redécouvrent Vian, the adolescent eternal, in whom they are found.

Works

He wrote eleven Romance S, four collections of Poème S, several plays, of the news, many musical chronicles (in the review Jazz Hot ), of the film scenarios, the hundreds of songs (in particular for Serge Reggiani and Juliette Gréco), etc, the whole with a liveliness which is clean for him.

Under its own name, he wrote the novels more fantastic, poetic and burlesques, most known being the Scum of the days and the Fall in Beijing , others being the Tear off-heart , the red Grass , etc

He is also author of plays, of news ( the blue Goose , the Fog , the Ants ,…) songs, and enthusiastic defender of the 'Pataphysique.

Its most famous song (among 460 qu ' he wrote) is the Deserter , song antimilitarist written at the end of the Guerre of Indo-China (that is to say the February 15th 1954), right before the Guerre of Algeria. This song was prohibited on the waves in its version of origin because of the litigious final verse:

If you continue me

Prévenez your gendarmes
Whom I carry of arm
And which I can draw

(Version attested by Francoise Renaudot, in its work he was once Boris Vian )

This verse was tardily replaced by:

If you continue me

Prévenez your gendarmes
Whom I will not have of weapon
And which they will be able to draw

Boris Vian was the object of continuations on behalf of paramilitaries of extreme-right-hand side. In this second form, the song had a real success in the Années 1960, sung by Peter, Paul and Mary; but Vian had already died.

In love with the American culture , it translated into French the great classic of the Science-fiction which Le Monde of Ā of A.E. van Vogt is , just like its continuation Players of Ā . It also translated Raymond Chandler, the poem Jabberwocky of Lewis Carroll extracts from On other side of the mirror and the memories of the General Omar Bradley has Soldier' S Story .

It also translated the fictionalized Biographie of the trumpet player of American jazz Bix Beiderbecke (1903 - 1931). It is about the work entitled the young man with the trumpet , written by Dorothy Baker in 1938. Boris Vian carried out this translation for Gallimard in 1951.

Novels and news

Theater

Poetries

  • Barnum' S Digest (collection of ten poems) 1948
  • Cantilène into cold (collection of poems) 1949
  • I would not like to burst (collection of twenty-three poems published on a purely posthumous basis) 1962
  • Hundred sonnets

Extract of the collection " I would not like crever" 1962

ALL WAS KNOWN AS HUNDRED TIMES

All was known as hundred times

And much better than by me
Aussi when I write these worms
It is that amuses me
It is that amuses me
It is that amuses me and I shit you with the nose

Tests

  • Manual of Saint-Germain-of-Meadows, 1951 .
  • Ahead the zizique one… And by here the big money, the contemporary Book, 1958 .

Songs

Inter alia:
  • the Deserter , 1954
  • the Lament of progress , 1955
  • the Java of the atomic bombs , 1955
  • the Small shop , 1955
  • the Blouse of the dentist
  • the Merry Butchers
  • Make badly me Johnny
  • the Tree of hung the : Texts of generic song V.F of the film " the hill of the brackets " of Delmer Daves.
  • Mozart with us (on the reasons for Turkish Walk )

Collaboration with periodicals

Between much of others, most important are:
  • Jazz Hot , of 1946 with 1958.
  • College of 'Pataphysique , 1953 with 1959.
  • Modern times , n° 9 to 13, and 108 to 111.

Quotations

  • work is the opium of the people… I do not want to die doped!
  • work it is health! Nothing to make, it is to preserve it.
  • One starts to have misfortunes when one ceased thinking only of oneself.
  • the birds are responsible for three at least great curses which weigh on the man. They gave him the desire to climb with the trees, that to fly, that to sing.
  • people without imagination require that the others carry out a regular life.
  • the day when nobody will return from the war, it will be because the war will have been well organized.
  • the characteristic of the soldier, it is salts it of the civilian.
  • When a woman is sick, it is not good any more with nothing. (" The Scum of the jours")
  • Sexually, i.e. with my heart.
  • What interests me, it is not the happiness of all the men, it is that of each one. ( the Scum of the days)
  • most clearly of my time, I pass it to darken it. ( the Scum of the days)
  • One is always excuses to live.
  • to make a soldier, it is necessary to demolish a civilian.
  • Generally. Why lies IT - one should write GENERAL: LIES, like pijonvol.
  • In the life, essence is to relate to all the judgments a priori. It appears, indeed, that the masses are wrong, the individuals always reason…

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